A letter authored by Attorney David Lujan was printed in the Guam Daily Post today.
Parents choose godparents, not the Catholic church
On Nov. 21, the Pacific News Center carried a story about Lt. Gov. Tenorio being prohibited from being a godfather for the sole reason he is in a same-sex relationship.
While PNC may have "carried a story," that's not the story. The story is that no one can be a godparent in the Catholic Church who doesn't qualify. It doesn't matter what their sexual orientation is. Those qualifications can be found in the Code of Canon Law beginning at Canon 872. As the author of the letter to the Post is an attorney, he will appreciate where the statute can be found.
The choice of who is to be godparents belongs solely to the parents, not the church. Parents bestow the privilege upon a person because of a long-term relationship, and, belief in certain qualities perceived in whom they believe will help raise, guide, and be a good example for the child. No priest is qualified to contradict the parent’s choice.
It appears that the author may be referencing the cultural meaning of "godparents" given the qualities he sets forth for the choice of godparents. However, none of those qualities are what Church law sets forth in Canon 872.
Pursuant to Canon 872, a godparent, in addition to presenting the child for Baptism (or Confirmation - which is the only other sacrament requiring a "sponsor"), "helps the baptized person to lead a Christian life in keeping with baptism and to fulfill faithfully the obligations inherent in it."
The key words are "a Christian life."
This applies to everyone. Thus a person in a sexual relationship with another person of the opposite sex to whom he or she is not married, is - in the eyes of the Church - living in a perpetual state of mortal sin and cannot be a Catholic godparent.
The disqualification because of same-sex relations is hypocritical. Why should homosexuality be a disqualifying factor? I remember being taught that “God created man in his image.” If so, why should God be limited to a male only? Wouldn’t this mean God discriminates? Since I have never seen God in a physical form, and I suspect neither have others, why should we conclude that God is a male only, and not a female, nor any other physical form?
Actually, God did not make a "male only." Genesis 1:27 says: "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." And then Genesis 1:28 goes on to tell us why God made mankind "male and female:" God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it."
Thus the male and female - in a faithful, fruitful and multiplying relationship - is the very Image of God on Earth, which is also why the deliberate frustration of the ends of the procreative/reproductive act (contraception, abortion) are a violation of God's very Image and thus a mortal sin - abortion being the additional sin of murder.
In addition, I was also taught God is omnipotent and just. If this is true, then heterosexuals, homosexuals, and LGBTQs were equally created in God’s image!
Yes, they were and yes we are. We are all created equal in the eyes of God, BUT with the freedom (free will) to become unequal and to choose our ends, just as Adam and Eve did, and just as did Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob...and Judas - of whom Christ said "better for him that he had not been born." (Mt. 26:24)
Since God supposedly knows, at the moment of conception, the sexual characteristics of each human God allows to be created, I cannot believe that God intended a child to be pre-ordained to end up in hell. I believe God is just.
Yes, God is just. And because God is Just, every person is created with free will and thus (at the age of reason) the freedom to choose heaven or hell as our eternal ends. As for going to heaven, Scripture tells us "nothing unclean shall enter it." (Rev. 21:27)
And we are free to either decide for ourselves what is clean and unclean...or to look to the Church Christ left us and the teaching authority for that Church. (Personally, I'll stick with two-thousand years of Church teaching as descended from the Apostles versus my own small, selfish, concupiscent mind.)
As the creator who is all-knowing and just, God could not have intentionally created only heterosexuals in his image. Hence, members of LGBTQs were equally created in His image.
Unfortunately for the author's point, the opposite-sex couple - in a faithful, fruitful relationship (having children - or at least open to life in every nuptial act) - is exactly how Genesis defines "His image."
Heterosexuals and LGTBQs abound throughout every race and culture. They are part of humanity and we should embrace, not exclude them, since God created them.
For the record, sacramentally married opposite-sex couples who contracept are also excluded from being godparents...and from receiving Holy Communion. Again, the Church discriminates equally. Well, sort of.
Because while homosexual acts are only considered intrinsically disordered, contraceptive acts between sacramentally married persons are dealt a much more severe blow. Such acts are defined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church as "intrinsically evil." (Catechism of the Catholic Church at par. 2370.)
In other words, the Catholic Church (in its official teaching - and not this or that pope, bishop, or priest) RECOGNIZES that homosexual acts are subject to a disorder that certain persons may not be able to control. Meanwhile, the same Church condemns heterosexual acts that are deliberately contraceptive as always and everywhere (the definition of "intrinsic") EVIL.
One might say that in its official doctrine (i.e. the Catechism) the Catholic Church is far more compassionate to persons with a homosexual orientation than it is to male and female sacramentally married persons, who deliberately contracept.
In closing, the Church, the archbishop, and that priest who brought the news to the lieutenant governor prohibiting him the privilege and honor of being a godfather that most of us heterosexuals have experienced owe a profound apology not just to the lieutenant governor, but other members of the LGBTQ community.
I agree with the author. The leadership of our Church does owe an apology for every time this or that cleric looked the other way at what the author presents here. Looking the other way for decades because of weak (and many times immoral) clerical leadership and cultural pressure, and even now, not taking the opportunity to address this matter publicly in the Archbishop's own newspaper when the matter with the Lt. Governor first surfaced, has demonstratively led to more hard feelings, possible scandal, and even more souls swimming away from the Barque of Peter.
By the way, I've heard it quipped, "A good attorney knows the law. A great attorney knows the judge." It would be a good idea for all of us who care about Eternity to know both the law and The Judge.
This is a P.S.
Perhaps the author of the letter to the Post cannot be held culpable for very much. Given his age, he is perhaps the local product of the Flores-Apuron generation which produced the most horrific record of sexual abuse of minors in the modern history of the Catholic Church in the Western World.
For those who don't know, Guam's record of clerical abuse of minors, per capita, during the Flores-Apuron years, is FOURTEEN TIMES that of the Archdiocese of Boston - which not only made damning international news, but also inspired the Academy Award winning movie, Spotlight.
However, as a P.P.S.
It should also be noted that all known cases against the former archbishop(s) and the Archdiocese of Agana have next to nothing to do with clinically defined pedophilia, and everything to do with (clinically defined) same-sex oriented clerics who preyed on underage, mostly-male, biological adults. The question is...will we every NAME THE PROBLEM.
The JUDGE will.
.....
And then there's a P.P.P.S (is there such a thing?)
Given that Attorney Lujan's office has the lion's share of clergy sex abuse cases, Mr. Lujan stands to make many millions of dollars if not many, many millions of dollars from the work this blog did to expose the afore-referenced scandal - all of which is rooted in decades of homosexual activities by certain members of Guam's clergy, going all the way up to the office of Archbishop. If - pursuant to Mr. Lujan's theology that God simply made people that way and they can't help it - then, but for the artifice of the age of the majority (18), there is simply no case.
