Letter to a Shepherd: Hobnob not with a Wolf
Correctio Filialis - as sheep are devoured
AMDG
10th May 2023
Your Eminence,
I thank you for your gracious reply. You do see that the evil events being played out today on the local stage are part of a drama of global and diabolical proportions. I recognise also that you are faced with the sayings of Pope Francis.
In such a context, my objective herin is to enable you and the Conference to take a stand that would condemn this bill outright, while enabling you conform to the sentiments of the pope.
A Perspective
You know of Rodrigo Borgia and Pietro Barbo and there have been good and great popes - and also heretics and brazen sinners. It has often been necessary for Princes of the Church such as yourself to correct and reform them.
Pope Francis has:
asserted that God positively wills the diversity of religions (Abu Dhabi Declaration) – although our Lord prayed “ut unum sint”
constantly supported not only the homosexual lifestyle but the entire LGBTQ ideology
denied the existence of acts that are always and everywhere evil, such as adultery (Amoris Laetitia)
taught falsely on the death penalty, undermining what Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium of the Church have upheld for two millenia
claimed that hell is empty, and that the souls of mortal sinners are "destroyed" after death (as believed by Jehovah's Witnesses)
Appointed pro-abortion members to the Pontifical Academy for Life
Ad nauseum.
Formulation of the Standpoint of the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka on the Penal Code 365 Amendment
You mentioned “criminalising persons who have an inborn homosexual tendency” is discouraged by Pope Francis.
To challenge the bill, and yet not contravene this pope’s sentiments, the distinction must be made regarding criminalising persons vs criminalising acts.
Please do stress your love for persons struggling with disordered inclinations, even those indulging in sin. Open your arms to the sinner, and offer support to journey with them towards salvation. However, make explicitly clear that acts of homosexuality are intrinsically evil and can never be condoned.
The penal code speaks of “grossly indecent” “carnal intercourse”. The Catholic Church cannot but condemn grossly indecent carnal intercourse, can it? Likewise, the Catholic Church is bound to oppose the sanctioning of such behaviour, because this is what the amendment of section 365 does. Therefore, it is necessary, while loving and supporting every sinner, and admitting that the church militant is filled with sinners and that Christ came to save sinners, to oppose the Dolawatta bill wholeheartedly – and indeed any legislation that sanctions or permits sin.
“It would be impossible for the Church to endorse or remain passive in the face of legislative changes that would sanction grossly indecent carnal behaviour. The Bishops Conference with great sympathy and love towards individuals who may be subject to homosexual tendencies, is compelled to vehemently oppose the amendment to section 356 and 365A”.
You mentioned the “merciful attitude” of Pope Francis toward homosexuals.
The Catholic Church worships the God whose greatest attribute is Mercy, and mercy is due to the repentant sinner.
But mercy does not and never did mean endorsement of the sin, let alone its legal approbation. It would be a wicked father who would approve his son’s errors, rather than correct them. The Catholic Church seeks to be merciful and to open the source of grace to every soul - by showing the Way, and teaching the Truth.
“Mercy is for the sinner, but to permit legalisation of sin is not mercy, but a condemnation. The Bishops Conference offers compassion to those who suffer either with concupiscence or with sin, and always accepts and welcomes the penitent. The Bride of Christ can, however, never sanction sin - and call it mercy.”
You mentioned “the Pope’s word is the final word on all matters, or at least that’s what people presume”.
The doctrine of infallibility is often misunderstood, and many may subscribe to an ultramontanism. The pope is not an oracle, nor is he a CEO whose every whim is to be fawned upon. To object to sanctioning of grossly indecent carnal intercourse would merely affirm the dogmas of the Faith and definitive Magisterial teachings.
Our bishops need to be more concerned with their salvation, rather than their careers. It will not be Pope Francis who encounters them at their judgement, saying: “I made you in life Heralds of the apostolic Faith, in meus persona agant, and Shepherds to my sheep. Did you protect my lambs from scandal, or did you not?”
Your Eminence
Love the sinner. Condemn the sin.
Fight this bill that will break the dam of remnant sanity and open the flood gates of slime and gall of an unimaginable horror.
Make no mistake, when sodomy is not just no longer a crime, but sodomites have “equality” sanctioned for them by law, you will have to face litigation for “harassment” if you don’t permit them to marry in the churches. They will obtain children by whatever unnatural means and declare their “right” to be baptised in the churches with their two or three fathers or their two or three mothers. Catholic guest houses will not be able refuse to accommodate them, and catholic businesses will commit “acts of violence” should they refuse to make LGBT wedding cakes, garments or hold their parties.
Even to preach the Catholic truth – the fundamental office of the Bishop, will be found to be a felony. It will be “discrimination” to point out that marriage is meant for a man and a woman, “incitement of fear upon oppressed groups” to affirm the traditional family, and “bias” to point out that men may not come to receive communion wearing ballerina costumes because all these will violate the equality of every conceivable “gender”, “gender expression” and “gender identity” and every kind of deviant sexual behaviour that becomes publicly, socially and legally permissible with the amendment to section 365, and its consequent fallout.
I appeal to you to make the strongest statement opposing any change in law that sanctions “gross indecency” with respect to “carnal intercourse”. Our spineless supreme court has determined that the Dolawatte bill was found constitutional. Now the soul of our nation depends on you.
Pleading for the intercession of St Catherine of Siena!
Yours sincerely,
Eshan Dias
Leviathan: Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness . . . Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness, and to Whom it Accrueth . . . https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/leviathan-part-iv-of-the-kingdom
[26] The fairies are not to be seized on, and brought to answer for the hurt they do. So also the ecclesiastics vanish away from the tribunals of civil justice.
[27] The ecclesiastics take from young men the use of reason, by certain charms compounded of metaphysics, and miracles, and traditions, and abused Scripture, whereby they are good for nothing else but to execute what they command them. The fairies likewise are said to take young children out of their cradles, and to change them into natural fools, which common people do therefore call elves, and are apt to mischief.
[28] In what shop or operatory the fairies make their enchantment, the old wives have not determined. But the operatories of the clergy are well enough known to be the universities, that received their discipline from authority pontifical.
[29] When the fairies are displeased with anybody, they are said to send their elves to pinch them. The ecclesiastics, when they are displeased with any civil state, make also their elves, that is, superstitious, enchanted subjects, to pinch their princes, by preaching sedition; or one prince, enchanted with promises, to pinch another.
[30] The fairies marry not; but there be amongst them incubi that have copulation with flesh and blood. The priests also marry not.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.