Archdiocesan 2019 Appeal Letter to Wilton Gregory

Your Grace,

Welcome to the Archdiocese. I met you once at a Catholic Charities Annual Gathering when my former wife, Moira, then Director of Membership at Catholic Charities, U.SA., presented me to you.

Given my former relationship with Catholic Charities, I feel why I must demure from this year’s appeal (aside from poverty).

My decision had nothing to do with the previous occupants of your office. Cardinal Wuerl was unjustly scapegoated for actions in his See in Pennsylvania where, ironically, he helped fight the abuse of minors than hiding it. As for Brother Theodore, all of his conduct occurred prior to his transfer and elevation. To this day, I believe his behavior is the result of undistinguished asexuality. Gay clergy are usually fully formed sexually. He obviously was not.

The renaming of the Appeal shows the same behavior which concealed the abuse, placing public relations before accountability. I doubt that anyone who had given to the Appeal in the past would have not done so because His Eminence or Your Grace was associated with it.

There are more substantive reasons why I am giving to the appeal. The first is that it funds the Office of Pro-Life Activities. Let me be clear that I do not favor abortion. Rather, I disapprove of the relationship with the Republican Party in advancing the falsehood that electing a Republican to the presidency, especially this President, has anything to do with repealing Roe v. Wade. To date, Chief Roberts and Justice Alito have not supported overturning Roe. In Gonzalez v. Carhart, they specifically did not do so, joining Justice Kennedy (for whom Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh had clerked) in citing the Commerce Clause as justification for the federal ban of dilation and extraction.

Roe is not going anywhere, nor should it. The latest spate of cases seek to return venue for equal protection and due process cases regarding state legislation to state courts, which both contravenes the plain language of the 14th Amendment and restores the regime of Plessy v. Ferguson. This would repeal every decision relying on federal power from Hernandez v. Texas and Brown v. Board of Education to Perry v. Brown. Those who seek such a reversal likely consider that to be a feature, rather than a flaw.

Only Congress can recognize the legal status of the unborn, except it cannot. Investigating first trimester dilation and courage procedures would require therapeutic procedures be investigated as well. The 5th Amendment prohibits selective enforcement, as does logic. Any ban would suddenly give rise to an epidemic of miscarriage and require universal investigation. Any such investigation would violate 9th Amendment rights to privacy. Moira had two miscarriages after Catie was born. Investigation of these by law enforcement would be unconscionable. While Congress could mandate them anyway, they will not.

The answer to abortion is in keeping with the Magisterium of Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii 119-122, a family income sensitive to family size. The private sector unaided by government subsidy could never provide this. Parents with large families would be terminated unless their children were. The proper form of this subsidy is a $1,000 tax credit for each child, distributed with pay by employers, likely as an offset to some sort of value added tax. The Republican Party will not support such a measure unless shamed to do so by the Church. When the Church leads such an effort, first by example, I will rethink my objection.

The second matter is supporter of seminary training, a major part of the appeal. Until women are admitted and ordained, this is a non-started. Establish a separate fund that I can ignore and I will reconsider my contributions. The prohibition on ordination has more to do with a Hellenistic asexual ideal and misogyny than the need for a persona Christi. Christ is all to all, not just to men. We must find Christ in the drug addled prostitute as much as in Raymond Cardinal Burke, if not more so.

From St. Augustine misreading Original Sin from the Eden myth and Sacred Continence to Humanae Vitae and the resistance to ordaining women, Catholic sexual theology is horribly flawed. Another class of male asexuals who are deluded into believing that they are heterosexuals sacrificing their sexuality to God is more than the Church can take. Well-adjusted asexuals are a boon to the Church. Those who believe that their sexuality is the highest state of man is its bedevilment. I will not lend my meager resources to continue this endeavor.

Thank you for allowing me to state my objections.

Yours in Christ,


Michael G. Bindner
St. Mary’s Parish
Rockville

The Ontology of Daisy and the Priesthood

Over the last few days (or is it decades), my college friend Daisy and I have had an ongoing dispute about our relationship. IMHO, she likes living in our past and I want to live in our future. In the present, I am in suburban Maryland and she is in southern California. Regardless, this is not really about her at all. It is about reconsidering my sexuality.

As I began a long walk down Rock Creek Trail, I asked myself, what do I want out of my relationship with Daisy. Unrequited lust and our joint hatred of Donald Trump aside, I want to start each day looking at her smile. To quote Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama, I want to kiss her whenever I feel like it. The thought followed, is that all I want? Maybe I am really asexual, and friendship is our best course, and the priesthood mine.

After my First Communion, I thought I might want to go that way. The four years of seminary was a concern, as I hadn't much cared for second grade. The joke is on me after four years of grad school so far, possibly more later. I dropped the idea of priesthood in high school when I realized that I loved politics and would spend more time running for bishop than being a priest. Not a good plan. Still, as a divorcee and a writer, could I be married to my work, not needing sex?

It deserved a look, especially since I have publically asked priests who think themselves heterosexuals making a sacrifice for the priesthood to consider that they may be naturally asexual. It might make them realize that their gay brothers don't choose their reality, they distinguish it, as they say in the Landmark Forum.

There are many ways to study being.  We distinguish reality. We decide between options and we chose the realty we want, regardless of our options and even when we have none.
Choice is an act of the Will, not the output of a decision. Commitment is a constant choice of the Will.

In philosophy 101, the Will is the irresistible desire for God when perfectly experienced in the next life. In this life, we do not experience God clearly. Instead, the Intellect informs the Will (offering options) and the Will choses as it will.  In making choices, we create reality. In making distinctions, reality choses us.

Nobody choses to be gay, asexual, hetero and all the rest (although it could be that many are more bisexual than they realize, at least toward individuals rather than sexualities).

The first thing the Church needs to distinguish is that epistemology works this way. Then it might have a chance of distinguishing that the LGBTQIA spectrum exists, that it is not bad and that almost all priests are on it.

Gay priests know this about themselves already. They distinguished their identity after noticing the signs. They did not decide or chose to be gay. Being gay chose them.

Many asexual priests have distinguished their identity. Chastity is not a burden for them. The problem is that some fail to see that it is not natural for the rest of us. We like sex as a good in itself, regardless of procreation. It is a feature, not a failing.

As I came upon a couple walking their dogs, I noticed the wife, not the husband. A gay guy would have noticed the husband. Not sure what an asexual would noticed. When they turned around, I was sure of my heterosexuality.

Upon honest reflection, noticed that when I have touched Daisy, aside from friendly hugs goodbye when one of us would go to another state or continent, that I did have a reaction that is more than just friendship.

The reality that I must chose for now is that cannot force her, or the priesthood, to distinguish, consider, choose or commit. Such things cannot be forced, not by me nor by the Church in dealing with people on the LGBTQIA. To be happy, we must chose others as they are, i.e., to love them. We suffer when we don't. Suffering is optional, but it is also contagious. Pope Francis, call your office.