Transcript

I love talking and working with young people, and this really is—I’m excited to be here.

We are actually filming this too, just for—I’ll talk a little bit more about filming talks like this and what can happen with that in a minute.

What we’re going to be chatting about today is—I don’t know what they told you we were talking about, but we’re going to be looking at a lot of the different topics surrounding sexuality in 25 minutes.

So, like this at Ritter, when I was teaching high school seniors, was two classes, and this was another class.

Then we did a class on homosexual marriage and then another class on homosexual adoption.

Contraception—two classes.

One class we didn’t have a class on oral sex; that would be weird.

Chastity was the talk, celibacy, priesthood was a whole other.

Each of our classes was an hour and a half, so we’re going to do it all in 25 minutes.

Okay, so I’m going to talk really fast now.

I was thinking about this talk for a long time—like how can we siphon it all down to something that’s really kind of central, and how is it all related other than just it’s about sexual things?

I think the question that I want us to think about today, really quickly—I want you to think about as well—is this question: If I don’t always act on my attractions, will I explode?

That’s the key question for us today.

I’m not—like, it’s funny, ha-ha, but literally this is the question that I want us to think about because all of these things really kind of come together here, and we’re going to talk about how they come together.

You know, we think, of course, the answer is no, but there are a lot of people— a lot of people who work in the entertainment industries, music, movies, television—all of the people who are basically kind of fighting either outwardly or subtly against the Catholic Church.

The answer for them to this is yes, I will explode.

I will literally explode or become a freak.

Okay, which they’re both the same.

I mean, if I’m going to become a freak, then I might as well just explode because then I’m dead.

Society is saying yes; there are a lot of people out there telling you that the answer to this question is yes, and I want you to think about: Do you believe that?

Do you believe that if I don’t always act on my attractions, I will explode?

Which way do you think?

Because there are a lot of people, again, out there saying yes.

And then you have the Catholic Church over here saying no.

The Catholic Church is about the only place where you’re going to find people telling you no.

We will talk about what other Christians say about this specific question here in a minute, but basically the only place where you’re going to find no is from the Catholic Church.

And you might think, well, that’s stupid; he’s a priest, of course he’s going to say that.

I really mean that, and I’m not getting paid to say that.

The Catholic Church is out there saying no, I do not explode if I don’t act on my attractions, and that’s really important because, again, there are a lot of people that will come out and will tell you that if you have an attraction towards Susie in chemistry class and you don’t lust after her and you try to fight that, you will explode.

The Surgeon General of the United States came out a few years ago and said we have to teach our teenagers how to masturbate so that they don’t become—basically she’s saying it’s healthy masturbation.

Society—there are people out there telling you that acting on your—if you do not act on your attractions, you are unhealthy.

Okay?

There are people—this is the central question around this issue of homosexuality as well.

People are saying, look, these people have an attraction; are you telling them that they can’t act?

Why would you tell them no?

If they don’t, they’re going to explode.

Who are you to tell someone that they shouldn’t always act on their attractions?

If they didn’t, how can I not act on my attractions?

Is what a lot of people are asking you to think about.

You know, the Church is against contraception.

Are you saying that a married couple can’t just have sex all the time?

That they’re supposed to—if they want to practice natural family planning, are supposed to abstain from sexual activity for four or five days?

Well, my heavens!

You’re asking that married couple to become weirdos.

You’re telling them to become freaks because that would be five days?

Are you kidding me?

My heavens, we’d have married couples blowing up everywhere—five days?

My heavens, you’ve got to be kidding me.

You’re telling me that you Catholics have priests that never, ever have sex?

Well, of course!

No wonder they’re all weird, and no wonder all the priests are weird people.

You’re saying, as Catholics, this idea of chastity—that it’s possible to live that way and not act on my attractions?

That, to most people today, all of these things—what the Church says about that—most people hear that, and they don’t even—the Church has zero credibility for most people because of this answer that the Church gives here.

Society—a lot of people, and more and more people are joining, I think, this part of it that are saying, yeah, you have to act on your attractions.

Here’s the question that I want us to consider, mainly because I want to write on the board.

Okay?

So we have the people that say yes, I must act on my attractions.

Okay?

I can’t help it.

Okay?

Must act on attractions—always, every time.

Then you have the Church over here saying no, I don’t always act on my attractions.

We have something on this earth—there’s a lot of them on this earth that must act on their attractions.

What are they called?

Anybody know?

We have a group of things—lots of them—animals.

Okay?

A little male deer in the middle of mating season, and the lady deer prances by.

The male deer does not take a moment to think, ought I to live chastely?

No, he chases the lady deer, and then there’s baby deers.

Okay?

Okay?

There’s a song that was out when I—the last group knew about it, so maybe you know about it too.

It was when I was in high school; it was called—I don’t even remember the name of the song.

I remember hearing it all the time on the radio.

The line from the song, “You and me, baby, ain’t nothing but mammals, so let’s do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel.”

You know what I’m talking about?

Okay, it’s—I mean, the word—the message is obviously whack, but I mean, I was just listening to it and being like, how do people listen to this?

This is terrible music.

But anyways, aside from the musical critique of the song, yeah, but look, we’re animals too.

We’re just like the deer, honey, and so I met you at the party.

So, I mean, my husband is attracted to you; you’re attracted to me.

We’ve got this thing going here.

Are you feeling it?

Because I’m feeling it.

So we’ve got this attraction thing going on, so we’ve got to go to my car because if we don’t act on this attraction, my heavens, we would be weird.

We would be freaks if we didn’t act on that.

The Catholic Church stands up and says I don’t have to act on my attractions, and in fact—and this isn’t just because it’s about sex—the Church says this is a huge thing, not because it’s about sex.

People are always like, oh, the Church is so obsessed with sex.

No, we’re obsessed with sex, and the Church is just trying to stand up and say, look, there’s something that’s really important going on here.

Not because we’re like, oh, we can always talk about sex.

The Church says not only is this not true; the Church is saying precisely because I don’t always act on my attractions, that is what makes me a human.

This ability is precisely what distinguishes me from the deer, and I don’t have antlers.

Okay?

I mean, yes, right?

Okay?

But for all the main thing here going on is the Church is saying, look, this ability to decide that I don’t have to act on my attractions—that’s humanity.

We say in Genesis that we’re made in God’s image and likeness.

He doesn’t say that about the deer.

It’s just us that are made in God’s image and likeness.

What does God’s image and likeness do for me?

It gives me the ability to not act on an attraction and not explode, and in fact be quite healthy because of it.

This is hugely important, and there are a lot of people that are saying this guy singing that song is basically saying thanks for the gift of humanity, thanks for the gift of being able to not act on my attractions, but I don’t want it; I want to give it back.

Have you ever seen the movie The Matrix?

Anybody ever seen that?

The Matrix is like where all this deception is going on, and people are lied to.

There’s a guy in the movie that wants to go back in; he’d rather live there in ignorance, and that’s what a lot of people are.

They experience gifts from God, such as this most important gift of being able to not always act on my attractions.

They say, yeah, thanks a lot; I don’t want it.

You can keep it because I want to be a deer.

I want to just have sex whenever I want.

I want to act on my lust and my attractions, whatever, etc.,

etc. This is a hugely important question.

Do you believe that?

Do you believe that if I don’t act on my attractions all the time that I won’t explode?

Very, very important.

Now, the other thing then that I want to mention in relation to all of this stuff is that there’s a very important message we’re teaching that will help us with all of these things here, including homosexuality, and we’ll get to that in a minute.

John Paul II has a very important teaching.

I’m going to erase this for just a moment.

That helped me out a lot, and I think that we need to do a better job of getting this message out as the Church because most people are like, if we’re doing Catholic Jeopardy up here, does the Catholic Church think it’s wrong to have sex outside of marriage?

Yes.

Does the Catholic Church against homosexual sex?

Yes.

Is the Catholic Church really lame?

Yes.

Going down the list, we would know the answers to this.

People know that, but they don’t know why, and we don’t know this part of it, and this helped me out a lot when I was in high school.

Okay, and I was in chemistry class, and Susie was there, or whoever, Michelle, or whatever.

And, okay, so you’re sitting there, and the teacher’s going on and on about, you know, significant digits or, you know, the 142nd element in the periodic table, and you’re like, oh, hey, there’s Susie—much better.

And you’re there, and you experience an attraction to Susie.

So then it’s like, oh my gosh, okay, I’m a good Catholic guy; I experience this attraction to Susie.

Well, what am I going to do now?

The teacher’s still rambling at the front of the room about the periodic table, and Susie is there.

The thing that I thought I was supposed to do in high school as a good Catholic guy was to not think about Susie, to not have the attraction.

I’m trying to do the right thing; I know I’m supposed to wait until I’m married—all of these things—and I can’t think about Susie.

If I think about Susie, I’ve sinned.

If any thoughts or images of Susie pop into my mind, I’m going to hell.

And so I would try to fight the attractions or whatever.

John Paul II came along, and this is the teaching that—and he didn’t come up with it; the Church has had it; we just didn’t have somebody out there telling everyone about it.

This is hugely important.

The Church teaches about attraction—that it is not in my control in the moment.

That’s very important.

I cannot control my attractions in this particular moment.

So if I’m in chemistry class and a thought pops into my mind about Susie, I didn’t—if it’s an attraction, I didn’t choose it.

Okay?

I didn’t choose it.

The problem—so that’s really important.

Attraction is not in my control at this moment.

Now, my attractions can be shaped long-term because if I’m a young man and I’m looking at pornography every hour, okay, then my attractions—the things that pop into my mind are going to be affected by that.

So I can slowly start to kind of steer my attractions to more positive things over time.

But if I’m in chemistry class in that moment and a thought comes into my mind, did I do anything to make that happen?

No. So John Paul II is saying, look, we can’t control that, and in fact, if I try to not have an attraction, we call that something; we call it repression, and that does turn you into a psycho.

If you repress, you try to repress your attractions, you will become weird, unhealthy, not good.

There are a lot of Catholics, especially ones who are trying to do the right thing, who think that it’s either mammals on the Discovery Channel or repression.

Then I’ve got to choose repression, so they’re trying to fight against the attraction instead.

And this is really important.

What the Church teaches is this, and this was very good news for me because it helped me out a lot as a young person when I finally figured this out.

I wish somebody had told me when I was in high school, but nonetheless, John Paul II and the Church are out there saying, look, I can’t control the attraction, so you can’t be judged for it.

It’s what we call morally neutral attraction.

If I didn’t choose it, then how could I be held accountable for it?

You see what I’m saying?

Does everybody understand that?

That’s really important.

The attraction that I experienced, I can’t be judged for that because it didn’t come from me choosing it, right?

Do we see that?

Okay?

If somebody’s robbing a bank upstairs and the money falls into your lap, you can’t be arrested for that.

Did you choose to have the money?

No. Now, the guys upstairs chose it; they can be arrested, right?

Attraction is morally neutral, and this is what’s key.

The moment that I need to really pay attention to as a Catholic person or as any person is not when I have it in chemistry class, but when I become aware that I’m having it.

When I’m in chemistry class and the thought pops into my mind about Susie and her and I taking a long stroll on the beach, okay, that’s not my fault.

That was an attraction that came to me; I didn’t choose it.

When I become held accountable, what I have to pay attention to is what do I do when I become aware in the moment that I’m having this thought?

What do I do with that?

That’s the question.

That’s what we have to pay attention to because this will determine—now when I get here, I do have a choice.

When I become aware of experiencing an attraction, I now have a choice that I have to make, and this might go on for minutes before I’m aware of it.

Okay?

It could go on for five seconds; it could go on for minutes before I’m actually like wake up out of, you know, it’s like a really boring homily, and all of a sudden you’ve been—something pops into your mind, and you’re not aware of what’s going on, and then like two minutes later you’re like, wow, I’ve been thinking about Susie for the last three minutes.

Okay?

What I am held accountable for is what do I do when I arrive at this spot where I’m now aware of my attraction and having this thought or whatever is popping into my mind?

I now have a choice.

I can now choose sin; I can choose to keep intentionally choosing to have the thought.

I can continue to say, you know what?

I’m going to—not only are Susie and I going to be walking on the beach, but we’re going to have babies.

Okay?

And I’m going to think about that.

I’m choosing that thought; that is called lust.

So I can choose in the moment when I’m aware of an attraction, and I’ve had it, now I stand at a decision point somewhere down the line here, and I can choose to lust and keep thinking about it, or I can choose to not sin.

I can choose chastity; I can choose to live that way.

We call that living a life of virtue.

I say, you know what?

I had that thought in my mind; I’m not going to hell because of it, but now I’m going to choose to say, you know what?

I had that thought, and I didn’t choose it, and now I’m going to kind of walk away from that.

I’m going to walk away from that thought that I was having, and I’m going to focus back in on chemistry, as hard as that is.

Okay?

Any questions on that?

Because that is really key what we’ve just been talking about.

And we have some extra time because we started early.

Any thoughts or comments on any of that?

Anything that wasn’t clear?

Okay, all right.

So we have then a few minutes at the end here to talk about how homosexuality fits into all of this.

Okay?

Bless you.

One of the things—I’m taping this class or this little presentation so that anybody that wants to watch it is able to do that.

I do that with my homilies and anything else I do, not because I think I’m like, oh, I’m really good, but because people watch it.

If you put it out on the internet, it’s amazing; somebody will watch it.

Somebody in Singapore who hates Catholicism will still watch.

So anyways, it’s really easy to do; it’s for free, so it’s there.

Teaching this issue, I did this over four classes.

Well, the first year I taught it at Ritter, my very first year as a priest, I taught this issue of homosexuality came up.

I’m teaching seniors, and I’m thinking, like, going into that year, I’m like, okay, these seniors are sharp; they’re going to want to know the truth.

They’re getting ready to have it in the real world; they’re going to really fight back on contraception, what the Church teaches on birth control pills and condoms and all those things, and they’re really going to fight me hard on, you know, celibacy and abortion and all these other things.

And I remember presenting and teaching that, and I was all ready, and I had all my handouts, and they were like, fine, makes sense, sounds good, yep, contraception, NFP, right on, sounds very—so I’m like, I was almost like ready for a fight—like not like punching fight, but like I was ready for them to like storm the front, right?

And that never happened.

Then we get to homosexuality towards the very end of the year, and I remember teaching that, and I kind of prepared for it.

There was rage, anger, hatred at the Church from every single person in every class that I taught that day.

The Church is bigoted; the Church doesn’t know anything; the Church is 2000 years behind; the Church was stuck in the Middle Ages; the Church hates people.

It was unbelievable.

I had no—they were asking questions that I hadn’t prepared.

You know, there was just all of this stuff, and I was just totally caught off guard by it, and I’m glad—I mean, I’m not mad at them for that; it was just I wasn’t ready; that was my fault.

So the next year I come along, and I teach this again.

I’m like, all right, here we go.

I’m going to really—so I did a lot of research, and it was really good for me because I didn’t know after six years of seminary what exactly the Church said.

I knew some of the stuff; I didn’t really know; I couldn’t teach it.

And so I bet I put ten hours of work into getting these two or three classes ready because I wanted to give them the answers.

And so I filmed them like I do all of my classes, and I put them online on my blog where I always put my classes.

And I remember that day I finished my last one, and it was spring break, so me and my priest friend, Father Meyer, we get on a plane and we fly to Rome, and we’re eating pasta and going to St. Peter’s, and it’s awesome.

Well, like the fourth day we’re there, a friend of mine—we were staying at a seminary—and a friend of mine comes in and is like, dude, you are everywhere.

I go, what are you talking about?

He’s like, you don’t know what happened?

I’m like, no, I’ve been eating pasta.

What happened?

He’s like, come up to my room.

So we went up to his room, and we got online.

My picture—the video of me teaching was on about 100 websites, a lot of them with my face with horns coming out of it.

“Watch priest in a dress warp the minds of young people.

Watch priests with hate speech.”

Ritter’s email accounts and server got shut down because we got so much hate mail.

The blog and my YouTube video had about a thousand comments on each one.

I log onto my blog; I’m like, oh my gosh.

You know, there’s like a thousand comments waiting for me to respond to them.

You know, I’m like, oh, okay, yeah, let’s start with that on vacation.

Most of them really weren’t wanting an answer anyways; they were just like, you bigoted, you hate, you know, just whatever.

It was just—but it was really kind of overwhelming at the same time, you know, to kind of see yourself all over the country on these blogs.

Like, it was really an interesting experience.

There is a lot of hatred towards the Church about this teaching, and this is only getting—it’s only going to come more to the front as we go forward.

Okay?

A friend of mine and I are actually—we just, uh, we’re working actually to raise—we have a project; we’re trying to raise seventy thousand dollars to do a documentary, a twenty-minute documentary that really dives into all of this, what the Church says about this and why, in a short amount of time, in a beautiful way with some good music, some interesting things like that, because the Church is not doing a good job of getting its message out about this.

No one’s going to read a Vatican document.

Okay?

I don’t like reading Vatican documents.

They’re good; they’re great; they draw me closer to God, but the first ten paragraphs are always like just theology words that no one understands, and that’s not their fault.

We have to do a better job as Catholics of taking that and presenting it to people in a way that they understand.

So we’re trying to do that.

I believe that this will become the issue of our generation.

You need to know what the Church says on this because if you don’t, you will be attacked.

And even if you do, you’re going to be attacked, but you better have the answer ready when you go to college and you’re in a philosophy class or you’re in a theology class or you’re in a speech class or you’re in an economics class or whatever—basically probably about everybody.

I’m not trying to make you paranoid, but about everybody in your college experience, especially teachers, already has decided that the Church is wrong on this, and they don’t know what the Church teaches.

But most Catholics go into those situations, and they don’t know what the Church teaches either.

They think they know, but they don’t because it’s a complicated thing.

So I want to spend—how much time do we have?

Fifteen minutes?

We’ll end early.

Okay, don’t worry; I’m not going to take fifteen minutes.

This fits into the discussion we’ve already been having, and so it’s a really easy substitute to talk about this when we’re talking about homosexuality and what the Church teaches.

All I knew after six years of seminary was that the Church said it’s okay; attraction is okay, but I can’t act on it.

That’s all I knew.

Now, why?

Why does the Church say that?

The Church comes over here—put this word in there—and it’s still all the same.

Homosexual attraction is not in my control at this moment.

We all know that.

Okay?

We all know that.

And so that’s what gives us a hard time.

We’re like, I know people that struggle with this; I know they’re not making it up.

Okay?

And so the Church says, look, this is just a type of attraction.

If I’m in chemistry class and it’s Susie, well, the same things apply if it’s Bill.

Okay?

Homosexual attraction is a type of attraction, and it’s interesting.

One thing we want to point out here is this—come over here really quickly.

This is—if we look at what society—there are two basically really loud camps on this issue, and we’re neither, and that’s part of the problem.

We think we are in one of them, but we’re not.

The religious right, so to speak, if you know what I’m talking about there, we’re talking about the evangelical churches.

Most of you know, like Baptist Church—a lot of those Christian denominations who are not Catholic are out there yelling very loudly that homosexual attraction is a sin.

To have an attraction in a homosexual way towards another person is a sin.

Is that what the Church teaches?

No. The Church says in that moment Bill is not choosing to be attracted to Dave or have an attraction towards Dave.

Okay?

Now, the other interesting message that’s out there is from most of your professors that you’ll have in the entertainment industry, in the movies and TV that you watch—the new normal, Modern Family.

Okay?

They’re out there saying—that’s the far left, right?

They’re out there very loudly saying not only is homosexual attraction not a sin; homosexual sex is not a sin.

These are the two messages that are out there.

You have one side saying homosexual attraction is a sin, and so is homosexual sex; it’s all a sin.

You have people over here saying homosexual attraction is not a sin, and neither is homosexual sex.

In fact, most people over here are like, what’s a sin anyways?

There is no such thing as a sin in the first place.

But regardless, the Church comes in the middle between those two.

They’re in neither camp.

We’re not in the evangelical camp; we don’t think that just having an attraction is a sin.

The Church is right here in the middle, but not many Catholics know that.

People will try to clump you in with, oh, you’re one of those Christian people.

Yeah, you’re over there, and you’re just protesting, and you think we’re all sinners, and we’re all going to hell.

No, that’s not it at all.

Actually, we’re actually a lot different than that.

We believe what is actually—this is psychology 101. The interesting thing about it—this is not like the Church saying the Catechism is the only place to find this.

This is good, solid, healthy psychology.

It’s not like you’re just having to believe this because I tell you.

Psychologists will tell you that an attraction is not something in my control at this moment, but I can decide what I want to do with it.

Okay?

So the Church—there’s a really interesting essay that I had all my students read.

It’s a person who is Catholic who struggles with or lives with—probably the better word—lives with same-sex attraction, and he talks in this essay about how he grew up.

He actually joined the Church; he wasn’t a Catholic as a person with same-sex attraction.

This psycho guy joins the Catholic Church.

Now, we never hear about that.

We never hear about a person that has same-sex attraction in their life joining the Catholic Church because everyone would be like, what are you smoking?

Don’t you know they hate you?

They want to burn you at the stake?

They’re like, yeah, witch hunter, ooh, you know?

You’re joining the Catholic Church?

You’ve got to be kidding me.

You know why he says in his essay?

It’s really short, really well written.

He says, I joined the Catholic Church because they’re the only ones that are talking to me in a way that describes me.

He finds not judgment; he finds hope.

This guy is talking about how he finds hope in the message of the Church talking to him about what he’s experiencing in his life.

There’s also another essay that I had him read by a young lady that says the same thing.

We’re trying to get both of them for our little video.

It should be huge to get them in there; that would be awesome.

But people who actually study the issue and look at it and are living same-sex attraction will tell you a lot of times I find a great deal of the hope from the Church.

And it was interesting; even there were some people who were commenting on my blog in the middle of the—okay, one guy, I remember—I don’t remember his name, but he was like, you know, you’re stupid, you’re dumb, blah, blah, blah.

But then he had this other post where he comes on and he says to all the other people, he goes, hey, you know what?

What he’s saying is crazy, but we should be talking to guys like this because they’re not—he’s telling all the other people who are hating what I was saying and hating me and the message.

He’s saying, look, we might hate him, but he’s not there.

The Church is not there, and we ought to be.

They’re saying what they find in the Catholic Church is actually a little bit different—in a way, a different message.

You have to be able to articulate that in 30 seconds if you’re going to hope to be Catholic after this year.

Okay?

You’re going to a public school, or you go off to college, wherever you’re at.

If you can’t articulate that in a minute to somebody and you’re not sure of it, you’re done.

We’ll see you maybe when you’re 40. Okay?

This is the issue, and it applies, and it really is—it’s not like we have—the Church has all of these teachings on sexuality and attraction.

It’s not like we say, oh, you want to know about homosexuality?

Well, let’s come over here to our little secret room where we have documents on homosexuality.

No, the Church is like, it’s all the same.

It’s the same story; it all fits in the same arc.

I do not explode because I don’t act on an attraction.

It doesn’t mean I’m unhealthy; it doesn’t make me weird; it doesn’t make me creepy.

Okay?

Whatever my attractions are now, long-term, can I help steer them in different directions if I live certain ways?

Yeah, yeah.

But my attraction is not in my control; it’s morally neutral.

What I have to decide is what will I do with it once I experience it, and that really is basically what the Church is asking us to think about.

Questions?

Comments?

Yes, ma’am.

There’s a book that I would always offer at the beginning of the year to buy all my seniors, any of them that wanted a copy of it.

It’s amazing; it’s a book of essays that are really short.

They’re all written by young Catholics about our age.

It’s called Faith at the Edge.

It’s got everything in there.

Two of the essays are about homosexuality in the Church, written by people who live with same-sex attraction.

There’s stuff in there about drugs and abortion and a lot of the other positive things about fasting.

It’s really well done for youth ministers or anybody.

All the kids that ended up getting a copy from me were always really like, hey, this is awesome.

So, yeah, Faith at the Edge.

Yep.

If you want to stick around, if you have any questions that you’d like to ask after this, I know it’s kind of hot in here.

We still have five minutes, but it’s kind of toasty.