What I Would Say to The Synod
Author: Andrew Comiskey
November 15, 2023
I am a man dealing with same-sex attraction. I am committed to chastity and helping others to become chaste. No mere abstinence will do. Chastity invites me continuously into a robust self-denial that frees me to behold another’s authentic good and to bless it without mucking things up. Put another way, chastity flows from love of God and neighbor and guides me in loving both. Only the chaste love well.
That’s because chastity is all about integration (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2337) and sexual wholeness—it frees me from self-concern and for a lean virility that welcomes brothers as brothers and confirms the dignity of my wife (42-years faithful and counting) and a host of dependents. Chaste Jesus only asks of us what he lived. This servant is not above him; under his care I flourish and accompany others to do the same. For the last 43 years, I have labored with Christians of all stripes seeking to become chaste in their divided sexuality, especially those driven and derided by same-sex attraction. Becoming chaste together through the many graces of Jesus and Church is the best thing going.
We are often weak and foolish. Divine Mercy shines on our sin-weariness and invites repentance (cf. Luke 5:31–32; Rom. 2.4). We repent as much as is needful. Sins against chastity reduce us to the feet of him who shed blood to cancel that sin. Our lives now depend on his. He stirs the waters of our baptism; he opens a horizon for us that supersedes any identification based on disordered desires.
The Cross also frees us from any self-pity and any claim to “specialness”; we do not romance “gay” anything or champion LGBTQ+ rights. Yes, our struggles can be profound, but his mercy is deeper still and invites us into identification with him alone. What a gift: The very sins that threatened our salvation become in repentance an aspiration to wholeness, over and over, as the lifetime goal of chastity demands.
One deception facing the Church today is the worldly notion that people facing sexual-identity conflicts constitute a minority group, an ethnos, and an oppressed-people group at that. Such a group often demands “protected” status, and any who oppose that are deemed “haters,” even killers, for provoking them to suicide by not heeding their demands.
Please, expose this lie at its root and pull it up. Otherwise, it will grow to divide schools, parishes, dioceses, and the Church overall. Endless gatherings will debate just how much we bless “gay” and “trans” unions, clergy, seminarians, and Church members. Instead, offer merciful advocacy and accompaniment for that person’s dignity through the Cross: repentance unto chastity; no other way but through Christ crucified and his cross-minded members.
The Catholic Church cannot afford to have her authority eroded and diverted by “gay” squabbles. Heed our Protestant brothers now divided and diminished due to LGBTQ+ demands. We must read the deception clearly and act truthfully-in-love. The Church welcomes divided sinners, not a weaponized “oppressed people” group. Refuse LGBTQ+ social constructs on the solid ground of our theological anthropology, our sexual ethics, and the Divine Mercy that raises the repentant from a host of sexual indignities.
Never has the Church needed to be more countercultural. LGBTQ+ realities tempt a generation to reconsider whether humanity is binary. This is socially persuasive to many who now experiment with a host of shame-free options, like “gay” relationships and “trans” identification.
We can do better. I am grateful for the fathers and mothers in the faith who summoned me from confusion into clarity of identity and sobriety of action. I especially value fathers of faith who saw more than I could about my dormant masculinity and accompanied me in its awakening. Virtue from without called forth virtue within. Though a couple of “fathers” misled me by confirming my “gay” self as intractable, I am grateful for the majority who understood the true nature of chastity—a gift and a goal (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2342, 2345) toward which I as a son of the Father could aspire: realistic and hopeful.
Complementing solid Church leadership is the gift of “one another,” men and women with whom I gather to goad each other onward in our chaste aspirations. Over the years, I’ve developed effective ways of gathering in small parish-based groups to pray, encourage, and mature in our identities as men and women. We gather to receive love and to give it in the spirit of the Imago Dei (cf. 1 Cor. 11:11–12). We heal to be “for” each other.
As an elder-blessed but lay-run offering, we have learned solid limits and a simple teaching style that keeps the “waters” pure and moving. In that, we are united with the Courage apostolate’s chapters around the world. We strugglers realize that each of us is made in his image; we are thus responsible to help the other know the sexual gift he or she is. In becoming free enough to extend blessing (at first in a “safe” small group setting), we become more whole.
And in that whole-enough state we become witnesses. The dragon may prowl and roar to intimidate us, but we counter him by the blood and word of our testimony (cf. Rev. 14:7–12). Our temptations to unchastity are intensified by false witnesses in the Church and without. More powerfully, we counter false narratives by giving voice to the stirrings of integration we experience.
I love this! We find our voices by articulating the transforming power of Jesus among us. The Word in my brother or sister strengthens me, and I return the favor. If she listens, the Church around us can hear the Gospel through a sexual sinner becoming a saint. Few homilies on chastity cast a vision more beautifully than a humble sinner who witnesses to how Jesus and Church united his or her divided life. Glorious. We create sacred space for restoring others by declaring his unfailing love in the specifics of what may otherwise have destroyed us.
The sacraments of confession and the Eucharist empower such witnesses. My words mean nothing unless they match real life. That hinges upon pouring out my sin regularly to a pretty good representative of the Bridegroom, who prepares me for himself by exposing what dulls and diverts my focus on his beauty and others’ good.
I want nothing to block the channel of his mercy. I come boldly to his throne in the confessional and get unblocked. It’s simple. Reconciliation to Christ and Church preps me for the Eucharist. I will not take part unworthily (cf. 1 Cor. 11:27–28): If my imagination and affections are cluttered by unchaste stuff, I want and need cleansing. I want my heart washed more than my hands in prepping for the holy meal.
I want to savor the Lord himself, take time at table and be nourished by his very essence so I can be faithful to him by continuing to take steps in the right direction. It works. Every time I recite (which is often), “Save us, Savior of the world” and “Only say the word and my soul will be healed,” I mean it. The Word gives me himself so I can be faithful. It takes God to love God. How could I not be more saved, more healed at table? No other way but through Christ crucified, the holy meal.
All of this is how every Christian can and should live. We are all disintegrated people, and the way to integration, to chastity, is not much different for me than it is for you. Our starting points may differ but the Way in is the Way on, over and over, whatever the conflict. I hope you can agree with a mentor of mine who once said: “The restoration of same-sex-attracted people is the restoration of all persons . . . ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all’” (Eph. 4:4).
Excerpted from First Things’ Letters From the Synod #6
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