Catholic Medical Quarterly Volume 72(1) February 2022

Is the Sexual Revolution imploding?

Dr Pravin Thevathasan

According to an article by Chay Quinn in the Daily Mail [1] (13 November, 2021) Boris Johnson's top advisors are letting Stonewall dictate government policy on transgender rights. Johnson's wife has said that her husband is an ally to LGBT people at a pro-Stonewall event. Stonewall is continuing to influence the ongoing Government consultation on a potential ban on conversion therapy. But what does "conversion therapy" actually mean? If it means forcing people to undergo therapy they do not want, the ban is surely to be commended. But what if it limits the work of truly Catholic organisations like Courage?

Writing in the Times [2] (15 November, 2021), Melanie Phillips writes that the BBC, which aims to become one of Stonewall's diversity champions, has redrafted the BBC News style guide to redefine sex as gender. The NHS has paid Stonewall to advise that patients should access wards and lavatories according to their self-identified “gender”. She notes that the LGBT agenda has piggybacked on the sexual revolution of the sixties in order to capture the institutions of the West. The changes in our culture's understanding of marriage lies beneath all other changes, she argues.

Stonewall is taking the trans cause and is simply taking the sexual revolution's radical principles to the next level, though cracks are appearing. There is a growing split between LGB and T, as J K Rowling has found out. Writing for the Mail On Sunday [3] (21 November, 2021), Josephine Bartosch notes that Stonewall is now branding lesbians as "sexual racists" if they raise concerns about being pressured into having sex with transgender women who still have male genitals.

Will the sexual revolution collapse in the same way as the Communist revolution? Will there be as many victims?

Revolution in the Church

The Catholic Church should have been in such a strong position to confront our collapsing culture. Alas, it is undergoing its own crisis. In particular, there is a crisis in its teaching authority. Witness the love-in awarded in Rome to the rabidly pro-abortion Mrs Pelosi and Mr Biden. But we should not be too surprised. We now know that a group of “liberal” Cardinals met in St Gallen in Switzerland over many years to "reform" the Church. The leading light was Cardinal Martini who regularly confronted Pope John Paul II on matters of morality. According to the National Catholic Reporter [4] (23, October, 2013), he dreamt of a "synodal" Church.

But what does the term mean? If it means that adultery should be considered a mortal sin in Poland but not in Germany, there is something seriously wrong with the term. The German Church has thus far only managed to reintroduce some rather old heresies while undergoing its synodal process. We also know that the recent synods have been hijacked. The synod on the family was hijacked by those who want to redefine marriage away from a lifelong union of one man and one woman. The synod on youth was hijacked by gay rights advocates and the Amazonian Synod ended in idol worship. There is thus a great danger that the current synod on synodality will also be hijacked. The 26th August 2021 issue of The Tablet [5] advertised a “Root & Branch Inclusive lay-led Synod”. The word "inclusive" is specifically set out by the Root and Branch movement as promoting LGBT themes within the Church [6] etc. as including abortion supporters and others. There is a picture of Mary McAleese: who voted for abortion in the Irish referendum[7]. The list of speakers appears to me to be summerizable by :- dissent from Church teaching. They desire to tear down the Catholic faith, root and branch. What they want is a new church, a different church.

In that Church, which is, in my view, very clearly not inclusive it seems inevitable to me that traditional-minded Catholics need not apply. Root and Branch specifically state that Natural law is contrary to and exclusive of “non-binary “ people. [6] Under the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict, we had the luxury of quietly ignoring them. That is no longer possible. We should not let these doubtless well-meaning and mainly elderly souls dictate to us. Their revolution was tried back in the sixties and seventies. And it failed. The good nuns who belong to this movement appear to be members of religious orders that will, very sadly, soon likely be extinct. It is not enough to criticise. We need to have the confidence to realise that the only growing movements in the Church today are vibrantly orthodox ones. We need to tell our leaders that we need a teaching Church, a Church that is unafraid to confront the secular culture and not be secularised by it. The word synodality refers to a journey.

Before going on a journey, we need a good map. We have one already and it is called The Catechism of the Catholic Church.

References

  1. Chay Quinn (2021) Nov 13th, Boris Johnson's top advisors are letting Stonewall dictate government policy on trans rights, PM's ex-aide warns. Daily Mail. Nov 13th 2021. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10197907.html
  2. Melanie Phillips. (2021) All-powerful Stonewall has over­reached itself The Times Monday November 15 2021, www.thetimes.co.uk/article/all-powerful-stonewall-has­overreached-itself-jv8z7530d
  3. Josephine Bartosch (2021) Trans lobby group Stonewall brands lesbians 'sexual racists' for raising concerns about being pressured into having sex with transgender women who still have male genitals. Mail on Sunday 20th November 2021. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10225111
  4. Thomas Fox (2013) Cardinal Martini's dream: the church of Francis. National Catholic Reporter 23,
    October, 2013. www.ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/cardinal-martinis-dream-church-francis
  5. Scarlett Sherriff (2021) First lay-led Catholic synod to open in UK. The Tablet, 26 August 2021, https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/14427/first-lay-led-catholic-synod-to-open-in-uk‑
  6. The Bristol text. Root and Branch www.rootandbranch­synod.org/the-bristol-text
  7. The Tablet, 19th June 2018. Mary McAleese stands by Ireland abortion referendum ‘yes’ vote www.thetablet.co.uk/news/9267/marymcaleese-stands-by­ireland-abortion-referendum-yes-vote-