Silence, Tolerance and St Thomas More

Last updated on: November 7, 2009 at 11:25 am by Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Silence, Tolerance and St Thomas More 2009-11-07T11:25:00-05:00 Fr. Dwight Longenecker

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Here’s a news story about a Massachusetts man who claims he was fired for expressing his opinions about a colleague’s lesbian ‘marriage.’ The story is interesting because the guy claims that he wasn’t radical and aggressive in his disapproval of the impending lesbian marriage, but that his homosexual colleague (and superior in the workplace) kept mentioning it until he gave some sort of response. In other words, he kept silent until he was goaded into a response, and being an honest person he could not give a response that was approving. The response he did give was (according to him) gentle, apologetic and regretful. Was his lesbian superior sacked because she hounded him over his religious views? No. He was fired because of his discriminatory behavior.

Here is the situation we are now in. The homosexualists run well financed campaigns to twist the majority view on marriage. They actively campaign for homosexual positive sex education in our schools. They have increasingly high profile ‘Pride Marches’ many of which are offensive to public morals with nudity, lewd acts, profanity, blasphemy and hate crimes against Catholics. We are supposed to respond to these aggressive, provocative and increasingly violent attacks with Christian tolerance, forbearance, wisdom and grace.

In fact this is exactly what we should do. We should respond with well reasoned, tolerant and gentle reproof. However, should we lapse and respond with the tiniest bit of fight back we’re ‘obsessed, bigoted, intolerant, full of hate, homophobic’ and every other nasty name you can imagine.

The fact of the matter is the homosexualists will not be satisfied with tolerance. Like this guy’s lesbian boss, they will insist on approval. I am reminded of St Thomas More’s response to the wickedness of Henry VIII. Thomas More chose the path of silence. Time and again his was the voice of reasoned tolerance and forbearance. Over and over again he repeated that he would not be able to sign the Act of Supremacy, but he did not judge the consciences of those who did. He tried repeatedly to retire in dignified silence. This was not sufficient. Henry demanded either his signature or his head.

Be prepared for the same. Tolerance is not what these people want. They will not be satisfied with that. They want your approval. They will not even be satisfied with ‘equality under the law’. Once they have civil partnerships they will demand that all churches provide the facility for homosexual marriage as the Church of Sweden has now done.

Finally, I should clarify my terminology. I regularly use the term ‘homosexualists’. I do so intentionally. With this term I am not referring to people with a homosexual orientation. I am not even referring to people who are engaged in homosexual activity. The genesis of the homosexual condition and the morality of homosexual actions is another discussion.

I am referring to those people for whom homosexuality has become the definition of their life, their goals, their ambitions and their agenda. In other words, I am writing about those who have turned a sexual orientation into an ideology.

My arguments against them, therefore are the same arguments I would use against anyone who forcibly promotes a false ideology of any kind. You will see what I mean if you go through the above post and substitute ‘communism’ or ‘vegetarianism’ or ‘Nazism’ or ‘climate change-ism’ or any other ideology for ‘homosexualism’.

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