 So a couple of points by way of introduction. First of all, a good question that priests ask me or thinking perhaps is who are you, Father, and who made you the expert on this topic? And I'm not the expert on this topic. I'm a parish priest, like I assume many of the priests in the gathering are here today. And one day I got a letter in the mail. Dear Father Czech, we do not have a ministry in our diocese for men and women with same-sex attraction. I would be very grateful if you started one. Sincerely yours in Christ, your bishop. And that's how I became an expert. So be careful the mail that comes from the chancery. I guess I should say that I teach a course in fundamental moral theology and Christian anthropology and sexual ethics to the seminarians for my diocese and to our men in the Permanent Deaconate Program. So I understood something about the topic from the standpoint of the magisterial teaching of the church, but it really wasn't until I started sitting with men like David and getting to know them that my education began in earnest. And our hope this afternoon and tomorrow morning is very much to put a face on this question for you. We need the anthropology underneath, and I'm gonna work on that a little bit in a few moments, but from the standpoint of our apostolate, which begins by the way in 1980 in the Archdiocese of New York, but is now in 150 dioceses and maybe 15 countries overseas. Our diocese, rather our apostolate is one soul at a time, one person at a time, one story at a time. David and I have presented together before and one of the places that we've been last fall, two days before the ordinary Synod in Rome, we were part of a conference at the Angelicum in Rome. David gave his testimony, along with three other courage members, and the keynote speaker for the morning session was Cardinal Robert Sarah. Many of you will know him, recognize that name. I recommend his book, Dot or Nothing. At the end of the morning session, I went up to him and I said to him, thank you, Your Eminence, for coming and spending this time with us. And he was very emotional. Some people said they thought that they saw tears in his eyes as he listened to these testimonials. And he said to me, I have never heard stories like these before. And he was moved. So putting a face on a difficult question. Now, I know from nine years working in this field in the full-time capacity that I've been the director of the apostolate, that whenever I'm in a large group of people there are some here for whom this question is not just a pastoral concern and not just a matter of our Christian anthropology, but it's personal. It's personal in that it may touch you or it may touch a member of your family or someone very close to you in your circle, not just the sphere of your ministry or your apostolic work. So that's one of the things that's in my mind. We are not just talking about homosexuality and same-sex attraction today. I know that I am probably, and David knows this too, talking to someone. So I wanna be careful with the words I say and the way that I say things because I don't want to offend anyone. And I want to be careful that the presentation of the church's teaching doesn't sound sterile or severe or an impossible ideal to be reached. So that would be the preface. The founder of our apostolate is the servant of God, Terence Cardinal Cook. And in 1980 he received what I think was a charism, a grace from the Holy Spirit to begin a work of the church for a portion of our community that often feels like they're estranged, separated, misunderstood, hated, and the rest. Because the word that's most usually associated with the Catholic church and the topic of homosexuality is the word no. And that's it. And Cardinal Cook knew we needed more than no and there is more than no and that's what we wanna share with you. So from that inspiration, seven men met in Lower Manhattan in 1980 under the spiritual fatherhood of an oblate of St. Francis the Sales, whose name was Father John Harvey, who was the founding executive director. And they formulated the goals of courage which Cardinal Cook approved. And those goals come right out of the heart of the gospel and we will get to those a little bit later. Okay, I'd like to start like this in terms of the content and discussion of Christian anthropology with a little audience participation. Is that okay, Father? Can we have audience participation? Yes, good. So, question to you. If someone asks you, Father, Deacon, Seminarian, what is the one word that you would use if you were gonna summarize the entire gospel of Jesus Christ? What's the word that you would pick? Love is a very good word. Truth is a very good word. Mercy is a very good word. Compassion is a good word. Faith, salvation, reconciliation. Jesus is a very hard word to beat. All good words. My word to summarize the incarnation and the teaching of Christ in the gospel is joy. Why do I say that? Because our Lord Himself said it. John 15, the farewell discourse. I have told you these things, he said, that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. I have told you these things. Now, my mother is an English teacher. Thank God she's in good health. She'll be 80 in August. And when we were, my brothers and I were growing up, we would sit around the kitchen table at night, our parents, and we would talk about things like antecedents. You would do that when you have an English teacher for a mother, right? So what is the antecedent of these things? I have told you these things, Jesus said. What is he speaking about? Well, one valid interpretation of that verse from John 15 could be the entire preaching of the kingdom of God. Everything that he has talked to us about for the three years of his public ministry. I have told you these things. I have preached the kingdom to you so that the joy that is mine will be yours. So that's a valid interpretation, I think. Or perhaps we could look at what he had just been talking about and give these things a more specific interpretation. The verse immediately proceeding. I have told you these things that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. I have kept the father's commandments and I abide in his love. Now you keep the commandments and abide in his love. I have told you these things that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. I think, brothers, it's a fair interpretation of that section to say there are three things that are in the mind of the God man that he's holding together. Joy, love, and the commandments. Now no one anywhere I think is going to take issue with the idea of having joy. And I don't think anyone is going to take issue with the idea of wanting to have love, to love and be loved. It's that third one that's difficult for us. The commandments. That is not so appealing. The thou shalt's and the thou shalt not's. Now as I said, I've been teaching moral theology now for almost 20 years and I think since the Second Vatican Council, the renewal of moral theology has tried to move us away from an understanding of commands and prohibitions in another direction. And that's what I would like to work with you on for a few minutes now. But let's go back to our first parents. Where did they live before original sin? In the Garden of Eden or Paradise where their joy was complete. And it was only after original sin that they lose the joy that God had given to them when he created them. So in that sense, the mission of the incarnation is the restoration of lost joy. So let's think about that, keep that in our minds now as we look at this question of the commandments. I would like to propose that when we teach the commandments and especially when we get to the question of chastity, which is of special interest to us today, that we think as St. Thomas Aquinas did and think of them not in terms of commands and prohibitions but in terms of virtues. What are virtues? Let's go to another section of scripture to use an image and make a point. The woman who has a hemorrhage, 12 years, no doctor can help her. She comes up behind our Lord, touches the tassel of his cloak and is healed. The common translation that we hear and that we read at Mass is this. And Jesus felt the power go out of him. Fair? Everybody remember that? In the Vulgate, which is the translation of scripture into Latin, which St. Jerome gave us, the word that he uses there for power in the Latin is virtus, or if there's a Latin scholar here and I'll bet there is, in the accusative case virtutum. So in the King James version of the Bible and the old Due Ren, this is how it sounded in translation. And Jesus felt the virtue go out of him. Seems odd to our ears because to lose virtue doesn't seem to be something that's agreeable or that we would hope for. But it makes a point that a virtue is a power. It's a power that helps us to realize in an authentic sense what God has given us in our humanity and in a given person in their personality. And we admire people who have virtues. When I'm giving a talk to young people, I'll start by saying, who do you admire? Or I have to think about my mother, the English teacher, maybe it's whom do you admire? And after we get past the pop stars and people who are famous and beautiful and have a lot of money, we get to character types and the people that they admire make sacrifices are generous, are humble, are self-forgetful and the rest. Why do they admire people like that? Because they're made for those virtues, like you and I are made for those virtues. So let's think of the commandments in terms of the virtues now. Let's go through them quickly because we don't have a lot of time, but I wanna make a certain point here that helps us understand the church's teaching, on chastity and then in particular about homosexuality. So we'll go through the commandments here. The virtue of the first commandment is the virtue of fidelity. I am the Lord your God. You love me with all your mind, heart, soul and strength. I'm not of strange gods before me. Or if you like the virtue of spiritual childhood. What does our Lord say is indispensable for entering the kingdom of heaven? You must become His little children and our Lord is the perfect child of God. So commandment one, spiritual childhood or fidelity. That's a power. It's a way to love and it's a way to love God in particular. Commandment number two, do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain or as our Lord refashions, the second part of the great commandment, love one another as I have loved you. The virtue is reverence. Reverence for the other. In the Semitic cultures in particular, very close connection between the name and the person. Reverence for the other. Third commandment, virtue of service. The most important service that we render to God is to worship Him in the way that He is asked. As Catholics, we know that's at the holy mass. Today is the feast of Thomas Moore. One day he was at Daily Mass. This was before he was in the tower, got a message from the king. King Henry says, Sir Thomas, he was chancellor of the realm, I need you to come to the palace right away. Thomas Moore wrote a note back, I am on service to the king of kings and I will come when mass is over. Service. Fourth commandment is the virtue of pietas, which we translate into English as piety, but then you and I probably tend to think of Eucharistic piety or Marian piety, these forms of devotion very good, but pietas is something else. Reverence, honor, respect, devotion to those who have some position of authority over us. And by the way, you may know the word authority comes from a Latin word that means to build up, to give increase. That's what authority is, not to be tyrannical or selfish, but to build up. Fifth commandment, let's call it the virtue of meekness. Sixth commandment of interest to us today, chastity. Seventh commandment, justice. Eighth commandment, truthfulness or veracity. Ninth commandment, purity of heart. And the tenth commandment, temperance. Now, if you forget everything else that I say today, please hold on to this line. Jesus Christ lived an intensely fulfilled and happy human life. Full stop. He lived an intensely happy and fulfilled human life. We don't always think about that because we think about this symbol as we should, as the central symbol of our faith. And in this moment, you would have to say, not a joyful, not a happy moment, but fulfilled. Why do I claim that our Lord lived a completely fulfilled human life because he lived all of those virtues perfectly? Commandments one through three, virtues one through three are loving God, and four through 10 are loving neighbor. And it is in and through that power to love and be loved well that the human heart receives joy. Now, that doesn't mean there isn't a cross, there isn't suffering. We know that's all real. But created in the image and likeness of God means made for communion, made for relationships, and the virtues are those powers that make that in accordance with the way God's image is within us. Now, let's take a couple of examples. When I was growing up, and I wanted to listen to music, you had a box into which you put other boxes. The fidelity was terrible, but that's how we listen to music. That's called an atrack tape player. Now, some of you are baby boomers like I am, and you remember those, but some of these people in the audience here are millennials. They have no idea what an atrack tape player is. They would see it on eBay and Museum. Let's say for a minute, this was an atrack tape player, and I put it in front of one of these young people today, and they'd look at that, and they'd say, Father, what is that? Remember your metaphysics? Probably the course you liked least when you were in the seminary? Adgeray, seguitor essay, action follows being. What is that is a question of metaphysics, and it presumes that this is something that it has a form or a design, and if we use it in accordance with the way that has been created, it will do, albeit badly in the case of an atrack tape player, what it's intended to do. What is that? And so the church, when she looks at the human person, says, what is that? Created the image and likeness of God, made for communion, to love and be loved according to these virtues. That's how she starts. So let's take a case of a commandment that no one's gonna consider controversial, the eighth. What's the purpose of the power of communication? What's it for? Audience participation time? To learn, to share things? To relay what? Ah, that's important. In other words, to the very best of my ability, when you and I are entering into a conversation, I'm gonna say what I believe is true. What happens if after the conversation, you find out that I didn't just make a mistake or I got hit on the head and got dizzy, but that I lied to you? What are you going to think? You say that's not right. Did you have to look in the commandments to check? No. You knew something welled up in you because the power of speech is not only to convey what we think is true, but it's to form relationships, friendships, associations, and love, and all of those will be undermined and sabotaged if we lie. Is anyone arguing with the church's teaching on the eighth commandment? No. Let's do another simple example. And by using these brothers, I'm not trying in any way to minimize the struggles and the sufferings, the things that are very difficult. I'm trying to make a certain pedagogical point that the church's teaching on chastity is just like all of our other teachings with regard to the human person, not detached, not severe, not medieval, but grows out of who we are. For me, two of the essential food groups are chocolate cake and red wine. I travel a lot for my job. I'm on a lot of airplanes. I don't typically sit in first class. That's not what the second collection is for. And when you're on coach, you know, sitting in coach, you get a peanut or two, little glass of water, and that's even true on the transcontinental flights. So when I get home at night, LaGuardia, Kennedy, I'm driving back to my rectory. I haven't had any dinner yet and I'm thinking, oh, that cook who takes care of the priest where I live, she's such a benevolent person and she knows that chocolate cake and red wine are essential things for me. And so they're there on the sideboard when I get home. Cabernet, big piece of chocolate cake. Now, here's the point. There's no joy without limits. If I step outside the reasonable limits there with regard to the alcohol and the cake, I'm gonna feel it. We know no one is arguing with the church's teaching on saturated fact and red wine, but the point is the same. Recognizing the design, the boundaries, the limits that are established by the wise creator helps us define fulfillment. Truth and love go together. They go together. Okay, so let's move into the realm of the sixth commandment now, which is admittedly a little bit more difficult, but again, the same kind of pedagogy applies. The same pedagogy applies. Question for you. How many people in the room have a reproductive system? Do you really? Let's think about that. So tonight, David has promised me some chocolate cake and red wine, and I'm, thanks be to God, gonna be able to digest that. Fine, my stomach is able to do that function by itself. Right now, my lungs are oxygenating, my blood, yours are doing the same. I can see, thank God, I can hear, all of the different systems, neurological, circulatory, digestive, all perform their functions on their own to their completion for the preservation and the promotion of life, except one. There's one thing, there's one thing within me that I can't do by myself. None of us can, and that is to further the human race. For that, two people are necessary, and not just two people, but a man and a woman. And that remains true even in something called in vitro fertilization, which means in the glass. Still, you need an egg and a sperm. So that tells us there's something unique about this aspect, this part of the human endeavor, the communion again. Is that the only reason for sex? No, church doesn't say that. But it is a recognizable end. And in fact, hand, ear, nose, eyes, knee, elbow, all of those things and their purpose can be discernible just by looking at them. But when it comes to the procreative organs, and I prefer that terminology to reproductive organs, but when it comes to the procreative organs, now it's different. Now in terms of form and function, we can't figure them out until we see and understand their compliments. That's the theology of the body or the nuptial meaning of the body in three sentences. It's much richer than that, as we know. But again, it's a clue. It's a clue for us. Now why do we run into difficulty here with regard to chastity that we don't run into difficulty with when it comes to veracity or truthfulness or temperance? Why is there such a problem here? Well, I think there are a number of different reasons and there are things that you're all aware of. Probably prior to 1950, there was nothing in the civil law of the United States which was contrary to the moral law of the church as it touches the Sixth Commandment in any serious way except divorce. When the birth control pill came, that changed everything. My guess is that if we were gonna try to decide the three most revolutionary technologies in human history, things that have affected human behavior more than anything else, the birth control pill would be in the top three. Even more than the internal combustion engine, incandescent or fluorescent lights, heat, air conditioning, maybe even the wheel. Nothing is revolutionized in modern times, maybe save the internet, the way people relate to each other. So this is one of the difficulties that we have pastorally when we're talking about homosexuality because it appears as though particularly in recent times prior to Obergefeld that the church was focused down so severely on this one group of people telling them, no, you can't be married and so on. But our preaching and our catechesis will be more effective when we situate that no in the wider yes, which addresses the question of human virtues, the communion of love, and chastity as a power for all. We will never be effective in persuading people that the church's teaching on homosexuality makes sense if we hold little or no ground or we're very weak on the teaching of contraception. Because once we make up our minds that deliberately sterilizing sex in marriage, whether it's through chemical means or through surgical means, once we make up in our mind that that improves marriage, I'm not talking about menopause, I'm not talking about people who are infertile. That's paraccidents. I'm talking about the deliberate change. Once we agree to that, once we say that that is what improves marriage, then we have no way to reasonably or coherently speak about this topic. And that's one of the reasons why I think we have so much difficulty. So we go back, we go back to the wisdom of Paul VI in Humanae Vitae, which of course reflects the wisdom of the church for a significant period of time and recover that lost ground. Now this is not a talk about contraception in Humanae Vitae, but I just wanna say that St. Thomas in the second part of the second part of the summa said that there were four sins that were contra-naturum, which is not a phrase I would use from the pulpit, it will be misunderstood. And what he meant, all sin is contra-naturum, by the way, we should say that. But in a particular way, these four things so radically engage the sexual power in a way contrary to its design that they fall under that umbrella. Do you know what they are? Bestiality, that's obvious, homosexual activity, activity, not the inclination, not the attraction, but the activity, contraception, and masturbation. Those are the four things that break apart that union of life and love that's intended by the design within us for spousal love. Why do I go through this with you? Is this the first time you've ever heard this? No, but this is where the coherence and the consistency of our teaching rises and falls. It is on this idea that we can come to know who we are, and in this particular realm as sexual beings. I think the most important question ever asked in human history was the one we heard in the gospel last Sunday when Jesus said, who do you say that I am? That's a question that at 56 years old, I'm still working out. We're all asking that question of identity, and it's from understanding who we are that then we know how to act. And in this case, we're talking about in the sexual realm. Christ the new Adam fully reveals man to himself in his most high calling. For 10 points, where does that come from? Gaudium at Spes 22, the most quoted line in the Magisterium of St. John Paul II, I think. Christ the new Adam tells us who we are. He is the one who marks out that path to the intensely fulfilled life. Some people say that, well, Jesus didn't say anything about homosexuality or contraception in the gospel father. Why does the church say no to both? Well, actually, our Lord didn't use those words, but he didn't need to. We notice that whenever Jesus is talking about the sixth commandment or the ninth commandment, he's always raising the bar. So much so that in one case, the apostle said, this is too hard, who can be married? Maybe it's better not to marry. And the Pharisees were the ones who were looking for concessions with regard to divorce. And our Lord said, no, NRK from the beginning in the Greek, not just a point on the timeline, but from the creative wisdom of God. And then, of course, in the Sermon and the Mount, where he makes it very plain that lust and adultery, and adultery means sinning against marriage, have a relationship. He's always raising the bar. And in the gospel, he looks at the root causes of unchaste behavior, which are lust and divorce. Why is this important? Because our norms for pastoral care flow from our understanding of the human person. The question that you will ask, and that we will get to today a little bit, and more tomorrow is, how do we find a way forward pastorally to help people? That's an excellent question. My answers are gonna limp along at best. But it's grounded in the same question as, what is that when we're looking at the eight track tape player? What is sex for? What is the human person for? That's what leads us in the direction of authentic pastoral charity. That's why getting some floor underneath this, it seems to me, my brothers, is of such great importance. I'm gonna pass it over to David here in just a moment so that he can do his testimony, and you're gonna learn a lot more from him that you will from me that will be compelling, and I'm quite happy to say that. We have this problem within called concupiscence. Which says that our feelings are not always reliable guides to that fulfillment of the human heart that our Lord marked out for us. GK Chesterton said, how does a man who's born upside down know when he's right side up? Usually the women laugh at that because they know how babies are born, or how they're supposed to be born. So it's a metaphor. It means that we come into the world upside down in our wounded nature, and we spend a lifetime trying to make sure we're standing up on our feet. Grace is indispensable for that, and our cooperation with it, and that's what the virtues are for. Chesterton also said, original sin is the only doctrine of the church that you don't have to believe. You just have to read a newspaper. You look on the front page of any newspaper and Heaven help us. We've seen plenty of it recently, haven't we? The horror and tragedy of man's in humanity to man. It's clear that our feelings are not always reliable guides. We need something else. Plato knew about this in a work called The Phaedrus. He hit the parable of the chariot. He said, inside of me I feel one horse going this way and one horse going this way. He wrote 400 years before Christ was born. He couldn't give an account of the fall, but he felt it. And then St. Paul, of course, in his magnificent letter to the Roman, says, the good I wanna do, I don't do. The evil that I wanna avoid, that is what I do. Such a testimony of his own humility. These things, brothers, are all part of our consideration with regard to pastoral charity because they're part of how we understand the human person.