Pentagon Bows to Homosexual Activists

The Pentagon issued a statement on Wednesday, June 28^th, retracting its earlier classification, in a military document, of homosexuality as a mental heath disorder, after the American Psychiatric Association and several homosexual activist groups objected.

In a document outlining policy for discharging or retiring service members because of physical disability, "homosexuality" was included in a list of “certain conditions and defects of a developmental nature…[that] do not constitute a physical disability.” Other elements on the list included sexual gender and identity disorders, personality disorders, mental retardation and alcoholism.

“Homosexuality should not have been characterized as a mental disorder in an appendix of a procedural instruction,” said the Pentagon statement, which also pointed out that the disputed classification was found in a minor listing that would have no effect on the current situation regarding homosexuality in military service. The statement went on to say, “notwithstanding its inclusion, we find no practical impact since that appendix simply listed factors that do not constitute a physical disability, and homosexuality of course does not.”

The original Pentagon document was brought to light by a pro-homosexual group called the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military (CSSMM), a think tank at the University of California, Santa Barbara. According to the CSSMM, the Department of Defense Instruction that so categorized homosexuality as a psychological disorder was signed by the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness in 1996 and re-certified as "current" in 2003.

Because the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses over thirty years ago, claiming that it "implies no impairment in judgment, stability, reliability, or general social and vocational capabilities,” the CSSMM responded to what it has called an outdated and offensive classification of homosexuality by issuing a “report card” on the military, giving it 'F's' in four out of five categories, including "Mental Health Classification," "Anti-gay Harassment and Command Climate," "Evidence-Based Assessment of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'" and "Family Support."

Dr. Aaron Belkin, director of CSSMM, expressed concern that the military continues to list homosexuality as a mental illness. "It's unclear why a Department of Defense document would classify homosexuality as a mental disorder over thirty years after the psychiatric community acknowledged this is a mistake," said Dr. Belkin. The vast majority of other military documents no longer list homosexuality as a mental disorder.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) lambasted the Pentagon for retaining a mental health classification for homosexuality that the APA discarded over thirty years ago. “Based on scientific and medical evidence the APA declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 – a position shared by all other major health and mental health organizations based on their own review of the science,” said James H. Scully Jr., head of the APA, earlier this month.

However, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) has accused the APA of allowing homosexual activists to dictate changes to the classification of homosexuality. A recent report by leading psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Satinover charged the APA, the American Psychological Association and the National Association of Social Workers with succumbing to the demands of homosexual activists by supporting the ‘normalcy’ of homosexuality, despite evidence linking homosexuality with mental health problems.

“The APA’s decision to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was presented to the public as based upon a solid scientific foundation, though this foundation was in fact lacking,” wrote Dr. Satinover.

The official Pentagon policy forbids the military from questioning service members about their sexual preference, but states that service members who openly declare they are homosexual and who engage in homosexual activity must be discharged from service.

Comment: Why did the American Psychiatric Association (APA) decide to change its policy on the diagnosis of homosexual behavior in 1973? In his 1981 book  Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis, Dr. Ronald Bayer states that the attack on the APA by homosexual activists began in 1970 at the APA convention in San Francisco. Homosexual activists disrupted the conference by interrupting speakers and shouting down and ridiculing psychiatrists who viewed homosexuality as a mental disorder.

In 1971, homosexual activist Frank Kameny worked with the Gay Liberation Front collective to demonstrate against the APA's convention. At the 1971 conference, Kameny grabbed the microphone and yelled, "Psychiatry is the enemy incarnate. Psychiatry has waged a relentless war of extermination against us. You may take this as a declaration of war against you." Homosexuals forged APA credentials and gained access to exhibit areas in the conference, where they threatened anyone who claimed that homosexuals needed to be cured.

Kameny had found an ally inside the APA named Kent Robinson, who helped the homosexual activist present his demand that homosexuality be removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders (DSM). At the 1972 convention, homosexual activists were permitted to set up a display booth entitled "Gay, Proud and Healthy." Kameny was then permitted to be part of a panel of psychiatrists who were to discuss homosexuality.

Dr. Charles W. Socarides, writing in “Sexual Politics and Scientific Logic: The Issue of Homosexuality” (The Journal of Psychohistory, Winter, 1992), made the following statement concerning the APA’s “change of heart” regarding homosexuality:

To declare a condition a “non-condition,” a group of  practitioners had removed it from our list of serious psychosexual disorders. The action was all the more remarkable when one considers that it involved an out-of-hand and peremptory disregard and dismissal not only of hundreds of psychiatric and psychoanalytic research papers and reports, but also a number of other serious studies by groups of psychiatrists, psychologists, and educators over the past seventy years.

Dr. Socarides continued: "For the next 18 years, the APA decision served as a Trojan horse, opening the gates to widespread psychological and social change in sexual customs and mores. The decision was to be used on numerous occasions for numerous purposes with the goal of normalizing homosexuality and elevating it to an esteemed status.”

In short, the effort to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder from the DSM was the result of nothing more or less than power politics, threats and intimidation, not scientific discoveries. Dr. Socarides called it “a chilling reminder that if scientific principles are not fought for, they can be lost – a disillusioning warning that unless we make no exceptions to science, we are subject to the snares of political factionalism and the propagation of untruths to an unsuspecting and uninformed public, to the rest of the medical profession, and to the behavioral sciences."

In a 2003 Zenit interview, Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons of the Catholic Medical Association noted that “numerous conflicts make homosexual behaviors abnormal, including rampant promiscuity, inability to maintain commitment, psychiatric disorders and medical illnesses with a shortened life span.” He said that “gay, lesbian and bisexual young people are at increased risk of psychiatric disorder and suicidal behaviors (according to studies appearing in the October, 1999 issue of the American Medical Association's Archives of General Psychiatry).

Dr. Fitzgibbons also stated that “the list of medical diseases found with extraordinary frequency among male homosexual practitioners as a result of abnormal homosexual behavior is alarming” and that “sexual transmission of some of these diseases is so rare in the exclusively heterosexual population as to be virtually unknown.”

Given the facts, long suppressed by the APA and its activist cronies, what are Americans to make of the Pentagon’s apology for adhering to a clinical analysis of homosexual behavior which has yet to be superseded by hard evidence?

Update on Litigious Atheist Luigi Cascioli

An atheist who gained worldwide fame when he sued an Italian priest, claiming Jesus Christ never actually existed, has been fined by an appeals court in Rome (World Net Daily, July 3, 2006).

In February, Judge Gaetano Mautone threw out a petition by Cascioli who wanted his childhood friend, Rev. Enrico Righi, to stand trial for asserting that Jesus Christ was a real person. Cascioli, a retired agronomist, contended that Righi violated a law that forbids deceiving the public. The atheist said the priest, who had publicly criticized him for casting doubt on the truth of the gospels, had no evidence that Jesus ever existed. Cascioli, who himself once trained for the priesthood, further accused the church of having profited from its deception for 2,000 years, another crime under Italian law.

Rev. Righi said the existence of Jesus is "unmistakable" due to a wealth of both pagan and Christian evidence pointing to His reality. "Cascioli maintains that Christ never existed. If he doesn't see the sun at midday, he can't denounce me just because I do. He should denounce all believers!" Righi told The London Times.

Luigi Cascioli, 73, vows never to pay the $1,900 judgment against him. The fact that he was given the maximum fine is "an abuse of authority against every right of intellectual expression and liberty," he said. "I refuse to pay."

Benedictine Community Severs Catholic Ties

According to the Wisconsin State Journal (July 3, 2006), “the St. Benedict Center, a Benedictine ecumenical community serving Madison for the past 40 years, has ended its ties to the Roman Catholic Church.”

According to the prioress of the Sisters of St. Benedict, Sister Mary David Walgenbach, 67, the center will now function purely as an ecumenical community under its new name, Holy Wisdom Monastery. She said the Sisters of St. Benedict petitioned the Vatican for dispensation from their vows as a Catholic religious order and the request was granted. The order will now be called the "Benedictine Women of Madison" and will continue to follow, generally, the monastic rule of St. Benedict.

Sister Mary David said there are a number of reasons for the change, one of which is that the order started accepting Protestant members several years ago. "We didn't want our non-Catholic sisters to have second-class status," she said. The Rev. Lynn Smith, a Presbyterian “clergywoman,” took her final vows to become a member of the order in 2004.

For the past 40 years, the St. Benedict Center of Madison has been synonymous with ecumenical activities in the Madison area. "The response to our offer of hospitality has been overwhelmingly abundant," wrote Sister Mary David in a letter to fellow sisters. "While the 40 years have occasionally felt like desert experiences, far greater is the joy. Formerly, Christians of various churches praying together seemed innovative; this practice is common today. We continue to know ourselves as Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopalian and Presbyterian. While these labels sometimes separate us, we also know our unity as Christians who live, pray and work together in our world."

Bishop Robert Morlino, of the Madison diocese, approved the changes but requested that the monastery no longer have Mass celebrated at the center and that the Blessed Sacrament no longer be reserved in the chapel.

"Such experimental endeavors can bear great fruit for the church, such as the monastery at Taize (France)," Morlino said in a letter to diocesan priests dated June 26. "But there are very few other success stories worldwide, and thus our prayers and good wishes are all the more important." The bishop has also stated that, while Roman Catholic adults are free to participate in activities at the center, "participation in such activities would not be suitable for Catholic school religion classes, parish religious education classes for young people through the completion of high school and certainly not for catechumens and candidates in RCIA (religious study) programs."

The local chapter of the Sisters of St. Benedict was organized in 1901 in Sioux City, Iowa. The Sisters moved to Madison in 1953 to begin a Catholic girls' school. When the school closed in 1966, the center became an ecumenical retreat.

Comment: Of particular interest in the above story are the comments by Bishop Morlino. On the one hand, such ecumenical experiments can bear “great fruit” for the Church. But, on the other, they are completely unfit for – get this – Catholic school religion classes, parish religious education classes for young people through the completion of high school and definitely unfit for catechumens and candidates in RCIA programs. Try to wrap your mind around that.

Which is it? According to the Wisconsin State Journal article, Bishop Morlino “warned” that young people must be “indoctrinated” into the basics of the Catholic Faith before they can participate in “ecumenical activities.” The new and improved Sisters of St. Benedict say they believe that such distinctions as Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopalian and Presbyterian are merely “labels” which hinder “unity.” If this is true, then who cares whether or not young people assume any Catholic identity? It’s just a “label,” right?

In the field of Logic, there is a neat little law called the law of contradiction. It states that “two antithetical propositions cannot both be true at the same time and in the same sense.” It teaches us that “nothing that is true can be self-contradictory or inconsistent with any other truth.” In shorthand, it tells us that “X cannot be non-X.”

All logic is grounded on this basic principle, the fundamental principal of rational thought, according to Aristotle and Aquinas. Our sacred Scriptures also teach this principle: “[GOD] can not deny Himself (2 Tim. 2:13) .... But let your speech be yea, yea: no, no: and that which is over and above these, is of evil (Mt. 5:37).”

And this is precisely why we cringe and shake our heads as our Catholic shepherds continue to “speak in forked tongues.” God can NOT deny Himself. But the so-called Sisters of St. Benedict have done just that, and a bishop approves. To suggest that something which is harmful to young Catholics, or adult converts in an RCIA class, can be beneficial to “other” Catholics is nonsense – and dangerous nonsense, at that.

The newspaper article cited above observes glowingly that, “although the new role for St. Benedict Center – or, now, Holy Wisdom Monastery – is somewhat radical, it fits generally into the culture of the sisters, who during their entire 53-year service in Madison have embraced any number of experiments in bringing new life to their activities.” We are then told that these sisters “have been leaders in environmental programs, liturgy and international outreach.”

Any number of experiments. Anything to relieve the boredom of a watered-down, bland, tasteless, “reformed” Catholic faith. Anything to regain some inkling of that true spirituality which was so carelessly tossed away after the Second Vatican Council. Anything to cast even a shadow of the quiet grandeur and mystery of the Traditional Catholic Faith. The Environment! Liturgy! Outreach! Help!!

Anything but a return home, that is.

As an unfortunate aside, Bishop Morlino’s approval of the Sisters of St. Benedict’s wholesale apostasy (as well as his lauding of that most unfortunate ecumenical experiment, the Taize community) only reflects the lessons he has learned from his own superiors. On August 24, 2005, L’Osservatore Romano quoted these words of Pope Benedict XVI on the murder of Brother Roger Schutz, the Protestant founder of Taize: "Brother Roger Schutz is in the hands of eternal goodness, of eternal love; he has arrived at eternal joy.” As Cardinal Ratzinger, the Holy Father also gave scandal to many by administering Holy Communion to Brother Roger at the funeral of Pope John Paul II. And so it goes, as we continue to pray, hope and endure.

Important Maltese Artistic Treasure  to be Conserved

According to a July 4, 2006 article posted at di-ve.com, “the leading portal for Malta and the Maltese Islands,” Heritage Malta's Conservation Division has been entrusted with the conservation of the Madonna ta' Filfla Triptych, a priceless work of art belonging to the Parish Church of Zurrieq, the largest village on the southern part of the island.

The painting is divided into three sections with the central panel portraying the Virgin Mary's Assumption into heaven, with the side panels portraying St. Joseph on the left and St. Dominic on the right. The angels on the side together with the crescent moon, the supporting clouds, the barely-visible crown and the hands joined in prayer are icons clearly associated with the Assumption. St. Joseph is identified from his white beard and his not-so-visible lily-flowered rod, which is a symbol of chastity. St. Dominic is portrayed holding the Bible and wearing a black-hooded cloak over a white tunic and a scapular.

The style used is vernacular and the technique is known as tempera, which involves a pigment combined with a protein medium. There is great elegance in the decoration of the Virgin Mary's attire, reflecting the unknown painter's Renaissance influence.

This triptych's history is open to speculation. It is thought that it was originally in the chapel on the little island of Filfla, hence its name. The chapel was deconsecrated in 1575 and all of its belongings, including the triptych, were moved to the San Leone Papa chapel, close to the Bubaqra cemetery. It was later moved to the vestry of Zurrieq's Parish Church, mainly for conservation reasons. Professor Mario Buhagiar, however, cast the first doubt on this account when he argued that the painting was far too superior to be left in a rather deserted chapel on Filfla. He also pointed out that the year 1604 painted at the bottom of the painting clearly contradicted this version of its history. However, it is difficult to determine whether this date was included at the time the painting was finished or if it was added at a much later date. Only a thorough documentation and a scientific investigation – such as pigment and binder identification and an examination under Infra Red and Ultraviolet light – can hopefully clarify this.

Final-year students of the Bachelor of Conservation & Restoration Studies degree course at Heritage Malta's Institute of Conservation and Management of Cultural Heritage will be participating in the conservation of the Madonna ta' Filfla Triptych, under the supervision of the conservators at the Paintings and Polychrome Sculpture Conservation Department. Even though most of the painting's details are still visible, time has left a great challenge for the conservators, who hope that their work will shed more light on the date of its creation.