Should active homosexuals be permitted to flaunt their lifestyle at a CatholicSchool?

[GloriaPatri4]

Dear Father Serpa,

My question is, should active homosexuals be permitted to flaunt their lifestyle at a Catholic School? A homosexual couple (men) has enrolled two of their four adopted children into our parish school. The two men are openly gay, they live together in the same house, they wear wedding rings and they are affiliated with Gay activists’ organizations. I feel the two men are flaunting their lifestyle and causing scandal by frequently appearing together at school and church functions (including our youth Mass where they volunteer) as a couple and as a family. They bring their children to school together almost everyday. I believe this situation is negatively influencing our students, parents, faculty at the school and our very impressionable teenagers at our youth Mass into thinking that homosexual unions are okay. The children and adults who aren’t aware of the church teachings on homosexuality are saying things like “The men are so nice” or “They make such a beautiful family” or “This is the society we live in we may as well get used to it now” or “There are all kinds of families” and the worst “If we listened to everything that came from Rome (The Vatican) we would be living in the Dark Ages”.

I am deeply troubled by this situation and I’m confused as to why our principal or pastor has not addressed the issue with the two men yet. There are many of us who have been praying for these two men in the hopes that they will have a conversion but how can we hope or think that the men will ever have a conversion if they are not corrected in their sins? We’ve been praying especially for the adopted children of these two men who are truly innocent victims.

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[Fr.Vincent_Serpa]

Dear GP,

If the couple were a man and a woman who were open about the fact that they were not married, it would be a matter of scandal for the parish to approve such behavior by not challenging it. To give scandal is much more than simply shocking behavior as the dictionary defines it. According to St. Thomas (II-II, Q. liii, a. 1) scandal is a word or action evil in itself, which occasions another’s spiritual ruin.

For the administration of a parish to allow such an open show of defiance of the Church’s moral teaching regarding sexual behavior is not only irresponsible, it is a scandal in itself! Our Lord had some very strong words about one who would scandalize His little ones: “…it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Mt 18:6)

As to the attitude that this is the society we live in so we might as well get used to it: what about our Lord’s command that we are to be salt for the earth! He said that if salt looses its ability to be different from that to which it is applied, it is good for nothing and ought to be trampled under foot. We have the world’s only Good News. What a tragedy to water it down!

As for listening to everything that comes from Rome bringing us to the Dark Ages, the Catholic Church was the only ray of light during the Dark Ages. It alone preserved the culture. And it alone is the ray of light today! But one would hardly know this to look at some parishes and chancery offices.

Thank God for the laity. In so many places today as in the past, it is they who are leading the clergy in fidelity to the Magisterium.

As the dramatization on EWTN says, “It’s our Catholic faith. Let’s live it!”

Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.