You're Hurting Me, Fr. James Martin
Please, Fr. James, know that this is not me attacking you. I just want to be open, and share my story and my heart with you.
I wanted to make something actually directed towards you, in hopes that you might read it, and that you might consider some of the things that I have to say.
Maybe I'm young, maybe I'm not that smart, but I live with this. I live with SSA every day, and every day is a fight.
I know that you care about your flock, and I know that you care deeply about the LGBTQ+ community.
I know that you want to do good things, but if I'm being honest, Fr. James, I don't think all that you're doing and saying is helping us.
You're hurting me, Fr. James.
I find myself standing on this bridge that you wanted to build with your book, but it's collapsing under me. It's falling under the weight of all that I know to be true, under the goodness, the truth, and the beauty of the true Catholic Church and her teachings.
I understand what you wanted to do with this book, but I cannot agree with all that you have said.
There's a lot that I could go over, but I want to focus on one element in particular, the call of persons with same-sex attractions to chastity and holiness.
Above all, I am a person, not a homosexual person.
There are only three kinds of persons: Divine, Angelic, and Human. The human person cannot be reduced to his or her experience. My identity is a beloved daughter of God, and can't be lowered to anything else.
Because of my nature as a human person, I am God's Creation, and His alone. God made me for Himself, and calls me to draw near to Him in this life so that I may remain with Him forever in the next.
In order to remain with God, I must follow His commands, and the teachings of His Bride, the Holy Catholic Church. If I'm going to follow those rules set out for me, I have to know what they are. What they really are. No watered down version of the faith is going to get me to Heaven.
I feel as though you're hesitant to say that acting on same-sex desires is wrong. It is inherently wrong, Father. God's design for conjugal love does not include the joining of man-and-man or woman-and-woman. It simply does not work.
Marriage is not a man made invention, and therefore is not ours to define. God intended marriage to be between one man and one woman, even the design of the human anatomy can attest to that! If we begin to deny this truth, we lose sight of who we are.
There's an identity crisis ravaging the LGBTQ+ community right now because we base our identities on who we're emotionally and/or sexually attracted to. We are so much more than that!
Calling my sexual desires "objectively disordered" is not "needlessly cruel." If I desire something that is not going to contribute to my holiness, then it needs to go unfulfilled. I cannot understand and bring to fulfillment God's plan for me by "satisfying" a desire that can lead to my demise. We all have desires that shouldn't go fulfilled; we all what things that we can't have. Me being able to sleep with a woman is no different than that. It's not cruel, it's what I need to hear, it is the truth.
Show me respect by reminding me and my brothers and sisters who we are, and all that we are called to be.
Call me what I am. Call me a child of God, loved by God, and called to greatness beyond my comprehension. See my value and my worth as a human person, and don't reduce me to an experience.
Show me compassion by walking with me and calling me to holiness, because holiness is for everybody.
You talk about how people with SSA are "unjustly discriminated against" in many ways. This is true. But I dare to say that feeding us a watered down version of the Gospel counts as unjust discrimination as well.
Call me to chastity and sanctity. Tell me that I can fight, and I am strong enough to carry my cross.
Insinuating that I need to have the rules bent for me, that I somehow just can't help acting on my desires, tells me that I am not capable of the same holiness as my brothers and sisters without SSA. It tells me that God doesn't love me enough to give me the grace and the strength to carry my cross with dignity, bravery, and courage.
Christ died for me. He told me to pick up my cross and carry it after Him. He is going to give me the strength to get to Calvary, and eventually Heaven.
Show me sensitivity by encountering me with authentic love, the same love that Christ would show me.
Know that in our hearts of hearts, inside our holy of holies, we want God. He made us for Himself, and He want us to go back to Him.
Show us His Face in your ministry, in the way that you love us, in the way that you encounter us. Please tell us what He would say, Father. Please tell us the truth, and walk with us on that road back to the one whom our soul loves.
I have had too many people try to preach the Gospel to me while leaving out the Cross. The Cross, the struggle, the suffering cannot be left out. Easter did not come without Good Friday, and we cannot get to Heaven without first fighting for it on earth.
The saints in Heaven fought for holiness while they were on earth. We cannot get to Heaven without a fight.
Do not try to make the fight easier for me, Fr. James, come with me, battle with me, and make me stronger.
I firmly believe that the next great saint of our age will be someone who lived with same-sex attractions.
We are called to holiness too, Father.
Please, do not drown out that beautiful call.