Monday, February 21, 2005

Feb 21 - St. Peter Damian

Considering the situation in which the Church finds herself today, infested with various sorts of insidious perversions, we can, nonetheless, look with hope as we ask for St. Peter Damian to intercede for us today as he did in his own time...

Among St. Peter Damian's most famous writings is his lengthy treatise, Letter 31, the Book of Gomorrah (Liber Gomorrhianus), containing the most extensive treatment and condemnation by any Church Father of clerical pederasty and homosexual practices. [2] His manly discourse on the vice of sodomy in general and clerical homosexuality and pederasty in particular, is written in a plain and forthright style that makes it quite readable and easy to understand.

In keeping with traditional Church teachings handed down from the time of the Apostles, he holds that all homosexual acts are crimes against Nature and therefore crimes against God who is the author of Nature.
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Considering that the Book of Gomorrah was written in 1049 A.D. it borders on the miraculous to note how many of Damian's insights can be applied to the current pederast and homosexual debacle here in the United States and abroad, including the Vatican. His treatise certainly stands as a masterful refutation of contemporary homosexual apologists who claim that the early Fathers of the Church did not understand the nature or dynamics of homosexuality. Rather, as Damian's work demonstrates, the degradation of human nature as exemplified by sodomical acts is a universal phenomenon that transcends time, place and culture.

One of the main points of the Book of Gomorrah, is the author's insistence on the responsibility of the bishop or superior of a religious order to curb and eradicate the vice from their ranks. [7] He minces no words in his condemnation of those prelates who refuse or fail to take a strong hand in dealing with clerical sodomical practices either because of moral indifferentism or the inability to face up to a distasteful and potentially scandalous situation. [8]

Other issues tackled by St. Peter Damian which have a particular relevance today are:
The problems of homosexual bishops or heads of religious orders who engage their "spiritual sons" in acts of sodomy.

The sacrilegious use of the sacraments by homosexual clerics and religious.

The special problems for the Church related to the seduction of youths by clerical pederasts, and

The problem of overtly lax canons and penances for clerical and religious offenders that make a mockery of the seriously sinful nature of homosexual acts.
Read more here.

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