In addressing these few explanatory remarks, it is appropriate to make a useful premise about a term that is today viewed with some suspicion: the concept of Tradition. It must be remembered that all pastoral care in the Church is closely linked to an anthropological and theological clarity that comes to Her from the Holy Gospel and, even more, from Tradition. Indeed, it is Tradition that grounds Scripture in its essence, legitimately interprets it and dutifully guards it. Scripture is Traditio sedimentata, living and life-giving (Dei Verbum, 8). Therefore, Tradition is not something old-fashioned, archaic and nostalgic, functional to tickle memorial vanities, but is the living essence, in the Holy Spirit, of the efficacious mandate that the Word of God, with His Incarnation and with His Passion, Death and Resurrection, gave to the Church.

The effort the Church has to incarnate herself in the Holy Spirit, at all times, and to live the mystery of the Easter Triduum - Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday - and Easter Sunday is the rhythm, the breath, the yearning, the command, the companionship and the possibility that the Church has in time. And it is everyone's momentum, albeit with different roles but equal in dignity. Remember Lumen Gentium: "The whole Church, strengthened by all its members, fulfils its mission for the life of the world more effectively "^[1].

It is not permissible in any way to fail to be faithful to God who is faithful, on pain of infecundity and thievery typical of the Apostle of Keriot who, being in the apostolic college, karstically cultivated his own ideologies that structured him towards the final epilogue, in a kind of impermeability to Mercy.

We will address in points and summaries topics that deserve much more scope, but which are inevitably addressed here in brief.

THERE ARE NO “LGBTQ+ CHRISTIANS”, BUT PERSONS

If we truly wish to serve our brothers and sisters, it will not be without cost to make the effort to first of all change languages and terminologies that create a dis-inclusive outlook and mind. A first common way to be rectified and which is used for (psychic and sociological) convenience to identify a certain reality is to 'ghettoise' and 'circumscribe' that reality.

Let's start by saying that there are no “LGBTQ+ Christians”, but Persons (and this is the point) who experience, in a more or less deep-rooted and intense form, a homo-affective drive, either experience difficulties, even dramatic ones, of self-recognition of their 'anatomical' and 'biological' sexed being. Calling such people as 'LGBTQ+ Christians' or 'LGBTQ+ Catholics' falls into a pietistic form of ghettoisation that achieves the opposite of that inclusion, which, rather, we all really need. And we all need it in a bi-univocal form. Because the one who includes is also in turn included in a meaningful relationship. Labelling them 'LGBTQ+ Catholics' excludes these brothers and sisters by confining them in a 'protected' category that could feed some socially bad (and spiritually sclerocardic) drifts such as victimhood, feeling persecuted beyond reality, enclosing themselves in 'lobbying' behaviour and ways. Therefore, if we love these brothers and sisters, these men and women, these Persons, it is absolutely not good to reinforce dis-inclusive ways and words. It harms us all. They are among us and, like us, with a shared dignity of the immaterial and intangible Divine and, like us, they are called to holiness and conversion.

It would therefore be worthwhile to purify language from what we might consider typical fashions of the world, fashions bent on subjectivist ideologies that reinforce the 'cult of the self' to use, instead, a conception of the person consonant with the millenary and widely shared tradition of the Church. This will avoid unintentional offence to the personal dignity of these brothers and sisters. "Staying close, discern and integrate "^[2] is well summed up in a single attitude that is an evangelically grasped and savoured inclusion. And, in doing so, it may be useful to think that it is not necessary to build 'bridges' but rather to tear down walls. Walls that have nothing to do with the Holy Gospel nor with a natural morality, which is a preamble to the freedom of the Gospel. A Person is a Person, and every baptised person is Christ's flesh, of which it is good to cultivate and guard mutual belonging and the shrine of deep conscience.

Belonging and custody are a serious, non-invasive responsibility, filled with deep respect and yet real, with which to understand that the conscience of each person is in permanent formation and permanent purification, as we will see shortly. Some might object: "We use this language to talk like them". The effort to approach even in language is an indication of good intention and solicitude, but there is a risk of 'bogging down' and not 'incarnating', and this is at the root of bad pastoral work. Certainly, like Jesus, we are called upon to adapt to the language of our interlocutor, but so that he may discover his Personal Dignity and not so that he may be confirmed in the deformations to which he has adhered, and Wisdom lies first of all in understanding that there is no 'us' and 'them' but there is an 'us' in which we are all grateful and called to grow, as disciples of the One who is 'the Way, the Truth and the Life' (Jn. 14,6).

Incidentally, behind the 'bogging down' may lie that subtle form of clericalism that is vanity.

Vanity of feeling better, vanity of feeling owners of a message rather than 'useless servants' (Lk. 7,10).

THERE ARE NO CIRCUMSCRIBED LIMITS TO HOLINESS

Holiness is a baptismal duty and, in some ways, as a præambulum, an anthropological duty. As creatures made in the Image and Likeness of God, we are called and empowered to be saints. Now, and this is a decisive point, God certainly loves and welcomes everyone, indeed each one, just as we are. But precisely because he loves us infinitely he does not want to leave us where we are. And each of us has an admirable and unique path, an inescapable path that is closely linked to the Trinitarian We and the ecclesial We.

The Church, therefore, cannot but welcome every man and woman, wherever he or she may be, but, if faithful and not immanentized, with respect of the Incarnation, of what she is and of her mission (Mt. 28,18-20), loves him/her with the love of Christ so that the Person begins a journey that takes him/her further, out to the open sea (Duc in altum, Lk. 5,4).

The Church is therefore a 'facilitator' of Grace, a 'facilitator of Holiness'. And holiness is for each of us for the benefit of all. Every brother and sister not welcomed or received badly without supporting his one and personal journey of holiness is a harmful and serious reverberation that the Church makes to herself. The Church that does not welcome or welcomes poorly (with superficiality and approximation) every baptised person, betrays the Grace of her State and her Mandate.

It is good to remember that the impediment to Grace, which desires to make our unique and very personal talent bear fruit, towards holiness, is not only given by those who cling to moral 'rigidities', tinkered like a club, but also by those who deny that the encounter with Christ does entail a change of life. Incarnation involves an et-et, not an aut-aut; it involves descent and transcendence together, inescapably united. It is precisely because God loves you that he descends to where you are, to take you further and fulfil you. The esteem God has for you is so great and unspeakable that any pastoral work that does not welcome or that welcomes poorly, by not promoting conversion and transcendence, concealing the demand of the Gospel for penance and maturity in self-giving, is a grave offence against both God and the Person.

When the Lord encounters the woman caught in flagrant adultery, a blatant, even public sin, he does not condemn her but, at the same time, certainly does not exhort her to continue being an adulteress, so he tells her: "Go and sin no more!"^[3] (Jn. 8,1-11).

God asks for what He gives and, in that moment, full of acceptance, God makes a request knowing that the request will lead to freedom and at the same time to a concrete companionship of God himself towards and with the woman. The woman had not asked Christ for anything, but her objective state of humiliation and repentance is evident, and there God intervenes generating a renewed life in Grace.

We must therefore be severely careful not to be moved by the fashions of political correctness and become incapable of truly believing that God transforms into what He demands. One would then discover that the lack of faith is not only of the 'rigid' but, paradoxically, of those who think they are reading and interpreting the Gospel in the light of 'progress' or 'paradigm shift'. This is how those who enjoy and fuel divisions^[4] have completed, among ideological factions, their project of denigrating the man, the Person. The illusion that a paradigm shift can heal the emptiness and anguish in the human heart is very great. Ideologies provide this obnubilating and deceptive veneer of an answer to the mystery of the human heart. Moreover, is it not the enemy himself who calls for a 'paradigm shift’ in Gn. 3?

The emptiness and mystery of man's heart is not satiated with the patches of a few rigid rules or paradigm shifts: man's heart is satiated with the powerful, transforming, esteem-filled Word that is: "Go, and sin no more!" (Jn. 8,11).

THE CHURCH AS VEHICLE, FACILITATOR AND GUARDIAN OF THE GRACE

As we mentioned, the Church is called to be a facilitator of the Grace. This vocational dimension takes place in such a way that it does not impede the unceasing call to Life that God makes to every creature and, at the same time, does not hinder its transfiguring action by indulging in choices and behaviour that prevent Grace itself from truly bearing fruit in the personal journey of every man and woman.

Grace, first of all, is grafted into the 'desired desire' of Christ^[5]. It is Christ who so loved the world that he gave eternal life for every person. Immersing ourselves in this feeling/thinking/desire of Christ is therefore fundamental. And to know this desire, one must be inflamed and educated by it, especially in Holy Mass and Eucharistic adoration. That is the place of lovers learning to love in Love. There the disciples are grafted into the 'criteria' of God: "orandum est ut Desiderium desideretur"^[6].

We do not even remotely imagine what treasure and what river of Good is present behind every Person who is precisely a Good spoken by God (bene, 'well' + dicere, 'to speak'), a bene-diction, or blessing. However, because of sin, original sin and personal sin, the Person can deceive itself and its relationships, perverting them, and for this reason, the Church cannot deceive any further, saying Good of something that is contrary to the Good of the Creature. The Church cannot bene-dict that which is evil and that which is disordered, but is called to facilitate the constant work of Grace so that what is evil is ceased, the evil already done can be ordered to a Good, and the Person begins to be a Person, reverberating all the treasure he/she carries inside for the benefit of the Body that is the Church, and of humanity. And holiness, I could testify with dozens of examples, can be revealed in Persons we thought were lost and (for us) 'confirmed' in evil.

God is wonderfully amazing and only He knows the heart of man (Sl. 64,7).

And just as we must be careful not to mortify God who speaks in the hearts of men and women (Dei Verbum, 2), so we must be sternly careful not to deceive the Persons - brothers and sisters - for whom Christ died and rose again by calling good what is evil, especially by reversing the 'gradualness principle' into the 'gradualness of the principle'.^[7].

This second and dramatic mode is easier for us because it condescends to the concupiscence, we all suffer from. However, it would be very dishonest to call honest that which is not honest, and one would act as 'the person in the manner of the non-person'^[8], by leading the Person given to us towards that which disrupts and brutish it only to please liminal desires and emotional confusions.

The now abused statement of 'possible good', as already mentioned elsewhere^[9] can lend itself to serious misunderstandings with regard to grace and the moral path. First of all, Good is the only possible one precisely because it is Good present, given and required. Quoting St Thomas:

"Respondeo dicendum quod Deus omnia existentia amat. Nam omnia existentia, inquantum sunt, bona sunt, ipsum enim esse cuiuslibet rei quoddam bonum est, et similiter quaelibet perfectio ipsius. Ostensum est autem supra quod voluntas Dei est causa omnium rerum et sic oportet quod intantum habeat aliquid esse, aut quodcumque bonum, inquantum est volitum a Deo. Cuilibet igitur existenti Deus vult aliquod bonum. Unde, cum amare nil aliud sit quam velle bonum alicui, manifestum est quod Deus omnia quae sunt, amat. Non tamen eo modo sicut nos. Quia enim voluntas nostra non est causa bonitatis rerum, sed ab ea movetur sicut ab obiecto, amor noster, quo bonum alicui volumus, non est causa bonitatis ipsius, sed e converso bonitas eius, vel vera vel aestimata, provocat amorem, quo ei volumus et bonum conservari quod habet, et addi quod non habet, et ad hoc operamur. Sed amor Dei est infundens et creans bonitatem in rebus.

I answer to say that God loves all existing beings, because everything that exists insofar as it exists is good; for the being of each thing is good, just as all perfection is good. Now God's will is the cause of all things, and consequently every entity has so much of being and good insofar as it is the object of God's will. So, God loves every existing being. Therefore, since to love is wanting the good of someone or something, it is evident that God loves all existing things. God, however, does not love as we do. For our will does not cause the good that is found in things, on the contrary it is moved by it as by its own object. Hence our love, by which we wish the good of someone, is not the cause of that person's goodness, but rather his goodness, real or supposed, causes the love that impels us to wish him to keep the good he has and acquire that which he does not have, and we strive for that purpose. God's love, on the other hand, infuses and creates goodness in things '^[10].

It is precisely because the Good is present, both in ontological predisposition and in deposit, in sanctifying Grace, where not lost, and in actual Grace, as God's constant stooping in the history of each one, that makes it possible for us to do the Good. The present Good enables the Good to be accomplished. All the more so in those who have received the gift of Baptism.

St Paul speaks precisely of 'debt in the Spirit', as a Good that impels us from within to do Good, even in humanly impossible situations (Rom. 8.1ff). This was the authentic meaning of 'Good Now Possible' anticipated by Benedict XVI in a famous speech:

"Therefore, even in our time educating for the good is possible, it is a passion that we must carry in our hearts, it is a common endeavour to which everyone is called to make their own contribution."^[11]

Now, if the Good is present, what is possible, dramatically possible, is the perversion of the Good or the deprivation of the same Good, inclining it to disorder and self-worship.

To be faithful, then, to Boethius' synthesis, the person is 'individual substance of a rational nature'^[12], and it must be made clear that 'rational nature' is not only cognitive capacity, but first and foremost relational capacity. It is thus shown that although evil does not touch the ontological essence of the Person, it nevertheless obscures and wounds it precisely in its relational capacity. Both in the ad-intra relationship, with herself and her self-perception, as well as in her relationship with God, and in her relationships with her brothers and sisters.

Therefore, full personalisation occurs precisely in the quality of its relationships. The more these are ordered towards a nature, a human and humanising purpose, according to the thought of Christ, the more they make the Person a Person. Incessant, provident actual Grace is a constant help that God places towards the Good that the creature is.

That is why, in order to guard the Good, to want the Good and to do the Good, the Church advises all the baptised to practise chastity. It is both evangelical and baptismal advice. Because through this gift and medium, the Person is humanised by conveying his or her affective potential and beauty, revealing the meanings of complementarity and fecundity. Moral, affective and relational choices have eternal significance and are measured there for the essence of the Person to unfold.

Persons with homo-affectivity, therefore, are welcomed like every Person but, like every Person, are called to a journey and to pass through the 'narrow gate' (Lk. 13,24). And woe betide if you forget that. Pope Francis recalls in Evangelii Gaudium:

"In a civilisation paradoxically wounded by anonymity and, at the same time, obsessed with the details of other people's lives, unashamedly sick with morbid curiosity, the Church needs a look of closeness to contemplate, to be moved and to stop in front of the other as often as necessary. In this world, ordained ministers and other pastoral operators can make present the fragrance of Jesus' close presence and his personal gaze. The Church will have to initiate its members - priests, religious and laity - in this "art of accompaniment", so that all may always learn to take off their sandals before the sacred ground of the Other (cf. Ex 3:5). We must give our journey the healthy rhythm of proximity, with a respectful gaze that is full of compassion but at the same time healthy, freeing and encouraging to mature in the Christian life.

Although it sounds obvious, spiritual accompaniment must lead more and more towards God, where we can attain true freedom. Some believe themselves to be free when they walk apart from the Lord, without realising that they remain existentially orphaned, without shelter, without a home to always return to. They cease to be pilgrims and turn into wanderers, who always revolve around themselves without getting anywhere. Accompaniment would be counterproductive if it becomes a kind of therapy that reinforces this closure of people in their immanence and ceases to be a pilgrimage with Christ towards the Father."^[13]

LIMINAL DESIRES ALSO DELIGHT THE HEART, AND EVEN THE PERCEPTION OF THE SELF MAY TURN AWAY FROM THE SELF

The Church, in the Light of her Lord, who speaks and instructs in the Light of the Spirit, is called upon both to promote discernment, especially with regard to the motions of the heart, and self-perception.

In an age that has mistaken the perceived for the real and has convinced itself that the subjective is objective^[14], there is only one answer, uncomfortable, but authentic and harbinger of the Common Good: to place the Person before the unconditional, merciful and at the same time demanding Love of Christ.

And Christ asks, at the same time giving New Life, albeit in the principle of gradualness. Now, without any doubt, only he who lives by this discernment and obedience fruitful in the Faith, with all his meagreness, educates to this discernment and obedience. On the contrary, meagreness, precisely when supported by clarity^[15], is a harbinger of virtuous paths and joyful life changes. One becomes a witness, a saved person who conveys the Salvation of Christ. You stop being hyper-uranic bigots or, if you will excuse the term, consensus-seeking pleasers. Two figures and attitudes that only appear to be in antithesis but spring from the same ego-narcissus-centred root and, unfortunately, without faith and without the light of logic and Intellect.

If, on the other hand, we recognise ourselves as poor but constantly saved, as debtors and not owners, in perpetual restitution and in the clarity of what God asks and gives, gives and asks, then yes, 'Lazarus' really does come forth and participates in the power of the Risen One. Both those who help and those who are helped are immersed in a bath of Grace, undeserved Grace. God does not fear our every misery and is not scandalised by the bad smell emanating from our state, whatever it may be.

If, on the other hand, one stiffens or speculatively wants to be liked at all costs, the shepherd, the guide, can end up getting bogged down with the one who is already in the quicksand of disorder, increasing the chasm of nothingness in his brother and sister. It seems futile (and fedifragist) to say that we are 'all brothers' if the brother, pastor and guide, confirms us in what is not the Good. He is not a pastor but a manipulator, a seductive opportunist who has already sold himself and his brother to the enemy of man and God, or who, at best, is living a severe bipolar hypocrisy. And, let us be clear, this hypocrisy is a very refined and mutated form of clericalism.

It would be very serious if the pastor or guide were to reinforce self-validating choices, confirming the subjectivistic retreat of the Person.

Going back to what we were saying about the resurrection of his friend Lazarus, Christ fears neither corruption nor the foul smell of our being enveloped and self-confessed in the mud; however, we must be severely careful that by dint of asserting that 'There are no situations, no sins, no corruption in which we are enclosed that are impenetrable to grace '^[16] one risks actually affirming that there are no more mortal situations, no more sin, and no more corruption. This would trample every soteriological action of Christ and would prevent us from transformation in the Grace, because sin would be normalized as constituting our essence and dignity. And this is a fine way of saying that God is a liar and deceives us ^[17], by denying impiety.

Remember that impiety is the most skillful way we have, as believers, to call evil by the name of good. And this is a terrible and deceptive habitus that renders us anaesthetised to the transcendent calls of Grace.  

In disordered affective life, for instance in adultery or pornography, experience tends to confirm itself in that self-validating principle of liminal perception. And this self-validation dissociates the self from the self and creates an increasingly deformed and deforming dissociative habitus. This is one of the effects of impiety.

A similar thing happens with practised homosexuality.

Finally, on the serious parcelling of the well-balanced suggestions of the Catechism, taken in aut-aut mode or partly concealed in the pastoral, we will speak later.

A decisive point is the fraternal life. In order to safeguard the Grace that gives mercy and asks for new life, it is appropriate that those who work in 'complex pastorates' are never left alone but have a solid fraternal life, especially among priests and between priests and their Bishop. It is then indispensable that he has a solid prayer life behind him and a stream of consecrated persons praying for his apostolate.

It is therefore necessary to put in the front line evangelically well-balanced people, who are not the bearers of non-integrated emotional difficulties that often manifest themselves in worldly, clerical, spiritual, freak, bohemian attitudes. Even the priest who only does community life with brothers and sisters who are fragile in the affective dimension would run risks.

It is therefore the Bishop's duty to carefully discern the candidate who can best do the good of these brothers and sisters, having before his eyes the love and fraternal communion towards his priests.

THE SELF IS MADE FOR GOD AND WITHOUT GOD IT SEEKS SURROGATES

It is therefore unhealthy to separate the affective dimension from the relational one. The goodness of the one is the goodness of the other. This is where the complex and precious evangelical counsel of chastity comes into play. What does it mean to fail towards chastity?

It is a concept that is easily explained with hyperbole: if, paradoxically, one did not fall into the disordered use of sexuality but, at the same time, behaved as manipulators, hypocrites, opportunists, one would likewise, gravely, fail towards chastity. This happens when the self stops searching for the roots of its happiness and retreats into a solipsism that, like any ego-narcissus-centred drive, tends to base itself on itself, never operating that path of transcendence inherent in its being a Person.

The person who experiences a homo-affective drive, more or less deep-rooted, undeniably does not seek the “other from himself” in order to be and to fulfil himself in the Good, but seeks the equal (homo) in order never to leave himself. Chastity, therefore, can be proposed as that gift that conveys the leaving of the self for the respectful Good of the other. The other is not a thing, a means to achieve the expression of a drive, but is precisely an Other, a Good in itself to be respected by 'taking off the shoes on our feet' (Ex. 3,5).

And in the light of what has been said, one can come to understand that a Person with a homo-affective tension who lives in chastity (albeit with hard fighting in the Grace^[18]) is more oriented to holiness than a Person who has forgotten the other and cosify him or her in the imaginary or in ordinary, everyday relationships. The affective-sexual drive is no guarantee of Good if it does not respect the canons of alterity and the encounter with the other of a Person as such. We said 'affective-sexual' and not 'hetero-affective' because by ontology of the Present Good the hetero-affective dimension is the affective-sexual dimension^[19]. The homo-affective tension thus already stands as a disorder of what affectivity and sexuality are, while not constituting a fault but rather, paradoxically, in the light of the proclamation of the Gospel^[20], as an opportunity, a channel of possible chaste virtuousness that can be experienced in the Light of Faith and placing the Person with homo-affectivity in a privileged place of self-fulfilment despite the wound.

HOMOPHOBIA AND TRANSPHOBIA ARE NEO-LANGUAGE CREATED TO FUEL PREJUDICE

Sometimes there are synthetic terms that help systematise a thought, even a complex one, to help us understand reality. Sometimes they are intuitive, sometimes they are artificially constructed, but with a well-founded anthropological basis, and sometimes they are created ad-hoc for ideological marketing purposes. Unfortunately, both the terms homophobia and transphobia fall between the latter and are a poor anthropological service especially for people with homo-affectivity or gender identity difficulties.

The creation of such terms has a catalytic function of the constant individual and collective need for 'identity'. Feeling part of a particular or protectable category reinforces the cult of self and fuels consensus. And such 'social reinforcement' becomes a real 'fever' for some. A fever that, like any altered state of consciousness, personal or collective, creates an obnubilation of reason and reasonableness.

The term 'homophobia' was coined by psychologist George Weinberg in the 1960s. The meaning currently attributed to this neologism indicates fear or disgust of people with homo-affectivity. It should not be forgotten that the introduction of this term was intended to support an ideology and normalise homosexuality.

If we were to argue for the meaning of (rational or irrational) fear of homo-sex, it could probably be a phobia peculiar to many people with homo-affectivity. In fact, such fear, unlike internalised-homophobia, (theorised by the homo-phile currents) which instead deals with the culturally rooted and unconscious 'fear' of homosexuality, both in Persons with homo-affectivity and in Persons with 'natural' affectivity (i.e. ordered for the purposes of sexuality, communion and procreation), could be safely defined as the profound awareness that something within oneself is 'broken' and does not work and that it is not necessarily a fault nor a deminutio of the Person's dignity.

In a way, the true homophobe is the person with homo-affectivity, and certainly not because of cultural pressure but because of an intimate and profound awareness of the deep-rooted and ontological meaning of sexuality. And, in this sense, all homophile currents are deeply homophobic as a deep reaction to a discomfort they want to deny within themselves.

On the contrary, these currents, supported by a great communicative and legal battleground (and it could not be otherwise in order to safeguard a wounded self), are pushing to sustain this homeostatic outlook. The real homophobia is right here, in these currents, in these organised lobbies, in these parades of 'gay pride' that, unfortunately, do no good whatsoever to People with homo-affectivity and People with gender identity difficulties. And Christians have a duty to say this with love and respect, but with clarity, and holding their head high (Gn. 4,6-7).

How, then, can we correctly define aversion as a rational or irrational fear of homosexuality? It is not good to look for a synthetic answer or a concise term when faced with a complex problem that touches on human affectivity and the affectivity of every person. It would be a convenient and terrible simplification, which would do no one any good. There is also the fact that there is a kind of sedimented self-consciousness of humanity towards something that can harm it. Therefore, behind the cultural aversion (inextricable from the genetic, relational and affective datum) towards homo-sexuality there is not a 'homo-phobia' a 'liminal and sub-liminal fear' towards homosexual relations, but a deep awareness that humanity has towards behaviour detrimental to the primary good that is the family, woman-man-children, the founding cell of the nucleus of the Person and the custody of the Person and a natural model of the Common Good. The desire to re-write a cultural datum by disassociating it from the authentic and anthropological meaning of sexuality is detrimental from whomever it comes from, be it from civil or religious institutions and authorities. It is a kind of concession to social ideologies that split the Person from within and seriously harm the Common Good. What we need to focus on instead, decisively and with true civic education, is respect, always and in any case, for the Principle of the Person and its unique characteristic. Behaviour remains in the non-substantial but incidental sphere, however entrenched.

Let's take an example: a person who experienced a 'natural' but compulsive sexuality would be considered a 'sick person', precisely with regard to the intrinsic meaning of sexuality. Now, it would not make much sense for a possible aggregation of people who experience a compulsive sexual dimension that depletes the intrinsic meaning of sexuality to define those who do not experience this drive as sexophobic. This linguistic deception can be found in the term homophobia.

It remains unquestionable, and it is worth repeating, that those who live a 'natural' sexuality, not obsessive and compulsive, are nevertheless called upon to respect the Person who lives a disordered sexuality as a Person, capable of rights and duties and of a unique vocational path. The Person is more important in dignity and substance than any of its tensions and behaviour.

As already pointed out, the assumption of the term 'homophobia' and the more recent term 'transphobia' (from the 2013 Oxford dictionary), conveys the ghettoisation of the Person experiencing a certain tendency or identity difficulty and certainly does not help these brothers and sisters. Nor does it help the community to live out correct principles of personalistic and christian acceptance.

It is therefore truly wrong for the Christian community to align itself in the use of these terms because it would both betray the brothers and sisters who are experiencing a certain tension and, at the same time, reinforce ideological pressures that have nothing christian or evangelical about them: Not wanting to be homo-phobic, would in itself be homo-philic.

But how did we get to this point?

It is well known that we have come to this as a result of sociological pressures and poor anthropological training with which vast currents of modern psychology and sociology are veined. It is also known that there have been 'political' urgings first on the APA and then on the WHO to de-list homosexuality from being a disease^[21]. QHowever, homo-affectivity is and remains a 'particularly vocationally-dystonic condition' that objectively refers to a discomfort with what sexuality is and how it affects the good of the Person. The suspicion is that today's psychology and medicine lack precisely the anthropological categories needed to address the problem of the self, in this foundational dimension.

Simplifying, and unfortunately, we cannot do otherwise here, we know that this affective disorder, like any affective disorder, equally disastrous towards Life in Christ, is undiagnosable in the light of the elements of modern medicine and psychiatry and that the answer we can give, for the sake of these brothers and sisters, as believers, is that it is a consequence of the wound of origin.

However, such a response requires a personalised, unique, careful and respectful journey, not affected and, above all, full of Hope in the Risen One who has conquered death, all death^[22].

Only Hope, discovered and made to germinate in the heart, can lead to overcoming a deep sense of anguish and 'vocational dystonia'.

Each person, each self, deserves all the attention and customisation of its own path. One cannot play and trifle with the profound dimensions of affective life, at risk of the reactive effect due to denials and improper emphasisation of rights that are distorting the Person's wellbeing and the social Good. One cannot help but notice that homophile pressure groups adopt an attitude typical of those who are in denial about anthropological and sexual difficulties and prefer to divert their claims into 'rights' battles. But the terrain of rights is such a narrow field that it can hardly heal the deep pain experienced by the person with homo-affectivity. Or at most it will heal in the form of a semblance, as a distractor never hitting the real and deep question that the person with homo-affectivity carries inside.

In summary, we could note the steps of such neo-language:

• First of all, a new classification was created to support an ideology and prevent any form of criticism, of legitimate expression, using the neo-term as progress.

• Support is sought in the Greek Classics for the cultural nobility of homosexual love as 'pure love'^[23].
• Automatically, opponents of these new terms have been relegated to the field of sick, or individuals to be re-educated or even prosecuted.
• Within this framework of neo-language, the interlocutors have been reduced to silence: anyone who criticises 'homo-affective unions', anyone who condemns 'uterus-in-law' and anyone who does not align with this view will be labelled as homophobic. In essence, a glossy form of neo-racism has been created that is antithetical to the concept of inclusion, if we want to talk about civil society, and fraternal community, if we move into the sphere of Christianity.
• In this work of language rewriting, all communication channels have been used, especially the immediate and rapid ones to re-educate through television, advertisements, TV series, polluting (sometimes encyclopaedic) online information sources.
• A climate of communal feeling in support of normalising homo-affectivity has therefore been sustained so that anyone who thinks differently must find themselves outside 'normality'.
• In an ecclesial context, facts of ephebophilic pederasty have often been commuted to paedophilia so as not to clash with common feeling (inside and outside the Church)^[24].
• It is not enough to find (arbitrarily) the support of the Greek classics to sustain the neo-language, but an attempt has been made to spiritually support homo-affectivity by connoting biblical characters and facts in this key.

PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS

From what has been observed above, it is clear that there is a need for a welcoming, respectful and personal approach in pastoral care towards any person experiencing homo-affective tension or gender identity difficulties.

• In the face of rather strong and overbearing sexual tensions, one must respond with both delicacy and clarity. And, precisely on the side of pedagogical aptitude and clear formation on the affective level, it is evident that we need to grow not a little, because such a pastoral et-et-et (which includes an aut-aut on the moral dimension and a path of gradualness^[25]) requires a balance that is a gift of the Holy Spirit, welcomed, cultivated and guarded. It is the Spirit who guides pastoral processes and leads them to the safe harbour of salvation, not our rigidities, let alone compromising with the fashions and thoughts of the world^[26].

• Kerygmatic and anthropological announcement must be matured not only through study but rather through prayer, one's own and that of the community, to support any sensitive pastoral approach that touches the lives of People.

• Attitudes to be avoided in every way are certainly rigidity on our part, but also homo-philosophical concordisms, both on a biblical and anthropological level. Aware that the manipulative ability to spiritualise or normalise what is evil and harmful is incalculable damage to the Church and to every person. Only those who are welcomed in their weakness by God and truly experience salvation and healing can convey salvation and healing without appropriation and manipulation. Avoiding all forms of abuse of conscience.

• The abuse of conscience, moreover, is not only carried out by those who want to forcibly 'repair', by dint of 'external' and content-related brain-storming, a wound and a homo-affective tension, but also by those who start and move on the assumption that conscience is a source of truth and not, rather, a place of truth. In the first case, by considering conscience as the source of truth, one wraps the subject in the already wounded self, producing an enormous abuse damage. In the second case, in those who are aware that conscience is the 'place' of Truth, they are aware that conscience can be erroneous, obnubilated and covered by a veil of bad-practice generating a habitus that swamps it^[27]. However, in the deepest conscience, the place of Truth, the Heart of the Heart, God can reveal Himself and heal the whole of life, the meaning, the why of the mystery of contradiction that, among other things, each of us carries both as a burden and as an opportunity^[28]. We are Christophores and as such we can carry (and must carry) Jesus, by ontology and baptismal mandate, so that He Himself emerges in the heart and in the life of these brothers and sisters. Precisely because we are Christophores we are called to intercept the depths of the anguish that man lives in modernity where the breakdown of the founding relationship with God has produced the death of all hope.

• Yet man hopes, yearns. Modernity has produced a vacuum that draws everything to itself like a 'black hole' that is never satiated in the voracity of avarice and all forms of lust. Here, in this void, if we too have dramatically faced it, as viators and disciples, we can help our brothers and sisters who experience homo-affective tension or a more or less deep-rooted gender identity difficulty. Simply because we can 'bring' Him who satisfies the hunger of every living person (Sl. 144,16) and fills that emptiness generated by all kinds of disorder (Ep. 2,4-5). The Love of Christ, who died and rose again for each person, is the paradigm, and certainly not the dramatically subjectivistic and flooding catchphrases such as 'love is love'.^[29]. Reality does not change according to our perception or our liminal thinking or feeling, but according to the life-giving Grace of Christ. This gift, to be experienced, commutes 'love is love' to 'I am loved therefore I am'. I am loved, I can love. Thanks to Christ I love, therefore I am. And everything changes, not from external or liminal or subliminal conviction but from a radical and profound experience^[30]. It is Christ who fulfils and fills the three basic needs/attitudes^[31] by transforming philautia into Charity.

• From a methodological point of view, it is necessary, at the same time, to develop a certain systematic approach while maintaining the customisation of the course, regarding both content and approach. In the Pastoral Care of Young People, for example, appropriate language is adopted, both contextual and experiential, enhancing healthy motivations and potential, but without diminishing the vocational tension and the tension towards transcendence. Similarly, in the pastoral care of persons with homo-affectivity or gender identity difficulties, the motivations and the potentialities that such brothers and sisters have for their own benefit and for the benefit of the community must be valorised.

• A first approach and closeness should certainly be provided to families of sons and daughters who have openly declared themselves homo-affective or with gender identity difficulties. Both these brothers and sisters and their families experience, like us and with us, an opportunity to grow in charity and in the appreciation of the Person. A person's existential difficulties or disorders are not a cause of exclusion from the community but an object of continuous striving for the Good within the Good.

• It is precisely the theological virtue of Hope that enables us to 'think like Christ' by having the 'thought of Christ' (1 Co. 2,16), the "feelings of Christ" (Ph. 2,5) and the "loving gaze of the Spirit" (Ga. 5,22) in any complex situation. God always opens a way where there seem to be walls and creates renewed bonds for the benefit of the whole community. Without the People, indeed without that specific Person, with whatever tension or difficulty, something is lost. Acceptance and clarity, yet in gradualness. Every person must and can be discovered as 'blessed' by God even without receiving any 'blessing' for his or her choices.

• The community welcomes the Person where he/she is, in that portion of the earth, perhaps messy and addicted, not to welcome some of his/her choices but to welcome his/her Person so that he/she encounters Christ. He alone, in fact, is the perfect lover who, with His Heart, heals every wound and every disorder, transforming evil into Good and bringing the Person to express its inescapable and unrepeatable potential. And therein lies the mission of the community. Beware: this is not a 'doing from above' but a doing to be what one is. Christ rather than putting Himself on top, stood by and testified to what He was. The only place where He was raised is on the Cross. The community, therefore, is not accomplished by dint of repeated doctrinal underlining, but is accomplished and defined in its transcendence in charity. The more a community lives in the discipline of misappropriation, the more it conveys the Good and makes one perceive, perhaps behind a clear and firm 'no', a splendid 'yes' to the Good, to the deep self of the Person, to the Grace that is silently working.

• The community, then, in turn, is called to grow not only in the clarity of the anthropology of the gospel but in offering 'prayers and entreaty, with loud cries and with tears, to the One that had the power to save him from death' (Heb. 5,7) cultivating especially the means of fasting. Fasting from all condemnation, fasting from discrimination, fasting from food, fasting from political correctness, fasting from clericalism and the conquest of spaces... but also fasting from any approximate lack of discernment. God's invitation to His people: "Come up and let us discuss!" (Is. 1,18) is not an invitation to ideological promiscuity and, syncretistically, to 'let us still love each other even if we are different' but rather to be perpetually listening as children of the Father and perennial disciples of Christ.

May the Holy Spirit, Love of Love, bring to completion, in His time and manner, what is lacking in our strength and in these poor lines.

“The Lord will accomplish what concerns me;
your faithfulness, Lord, is everlasting;
do not abandon the works of Your hands.” (Psalms 138,8)

Paolo Cilia

3 June 2024, Saints Charles Lwanga and 12 companions

^[1] VATICAN COUNCIL II, LUMEN GENTIUM, 37

^[2] PAPA FRANCIS, "AMORIS LÆTITIA", Chap. 8

^[3] PAOLO CILIA, "Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more - without Justice Mercy does not fulfil herself", 20 November 2014, https://www.ilcattolico.it/catechesi/spiritualita/appunti-per-il-sinodo-sulla-famiglia-neanche-io-ti-condanno-va-e-non-peccare-piu.html

^[4] THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW 13,27-28 "The owner’s labourers went to him and said: Sir, was it not good seed that you sowed in your field? If so, where does the darnel (discord) come from? He said to them: Some enemy has done this."

^[5] PAOLO CILIA, “EUCHARIST, A GIFT OR A RIGHT?"”, 30 april 2020, https://www.ilcattolico.it/rassegna-stampa-cattolica/formazione-e-catechesi/eucaristia-dono-o-diritto.html

^[6] PATRIZIA GREGORI, “Orandum est ut Desiderium desideretur”, 30 APRIL 2020, https://www.ilcattolico.it/rassegna-stampa-cattolica/formazione-e-catechesi/orandum-est-ut-desiderium-desideretur.html

^[7] JOHN PAUL II, "Homily of the HOLY MASS AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE FIFTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS", 8, 25 October 1980

^[8] Joseph RATZINGER, Dogma und Verkündigung, Erich Wewel Verlag, München-Freiburg im Breisgau, 1973, p. 233, «Wenn man fragt, ob der Teufel Person sei, so müsste man richtigerweise wohl antworten, er sei die Un-Person, die Zersetzung, der Zerfall des Personseins, und darum ist es ihm eigentümlich, dass er ohne Gesicht auftritt, dass die Unkenntlichkeit seine eigentliche Stärke ist - If one wonders whether the devil is a person, then one would have to answer correctly that he is the non-person, the decomposition, the disintegration of the personality, and therefore it is peculiar to him that he appears faceless, that unrecognizability is his true strength»,

^[9] PAOLO CILIA, “INHERENTLY DISORDERED ACTS”. ANATOMY OF A CRYSTAL-CLEAR STATEMENT IN A PRESS CONFERENCE AT TIMES PERMEATED WITH SELF-DEFENCE, 16 APRILE 2024,  https://www.ilcattolico.it/rassegna-stampa-cattolica/formazione-e-catechesi/atti-intrinsecamente-disordinati.html

^[10] THOMAS AQUINAS, "SUMMA THEOLOGIAE", I, q. 20. a. 2. See also: II Sent., d. 26, q. 1; C. G. I, c. 111; De Ver., q. 27, a. 1; In Ioan., 5, lect. 3

^[11] Benedict XVI, 'Audience for the presentation to the Diocese of Rome of the Letter on the Task of Education', 23 February 2008

^[12] BOETHIUS, 'Liber de persona et duabus naturis contra Eutychen et Nestorium', 'naturae rationalis individua sustantia'

^[13] POPE FRANCIS, 'EVANGELII GAUDIUM', 169-170

^[14] PAOLO CILIA, "CHRIST GUIDES THE CHURCH","'Toast to one's own conscience' as some say, wrongly quoting Card. Newman, becomes an opportunity, all carnal, clothed in spirituality, to say what we think, about everything and anything; as if the world depended on our thinking and not rather our very personal perception of it [...] even to the devotees of 'personal conscience alone' not as a limited and operative expression of a shrine we have received (and which must be cultivated rightly), but which they erect as an absolute that claims to create reality because it is intuited and thought: "I see and think and therefore I decide what is and what is not". It is the Cartesian infantilism and absurdity of confusing the perceived with the ontological that is assumed as everyday practice.", https://www.ilcattolico.it/rassegna-stampa-cattolica/formazione-e-catechesi/cristo-guida-la-chiesa.html, 22 February 2024

^[15] BENEDICT XVI - POPE FRANCIS, "LUMEN FIDEI", 33

^[16] VATICAN NEWS, interview with Fr. Martin S.J. 'Father Martin: Jesus is not afraid of our sins, he brings us out of the grave', https://www.vaticannews.va/it/vaticano/news/2024-06/padre-james-martin-libro-lev-lazzaro-intervista-tornielli.html

^[17] GENESIS 3,4

^[18] Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 407

^[19] JOHN PAUL II, "CATECHESIS CYCLE ON GENESIS", from 5 September 1979

^[20] VATICAN COUNCIL II, "SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM", 9, "... before people can approach the liturgy, they must be called to faith and conversion: "How then are they to call on him if they have not come to believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard of him? And how will they hear of him unless there is a preacher for them? And how will there be preachers if they are not sent?" (Rm 10:14-15). This is why the Church proclaims the message of salvation to those who do not yet believe, so that all men may come to know the one true God and his envoy, Jesus Christ, and change their conduct by doing penance. To believers, then, the Church has always the duty to preach faith and penance; she must also dispose them to the sacraments, teach them to observe all that Christ has commanded, and incite them to all works of charity, piety and apostolate, to manifest through these works that the followers of Christ, though not of this world, are nevertheless the light of the world and give glory to the Father before men."

^[21] UCCR EDITOR'S REPORT, 'EXITING FROM HOMOSEXUALITY IS POSSIBLE, APA IS ONLY POLITICAL', https://www.uccronline.it/2011/11/16/lex-presidente-dellapa-«dallomosessualita-si-puo-uscire-lapa-e-solo-politica»/ , 16 NOVEMBER 2011

^[22] POPE FRANCIS, "AMORIS LAETITIA", 256: "It comforts us to know that there is no complete destruction of those who die, and faith assures us that the Risen One will never abandon us. Thus, we can prevent death 'from poisoning our lives, from making our affections vain, from making us fall into the darkest void'"

^[23] CORRIERE DELLA SERA, U. Veronesi: 'Homosexual love is the purest love, as opposed to heterosexual love, which is instrumental to reproduction', https://www.corriere.it/cronache/11_giugno_23/veronesi-amore-gay_cba482c8-9d92-11e0-b1a1-4623f252d3e7.shtml, 23 June 2011. After this statement by Dr. Veronesi, several have been defending homo-sexual relationships since ancient Greece. However, it is Plato himself who states in the Laws, at 636c: "The pleasure of men with men and women with women is against nature and such a reckless act stems from the inability to dominate pleasure."

^[24] PAOLO CILIA, 'CHURCH, ABUSE AND REFORM: WHERE TO START FROM', https://www.ilcattolico.it/catechesi/studi/chiesa-abusi-e-riforma-da-dove-partire.html, 13 JANUARY 2019

^[25] JOHN PAUL II, "FAMILIARIS CONSORTIO", 34 «Therefore, the so-called 'law of gradualness', or gradual path, cannot be identified with the 'gradualness of the law', as if there were various degrees and various forms of precept in the divine law for different people and situations.»

^[26] JOHN PAUL II, 'CHRISTIFIDELES LAICI', No. 15 'For the Church lives in the world even though she is not of the world (cf. Jn 17:16) and is sent to continue the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, which 'while by its very nature has as its end the salvation of men, also embraces the instauration of the whole temporal order'"

^[27] ROMANO GUARDINI, "LA COSCIENZA", "Among the tendencies of the modern age is that of radically denying the absoluteness of conscience. Reducing conscience to a question of temperament, and thus opposing to the 'moral' man an 'amoral' man or reducing conscience to a product of history or the social environment. Thus, it would be something that has matured little by little, that has been acquired through education and that might even disappear again. Here, too, one has to work one's way through a tangle of sociological, psychological and historical half-truths down to the elementary fact: the conscience exists! There exists in us that supreme something, which is related to the good, which responds to the good as the eye does to the light.”, https://www.ilcattolico.it/catechesi/etica-e-morale/la-coscienza.html, 20 FEBBRAIO 2014

^[28] PSALMS, 63,7 "Who will see us? They say, or will penetrate our secrets? He will do that, he who penetrates human nature to its depths, the depths of the heart"; ROMANS, 8,27 "And he who can see into all hearts knows what Spirit means because the prayers that the Spirit makes for God’s holy people are always in accordance with the mind of God."

^[29] OBAMA, 'LOVE IS LOVE', President Obama reacts to the Supreme Court's decision to legalise same-sex marriage nationwide, https://www.nbcnews.com/video/love-is-love-obama-says-after-high-court-legalizes-same-sex-marriage-471812675527, June 26 2015

^[30] SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, "CONFESSIONS", III, 6, 11, "Tu autem eras interior intimo meo et superior summo meo; You were more inward in me than my innermost part and higher than my highest part."

^[31] PAOLO CILIA, “SERIES OF REFLECTIONS ON BASIC NEEDS AND PHILAUTIA”, "Need/attitude for identity, need/attitude to be loved, need/attitude to love", https://www.ilcattolico.it/rassegna-stampa-cattolica/formazione-e-catechesi/serie-di-riflessioni-sui-bisogni-fondamentali-e-la-filautia.html , 8 OTTOBRE 2016