The Sacred Heart Replaced by Self-Affirmation: Fr. James Martin, Pete Buttigieg, and the AUSCP’s New Gospel

Because Nothing Says ‘Catholic Renewal’ Like Gay Podcasts and Erotic Mysticism

There was a time when priests would lead a soul burdened by grave sin toward repentance, weeping alongside the penitent and pointing them to the Crucified. Today, certain priests lead those same souls toward platforms, podcasts, and applause.

In a recent episode of The Spiritual Life, Fr. James Martin praised Pete Buttigieg as a “model of freedom” for declaring that God helped him “come out” as a homosexual. “It’s great to hear you say that,” Martin replied, when Buttigieg claimed to have accepted “God’s love for him as a gay man.” Martin, ever careful to lace theological poison with pastoral sweetness, called the claim inspiring for those still trapped in what he portrayed as an outdated tension: between the love of God and the rejection of sodomy.

This is a new gospel: one in which divine revelation is subordinated to personal affirmation, and sin is rebranded as authenticity. That gospel now forms the pastoral norm within the Association of United States Catholic Priests (AUSCP): a group that, for all its pretenses of fidelity, continues its annual tradition of spiritual mutilation.

Freedom from What?

When Fr. Martin praises Buttigieg’s “freedom,” he implies that prior resistance to sin was not freedom, but repression. Yet the Church has always taught that true liberty consists in conforming the will to God’s law. Freedom from sin, not indulgence in it, is the mark of divine grace. Buttigieg’s claim that he drew closer to God by embracing a mortal sin would have scandalized even liberal prelates in previous generations. But in the postconciliar era, with its softly glowing synodal logos and vague “listening Church,” the only remaining sin is to be judgmental.

Fr. Martin is the friendly face of doctrinal inversion. Where Salzman writes books and Rolheiser pens pseudo-mystical erotica, Martin smiles on podcasts, removing the last cultural hesitations before the plunge into open heresy. He is the greeter at the edge of the abyss.

The AUSCP’s Ritual of Rebellion

If Martin is the soft salesman of sexual revolution, then the AUSCP is the warehouse. This year, they invited Todd Salzman, a theologian explicitly condemned by the USCCB, to keynote their assembly. Salzman’s most famous work proposes that Catholic moral teaching on sexuality is not only mistaken, but fundamentally oppressive. In his framework, truth is not revealed or reasoned from nature, but filtered through “perspective,” shaped by culture, and adjusted according to experience.

This, of course, is nothing but warmed-over Modernism. Pope St. Pius X, more than a century ago, condemned these exact errors. Salzman’s perspectivism mirrors the Modernist’s “vital immanence”: a theology in which doctrine flows upward from human subjectivity rather than downward from divine revelation. Experience becomes the new magisterium. In this scheme, homosexuality is no longer a disordered inclination but a “life-giving” relationship. Contraception is no longer intrinsically evil, but an “ethical imperative.” And celibacy? A loneliness “God himself has damned,” at least, according to Fr. Rolheiser.

Rolheiser, too, was featured at this year’s AUSCP gathering, not as a theologian but as a retreat master. He is the mystic to Salzman’s ethicist, translating heresy into poetry. If Salzman lays the foundation of relativism, Rolheiser furnishes it with candlelight, erotic longing, and the faint scent of incense meant to evoke the sacred while affirming the profane.

Together, they represent two faces of the same rebellion: intellectual and sentimental, doctrinal and pastoral. Both preach a gospel without repentance. Both replace the Cross with a mirror.

A New Sacred Heart?

Recall that the month of June, now colonized by rainbow flags and drag liturgies, was once the month of the Sacred Heart. Devotion to Christ’s Heart meant acknowledging that it was pierced for our sins, not celebrating those sins as expressions of divine creativity. To love the Sacred Heart was to grieve that it is wounded anew by every mortal sin, especially those paraded as virtues.

What Martin, Salzman, and Rolheiser offer is not a new expression of the Gospel, but a counterfeit gospel altogether. It is the cult of Self in vestments. It is the Sacred Heart replaced by the Synod logo, the Confessional replaced by the couch, and the crucifix replaced by the selfie.

The Silent Episcopate

Perhaps most scandalous is not that Fr. Martin made such remarks, or that the AUSCP continues to platform heterodox theologians. It is that so few bishops say anything at all, much less Leo. Salzman’s errors were condemned in 2010, and yet he continues to teach at Creighton University with impunity. Fr. Martin has been repeatedly warned by fellow clergy, only to be rewarded with papal meetings and Jesuit promotions.

At what point does silence become complicity?

When Leo and his bishops refuse to discipline heterodox priests but swiftly suppress faithful communities attached to the Latin Mass, they reveal the true postconciliar hierarchy of values.

The Real Model of Freedom

Christ did not suffer and die so that we might accept ourselves. He died to redeem us from our sins. Faithful Catholics who struggle with same-sex attraction do not claim that God has called them to embrace their disordered desires. They embrace the cross, they live chastely, and they beg for mercy.

They, not Buttigieg, are the model of freedom.

And the Church, if she is to be recognizable as the Bride of Christ, must stop celebrating men who flee the cross and begin again to lift up those who carry it.