Friends with Benefits Viva-la-Difference Prayer Vigil

Our friends at Boston Catholic Insider have a post up with one of the another 'pastoral mystery' from the Archdiocese of Boston.


Are these people pulling my leg?

With all the spiritual problems manifesting themselves in every corner of the world, the Archdiocese of Boston held a viva-la-difference prayer vigil for friends with benefits.


Do your one-night stands have you down in the dumps?

Have you lost your get-up-and-go over the difference between Church teaching the person you're having sex with?

Chapfallen because the husband of your lover hates you for sleeping with his wife?

Come one come all to the Archdiocese of Boston prayer vigil for the sexually oppressed.


Seriously, what is sex doing on this list?

It has no business there.

Why wasn't there an hour for Catholics hated for their beliefs on human sexuality?

How about Christians who are being forced by the gay community to give up earning their living to save their soul? Oppressed by folks who won't walk to the next block to buy their wedding cakes or drive another mile to another venue because Christians can't host something they believe is robbing you of your salvation.

Wouldn't that be more appropriate to the reality in the culture?

Isn't it time to catch up to who is being oppressed by whom and start holding vigils for it?

How come these prelates never want to heal the wounds of merchants or employees who are hated, reviled and persecuted because they don't want to participate in gay weddings?

How about the police being executed and beaten in our streets?

Give me a break. I am so sick and tired of the malice these people are inciting against practicing Catholics, and more importantly our religion, it isn't even funny.


It's fair to say that the teachings of the Church convey they don't like the sexual choices some of us make or have made. They never will.

This reality is more complicated for SSA Catholics than it is for the rest of us because SSA Catholics believe their theologically-outlawed sexual preferences are not a choice. They maintain that the libido controls what you're attracted to.

Knowing some of the jerks I've been attracted to in my life, I'd say there is some merit to that principle, with the caveat that sexual intimacy and appetites are shaped and formed during childhood and refined during puberty. If they weren't, most of us would be married to our mothers and fathers.

When intimacy and bonding is first recognized by a child - at age 5 or so - a child will express it by announcing they're going to marry their Mom or Dad, or another parent-figure in their lives. This is the teaching moment, the shaping moment, the formation moment. Later in puberty or young adulthood, children can be influence and brainwashed by relatives, friends, teachers - but this is the normal course of development.

This post isn't about the quibbles in Christendom over nature vs. nurture of sexual appetites. Nor is it about the reality that our homosexual brothers and sisters experience malice. The language used to hurt or make them feel shame, the stinkeye.

Whenever we encounter pain caused by this or because of misunderstanding of Church teaching on human sexuality, we need to work hard to bind those wounds to the best of our ability.

Sexual preferences outside of marriage do not belong on a list of oppressed in the Catholic Church. Church teaching isn't oppression. It is, in fact, the opposite of oppression. It is freedom. Church teaching saves us all from ourselves.


The post is about Fr. Steve Madden and Cardinal O'Malley throwing gasoline on the fires with their own personal political agendas.

We all know the reasons why Catholics who are hated for their beliefs on human sexuality were not on that list.

We all know the reasons why our policemen were not on the list.

They wouldn't dare fuel those fires.

But they have no problem burning the Crucifixes on our lawns.