For Catholics, June is not only the month to devote ourselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, but it is also a perfect time to recommit standing up against sexual debauchery. June has been hijacked in popular culture as the majority of Americans now connect the month with so-called “gay pride.” Ironically, Catholics celebrate in June a feast day of a saint who died as a martyr not only for his fidelity to Christ but because he resisted homosexual sex.
Twenty-five-year-old Charles Lwanga and the other African males he mentored, ages 14-25, were all pages of the court of the Ugandan king. On June 3, 1886, these 22 boys and young men became the first martyrs coming from the Republic of Uganda for being true witnesses of the Christian faith and for not submitting to a sodomite king, who was furious that they wouldn’t have anal sex with him. Lwanga’s story is one where a courageous follower of Jesus loved God so deeply and hated sin so severely that he was willing to suffer death, and his 21 companions followed his lead. All were canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1964.
I have to be honest and say I had never heard about St. Charles Lwanga until June 3, 2020, when my school’s pastor gave a homily on his feast day. Unfortunately, his sermon was erroneous. You see, June 2020 was also when America was in the thick of the “George Floyd Movement” – the distressing case of a black criminal dying due to a white police officer’s subdual and restraint. Although it was later shown that resisting arrest, cardiovascular disease, and drug intoxication were contributing causes to Floyd’s death, the majority of the country had already decided this case was evidence of out-and-out, evil-minded racism. Our pastor’s homily informed the congregation that there was a clear similarity between Floyd and Lwanga because both were black men killed due to racism.
After this Mass, I searched online for more information on this story of Uganda’s first Saints and saw that after Lwanga found Christ and was baptized, he then catechized and saw to it that the king’s other pages were also baptized. Charles Lwanga, an African, was black, as were his 21 companions, and the person who put them to death, a Ugandan king, was black. So not only was our pastor ill-informed that race contributed to the martyring but he also failed to note that the murders were triggered by a man’s depraved sexuality. The king, who himself was only 18 years old, was into sinful sexual acts, and Lwanga counseled all these young males to refrain from the king’s sodomite advances. The king was enraged by Lwanga’s defiant stand and his protecting and catechizing of the pages who worked for the king.
When the teens and young adults rejected his homosexual overtures, the king recognized that this new “Christian religion” was the reason these once promiscuous youth were suddenly resisting sexual immorality. So the Ugandan king angrily ordered a persecution of “all those who pray,” and began to have people murdered. He had all the pages rounded up and gave them a choice between their Christian God and him. He asked them if they were willing to keep their faith, and they answered in unison, “Until death!” Because they refused to denounce Christianity and resisted the inherent evil of homosexual acts, Lwanga and his 21 companions were sentenced to be tortured and then burned alive or pierced by swords.
The account of this martyrdom event says that when they burned Lwanga at the stake, the executioners first burnt his feet until only the charred stumps remained, but he remained alive. So his tormentors promised that they would let him go if he renounced his faith right there and then. He refused, fearlessly saying, “You are burning me, but it is as if you are pouring water over my body.”
Fast forward about 150 years, and the message of St. Charles Lwanga’s heroic story isn’t to teach us about racism but to teach us that we must be willing to protect purity through our bold witness against the prevailing culture. Lwanga felt called to lead Ugandan’s new flock of Christians, and his courage, hatred for sin, and love for God’s children brought him to the point of death. Like Lwanga, we are called to be witnesses to Christian living by the examples of our own lives, and we who have children under our care have even more responsibility on our shoulders. Our Lord calls us to spread His message by word or deed and expects us to remain courageous and unshakable in our faith during times of great moral and physical temptation.
Today, many Christians and Christian parents act 180 degrees differently than Lwanga. They not only ignore sinful, permissive sexual debauchery but they enable and endorse it as shown by their casual approach in conceding to or extolling the current culture’s false messages of “love is love,” “live your truth,” and “God made me this way.”The biographies of Charles Lwanga and his 21 companions teach us the broader context of child protection. Unless we confront the values and lifestyles brought about by the modern sexual revolution’s hedonistic philosophy, our children will continue to suffer either directly or through collateral damage.
What active homosexuals and heterosexuals who endorse homosexuality are figuratively saying is, “To hell with God!” They are arrogantly embracing a false version of reality, as the so-called gay pride movement promotes the idea that God didn’t decide one’s sex at conception and that intimate relations with members of the same sex are natural and good, even though God said otherwise. They may be implying, “To hell with God!”, but their fallacious justification that keeps them living in sin and lures others into their wicked ways will eventually produce the eternal consequence of them being the ones ending up in hell.
The Ugandan martyrs refused homosexual acts and called it a sin even though they knew they would be killed for taking this stance. Contrastingly, many of today’s Christians refuse to call active homosexuality a sin simply because they are afraid they will be so-called “canceled” or labeled the made-up term of “homophobe.”
The so-called *LGBTQIA2S+ agenda and gay pride movement reject God by glorifying sin and bombarding society and especially our children 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with their ungodly indoctrination. Whether it is celebrity endorsements and kids’ TV shows which underlyingly celebrate anal sex and transvestism or the advocating of drag queen story hours in public libraries and pornographic books in public schools, their propaganda machine is in full active mode, relentlessly telling the culture how good homosexuality is and that homosexual love is equal to that between men and women.
*Note: LGBTQIA2S+ is the latest politically correct acronym used by the culture to describe people who don’t follow the original manner of sexuality as intended by God and who want to be categorized according to their sexual appetites. The only reason I use this elongated, seemingly infinite, reprobate term is purely to magnify its ridiculousness.
Of course, sensible people know that homosexual sex is not equal simply because life cannot come forth from this type of disordered activity. And authentically Christian people know that God, as the One who made human love, purposely made it to be beautiful so that from the love of male and female life comes forth. St. Charles Lwanga and his companions so strongly recognized the foulness of homosexual acts that they went to their deaths rather than sin. Parents who are honest with themselves know that the so-called LGBTQIA2S+ movement promotes a life contrary to God and that not only engaging in it but simply sticking up for it can damage one’s soul and thus destroy one’s relationship with God.
It might be too late ever to turn the tide. However, it is still worth it for faithful Catholics to swim against the tide by speaking out about homosexual activity being sinful, about so-called “gay marriage” defying God, and about transgenderism being an untrue ideology. Whereas there is no sin in being same-sex attracted, it is a sin if someone is living a homosexually active lifestyle, and the person who cheers on this homosexual, disordered sexual activity is sinning as well. Cheering on is exactly what the culture is figuratively and literally doing, especially throughout June.
What we should do instead of supporting so-called gay pride is validate that any sexual temptation can be a daily struggle and counsel the active homosexual to refrain from acting on it. Catholic parents of same-sex attracted children need to be frank as they enlighten them that God loves them so much that He wants them not to succumb to the homosexual agenda’s belief system, not to perform immoral acts, and to change their lifestyle. This would be the same appeal of turning away from darkness and turning toward the light as one would make for a heterosexual who commits adultery, a person addicted to watching porn, or an alcoholic.
For Catholic parents of children who themselves are heterosexual yet are sympathetic supporters of the so-called LGBTQIA2S+ cause, moms and dads need to be outspoken. They must teach their kids to reject the falsehoods the secular culture pedals and correct the confusion that has permeated youngsters’ minds in recent generations.
Dreadfully, a high number of Catholics/Christians have been acting too gently and quietly instead of speaking out boldly and bluntly regarding homosexuality and so-called transgenderism. Specifically in the case of our younger generation who are being easily indoctrinated by our debased culture which is falsely teaching them to go along with sexual sins, an excessive number of parents (and Catholic clergy) have not shown the fortitude to be counter-cultural by proclaiming the truth regarding sexual disorders. They have been too cowardly to tell their youngsters the truth about the dangers of profane human sexuality, either because they are too scared to be counter-cultural or are more concerned with seeking the approval of the world than the approval of the Lord. And they don’t even have to worry about being burned at the stake if they stand in opposition.
As we enter June and the month-long party that celebrates disordered sexual acts and sinful lifestyles, I challenge parents – using the courageous example of St. Charles Lwanda as inspiration – to inform their children about God’s truth lovingly and to make sure their family does not cave to the secular agenda. Courage and Encourage are Catholic-endorsed resources for both people struggling with same-sex attraction and parents of those struggling, and The Third Way is a film that will provide Catholic parents with good information and guidance in how to approach the topic of homosexuality with their kids.
Someone once said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” This June, do something.
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