A response to Catholics who are upset about our last article on Aquinas:
It is amazing how ancient things are right in front of us. From the times before the great Deluge to now, the evils of man remain the same. And if man finds a moment of peace, a moment of civility, he will find ways and justifications to return to the very darkness that enslaved his ancestors. In the pagan world we find the worst evils upheld: homosexuality and cannibalism. And just as the Israelites — knowing the law of God — returned back to the savagery of Canaan, the Catholic Church — knowing the law of Christ — is returning back to the paganism that it once vanquished. From the Church welcoming the Amazonian goddess Pachamama, to the Vatican minting a coin engraved with an image of a pregnant Mother Earth, to the most praised John Paul II convening a quagmire of paganism in Assisi, to Pope Francis exhorting for homosexual “civil unions,” we must ask ourselves: Is this what Christ died for?
Did He establish a Church so that it would make a return back to the very paganism that it was suppose to be victorious over? Catholics today will trace this evil back to Vatican Two, but this is a misconception. As we shall discover, we can trace this “falling away” as far back to the most quoted of the “saints”: Thomas Aquinas.
Aquinas can be found arguing similarly to how modern priests and theologians argue when they embrace the captives of Sodom and her daughters and comforted them (Ezekiel 16:54-57), stating that homosexual desires can be innate. We find Aquinas arguing that the worst of depravities — homosexuality, cannibalism and beastiality — can be natural:
“Consequently it happens that something which is not natural to man, either in regard to reason, or in regard to the preservation of the body, becomes connatural to this individual man, on account of there being some corruption of nature in him. … thus from custom some take pleasure in cannibalism or in the unnatural intercourse of man and beast, or other such things, which are not in accord with human nature.”
With this logic, perversions and unnatural actions can be “connatural” or innate to individuals. What is unnatural to the general population then becomes natural for the particular perverts of a society, under this logic of Aquinas. What we see in Aquinas’s work is an incremental step back to the evils of pagan Rome. When speaking of homosexuality in his letter to the Roman Church, St. Paul wrote of how men “gave up natural relations with women” (Romans 1:27). He does not say that such evils became natural or “connatural” to them. And here lies one of the insidious things that is as a cancer to the Christian faith: The rustic simplicity of the Christian faith is replaced with a dry, academic religion, wherein not everything is clear nor straightforward. Homosexuality is unnatural, but suddenly can become natural, leaving room for the loopholes of Sodom’s theologians, leaving space for a return to Sodom. Light becomes dark and dark becomes light; what is unnatural can become natural.
Catholics will argue against us, and say that misinterpreted Aquinas. But the reason why sophistry exists is so that people can accuse others that they have misinterpreted a teaching lined with sophistry.
There are two types of savages: there is the one that is a blatant savage, who will take the first step to kill; and then there are those who wait for the right moment to find a justification to do everything that the first savage has carried out. The first one is blatant, but the second is cunning, finding loopholes and pretexts, he will advance his torrent of blood through sophistry.
Man knows not the ways of peace. He continues in war, and even after the storm of hell has passed, after some peace he will go back to pillaging, to revolution and slaughter; he will revolt and call for lawlessness, he will hunt down his neighbors as if they were animals, and will say, “I am civilized!” He will cry out, his face and hands stained with blood, “I am for freedom!” Yet his path of gore leads to more bloodshed. As the leopards always have spots, and as the zebra always has stripes, there will always be those who will make a mountain out of a molehill, who will strain out a gnat and swallow a camel (Matthew 23:24).
They will holler over things that are not genocide, not horrid massacres, not the tyranny that kills indiscriminately, only to (once they have taken power) commit genocide, the most horrid of massacres, killing indiscriminately. From the time before the flood, to the years after Noah received the dove who flew back to him with an olive branch in its beak, man has chased blood, savoring in the moments of mass death, thinking himself as being filled with power. And what is the evidence for this observation, but the whole historical record of man? Man marvels at the revolutions of his modern age, but there existed the horrors of ancient revolution. And these existed not only with secular words, but with pagan praises, with heathenish reverence for idols, with spilt blood and draping human innards, a carnage that even terrified other pagans living in those dark days. We can see the future as its face looks to the mirror of the past; for in history, we see the future. Remember the former things of old (Isaiah 46:9) for there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9).
During the Peloponnesian War, one could have seen an example of this. This war is portrayed as the struggle between Athens and Sparta for power over Greece. But when you read Thucydides, our main source for this history, what you will find is that the whole Greek world was plunged into a civil war between those who supported Athens and those who backed Sparta. The killing went beyond politics, and there were those who used the war as an opportunity to murder people, such as those who they owed money to, and even their own sons. As Thucydides wrote:
“Death took every shape; and, as usually happens at such times, there was no length to which violence did not go; sons were killed by their fathers, and suppliants dragged from the altar or slain upon it; while some were even walled up in the temple of Dionysus and died there.”
In the fervor of revolution, provocateurs changed the meaning of words. Sophistry — as it does today — reigned supreme. Caution became cowardice; reckless violence became courage in the whirlwind of murderers and thieves. As Thucydides wrote:
“Words changed their ordinary meanings and were construed in new senses. Reckless daring passed for the courage of a loyal partisan, far-sighted hesitation was the excuse of a coward, moderation was the pretext of the unmanly, the power to see all sides of a question was complete inability to act. Impulsive rashness was held the mark of a man, caution in conspiracy was a specious excuse for avoiding action. A violent attitude was always to be trusted, its opponents were suspect. To succeed in a plot was shrewd, it was still more clever to divine one: but if you devised a policy that made such success or suspicion needless, you were breaking up your party and showing fear of your opponents. In fine, men were applauded if they forestalled an injury or instigated one that had not been conceived. Ties of party were closer than those of blood, because a partisan was readier to take risks without asking why; for the basis of party association was not an advantage consistent with the laws of the state but a self-interest which ignored them, and the seal of their mutual good faith was complicity in crime and not the divine law.” (Thucydides, War, 2.82)
Reading these words, one cannot help but say that this all sounds very modern. How is this different from the insanity of the modern age? Be it Ustasha Croatian nationalists butchering a million people in the name of their tribe, Ukrainian fascists killing a hundred thousand people for their ‘love of nation,’ the Germans murdering countless lives for their National Socialist party, Lebanese falangists slaughtering and raping thousands for their Kataeib party, and the countless other examples of people putting their party — their tribe — above the laws of heaven.
Rustic simplicity which says, “This is wrong,” is seen as inferior to sophistry. As Thucydides wrote: “Villainy is sooner called clever than simplicity good, and men in general are proud of cleverness and ashamed of simplicity.” (Ibid) And do not people do this with the Christian Faith? The rustic simplicity of the Christian religion is reduced to a codified system, pledging to a mechanical god. In the world of hysterical revolutionaries, wealth is seen as evil by those who covet wealth. Thucydides wrote of “the unjust designs of those who wished to escape from a life of poverty and who were stung by passion and covetous of their neighbors wealth”. (2.83).
THE LEAVEN OF THE SADDUCEES
The relativizing of everything into one’s own personal decision, shattering moral absolutes of right and wrong — this insidious paradigm existed in the sect that hated and murdered Christ, the Sadducees (“the righteous ones”). As Josephus explains:
“But the Sadducees are those that compose the second order [after the Pharisees], and take away fate entirely, and suppose that God is not concerned in our doing or not doing what is evil; and they say, that to act what is good, or what is evil, is at men’s own choice, and that the one or the other belongs so to every one, that they may act as they please.” (Wars, 2.8.14, brackets mine)
It is no wonder why Christ warned His disciples: “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.” (Matthew 16:6) And St. Matthew describes this as “the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” (Matthew 16:12) And St. Paul warned the Church: A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump (Galatians 5:9). The leaven of the Sadducees would include moral relativism, and it has been levening the Catholic Church for centuries.
The Sadducees relativized evil to one’s own personal decision, and the greatest doctor of the Catholic Church — Aquinas — taught that evils like homosexuality, cannibalism and beastiality, can be natural (innate, or connatural) to individuals. Aquinas explained that such unnatural desires — the evil of Sodom, cannibalism, zoophilia — can be as natural to some people as hot water emits heat, in an argument that can only be defended with sophistry. In his Summa Theologica, Aquinas writes:
“Under each kind of pleasures, we find some that are “not natural” speaking absolutely, and yet “connatural” in some respect. For it happens in an individual that some one of the natural principles of the species is corrupted, so that something which is contrary to the specific nature, becomes accidentally natural to this individual: thus it is natural to this hot water to give heat. Consequently it happens that something which is not natural to man, either in regard to reason, or in regard to the preservation of the body, becomes connatural to this individual man, on account of there being some corruption of nature in him. And this corruption may be either on the part of the body—from some ailment; thus to a man suffering from fever, sweet things seem bitter, and vice versa—or from an evil temperament; thus some take pleasure in eating earth and coals and the like; or on the part of the soul; thus from custom some take pleasure in cannibalism or in the unnatural intercourse of man and beast, or other such things, which are not in accord with human nature.”
While Thomas Aquinas does say that homosexuality, beastiality and cannibalism are contrary to the natural order (here lays the leaven) he also says that such evil desires can indeed become natural to certain individuals. Thus, evil becomes relativized. It is like people today who argue that while pedophiles are dangerous, pedophilia itself is an “orientation.” It’s an incremental step towards the embracing of this evil. If Pedophilia, homosexuality, the desire for human flesh and beastialty can all be natural for particular individuals, then the logical conclusion is toleration for these sinister things. And now we know where the Catholic Church got its justification to put in its Catechism that homosexual desires are not a sin. The Roman Church ignores the letter written to them by St. Paul: “who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things [homosexuality] are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.” (Romans 1:32). While the Catholic Church does not blatantly encourage the practice, it ignores the cause (homosexual desires) pointed out by St. Paul, by arguing that it is deeply-seated and innate.
The United States Council of Catholic Bishops teaches that homosexual desires are not a sin but an orientation that is beyond one’s free will:
“While the Church teaches that homosexual acts are immoral, she does distinguish between engaging in homosexual acts and having a homosexual inclination. While the former is always objectively sinful, the latter is not. To the extent that a homosexual tendency or inclination is not subject to one’s free will, one is not morally culpable for that tendency.”
But what this fails to mention is what St. Paul wrote to the very Roman Church that has embraced sodom: that homosexuals have already been given up by God:
God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. (Romans 1:26-27)
St. Paul does not just discuss the act but the “sinful desires”; for when such an aberration exists it is to a point of no return. In other words, the true cause of the homosexual desire in itself is sinful; for it generates the effect. While Aquinas and the Catholic bishops teach that such “desires” are innate, St. Paul teaches that God has given up such people to depravity.
Homosexuality is evil, but according to Aquinas it can be natural for some people, but this gets much worse. In Aquinas’s view pedophilia and pederasty are also “connatural” for individuals, while being evil for the general human population. The darkest most sinister works — homosexuality, cannibalism, beastiality — can be, according to the person considered the greatest mind of Church doctrine (Aquinas), natural. Thus, we have here, in the 13th century medieval period, the most sited theologian of the Church, laying the foundation for the “people are born gay” ideology. We see the “born that way” trop as modern, but the first pieces of the railway back towards Sodom were put in place by Aquinas and his ilk. During the French Revolution, rebels would literally cannibalize people on the streets. Historian Stanley Loomis writes:
“Cannibalism, disembowelment and acts of indescribable ferocity took place here…The Princess…refused to swear her hatred of the King and Queen and was duly handed over to the mob. She was dispatched with a pike thrust, her still beating heart was ripped from her body and devoured, her legs and arms were severed from her body and shot through a cannon.”
Since these men desired human flesh, their urge — according to Aquinas — was natural for them. The leaven of the Sadducees — moral relativism, the reduction of good and evil to mere individual choice — was put in the batch by Aquinas, and the rot of it is seen clearly. Pope Francis will say that homosexuality is a sin, but he will also argue that homosexual “civil unions” are needed, essentially pushing for homosexual marriage. Did not St. Paul warn the Roman Church of homosexuality in the first chapter of his letter to them? And instead of heeding to this warning, the Roman Church has been running towards Sodom for centuries.
It argued — through Aquinas — that homosexuality can be “connatural.” In the 15th century, homosexuality and pederasty was a cancer within the Church, as Savonarola declared in a sermon: “the high priests of Rome … you whose lust, love of luxury and pride have been the ruin of the world, violating men and women alike with your lasciviousness, turning children to sodomy and prostitution”. The decay of the Catholic Church goes far beyond “Vatican Two” and is rooted in a very ancient evil. The pagan world was riddled with cannibalism, pederasty, homosexuality. To say that such evils can be natural is the beginning of the paving of the path back to the pagan nightmare.
It is a horrifying thing to know that mankind is in a perpetual state of violence, a vicious cycle that always circles back to mass murder, to thievery and destruction, to cruelty and sadism, to bloodshed that drives on without pity, without sympathy, without sadness or remorse. It is to the point that no internal feelings of despair are felt for the elderly, no anguish held not even for infants.
“let us neither spare the widow
nor revere the aged for hair grown white with time.
But let our strength be our norm of righteousness” (Wisdom 2:10-11)
Josephus, writing on the Jewish civil war, describes how people would kill their neighbors because they had more wealth than them, a common evil that springs up with the revolutionary spirit — just like Bolshevism or the French Revolution — using the rage of the lowlife to persuade him to murder. Again, what was dishonorable became honorable; the opposite to good became what was acceptable. As Josephus wrote:
“Moreover, greediness of gain was a provocation to kill the opposite party, even to such as had of old appeared very mild and gentle towards them; for they without fear plundered the effects of the slain, and carried off the spoils of those whom they slew to their own houses, as if they had been gained in a set battle; and he was esteemed a man of honour who got the greatest share, as having prevailed over the greatest number of his enemies. It was then common to see cities filled with dead bodies, still lying unburied, and those of old men, mixed with infants, all dead, and scattered about together: women also lay amongst them, without any covering for their nakedness; you might then see the whole province full of inexpressible calamities, while the dread of still more barbarous practices which were threatened, was every where greater than what had been already perpetrated.” (Josephus, Wars, 2.18.3)
One leader of a factional gang named Simeon would every day slaughter “a great many of the Jews of Scythopolis,” and when it was obvious that he was going to be defeated by the Jews he oppressed, he decided to murder his own family. He “caught his father by his gray hairs, and ran his sword through him — and after him he did the same to his mother, who willingly received it; and after them he did the like to his wife and children, every one almost offering themselves to his sword, as desirous to prevent being slain by their enemies” (Josephus, Wars, 2.18.4). This was cult suicide, and has such insanity ceased to exist in our own times? This self-murder is done by insidious sects, but its also done by national cults, as the world witnessed in imperial Japan.
And at the heart of this evil was a pagan spirit. Since these mobs reverse things to make evil good, they will see suicide as courage. This was done by the Jewish rebel leader Eleazar in Masada. In the battle of Masada, when the Jews knew that the Roman victory was inevitable, the leader of the rebels, Eleazar, exhorted his followers to murder their own wives and children and then commit suicide. When many of the Jews refused to do such bloodshed, Eleazar began to sting their insecurities, calling them effeminate and cowards and deeming them as not real men:
“Truly I was greatly mistaken, when I thought to be assisting to brave men, who struggled hard for their liberty, and to such as were resolved either to live with honour, or else to die. But I find that you are such people as are no better than others, either in virtue, or in courage: and are afraid of dying; though you be delivered thereby from the greatest miseries.” (Wars, 7.8.7).
Eleazar then referenced Hinduism when trying to inspire the Jews in Masada to commit mass suicide:
“let us regard those Indians who profess the exercise of philosophy. For these good men do but unwillingly undergo the time of life; and look upon it as a necessary servitude; and make haste to let their souls loose from their bodies. Nay when no misfortune presses them to it, nor drives them upon it, these have such a desire of a life of immortality, that they tell other men beforehand that they are about to depart. And no body hinders them. But every one thinks them happy men, and gives them letters to be carried to their familiar friends [that are dead]. So firmly and certainly do they believe that souls converse with one another [in the other world]. So when these men have heard all such commands that were to be given them, they deliver their body to the fire: and in order to their getting their soul a separation from the body in the greatest purity, they die in the midst of hymns of commendations made to them. For their dearest friends conduct them to their death, more readily than do any of the rest of mankind conduct their fellow-citizens when they are going a very long journey. Who at the same time weep on their own account; but look upon the others as happy persons; as so soon to be made partakers of the immortal order of beings. Are not we therefore ashamed to have lower notions than the Indians?” (Josephus, Wars, book 7)
Hinduism actually had a parallel with the very institution that murdered Christ, the Pharisees. According to Josephus, the Pharisees — like the Hindus — believed in reincarnation: “They say that all souls are incorruptible; but that the souls of good men are only removed into other bodies, — but that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment.” (Wars, 2.8.14)
In Judea we see both paganism (a form of Hindu reincarnation) and homosexuality. Josephus writes of how the zealots in Jerusalem “decked their hair, and put on women’s garments, and were besmeared over with ointments; and that they might appear very comely, they had paints under their eyes, and imitated not only the ornaments, but also the lusts of women, and were guilty of such intolerable uncleanness, that they invented unlawful pleasures of that sort.” (Wars, 4.9.10) They rejected Christ, they got possessed by the demon of Sodom, and they massacred themselves under the inspiration of suicidal Hindus. In their embracing of homosexuality and cross-dressing, Jerusalem became Sodom. Jerusalem treaded the path toward paganism. Jerusalem was crushed by Rome, and the Romans soon accepted the Messiah of Israel. But the Roman Church has been walking the path to Sodom and to paganism. Has not the Vatican accepted the Amazonian goddess Pachamama? And did not the Vatican mint a coin with a pregnant Mother Earth? Did not the Pope say that what is needed is homosexual “civil unions”? The Vatican has embraced paganism, and it has embraced Sodom. A return to paganism would be a return to a very dark world. One only needs to read what the ancients themselves wrote of the sinister rituals of the pagan world. As Lucan wrote of the gods of Gaul: “The barbaric gods worshipped here had their altars heaped up with hideous offerings, and every tree was sprinkled with human blood…” (Pharsalia III, 372-417). The path to this evil has been paved, and too many are treading upon it.
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