Editor’s note: WARNING! Explicit language contained in report below.
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — A sexually explicit 1998 book by Victor Manuel Cardinal Fernández, in which he compares how the “particularities of men and women in orgasm also occur in some way in the mystical relationship with God,” has recently resurfaced. The work also downplays the immoral nature of homosexuality.
Entitled “Mystical Passion: Spirituality and Sensuality,” the 1998 work by the Argentinian cardinal (available in Spanish here and listed in his published works) builds upon the themes contained in his scandalous work Heal Me with Your Mouth: the Art of Kissing. Now 26 years old, the passages were recently rediscovered; LifeSite received a copy of the text from a trusted source.
Chapters 7, 8, and 9 in particular have been selected as containing notably offensive material, and are respectively entitled: “Male and female orgasms,” “The road to orgasm,” and “GOD in the couple’s orgasm.”
Fernández, linking the fullness of spirituality with the exercise of sexual intercourse and orgasm, examined the question “if this mystical experience, in which the entire being is taken by God, if this kind of ‘mystical orgasm’ is experienced by each person according to his or her sexuality.”
Writing in detailed, sexually explicit language about the act and completion of sexual intercourse, Fernández applied this concept to a relation with God:
Let us now ask ourselves if these particularities of men and women in orgasm also occur in some way in the mystical relationship with God. We could say that the woman, because she is more receptive, is also more willing to let herself be taken by God. She is more open to religious experience. That may be why women predominate in churches.
Drawing on the language of “dominance” and “receptiveness,” Fernández wrote “that in the mystical experience God touches the most intimate center of love and pleasure, a center where it does not matter much whether we are male or female.” Such a sensual “center,” wrote Fernández, is one where “we are all receptive and live an experience in which we are not fully masters of ourselves,” suggesting that spiritual union with God cannot be achieved while one is in full possession of one’s mental faculties.
He compared the “sensual pleasure” of the completion of sexual intercourse to the spiritual union man has with God, additionally stating that the contemplation of God could be found through all the pleasures of the world: “all the attractions of this world should elevate us, from now on, to the encounter with the divine source, to drink from that inexhaustible wellspring of good and beauty.”
Fernández also appeared to downplay the power of God’s grace along with the need for personal conversion and chastity. In a passage closing chapter 8, “The road to orgasm,” Fernández wrote about the inability of Divine grace to assist a person from ceasing acts of homosexuality:
But this does not necessarily mean that this joyful experience of divine love, if I achieve it, will free me from all my psychological weaknesses. It does not mean, for example, that a homosexual will necessarily stop being homosexual.
Let us remember that God’s grace can coexist with weaknesses and even with sins, when there is a very strong conditioning. In those cases, the person can do things that are objectively sinful, without being guilty, and without losing the grace of God or the experience of his love.
Such an argument, added Fernández, formed part of the instances where there is “the possibility of reaching a kind of fulfilling orgasm in our relationship with God, which does not imply so much physical alterations, but simply that God manages to touch the soul-corporeal center of pleasure, so that a satisfaction that encompasses the entire person is experienced.”
Continuing, he stated that an orgasm-styled relationship with God “leads us to another important consequence: it invites us to discover that, if God can be present at that level of our existence, he can also be present when two human beings love each other and reach orgasm; and that orgasm, experienced in the presence of God, can also be a sublime act of worship to God.”
“God loves man’s happiness; therefore, it is also an act of worship to God to experience a moment of happiness,” wrote Fernández, without clarifying whether such “happiness” need be licit or natural.
In a blatant misrepresentation of Scripture, Fernández argued in defense of sexual activity without clarification or specification, stating: “We can, therefore, say that we are pleasing God and worshiping him when we are able to enjoy the small and legitimate pleasures of life. So, we don’t have to flee or hide from God when we enjoy because it is he who ‘created all things for us to enjoy.’” (1 Tim 6:17)
The full scriptural passage actually presents an entirely contradictory meaning to that which Fernández suggested, warning people “not to trust in the uncertainty of riches” or the pleasure of earth.
Equating the “pleasure of orgasm” to spiritual perfection and beatitude, Fernández wrote that “the pleasure of orgasm becomes a preview of the wonderful festival of love that is heaven. Because there is nothing that anticipates heaven better than an act of charity.”
READ: Archbishop Viganò: Cdl Fernández’s defense of Fiducia Supplicans shows his ‘manifest heresy’
He also avoided any mention of the Church’s clear guidelines on chastity with regard the use of one’s sexual functions, downplaying the sinful nature of masturbation. Instead, Fernández stated that masturbation is a form of sex removed from “its most precious purpose,” but made no mention of its immoral nature.
Responding to the text, former nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò called on the Swiss Guards to “arrest these heretical perverts.”
“The blasphemous sewer regurgitations of Tucho’s repulsive pamphlet show such a level of perversion and alienation to the Faith as to demand the expulsion manu militari of the Argentinean and his accomplices,” he wrote.
“The Swiss Guards have sworn to defend the See of Peter, not the one who is systematically demolishing it. Let them therefore be faithful to their oath and arrest these heretical perverts!”
Italian news blog Messa in Latino described the text as “truly outrageous and apparently blasphemous,” while The Spectator’s Damian Thompson suggested it marked “the final crisis of this pontificate.”