Above: Prayer of thanksgiving after leaving Noah’s Ark, by Domenico Morelli (4 August 1823 – 13 August 1901).
There is something not only publicly offensive but positively demonic about the way the rainbow and the month of June—traditionally dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus—have been violently appropriated by one of the most socially and morally destructive forces in the world, the LGBTQ+ movement.
It hardly needs to be stated among Christians that the rainbow is, first and foremost, God’s sign, and any legitimate use of it must be tied back to the signification He gave it:
I will set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be the sign of a covenant between me, and between the earth. And when I shall cover the sky with clouds, my bow shall appear in the clouds: And I will remember my covenant with you, and with every living soul that beareth flesh: and there shall no more be waters of a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the clouds, and I shall see it, and shall remember the everlasting covenant, that was made between God and every living soul of all flesh which is upon the earth. And God said to Noe: This shall be the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh upon the earth. (Gen 9:13–17)
Noah’s Ark is a Scriptural image of the vessel of God’s salvation. Being in the Ark is being in Christ, in His Body, the Church. The raging flood of sin and vice drowns and destroys those who are caught up in it, but those who pass through the waters of baptism—of the death and resurrection of Christ—have their sins washed away and receive the grace of divine sonship. As the human race was preserved for temporal life in Noah and his family, so is it saved for eternal life in the Church.
The rainbow, one of the most uplifting glimpses of beauty in the natural world (and also, like the wind of the Holy Spirit that “blows where it will,” one of the most elusive and surprising) was given as a divine sign and symbol of the promise following upon salvation from the flood-waters of destruction. God would not destroy the earth again… by water. Next time, at the end of time, the earth will be destroyed by fire. The ambivalence of the water imagery (drowning, giving life) is paralleled by the ambivalence of the fire imagery (burning up with lust and burning down to ashes, or enkindling with love).
Real (not Pretend) Diversity
The rainbow also reminds us of the genuine diversity to be found in the Church of Christ, which brings together Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free, men and women, all nations, cultures, races, peoples, into a single family of God. The saints, perfected by their union with Christ, are at the same time the most vivid personalities in human history, with the most distinctive faces. Theologian Sergius Bulgakov calls the host of saints “God’s rainbow”:
I pray to the saints of God, I look upon their faces in their icons and call them each by name, I converse with them, I pray to them for my needs and together with them I pray to the Lord of glory. The saints in their icons surround my home altar and serve with me, praying along with me. Wondrous is God in His saints [Ps. 67:36 Douay-Rheims], and blessed is the man who is with God’s saints. This is God’s rainbow, this is the angelic-human choir that, together with us sinners and together with me, a wretch, prays to God. They do not abhor my wretchedness, and I do not grow ashamed, but instead I call upon them. Our love for the saints becomes ever warmer, more palpable, more vital, the more we pray to them, and their love for us in return becomes even more ardent—if this “more” is even possible for them. And yet the saints of God are people, and for them there exists an eternal more, and they grow richer in God by love for us through our prayers to them. This is the circle of human interconnectedness, linking heaven with earth, sinful humans and the saints of God; this is the palpability of the church visible and invisible, this is the rainbow, the bridge of our ascension from earth to heaven. And all the saints respond to our prayers, each saint to every prayer, regarding whatever we ask of them, and they speak in their own tongue to their own people: St Nicholas to his, St. Sergius to his, St. Seraphim to his, the Greatmartyr Panteleimon to his, Mary Magdalene, the Greatmartyr Barbara . . . Wondrous is God in His saints, the God of Israel!
In the wonderful painting of the Last Judgment by Marx Reichlich (South German, active ca. 1485–1520), one sees Our Lord seated on a rainbow that joins Our Lady and the Forerunner to Him.
He is the Lord of creation and the King of the saints, the unity from which all diversity flows, and to which all must return in order to be natural, right, good, and blessed. This too is what the month of June, traditionally dedicated to the Sacred Heart—since the year 1673, I have seen it said—is meant to remind us of: He loved us first, and by His love, by what He did for us and gives to us, we learn whom to love and how to love. Apart from him there is only demonic unnaturalness, perversity, malice, and misery.
Inverting the Symbol
Austen Ruse recently wrote:
The worst month of the year begins. June—the month of the Sacred Heart—has been taken over by perversion. The love that dares not speak its name screams all month long in our faces. You cannot get away. Rainbows everywhere. You are tempted to stay inside, lower the shades, like the three days of darkness, praying for the demons to pass by.
It is a very ancient understanding of the spirit of Antichrist that it mimics and mocks Christ. It takes what is His, and inverts it. A moral or doctrinal inversion of a Christian symbol perforce becomes a demonic symbol. For example, an upside-down cross—if it is not in the very specific context of a depiction of the Apostle Peter, who was martyred upside-down—is an anti-cross or a rejection of the cross of Christ. That the rainbow, sign of God’s covenant with restored creation, was affixed to a flag representing grave depravity and even the misanthropic destruction of humanity (since “God created them male and female”), is already a clear sign of the spirit of Antichrist. But we are given one more indication of this, hiding in plain sight. The demonic symbol represents the rainbow with six colors—that is, according to ancient numerology, the number of man—and not seven, the number of the divine, as in a natural rainbow.
Any place this flag is hoisted or displayed will be a target of demonic activity and possibly infestation. Wherever it is flown, the banner of Satan is unfurled, in a public contest with the Vexilla Regis, the standard of the King.
The connection between, on the one hand, disordered sexuality culminating in one of the “sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance”—sodomy or unnatural sexual relations—and, on the other hand, apostasy, atheism, hatred of God, violent rejection of all sacredness, and idolatry or worship of demons is something illustrated already in many pages of Sacred Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament. Into the cauldron may now be stirred the ingredients of transgenderism, which adds to sexual perversion crimes of self-mutilation. The devil, the father of lies, is the ape of God: he cannot create, he can only mock and mar. He will not come up with a new symbol; he will always take an old one and desecrate it, and with transhumanism the ultimate symbol can now be corrupted: the human body.
Social Responsibility: Christians, Where are You?
The connection between LGBTQ+ and Satanism isn’t even hiding itself any more: Target brought out a “Satan respects pronouns” T-shirt that was quickly scuttled off the floor due to the volume of protests. It is good, of course, that there were protests (as with Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney stunt that has badly backfired, costing the company $5 billion), but the forces of darkness are numerous, powerful in worldly resources, and stubborn as hell, and will continue to push the envelope day by day, month by month, year by year, wearing down opposition and winning over the non-committal. We should not give up doing what we can, but we should also recognize that the primary reason to refuse to buy from certain companies is that it would be wrong for us to support them, regardless of whether or not our refusal to purchase will make any difference.
On Facebook I saw the following timeline:
In 1999, Democrat President Bill Clinton declared June “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month.” Every year since, the first week in June, Disney uses its facilities to kick off homosexual’s month-long victory celebrations over Christianity. Then 13th thru the 15th of June Disney host’s gay pride nite parties in its parks. In 2010 Disney supported democrat President Barrack Obama’s transformation of our military into a sanctuary for homosexuals to openly defy God. Disney vigorously backed the legalization of same sex marriages. Between 2010 and 2015 Disney and cooperative America coerced Christian Boy and Girl Scouts’ clubs into accepting active homosexuals as members, mentors, and Scoutmasters.
Disney movies and cartoons showed in theaters and other venues are riddled with homosexual characters, some blatant, others subtle, subliminal, and suggestive, while others are full blown homosexual movies. Most of Disney’s children literature are subliminally laced with suggestive homosexualism. Disney is a strong advocate of homosexualizing school children.
Romans 1:26–28 along with 25 other gospels [bible passages?] emphatically states God condemns homosexual conduct: including behaving contrary to one’s birth gender. This homosexual depravity condemned by God is Disney-promoted, government-sanctioned, approved by hordes of corporations & companies, embraced by likeminded Americans, and accommodated and tolerated by the majority of Christians. Amazing. How are we Christian’s handling this? Or are we?
Focused boycotts on Bud Light and Target have had a real effect and have sent signals that capitalists are likely to take seriously, since the only language they speak is money. This is something we all should be much more conscientious about—not that we can avoid every single company or store that promotes the woke agenda, but at least we can avoid the worst of the worst, like Disney. Why give them a single cent or any free rent in our souls?
As usual, our brethren in Africa are setting an example to the whole world by keeping the Faith and choosing truth over the idolatry of Western money, working to pass salutary and sane legislation against the LGBTQ+ agenda – “for our children,” as they say. Should we be surprised that Uganda is leading the world in reasonable, correct, proportionate, and sufficient laws on behalf of the family and against moral perversion, when the Ugandan Martyrs died rather than commit the abomination of sodomy with their king? All parents must act now, in whatever ways they can – wherever they live worldwide – and follow their parental instincts, even if the progressivist brigade at the Vatican or the whole world may come against us. Our children are worth every sacrifice to protect them from this Satanic filth.
The Difficulty of Dialogue
Well-meaning people tell us that we must learn to dialogue with the LGBTQ+ community. I have no doubt that we should try to find effective ways to reach them. But dialogue is often impossible, for the reason that it always goes something like this (as I once saw someone spell it out):
Person: I want to do “X.”
Catholic Church: You are free to do it.
Person: But you think “X” is wrong.
Catholic Church: Yes.
Person: Because you want to control me?
Catholic Church: No. You are free to do what you want.
Person: But you think “X” is wrong.
Catholic Church: Yes. But only because I want your ultimate good.
Person: But I want to do “X.”
Catholic Church: You are free to do it.
Person: But I want you to say that “X” is good.
Catholic Church: I cannot say that.
Person: Why do you hate me?
Now, more than ever, it will be the example, out in the open, of normal, relatively happy, peaceable, compassionate, and clear-thinking Christians that may win over those who find themselves eventually exhausted and disgusted by a life lived contrary to nature and to nature’s God, contrary to Christ and His Church, which means, contrary to the basic requirements of human sanity and joy. When someone begins to question what he/she (or any other preferred pronoun) is doing with himself/herself—begins to have doubts, regrets, questions—let us be there to listen and to answer.
But most of all, let us be witnesses to the Gospel of Life by faithful marriages and children generously welcomed, loved, educated. With God’s help let us fill the world with lovers of God and of each other, in all our wondrous God-willed diversity. This is how we will vindicate the true meaning of the rainbow symbol, which for now lies captive in the hands of our enemies at this stage of the “cosmic edition” of Capture the Flag that we are now playing, for eternal stakes.