Catholic Answers

The “LGBTQ Catholic Ministry” Outreach, founded in 2022 by James Martin, S.J., recently offered the following queer-friendly “adaptation” of the Confiteor: I confess to our Loving God and to you, my siblings, That I have fallen short in my prejudiced thoughts and my biased judgements in my careless words and my degrading self-talk in what I have done to cooperate with injustice and in what I have failed to do to resist it; Through my fear, through my complacency, through my worst errors. Therefore I ask all my spiritual ancestors, queer saints, and you, the human family, to pray with me, that together we might build a better tomorrow. Amen. This prayer comes from an article called “An LGBTQ Catholic guide to the Mass: Praying the Confiteor,” authored by Ariell Watson Simon, who describes herself as “queer” and lives in Missouri with her “wife.” Her essay “begins a series that explores praying with the Mass from an LGBTQ perspective.” We hardly need to be theologians to recognize the ideological and deeply secular nature of Simon’s attempt to pervert the words and focus of the Confiteor: "I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. Therefore, I ask Blessed Mary ever virgin, all the angels and saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God." In the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chysostom, we Eastern Catholics pray the following before receiving Holy Communion: "O Lord, I believe and profess that you are truly Christ, the Son of the living God, who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first. . . . O God, be merciful to me, a sinner. O God, cleanse me of my sins and have mercy on me. O Lord, forgive me, for I have sinned without number." The intent, in both the East and the West, is acknowledging that I am a sinner, in constant need of mercy and conversion. Period. Furthermore, implicit in these prayers is a fact that cannot be erased, even if Martin, Simon, and company seek to do so: it is Jesus Christ and his Church who tell us what is sinful and what is good—not our emotions, passions, or desires, no matter how strongly they press upon us. As Fr. Aidan Nichols writes, “it is not experience we should trust but the transmutation of experience by Scripture and Tradition."

We can't have a moral system based only on "consent." Take self-injury. Some “transabled” persons feel as though they should be disabled, and so they desire to have a doctor render them paraplegic or to amputate a healthy limb. But just because these persons, and the doctors, consent to such acts does not make them morally permissible. Most people would still say this is wrong. Or consider the more absurd example of Armin Meiwes, who butchered and ate a willing victim who responded to his internet ad. Should murder and cannibalism be morally permissible if consented to? “But those people must be mentally ill if they’re consenting to that.” Why must we draw that conclusion? We can judge that someone has a mental illness only if we first believe that his desired behaviors are grossly disordered. But disordered or bad behaviors can be evaluated based only on a presupposed moral standard that determines what ordered and good human behavior is. This undermines the idea that choice, or consent, by itself is the sole moral criterion.

This meeting isn't as surreal as it appears. By his own account, Bob Dylan is a serious and committed Christian. His 1979 conversion and subsequent recording of three Christian-themed albums (Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love) are well known among Dylan fans, and among many who are not. The common assumption, however, is that Dylan discarded Christianity as quickly as he took it up, and that his “Christian phase” was just another bizarre incident in a strange man’s multifacetedly quirky career. The man himself, however, says otherwise. In 2022, long after he is widely assumed to have left Christianity and never looked back, Dylan said, "I’m a religious person. I read the scriptures a lot, meditate and pray, light candles in church. I believe in damnation and salvation, as well as predestination. The Five Books of Moses, Pauline Epistles, Invocation of the Saints, all of it." And in 2009, when he released Christmas in the Heart, an album of Christmas carols and hymns sung as only he could sing them, an interviewer said to him, “You really give a heroic performance of ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem.’ The way you do it reminds me a little of an Irish rebel song. There’s something almost defiant in the way you sing, ‘The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.’ I don’t want to put you on the spot, but you sure deliver that song like a true believer.” Dylan replied simply, “Well, I am a true believer.” Let's pray that he puts to good use the rosary that Pope Leo gave him and comes all the way home to the Catholic Church!