The Quest to Redefine Reality

Originally Published on tob.catholicexchange.com

Recently, LifeSiteNews.com ran a story about how the London-based organization called Marriage Care is courting the same-sex agenda. The chief executive, Terry Prendergast, is “to be the keynote at the annual conference of the homosexual organization Quest.” While sadly these conferences acclaiming the same-sex lifestyle are happening more and more frequently, what is most troubling is the connection between Marriage Care and the Catholic Church.

Marriage Care is “registered as a Catholic charity whose president is the sitting Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols,” where “the group operates from 80 locations and 53 relationship counseling centres in England and Wales.” The last time I checked, the Church had a very clear stance on the issue of same-sex attraction, and they definitely don’t see eye-to-eye with organizations like Quest, which is “is trying to convince the Catholic Church to abandon its ‘policies’ on sexuality and the nature of marriage.”

Oh, and the real kicker about Marriage Care is that

“Terry Prendergast told LifeSiteNews.com in an interview that a significant source of the group's funding and other support comes from Catholic dioceses, one of which pays the rent for offices, and from individual parishes across the country. But…the group's purpose is not necessarily to uphold the Catholic teaching on marriage and family.”

Did you catch that? The Catholic Diocese of Westminster is directly helping to finance the destruction of marriage and the family! Any attempt for the Diocese to be “pastoral” (read: a pushover) and bring outsiders into the Church is doing much greater damage than any possible good.

(I encourage everyone to contact the Archdiocese of Westminster, requesting that diocesan funding be pulled from Marriage Care. To do so, please contact:

Archbishop Vincent Nichols
Vaughan House,
46 Francis Street,
London SW1P 1QN
Phone: (+) 020 7931 6007
Fax: mauramcbride@rcdow.org.uk)

Let’s get back to Quest: The conference they are putting on is themed, "We Are Family: New Thinking (Read: Bad Thinking) for the Twenty First Century”, and as keynote speaker, Prendergast will be calling “upon the Catholic Church to "rethink" the nature of the family this weekend.” His reasoning: the “romantic image" that has been “built up by the Church of a ‘golden age of the nuclear family’ which excludes those who "do not fit," including single parent ‘families,’ "and also ‘co-habiting and same-sex families.’"

What’s more: Prendergast believes that persons with same-sex attraction "lay equal claim to their married heterosexual counterparts when bringing up children in stable relationships." He believes that “children do best in a family where the adult relationship is steady, stable and loving,” and that “adult, not married, (are what is important) since there is no evidence that suggests that children do best with heterosexual couples."

I just have one question for him: Is he actually in touch with reality?

Every single statistic used by the same-sex agenda to claim that children do no better with male-female relationships than with those in same-sex relationships have been flawed. For example, take the Goodrich v. Department of Public Health in 2003 (the case that legalized same-sex “marriage” in Massachusetts and started the snowball effect of “gay marriage” in other States). In that decision, and every other one since, none of the children in the stats were raised by a married man and woman, but instead of children raised by single women. In comparing between the single mother and those in “committed” same-sex relationships, there seems to be no difference in child development.

However, when comparisons between the child development of those who are raised in a home with a father and a mother and those raised with only their mother are made, there is not even a caparison. When the father is in the home and is present to his children, the children are much more confident, self-assured, and ready to engage in world in a constructive way (for more info, see Joseph Nicolosi, A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, Chapter 9).

What does the opposite scenario look like? Just look at our society. We have grown up since the 1960s where “free love” ruled, contraceptives became readily available, and divorce rates began to skyrocket. In the midst of this, vast numbers of children were raised in fatherless situations, leading to three generations of children lost, not knowing their origin, and when they became adults themselves, because of their homegrown education, they continue the pattern of irresponsible parenthood, not to mention the increased chances for emotional dysfunction and getting involved with drugs and crime in their youth. (For more info, see here.)

And what about the “steady, stable and loving” relationships? Again, if we look at the statistics, we see that these types of relationships don’t exist in the same-sex community. For those who have been involved in “stable” relationships (primarily men), it is widely understood that for the relationship to last, cheating must be allowed to occur (read: one night stands) as long as they don’t become emotionally attached.

This is not a healthy environment to raise children, where they will obviously be exposed to the latest partner that daddy brings home. To have them raised by a couple who do not understand what their sexuality is all about, as well as to flaunt this in front of their “kids,” is not something that should be celebrated, but instead should be treated as a form of child abuse.

What about love? Now there’s a word that is thrown around. I’m all about love when it’s actually love, but when it is counterfeit version being passed off as the real deal, then its going to lead to a world of hurt for all parties involved. While the world may define love by the relationship between those who express themselves genitally, real love from the Catholic perspective is based on the reality of the Person of Jesus Christ, who demonstrates love not through mere sentimentality, but as a sincere gift of self. He poured out everything that he had, not holding anything back. He demonstrated the full truth and meaning of sexuality, that it is not about what a person can get, but it is about what can be given to others.

For love to exist between two human beings, there must be one who gives the gift, one who receives, and the gift between them. In regard to genital activity, if one is not giving (or receiving) everything to (or from) the other person (a.k.a. their fertility), then they are actually lying with their bodies. Like those who contracept, those in same-sex relationships know something is wrong, but can’t put their finger on it; they become more and more distant, and eventually the relationship will die. This is because when the house is built on lies, it is isn’t going to last.

And guess what? Like children of divorced relationships, the children in these “families” will be left to try and figure out why this has happened, when in reality, it shouldn’t have happened in this first place.

I believe that Dale O’Leary puts it best: “If we are to put the best interests of children first, we must respect a child’s right to be born into a family consisting of his biological father and mother, who are united in a permanent and exclusive marriage” (One Man, One Woman, A Catholic's Guide to Defending Marriage, 197).

Even more important than the issue of child rearing is that when organizations like Quest try to change the Church’s ‘policies’ on sexuality and the nature of marriage, we must recognize this as THE most fundamental issue facing the Church today. For the union between man and woman is not simply a historical construct but was instituted by God from the beginning to image His love for humanity. To say that marriage can be conceived in any way possible is to say that there is no real structure to love and that it can mean anything.

If love can mean just anything, than it becomes meaningless. If love is meaningless, than we are without hope; a world without hope means despair. Simply look at the rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, and successful suicide attempts (see here for more info) amongst those in the same-sex lifestyle shows just how deep despair goes when love becomes inverted. To pretend that this is simply a different way of a person “expressing themselves” is simply fooling ourselves and betrays the very reason we were created, which is to love as God loves.

Remember Paul Revere? He rode throughout the colonies, waking up the slumbering to alert them that the British are coming. We must be like him, taking that long, swift ride through our homes, schools, work places and streets, proclaiming the truth about the human person. To simply accept this agenda laying down will have disastrous consequences, for marriage…and our children.