Introducing a report yesterday on a Jesuit scholar who says it is time to stop using the language of “disordered” in discussions about same - sex orientation or LGBT people, Frank DeBenardo of New Ways Ministry wrote:

In my over 20 years of Catholic LGBT ministry, there is nothing that has sparked more anger and more questions and confusion than the Vatican’s use of the terms “intrinsically disordered” or “objective disorder” to describe, respectively, homosexual acts and homosexual orientation. They are terms that are not easily understood, and, even when they are, they still cause much pastoral damage and misinformation.

DeBenardo is absolutely correct. The only thing that is “disordered” in this context, is the doctrine itself, and the language that is used in the church documents that talk about it. The claim that same - sex orientation is in any way disordered or unnatural has no foundation in any of the biological or social sciences, and has been widely discredited by mental health professionals. Worse, the claim that the word has a particular theological meaning, not that of common speech, is also not valid: the theologians James Alison and James B Nickloff have both examined the supposed theologically precise meaning of the term - and found that there is none. The terminology is not only intrinsically disordered itself - it does untold damage, especially to the minds of young people still coming to terms with their own sexuality, and is damaging, destructive, and dangerous.

On the other hand, what is demonstrably disordered, is homophobia (used here in its correct sense as “an irrational fear” of lesbian or gay people, which lies at the heart of so much of the prejudice and discrimination that the community experiences. One Catholic bishop at least, of the diocese of Saltillo, Mexico, agrees - describing homophobia as an illness:

Bishop Raúl Vera López: “Homophobia is an illness”

by Christian Rea Tizcareño (English translation by Rebel Girl)

Tierra

August 19, 2013

You have to be “sick in the head” to think that a gay man or a lesbian is a degenerate or depraved person. Homosexuals are human beings worthy of respect, stressed Raúl Vera, Bishop of Saltillo, Coahuila [Mexico].

Interviewed by Terra, after his participation in the program “Tejemaneje” — the first program of political analysis and debate on the Internet in Mexico, Vera López talked about the question Pope Francis asked the international press recently: “Who am I to judge homosexuals?”

The winner of the Rafto Prize 2010 for his fight for human rights in Mexico acknowledged that the words of the Argentine pontiff conrast with what many hierarchs of the Catholic Church think about it, that is, that homosexuality is a form of human perversion.

“A mom came talking to me about her son, and she had a lot of issues because he was going around with ‘those degenerate gays!’ I told her, ‘Well, condemn yourself, because your son was formed that way in your womb and he wasn’t formed as a degenerate or a pervert! He was generated with a composition that you’re getting tied up in knots about. Calm down! You’re the mother of this child and this child started to be what he is today in your womb!,” says the head of the Diocese of Saltillo.

Homosexuality has a scientific explanation that we still don’t want to admit, and from the religious point of view, it’s important for pastors to review the historical context and carefully re-read “the Biblical texts that we’ve beaten homosexuals over the head with to say that they’re condemned in the Bible,” the Dominican prelate explained.

Homophobes think a priori that homosexuals and lesbians are degenerate and promiscuous people, but having those thoughts is a mental illness, the Catholic hierarch thinks.

-read more in Spanish at Terra, or in English translation by Rebel Girl, at Iglesia Descalza