The sacrament of orgasm. . .

Not everything is about sex.  At least that is what some are trying to say.  But it appears that the Vatican today is more about sex then less.  A newly minted cardinal who has jurisdiction over the content of what is believed and confessed by Rome apparently is also the author of a controversial book on “spirituality and sensuality” which was, surprise! surprise!, omitted from his biography and resume.  Cardinal Víctor Fernández seems to have forgotten than nothing is really hidden or forgotten.  The 1998 book published in Mexico has reappeared.  Look for his work under the title The Mystical Passion. Spirituality and sensuality.    This is a second book, a somewhat pornographic sequel to "The Art of Kissing” and   Chapters 7-9 are too explicit even to quote here.  As some pundits have said, is this Tucho's version of Fifty Shades of Gray?  It is said that Victor Manuel Cardinal Fernández compares how the “particularities of men and women in orgasm also occur in some way in the mystical relationship with God.”  Of course, the book also has little to say about the immorality of homosexual behavior.  “God loves man’s happiness; therefore, it is also an act of worship to God to experience a moment of happiness,” wrote Fernández.

The point is this.  How can anyone, even his supporters, take seriously his role as head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith?  Is this a joke?  That is how the world sees it and the reality is that is how it is intended to be.  Pope Francis has repeatedly indulged in the same kind of deafness to the way his words are taken and his supposed role in propagating and safeguarding the faith.  While some enemies of Rome are gleeful about this, we should all be sad -- sad that this is what it has all come down to.  Blessings of same sex couples that are not really blessings and talk of our spiritual union with God as a kind of orgasm.  The world out there does not notice the nuance that Pope Francis is not the leader of all Christians nor does the world pay attention to the finer distinctions even within his or his minion's words.  This is, in the end, more dangerous than out and out heresy.  Apostasy can be addressed but when those who are supposed to represent the faithful before the world speak without carefully choosing their words and paying attention to how they will be heard, the faith is damaged for all of Christianity.  Confusion is as much a tool of the devil as out and out error.  And this pope and those who serve him have proven themselves to be adept at living on the edge of truth and morality when they should be representing its vital center in Christ.

When will you wake up and decide enough is enough?  That is what I was told by Roman Catholics in the past every time some Protestant voice ended up embarrassing the faith and not simply himself.  When will Methodists awaken to the formal takeover of their church by the LGBTQ+ faction?  Or those in the ELCA awaken to the fact that there is no more Lutheran in that church body?  Or Presbyterians awaken to the fact that theirs is a church which is no longer true to its roots?  How can you possibly have a serious ecumenical conversation when people no longer believe what they stood for and confessed?  This ought to be a similar wake up to those church bodies attempting to hold the line but also unwilling to break communion over such egregious error?  If there was ever a time when Christianity deserved a solid realignment, now is that time.  Before it is too late.