Excerpts from interview with Dave Rubin:

With Cardinal Dolan, Bishop Barron once said: If the only thing gay person hears from the Catholic Church is you’re “intrinsically disordered” we have a very serious problem on our hands.

(In New York City alone – there are several gay-affirming parishes that regularly sponsor “Pride” masses, organized lectures and retreats given by Catholic “gay” men and women who openly dissent from Church teachings with regards to homosexuality. How then, could anyone possibly believe that there are “gay” people who only hear they are “intrinsically disordered” from the Church – actually, this is probably the one thing they will never hear. In fact, at the 2017 LA Religious Education Congress, where Bishop Barron will also speak, “gay” Catholic Arthur Fitzmaurice, who has spoken at this event several times, has repeatedly stated that in terms of homosexuality, the language in the Catechism is “gravely evil.”)

Bishop Barron: The first thing a “gay” person, like any person should hear, you are a beloved child of God.

(That is beautiful and True, but the first thing “a gay person” should hear is that they are in reality not “a gay person.” You do that by simply not calling them “gay.”)

Bishop Barron: If that’s the way our message was coming out, we were “disordered.”

(If there has been any predominant message coming out from the Church on this issue it has emerged from these gay-affirmative parishes. For instance, an example from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles – a 2013 video series for The IN [Ignatian News] Network on “LGBT Catholics,” included an interview with Javier and Martha Plascencia who are in charge of an officially recognized LGBT outreach in the Archdiocese. Javier will speak at the 2017 LA Congress. When interviewed Martha talked about their “gay” son and the Catechism; Martha said that: “The language in the Catechism has to change. That word ‘intrinsically disordered,’ my son is not intrinsically disordered.” From Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Parish in San Francisco, we hear: “Many of our parishioners are married to their same-sex partners and have adopted children which are baptized at our parish. BTW, none of the parishioners feel that we are “intrinsically disordered” and we have told that to the Archbishop.” And just recently, a dissident priest spoke at a gay-affirmative parish in New York City, his main contention: “My disagreement with the current teaching of the Roman Congregations is about what I consider to be their fundamentally flawed premise of the objectively disordered nature of the inclination.”

If the Church has been “disordered” in any sense on this issue – it’s that Bishops have allowed for this confusion and open deception to continue completely unchecked. In my 18 years as an ex-gay man, I have never once met a single person who said that a priest, or anyone for that matter – in the Church, told them that they were in any way “disordered.” In truth, the principle complaints are that priests and ministries were typically overly facilitating and gay-approving. The non-issue about language has been used by those who want to essentially change Church teaching; for example, during an interview from 2015, Fr. Donal Godfrey, S.J., the former director of campus ministry at the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco and frequent speaker at Most Holy Redeemer and various other gay-affirming parishes in San Francisco, said: “As a church we need to accept that family goes beyond traditional lines. I don’t expect the teachings to jump to acceptance in one day, it will take decades. In the meantime we need to accept people pastorally as they are and where they are. For now, this would be sufficient. Later the teachings will catch up and evolve.”

The Catholic Ministry with Lesbian and Gay Persons (CMLGP), which is the official LGBT outreach for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, is indelibly linked with this gradualist mind-set. In addition to advocating for the inclusion of “…positive language regarding LGBT Catholics, especially for same sex couples in long term relationships,” CMLGP celebrated an “indelible moment” at the 2016 LA Religious Education Congress when “…at the closing liturgy on Sunday…a gay couple and their son helped present gifts at the altar to Archbishop Jose Gomez;” they stated, this was a sign that: “Progress for LGBT Catholics is slow and happens in incremental pieces, and often includes setbacks.”)

Ruben: You’re personal feelings on this matter…I assume you felt it was the wrong decision by the Court – is that fair to say?

Bishop Barron: Yeah, no, I do, but I don’t think I want to press it much further, I think where we are right now in the States, I’ll apply the Aquinas principle, I think it would probably cause much more problem and dissension and difficulty if we kept pressing it.

Ruben: Is this one of the things where, I sense that your heart and your spiritual sense-self, maybe aren’t quite matched up, because I don’t sense judgment from you sitting here, I really don’t and I don’t sense that you want – that you would try to legislate to reverse the decision but I also sense that you can’t fully say to me well it’s okay.

Bishop Barron: Yeah that’s probably right the way you just put it there is probably right. I wouldn’t want to fully just say that’s great off you go, at the same time I wouldn’t want to get on a crusader’s tank and try to reverse that…”

(Would Bishop Barron get on a “crusader’s tank” in order to overturn Roe v. Wade? I assume he would. Why are the lives of those suffering from same sex attraction worth less? Have they not also been victimized by the culture of death? Also, compare Barron’s non-answer to Rubin’s inquiry with the Jewish Ben Shapiro’s unequivocal response to the same question about gay marriage.)

Bishop Barron – You are entitled to your opinion, but as someone who had made it his life-mission to outreach to the “gay” community, I have seen the real horrors that the legitimization of this lifestyle, which was moved decisively even a further step forward, by the SCOTUS decision on same-sex marriage, has had on the lives of our young people. And there has been a difference since June 26, 2015. At the last San Francisco Pride, I met a 22 year old young man, who was raised Catholic, and he is now embracing “gay” and fighting a third bout of gonorrhea. Although his family is somewhat ambivalent about his homosexuality – he feels that now: the entire country is behind him. As a nation, I feel like that is at least partially our fault.)

On a more personal note:

Barron:“…we were “disordered.”

Something Bishop Barron said in that interview reminded me of something someone else once said:

Barron: If the only thing gay person hears from the Catholic Church is you’re “intrinsically disordered” we have a very serious problem on our hands. He continued: If that’s the way our message was coming out, we were “disordered.”

The late John J. McNeill, SJ: The Vatican is right, I believe, in claiming that we are dealing with an “objective disorder”. But that objective disorder has nothing to do with homosexuality but with the Vatican itself.

This reveals a massive disconnect within two very different members of the clergy and what they absolutely do not understand about the reality of homosexuality – for I cannot comprehend how someone could make an equivalency between perhaps, because of oversight or lack of knowledge, not being as pastorally sensitive as one could be and the way in which the false “gay” identity can literally take over a person.

Secondly – if a “gay” person is going to hear anything from a priest on this topic – it would typically swerve towards two extremes – and nothing near to what Barron is proposing: 1.) The priest, usually at a highly gay-affirmative parish located in one of the largely homosexual populated neighborhoods in the major cities, will be very affirming in this matter – telling the person that the Church is progressing on this issue and will one day catch up with the culture. 2.) If they are lucky enough to find someone associated with Courage – they will certainly NEVER hear any sort of condemning language.

But there is a third reality – I have confessed all sorts of sexual sins – some heterosexual, some homosexual – it’s been my experience that priests at your non-weird gay-controlled parish will treat you like every other repentant sinner – he isn’t sitting in the Confessional ready to read from the Catechism that you are “disordered” – this somewhat reminds of the confessional as “torture chamber” analogy from Pope Francis.

In that case, Barron’s supposition is insulting as he singles out those who would uphold the Church’s teachings while ignoring those who openly disregard it – Bishop Barron: you are talking about a non-issue while the real problem remains unchecked.

He breaks down homosexuality to something rather banal sounding: as simply an “inadequate, incomplete integration of the sexual act.”

It’s so much more than that – if I tried to make one thing clear in my book – it’s that abandoning oneself to homosexuality – is to subconsciously submit to evil. Now, not everyone who is actively gay – even those who engage in the most perverse situations – is possessed by demons, but they have certainly opened themselves up to evil; the world can’t see this anymore, because the rot has been glossed over by the thin veneer of legitimacy that’s perpetuated by those who think themselves tolerant and merciful – when in reality, their nuances render themselves wholly irrelevant.

Since the epidemic began, an estimated 311,087 gay men with an AIDS diagnosis have died in the US. Did they die because of an “inadequate, incomplete integration of the sexual act?”

In 2003, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith advised that existing laws which allow same-sex marriage – should be repealed.

Bishop Barron made this clarification to his interview with Dave Rubin:

“What I question is the prudence and wisdom of pursuing the opposition to gay marriage right now through legislation. I believe that, given the present climate, it is best to oppose it through personal witness and education.”

Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons:

In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty….When legislation in favor of the recognition of homosexual unions is already in force, the Catholic politician must oppose it in the ways that are possible for him and make his opposition known; it is his duty to witness to the truth. If it is not possible to repeal such a law completely, the Catholic politician, recalling the indications contained in the Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae, “could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality”, on condition that his “absolute personal opposition” to such laws was clear and well known and that the danger of scandal was avoided. This does not mean that a more restrictive law in this area could be considered just or even acceptable; rather, it is a question of the legitimate and dutiful attempt to obtain at least the partial repeal of an unjust law when its total abrogation is not possible at the moment.

Update: At the 2018 Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, Bishop Barron spoke alongside radical Catholic LGBT advocates who called for drastic changes in Church teaching regarding homosexuality. Those same speakers were invited back for the 2019 LA Congress – where Barron is again a featured presenter.