The Devilishly Heretical Fr. James Martin

I’m currently under Twitter suspension again, this time for offending the sensibilities of Big Gay (I dared suggest that gay men were inordinately attracted to young men and even boys). While I’m banished to the social media nether regions (no pun intended), the chaplain of Big Gay, Fr. James Martin, is at it again.

It started when the Catholic League tweeted, “It’s true that Pete Buttigieg is legally married, but that is a legal fiction.”

For those unaware, Pete Buttigieg is the current United States Secretary of Transportation. A former Catholic who is now Episcopalian, he “married” another man, Chasten Glezman, in a private ceremony at the (Episcopal) Cathedral of St. James in South Bend, Indiana in 2018. 

Orthodox. Faithful. Free.

Sign up to get Crisis articles delivered to your inbox daily

Email subscribe inline (#4)

Fr. Martin, who opines incessantly on social media about All Things Gay, of course could not let that statement of plain Catholic (as well as natural law) teaching go unchallenged. He responded simply, “Pete Buttigieg is married.”

This is typical Martin fare. He makes a statement that he clearly wants to be interpreted in a heretical way but is written so that he has plausible deniability if by some miracle a Church hierarch should challenge it.

Remember that the Catholic League acknowledged that Buttigieg is “legally married,” but called it a legal fiction. So when Martin says that Buttigieg is “married,” without any qualifier, the most plain meaning (and the one Martin wants you to have) is that Buttigieg’s gay “marriage” is a true marriage, not just a legal one.

At the same time, Martin’s lack of a qualifier allows him some wiggle room were he to be challenged by a superior. He could just claim, “I was just talking about the legality of the marriage under U.S. law—I wasn’t saying it was the same as a heterosexual marriage!” 

In making such weaselly statements, Martin imitates that master liar, Satan. In the Garden of Eden, the devil urged Eve to eat the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. When Eve objected that God told her she would die if she did, the Old Snake responded, “You will not die” (Genesis 3:1-4). In a certain sense, the devil is telling the truth; after all, after Eve eats the fruit she doesn’t immediately drop dead. But of course Satan’s half-truth conceals his lie, for he knew that by eating the fruit Eve will die—she will break her communion with God and be under the reign of sin and death. 

So as we can see, Martin’s playbook is as old as mankind itself, tracing all the way back to our first parents’ Fall. His ambiguous, partially-true statement is far more effective than an outright lie; it allows those who want to be deceived to claim a Catholic covering for their deception, and it fools the naive into letting Martin off the hook.

Later Martin feigned shock at the considerable backlash to his tweet: “Surprised this got so much attention. Like it or not, Pete Buttigieg is legally married. You may disagree with same-sex marriage (or not). But @SecretaryPete is married in the eyes of the state, and his church, as much as anyone else is. To claim otherwise is to ignore reality.”

But of course Martin was not surprised—he got the exact reaction he intended by the words he used. He wanted people to believe he was putting Buttigieg’s faux-marriage on par with a marriage between a man and a woman. Perhaps if this was the first time Martin had made such a two-faced statement we might give him the benefit of the doubt, but it’s clear from his history that he uses these statements to further push for his heretical desire to normalize homosexual relations.

When dealing with the devil (or his minions) Catholics need to oppose half-truths and ambiguities with clear, direct, and fully-true statements. In this situation, we need to state directly that Fr. James Martin is a heretic who should not be allowed to continue his public ministry as a priest. If we mitigate that truth in any way, trying to defend Martin or giving him the “benefit of the doubt,” we simply fall for the trap designed by the devil himself and practiced to perfection by Martin.

Author

  • Eric Sammons

    Eric Sammons is the editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine.

Share

Editor's picks

Item added to cart.
0 items - $0.00

Orthodox. Faithful. Free.

Signup to receive new Crisis articles daily

Email subscribe stack
Share to...