Before returning to the Catholic Church more than 13 years ago, I viewed myself as an online freedom fighter who would do and say anything I deemed necessary to help wake people up to what I considered true and good.
My blog and YouTube channel were the battlefield where I wielded words—my weapons of choice. I waged war against what I perceived as deception and manipulation by many in the government and entertainment industry. My words were often foul, and my delivery method was usually angry and aggressive, but I did my best to help free captives. Over time, Jesus took my desire to free others and transformed my understanding of freedom and my methods of fighting.
Until I was given my true freedom, I didn’t clearly see the false freedom of the hedonistic lifestyle I’d been living. I was pleased to find that the Church had consistently fought for people’s freedom from its inception. One of the significant battles she was involved in when I returned was deeply personal to me: the battle over identity. I gladly joined this fight, in part, by joining the Courage apostolate and by writing and creating videos on my website.
Soon after joining this battle, though, I discovered that many within the Church are fighting on the opposing side, either intentionally or unintentionally. The intentional fighters for the other side are those who, despite their catechesis, think they know better than the Church and actively fight to subvert the Truth. The unintentional fighters are those who, due to a lack of catechesis, rely on their own feelings and understanding, trust in the understanding of the world, and/or doubt in the power of Christ. Both keep many of us away from the freedom Jesus wants for us. My decision to begin taking classes at the Avila Institute brought me into contact with people who reignited my waning zeal for this freedom for myself and others.
On day one of my first class with Dan Burke, he stated, “One mortal sin can send you to hell.” Woah! What a smack in the face that was. Later, in another class, he stated, “Without a firm amendment to change, your Confession may be invalid.” These two statements were battle cries from someone who—I hadn’t encountered in the Church up until now—was a true freedom fighter. A freedom fighter who speaks boldly but gently and with compassion, showing me a new way to fight.
Another statement, “you have to fight like heaven to get the hell out of you,” yanked me from the mediocrity I’d been dwelling in for some time and reminded me of the greatness Jesus invites us all to.
Up until this point, I’d been falling (or rather throwing myself) into mortal and venial sin habitually. I’d convinced myself that my habitual sin wasn’t that big a deal as long as I went to Confession. I believed I could love Jesus and, at the same time, intentionally embrace behavior contrary to love, until I watched a video from another freedom fighter, Fr. Mike Schmitz, in the same series of classes.
In it, he said that each time we choose to sin, we are telling Jesus, “I know what You want, and I don’t care. I want what I want.” I began to cry as I listened to these words, and I felt a shift in me. A desire to stop harming my relationship with Him, Whom I say I love.
I’d never thought of sin this way because I hadn’t encountered freedom fighters who were willing to speak to me this way. I was shaken awake and wanted to show my gratitude by doing the same for others in a Church that seems to have fallen into a sleepy, mediocre state.
The most obvious example of this for me is the repeated statements from well-meaning bishops and priests, referring to people who experience same-sex attraction as “gay” or “homosexual.” Each time I hear these terms used, I feel a little sting. The Church recognizes that these words limit us and reinforce the false idea that we are defined by our desires and that we have no choice but to act upon them and live them out. This is a mindset straight from the devil and reinforced by the voices of those who should be encouraging us to fight for greatness, not settle for mediocrity.
The sins involved with living out these identities are at least grave matters, if not mortal sins (committed freely and with knowledge), meaning just one of them can separate us from Christ for eternity. Each time we engage in them, knowing what the Church teaches, we are saying to Christ, “I don’t care what You want. I want what I want.”
For those of us who are Catholic and living this identity without this understanding, we might then go to Confession with no real plan in place and no hope or desire to stop the behavior, thus performing an invalid Confession. Afterwards, we might present ourselves to receive the Eucharist, which, in this state, is sacrilegious. We are not fighting like heaven to get the hell out of us, and sometimes it seems many of our Church leaders are not either.
I am not gay. I am not homosexual. I am a son of God who experiences a sexual attraction that is not what God intended for me or anyone else. For me to fight like heaven, I need the Church to fight with me, not against me, and in many cases, that is what it feels like it’s doing.
Identity is foundational. For me to grow as a son of God, that identity has to be firmly established. It has always been firmly established in the Church of the past, and so people who felt what I have felt from a relatively early age had something to build off of. I have this attraction. The authoritative teaching of the Church of Christ says that this attraction is not properly ordered. Ok. Now I have something to pray about, something to fight against, and something to fight for. I have the prayers of the Church, along with the leadership of her clergy, to shore me up in this fight. This is the foundation that has been taken from us (or is in the process of being taken), and we must fight to preserve it.
To fight for our freedom, we have to maintain the Truth and speak it with love. Mortal sin is deadly. Repeatedly falling into mortal sin and going to Confession with no desire or plan to change is equally deadly. Receiving the Eucharist while still in mortal sin is deadly. This is what has helped me discover a new sense of the freedom available to me over the last couple of years, and my brothers and sisters who live with this attraction deserve the same opportunity for freedom. For that to happen, we need the Church’s support.
I know who I am now. I am a free man created by God to love Him and to be loved by Him—and to use my freedom to choose to live with Him in this life and in the next.
I believe that many of our good and holy leaders have been misled by the world, their own feelings, and the priests and bishops who practice false compassion and mercy. They believe that same-sex attraction and the false identities that go along with it do not need to be fought against, so they leave many of the sheep—those most in need of defending and tending—to wander on their own, grazing in corrupted fields of dead grass.
I write this to help them and those who are misleading them to see things from a different perspective—through the eyes of the historical Church, which knew that to exit the battlefield by capitulating to the ways of the world leaves the sheep defenseless. This is a dereliction of their duty as freedom-fighting shepherds, and I pray that they soon get back to fighting for our souls rather than against us.
Photo by Jomarc Nicolai Cala on Unsplash
