Faithful Catholics who love laughing at Jim Gaffigan will be disappointed to learn that the comedian, whose bag of jokes is often influenced by his Catholicism, allowed his kids to watch New York’s Gay Pride Parade over the weekend and tweeted out a picture of them waving rainbow flags.
“I’m so proud of my gay kids. Happy #pride2017 #pridenyc,” he tweeted on Sunday.
Even Gaffigan’s wife Jeannie used social media to showcase her family watching the homosexual parade go by. “Mom? Is everyone in New York City gay?” her kids asked her.
“They were at the sprinkler park in their bathing suits and the parade just marched by and handed out rainbow flags,” she posted on Instagram.
Gaffigan, a graduate of Jesuit-run Georgetown University, is often trotted out by the Catholic world as a comedian who “brings Catholicism to the masses” through his gift of humor. Best known for his family-friendly routines on bacon, McDonald’s fries, and bowling, Gaffigan will also get laughs for his jokes about being a Catholic parent with five kids. Gaffigan, who is 51, has often been praised by Catholics for his frank adherence to Catholic teaching against contraception.
The comedian has received accolades from Catholic News Agency, Aleteia, and National Catholic Register. When Pope Francis visited the U.S. in 2015, Gaffigan was honored as being the lone comedian in a warmup act prior to the Pope’s appearance at the Festival of Families.
But there is a side to Gaffigan’s Catholicism that does not square with Catholic teaching. And that’s his take on sexuality.
The Catholic Church teaches that God created humans as “male and female” and gave them to each other in marriage so they could “increase and multiply.” Sexual attraction and sexual acts between a male and female are specifically created by God for the purpose of procreation. The Catholic Church teaches that homosexual acts are “acts of grave depravity” and “intrinsically disordered” since they are “contrary to the natural law” in that they “close the sexual act to the gift of life.”
“They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved,” states the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Since God did not make a mistake in creating humans as male and female for one another, the Church also teaches that same-sex attraction is “objectively disordered” since God created members of the opposite sex to be attracted to one another for the sake of procreation.
Based on the content of his shows, Gaffigan takes much more than a “who am I to judge” approach to homosexuality.
In a 2012 episode of the TV show Portlandia, Gaffigan plays “Donald” who kisses his gay business partner “Stu” of “Stue’s Stews” on the lips after the pair successfully sells their first bowl of hot food from a food cart. The front of the food cart consists of a giant image of two naked men in a hot tub filled with stew. In the image, Gaffigan is wearing a hat with the word “Oregon” in rainbow letters.
Then in 2015, Gaffigan and his wife Jeannie produced The Jim Gaffigan Show which highlights an active gay character, played by Michael Ian Black, whose attraction to and sexual involvement with other men is portrayed as normal and healthy. In the show, the gay character is constantly hitting on other men, often asking them out to lunch as he jokes about condoms and oral sex.
“I knew exactly what he [Black] would bring [into the show], and he did every time,” said Jim Gaffigan in a behind-the-scenes explanation on YouTube about the humor behind the gay character.
Gaffigan was praised not only by liberal Catholic media but even by homosexual media for his ‘inclusivity’ in the show.
“The viewer gets the impression the TV Gaffigans are too busy living out their faith to have a lot of judgmental opinions about other people’s behavior. No wonder the real-life Gaffigans were invited to Pope Francis’ United States visit this September,” wrote the U.S. Catholic in a 2015 piece about the show.
“Gaffigan takes on homophobia within the Catholic Church in an episode revolving around an antigay pizza chain. In this one storyline, Gaffigan’s overarching motifs of celebrity, religion, homosexuality, and his indefatigable love of food come crashing together,” wrote Out Smart Magazine in a July 2015 article on Gaffigan’s new show.
The U.S. Catholic praised the show as a “textbook example of the Jesuit charism for embodying the gospel’s values in the culture of our everyday world.”
Jim Gaffigan’s wife Jeannie explained in a 2016 interview with National Catholic Register that she thinks that both she and Jim can be good Catholics — on screen and off — without having to judge the actions of people.
“No one is finger-wagging at anyone. With the world we live in, what we do is we live our lives, and we’re open about what we do. We’re happy, and we have a lot of joy in our children and in our faith and in our marriage. We’re not turning around and telling everyone if you don’t live this way you’re bad. Be good, and the good will spread, rather than casting judgment on other people,” she said.
“The worst way to evangelize is to go into certain situations where you’re trying to push something down somebody’s throat,” she added.
While Jesus teaches that one can never judge someone’s motives or state-of-grace before God, he speaks clearly of judging between good and evil, between weeds and wheat, between good fruit and bad. “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgement,” said Jesus, as related in the Gospel of John (Jn. 7:24).
Read the rest of the article on LifeSiteNews.com
Register your interest for Daniel Secomb's new book, "Politics of the Last Days"
Daniel's new book explores the integral and fascinating role that politics will play in the end times.
He demonstrates that political philosophy is actually underpinned by biblcal principles and that by examining the political history of the past can give us a fascinating glimpse into how Biblical end times events will unfold.
Be sure to sign up with your name and email address to be notified of updates and the upcoming release date of the book.
