Fr Ingram clarifies views on declaration

Somewhere between my pen and the church porch my article on January 23_ on the recent Vatican declaration on sexual ethics lost some of its sentences, with the result that my meaning was less clear than it should have been and some critics of my article seem to have missed the point I was trying to make. So please would you allow me space to make my meaning clearer?
My main point is that there are at least three components in a sexual act that should be taken into consideration when judging its morality — pleasure, procreation and love, and the highest of these is love.
The recent declaration, in spite of its high-flown rhetoric, does nut take love into the consideration of the morality of an act. It is thus a disappointing document.
For those or us who love the Church, it is frustrating to see our leaders lose respect and credibility by repeatedly issuing documents which degrade man by reducing him to his biological functions, and degrade the sacrament of marriage by reducing it to a licence to enjoy sexual activity. This document, like others on this subject coming from the Vatican, shows a gulf between its elevated ideals and its reasoning. The mind is cut off from the heart. Aristotle is preferred to Christ.
This splitting is reflected in practice in all sorts of ways. The Vatican glorifies celibacy as the "jewel and crown of the priestly life", and turns a blind eye to the fact that just round the corner concubinage is rife.
By making procreation the main criterion for morality in the Church it becomes moral for a married couple who hate each other to bring a child into a loveless family, but a sin for two men who love each othfr to have sexual relations.
A Catholic who sins by marrying outside the Church may get a divorce even though there are several children, But a childless couple who married in the Church may not.
A theologian who wishes to make the morality of sexual activity include consideration of love is aligned with pimps, perverts and pornographers who are undermining the morality of our society. In your issue of January 30 Fr Giles Hibbert took me to task for generalising from the pathological. In order to put my theory to the test I asked for 25 volunteers from the local "gay" community all men and women who had more or less come to terms with their condition.
I subjected them to batteries of tests and personal interviews. I found nothing to make me change my mind. I used a control group of 25 married men and women. I found only two of them had experienced those conditions that think contribute to the develop. ment of homosexuality.
Fr Hibbert suggests that my getting to know him better might make me change my mind. I can only say to this that my services as a counsellor are free, and I would be glad to offer him an appointment on my next visit to England. Alternatively he can say five decades of the Rosary for his penance. (Fr) Michael Ingram OP English-Speaking Roman Catholic Mission 36 Avenue William Fevre, Geneva.