Sunday, October 28, 2018

Bishop Gene Robinson to Matt Shepard: "Welcome Home"; Catholic Youth Synod to LGBTQ People: "You Will Not Be Named in Our Heterosexual Church" — Questions for Synod Participants and Voters



In his sermon at the interment of Matt Shepard, Bishop Gene Robinson says the following (these excerpts are from about 1:13:48 and 1:19:32 in the video above):

Friday, October 26, 2018

We / They: How Refusal to Include Queer Voices in Synodal Conversations Undercuts Claims of Church about Itself as Sacramental Sign of Redemption



In response to a question from Deborah Rose-Milavec of Future Church about how the Youth Synod is dealing with women's and LGBTQ issues, delegate Yadira Vieyra states,

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Commentary: McCarrick and Supposed "Gay Clique" in Hierarchy; Homosexuality Not Cause of Catholic Abuse Crisis; When Welcome Doesn't Really Mean Welcome


Things I've read in the last day or so that I'd like to pass along to you — with themes that, in my view, fit together, so that it's helpful to read this commentary side by side:

Monday, October 22, 2018

Where Do We Go from Here, as the Future Looks More and More Bleak for LGBTQ People in the U.S.?

So where do we go from here? I ask because I quite sincerely don't know the answer to that question.

My sense is that for queer people — especially in the U.S. — and for those who care about us and stand with us, things are going to get much worse, and more quickly than many of us realize.

What do we do with that probability? Or am I wrong to sense this, do you think? (See Brynn Tannehill's sobering predictions.)

Rolando, what can those of us gathered here in this particular dialogue community do to assist you in concrete ways? Please tell us, if there's something we can be doing in addition to offering you our support and sympathy.

Saturday, October 20, 2018

ViganΓ² Attacks Again: Even More Obsessively Focused on Homosexuality, as U.S. Catholic Church Continues Branding Itself as Homophobic Hate Machine


Friday, October 19, 2018

Married Gay Catholic Minister Hounded Out of Ministerial Job with Acts of Hate from Organized Catholic Hate Groups


I wish so much that this story had not flashed across my computer screen on the very same day in which I posted Rolando's testimony about what has been done to him and John. But here this additional story is, staring all of us in the face. Dan Morris-Young writes

"I Am Excommunicated from This 'Redemptive Institution' Because 3 Years Ago, John and I Formalized our 49-Years of Living, Loving and Ministering Together by Registering Our Civil Union"



The following is testimony that Rolando shared at Bilgrimage several days ago. This testimony deserves a wider hearing than it will receive if it remains in a combox; I'm posting it as a stand-alone comment for that reason. This story is just so painful — and it's one that is repeating itself over and over in Catholic institutions right now. 

Thursday, October 18, 2018

Was Dietrich Bonhoeffer Gay? Diane Reynolds' The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the Biographical-Theological Evidence

Diane Reynolds, The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Women, Sexuality, and Nazi Germany (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2016)

When I reported to you (and here) a month ago regarding Charles Marsh's biography of theological Dietrich Bonhoeffer entitled Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (NY: Knopf, 2014), I mentioned to you that, as Marsh does, another recent biographer, Diane Reynolds, sees Bonhoeffer as a gay man in love with his colleague Eberhard Bethge. Reynolds' biography of Bonhoeffer, The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Women, Sexuality, and Nazi Germany (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2016), proposes that as a man aware that his erotic inclinations moved in a forbidden direction in the savagely homophobic culture of Nazi Germany, Bonhoeffer lived a double life, often pretending to be who and what he was not (p. 4) — while he began to develop, especially in the latter part of his tragically truncated life, a "nascent queer theology":

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

Not Blogging Lately Because I Don't Think That I Have Much to Say That Will Make Much of a Difference

I'm not blogging much lately because I don't think, honestly, that I have much to say that will make much of a difference to any of the conversations going on around me. I appreciate readers who have contacted me to ask how I'm doing, and who have shared your similar sense that we're being overtaken by a huge cultural wave at a global level that is moving the global community to some very dark fascist places — and we have all too little power to change the direction of that wave right now.

Friday, October 12, 2018

Me, Talking Back to National Catholic Reporter and Michael Sean Winters re: Resignation of Donald Wuerl


Wednesday, October 10, 2018

"Only the Good Has Depth That Can Be Radical": Hannah Arendt on Banality of Evil — Critically Important Role of Thought and Imagination as Fascist Tide Rises



A key point of Hannah Arendt's analysis of the banality of evil is that evil is essentially stupid, as it manifests itself in the social arena. Evil lacks imagination. It does the same (misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, elitist, fascist) thing over and over, expecting always the same results — since doing the same  (misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, elitist, fascist) thing last time worked. So surely it will work again….

Saturday, October 6, 2018

Commentary: How Kavanaugh's Confirmation Shows What We've Refused to Learn from Catholic Abuse Chronicle, Etc.



Friday, October 5, 2018

The Sole — Crucial — Lesson the GOP Takes from Orwell: Boot Stamping on a Human Face — Forever


My new pinned tweet on Twitter….