Of millstones and strange flesh
By Alan Fimister | 21 May 2025
“Western mass media is extraordinarily effective in fostering within the general public enormous sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel — for example abortion, homosexual lifestyle, euthanasia.” — Fr Robert Prevost OSA (Leo XIV)
Johan Bergström-Allen is a “lay pastoral minister at Our Lady’s Church in York” and “chairman of the Pastoral Council to support and develop the LGBT+ ministry for the Catholic diocese of Middlesbrough”, UK. He is overtly “gay”. Presumably this means that he experiences “an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex”. Mr Bergström-Allen is consulted relatively frequently about Catholic matters on BBC local radio in York and on BBC Radio 5 Live. In the wake of the election of Pope Leo XIV, he appeared briefly on BBC Radio 5 Live and took the opportunity to call for a change to section 2357 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church which states the Church’s teaching on “relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex”. As the Catechism indicates, this teaching is based upon “Sacred Scripture” and “what tradition has always declared” i.e. that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered acts of grave depravity.
That which is asserted directly in the text of Sacred Scripture is asserted by God Himself and the interpretation of Sacred Scripture which the “tradition has always declared” is necessarily correct else the Church would not after all “guarantee … the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error” (CCC 890). Mr Bergström-Allen, however, thinks “we all have more updated understandings” of such questions today due to improvements in scriptural interpretation and the progress of science. St Augustine (for example) he explains, mistakenly held that sexual activity must always be open to the transmission of life, but he arrived at his benighted interpretation of Scripture because he “didn’t have the advantage of David Attenborough’s documentaries”. Mr Bergström-Allen goes on to explain that “scripture doesn’t always present homosexuality as acts of grave depravity”. Does it then sometimes present homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity?
The Catechism itself provides four examples of Scriptural teaching on this point: Genesis 19:1–29; Romans 1:24–27; 1 Corinthians 6:10 and 1 Timothy 1:10. Mr Bergström-Allen dismisses the first of these as a misunderstanding. The crime of Sodom and Gomorrah, he explains, was not unnatural vice but “inhospitality to strangers, of violation of Abrahamic hospitality”. This is surprising as the Apostle St Jude offers as an example of persons who have fallen under God’s wrath “Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise acted immorally and indulged in unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire” (Jude 1:7). More literally, the Sodomites are said by St Jude to have “gone after strange flesh”. Incidentally, this passage just by itself refutes those who would believe or hope that hell is empty because it directly asserts that the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah are already “undergoing a punishment of eternal fire” and, as Our Lord tells us (Mt 11:23–24) that things will go better for Sodom than for Capernaum on the last day, which rather suggests an unhappy fate for the citizens of that town as well.
More generally, Our Lord instructs His disciples “if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Amen, I say to you, it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town” (Mt 10:14–15). If one flicks to the back of the good old Penny Catechism, prepared for the Catholics of England and Wales by their bishops, one sees there at number 326 as the third of the six sins against the Holy Spirit “Resisting the known truth” and then (helpfully) immediately afterwards at number 327 “The sin of Sodom (Gen 19:13)” is listed as the second of the four “sins crying to heaven for vengeance”. Combining these two by denying the clear teaching of Scripture, the Fathers and the Magisterium concerning unnatural sexual acts is therefore about as unwise a course of action as can be imagined.
St Jude also famously refers to the teaching of Christ and the Apostles as the “faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). That is, the teaching of the Church does not remain obscure or opaque for millennia pending the arrival of “David Attenborough’s documentaries”. If the faith of the Apostles is not our faith then that faith will not save us. Likewise the moral order does not change from age to age or from one culture to the next rather “the Council proclaims that all must hold to the absolute primacy of the objective moral order” (Vatican II, Inter Mirifica, §6).
As Vatican II also teaches, “In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted” (Dei Verbum, §11). The Holy Spirit assuredly does not err in the Epistle of St Jude when He tells us what He meant to say in the Book of Genesis.
The second passage quoted by the Catechism is Romans 1:24-27 which explains the moral consequences of widespread atheism and pagan superstition in human society. It reads:
“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error.”
Unsurprisingly, here in the Epistle to the Romans, the Holy Spirit seems once again to agree with the doctrine He implied in the Book of Genesis and stated in the Epistle of St Jude. Equally unsurprisingly, as atheism and pagan superstition once more abound in western society so does unnatural passion.
Now, as God can neither deceive nor be deceived and the Sacred Scriptures contain “everything and only those things which He wanted” and indeed, as, “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16) we can be confident that the doctrine of Scripture as correctly understood by “what tradition has always declared” stands for all time and shows us the way of life and the path to true blessedness in God’s presence with all our sins forgiven.
Perhaps Mr Bergström-Allen, when he pronounces that “we all have more updated understandings”, is unaware that this approach to Christian doctrine was solemnly anathematised by the Church when she declared that, “If anyone shall say that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of science, that a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the Church which differs from that which the Church has understood and understands: let him be anathema.”
Let us pray for Mr Bergström-Allen that familiarising himself with the irreformable doctrine of the Extraordinary and the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium, the life giving truths of Scripture and the wisdom of the Holy Fathers he will set aside his opinions on this question and conform himself to the teachings of the Catechism and of our Holy Father Pope Leo who just a few days ago reminded us that “harmonious and peaceful civil societies” are founded on the family itself built “upon the stable union between a man and a woman, ‘a small but genuine society, and prior to all civil society.’”
We live in the era of mercy. The era of justice has yet to begin. None of us knows the day or the hour when it will begin either for mankind as a whole or for each of us individually at the hour of death. Jesus welcomes all but He says to each “Go and sin no more” (Jn 5:14; 8:11). He calls mankind to “repent and believe in the gospel” (Mk 1:5). We can neither repent in the first place nor go on to sin no more if those entrusted with proclaiming the Gospel obscure the necessity of repentance. Jesus “I came that [we] may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10 but He tells us “If you would enter life, keep the commandments” (Mt 19:17). Again and again we fail but His grace is enough and His power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:9).
“God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (Jn 3:17-18).
Those who do not receive the Gospel are lost not because of their ignorance but because, in their ignorance, they lack the means of salvation. To deprive anyone of those means through obscuring the Gospel is a most dreadful thing.
“It is impossible that scandals should not come: but woe to him through whom they come. It were better for him, that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should scandalize one of these little ones.” (Luke 17:1-2)
Again, let us pray for Mr Bergström-Allen. St Paul called himself the least of the Apostles because he persecuted the Church of God but, by God’s grace, he came to surpass them all (1 Cor 15:9–10). It was not through lack of zeal or because he despised the law that Saul the Pharisee devoted his life to causes so contrary to God’s will and Christ chose to transform that zeal into an instrument of salvation at the service of the very Gospel it had hindered.
“The hand of the Lord is not shortened that it cannot save, neither is his ear heavy that it cannot hear.” (Is 59:1)