In Defense of the Sacred Heart

The month of June is often recognized these days as “pride month,” dedicated to the celebration of the chief of the seven deadly sins. But for well over a century, the Catholic Church has dedicated June to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Despite finding its roots in the medieval pieties of nearly a millennium ago, the Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart is now being challenged as “extremist” due to its stark opposition to the demonic novelty called “pride month.”

In a recent opinion article for The Hill, staff writer Nick Robertson claimed, “The Sacred Heart of Jesus flag is a symbol associated with the Christian right wing, specifically used to protest Pride,” referring to a Sacred Heart flag flown by Martha Ann-Alito, the wife of Catholic U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the Court’s landmark ruling overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. According to CatholicVote, the article has been retroactively edited to read instead, “The Sacred Heart of Jesus flag has been used by some opponents of gay rights to protest Pride and LGBTQ rights in general.” (READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: Pride Month, Leftism, and ‘The Ape of the Church’)

The original claim proffered by Robertson is patently false. The diabolical notion of “pride month” was not engineered until the 1970s and was not an official “celebration” until the year 2000. June has been celebrated as the month of the Sacred Heart in the Catholic Church since 1856, and June has been formally dedicated to the Sacred Heart since 1899. Furthermore, devotion to the Sacred Heart is not “specifically used to protest Pride,” as Robertson ignorantly insisted. Rather, devotion to the Sacred Heart is a means of prayerfully, often sorrowfully or penitentially contemplating the love which Christ bears for mankind and His suffering, crucifixion, and death.

The revised claim — that imagery honoring the Sacred Heart “has been used by some opponents of gay rights to protest Pride” — may be closer to the truth. But then, what better way to rebel against the sin of pride than with the ultimate image of humility? For that is one of the two great virtues which the Sacred Heart most embodies. Christ — that is, God Himself, in the Second Person of the Holy Trinity — not only condescended to love His creation mankind, but deigned to humble Himself and become one of His own creatures. What king would leave his throne, dress himself in burlap and rags, and live in a hovel for love of his simple subjects?

As if this were not in itself astounding — truly, in the reverential sense of the term, awesome — enough, Christ also suffered and died for His creation. He alone who is blameless, who is the very antithesis of and antidote to sin, took the sins of all mankind upon Himself, paying a price that man could never otherwise pay. He suffered brutal torture, public degradation and abuse, and finally the most grueling and ignominious of executions — all willingly, all for the sake of love.

And, of course, this is the other great virtue which the Sacred Heart embodies so beautifully. It is no accident that this holy symbol of love, the Sacred Heart of Love Himself, is seen as hostile to the perverse agenda which claims “love is love” as its slogan. Love is self-sacrifice, love is discipline, love is humility, love is suffering. Ultimately, love is Christ. These definitions, immutable and eternal, are utterly rejected by the LGBT mod in the midst of their debauched bacchanalia month of “pride.” Referring to Christ, the author J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote to his sons:

There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death. By the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste — or foretaste — of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man’s heart desires.

Tolkien understood, certainly, as have countless Catholics throughout the centuries, that Christ’s death is the ultimate, the perfect expression of love. Tolkien’s semi-invented word for it was “eucatastrophe,” an event in which tragedy and sorrow are mingled and intertwined with joy and wonder so intimately that the two become one and the same.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus is a beautiful and poignant expression of this “eucatastrophe.” This heart so on fire with love that it suffers the cross, the crown of thorns, the lance in the side, and still burns for its beloved. The LGBT agenda rejects this definition of Love, championing instead Hell’s definition, which is nothing more than a disordered and even depraved love of self. This is why “pride month” takes the deadliest of the seven deadly sins as its moniker and emblem, and it is why both humility and love — in the form of the Sacred Heart — are rejected, scorned, and feared.

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