(LifeSiteNews) — Pro-LGBT Jesuit Father James Martin doubled down on his support for the LGBT agenda in a Tuesday article in which he asserted that the Catholic liturgical calendar’s June devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is actually “complementary” with “Pride Month,” which celebrates people who engage in homosexual lifestyles.
In an article published by Martin’s newly founded organization Outreach, which bills itself as “an LGBTQ+ Catholic Resource,” Martin argued that Catholics can celebrate “Pride Month” if they understand “pride” to mean “a consciousness of one’s own dignity.”
According to Martin, “the two celebrations — the Month of the Sacred Heart and Pride Month,” are “not only not in conflict, but deeply complementary. One … shows us how Jesus loved. The other shows us whom Jesus calls us to love. “
Martin noted that Catholics often object to the celebration of “Pride Month” during the month of June for two reasons. The first reason, he stated, is that “pride is a sin, and sin should never be celebrated.” Others also object, according to Martin, because they believe “LGBTQ people are simply sinful or are always in conflict with church teaching.”
New: The Month of the #SacredHeart, one of my favorite devotions, and #PrideMonth are both celebrated in June. And they are complimentary, rather than contradictory: One shows us how Jesus loves. The other shows us whom Jesus calls us to love.https://t.co/PDRiMtB0Dw
— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) June 14, 2022
RELATED: FLASHBACK: St. John Paul II called ‘pride’ celebrations an ‘offense’ to Christian values
Answering the first objection, Martin asserted that “there are two kinds of pride,” and while one is “the opposite of humility,” the other (which he argued is “closer to what Pride Month is meant to be for the LGBTQ community”) amounts to “a recognition of the human dignity of a group of people who have, for centuries, been treated with contempt, rejection and violence.”
Taking on the second objection, the controversial priest — who recently made a statement seeming to defend puberty-blocking drugs for children — asserted that “many LGBTQ people aren’t doing anything at all against church teaching.”
“Imagine a young LGBTQ person who is not in any sort of sexual relationship but simply wants to be accepted,” Martin suggested. “Where is the sin?”
The priest went on to suggest that harboring objections to the public celebration of homosexual lifestyles is “false” because “it ignores the fact that all of us are sinful. Who among us has not sinned?”
Despite Martin’s depiction of a chaste young person who identifies as LGBTQ+, public celebrations of “pride” during the month of June do not tend to support Christian chastity. Instead, drag shows, pride parades, and even commercials promoting “pride” often definitionally advocate homosexual lifestyles and many feature sexually explicit content, including content enacted in front of or specifically targeted at children.
Moreover, with the ascendency of transgender ideology, “pride” celebrations have also placed strong focus on affirming the notion that people can change their God-given sex, a radical idea that Fr. Terrance Chartier of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate recently asserted violates at least four of the 10 commandments.
Later in his article, Fr. Martin compared expressing love and support for people who identify as LGBTQ+ with several of Jesus’ interactions with individuals in the Gospels, including His conversation with a Samaritan woman as recounted in the Gospel of John.
“She has been married five times and is living with a man who is not her husband. In other words, she has an irregular sexual past and present,” Martin said of the Samaritan woman in the Gospel, adding that “Jesus treats her with infinite love, engaging with her in one of the longest conversations in the Gospels, revealing himself to her as the ‘Living Water’ and commissioning her to spread the Good News among the Samaritan people.”
Martin did not note that Jesus’ expression of “infinite love” for the Samaritan woman included making clear to her the wrongfulness of her lifestyle by telling her: “You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’ For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true” (Jn. 4:17-18).
Earlier in John’s gospel, Jesus had told the woman caught in adultery to “go and sin no more.”
In a 2019 piece for The Catholic Spirit, Fr. Erich Rutten pointed out that while Jesus “does not wish to condemn us,” He “clearly urges us to go and sin no more that we might have true life.”
“In John 3:17, we are told that God did not send Jesus into the world to condemn the world. But neither does Jesus leave us in our dysfunction and sin,” Rutten said. “He comes to show us the way out. He is ‘the way, the truth and the life’ (Jn 14:6). He comes to save us from ourselves and our sin.”
Fr. Martin’s “Outreach” organization is planning to host a conference on June 24-25 at the nominally-Catholic Fordham University in New York City.
The event will feature a lineup of various homosexuality and transgender advocates, including so-called “gender doctor” Dr. Colt St. Amand (a woman who presents herself as a “transgender” man) whose bio on her website reads: “Openly transgenderqueer Two Spirit man who works with LGBTQI+ children, teens, adults and their loved ones.”
Attendees at the event will be required to “provide proof of [COVID-19] vaccination and booster shot(s) upon arrival, wear masks during the conference, and observe any additional Fordham University Covid protocols,” according to the “Outreach” website.