Thomas O'Loughlin on Mass as Theater and Eucharist as Commodity: Theological Underpinnings of These Ideas

As a follow-up to what I posted yesterday about how the aberrant Mass-as-theater theology of many Catholics is asserting itself all over again in this pandemic, some sound theological reflection from theologian Thomas O'Loughlin in an essay entitled "Reimagining the Eucharist":

If I Were a Young Person Seeking a Church Home for Myself, Why Would I EVER Want to Consider a Church in Which….

If I were a young person seeking a church home for myself, why would I EVER want to consider a church in which

When a Story About Chewing Gum Is Not About Chewing Gum: Transgender Teen Denied Communion in Charlotte, North Carolina, Catholic Church

Was she denied Communion because she’d been chewing gum — or because she’s transgender? https://t.co/cm8rjukgYx

— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) July 27, 2018

 

With all the really challenging things going on in the world around us right now, my choice to focus on this story might appear baffling. It's a "little" story, perhaps, compared with ones like the raging fire gobbling up a big portion of California, or the (shocking but unsurprising) revelation that the parents of many children snatched from their parents by the U.S. government at the nation's borders cannot be located and there are reports that some of these children are being sexually abused. 

LGBTQ Catholics and the Conversation About Staying or Leaving: 15 More Theses About Truths That Need to Be Heard in This Conversation

My last posting was an attempt to tell truth that is, in my view, often obscured and even barred as Catholics discuss the "problem" or "challenge" of welcoming LGBTQ people within Catholic spaces, or as LGBTQ Catholics discuss the question of staying in or leaving the church. As that posting indicated, some of us who are LGBTQ and Catholic have never had any choice in the matter: we were shoved from the church when our vocations were shattered without explanation, our livelihood removed, our daily bread taken from our mouths, our healthcare coverage yanked from us — as we were shown the door and it was slammed in our faces.

LGBTQ Catholics Are Asked, Why Stay in the Church? My 15-Question Response

A recent conference at Boston College asks LGBTQ Catholics, Why stay? Why do you stay in the Catholic church?

Pope Francis' Recent Remarks on Gender Theory and Pastoral Accompaniment of Gay People: My Response in a Nutshell

In a nutshell, in case this was not clear when you read my posting yesterday about Pope Francis' recent remarks regarding "gender theory" and the need for gay people to be accompanied pastorally: the word "accompany" has built right into it a reference to bread. We accompany others by sharing (cum) bread (panis). Those we accompany become our companions, those with whom we break bread.

Detroit Free Press Article About Gay Couple Who Are Active Catholics: An Image of the Divided U.S. Catholic Church

If you're looking for a rather neat snapshot of the two theological universes that coexist uneasily in American Catholicism today, especially vis-a-vis the question of welcomingly openly gay people and married gay couples in Catholic parishes, I'd highly recommend Patricia Montemurri's report in Detroit Free Press today about Bryan Victor and Thomas Molina-Duarte, a gay couple who married this summer in an Episcopal church in Detroit, but who are active members of a Catholic church in Detroit. Montemurri indicates that Victor's uncle Rev. Ronald Victor, a Catholic priest, attended his wedding along with other family members, and supports the couple, noting that the Catholic community "needs more examples of gay holiness."

How the Confederate Battle Flag Is Like the Tridentine Mass: What Sister Never Knew and Father Never Told You Speaks Out

At the What Sister Never Knew and Father Never Told You site, blogger Consolamini minces no words as he compares the Confederate battle flag to the traditional Latin Mass, as it has become a shibboleth and organizing symbol of Catholics opposed to Vatican II at this point in history: 

Welcome Table, Jesus's Practice of Open Commensality, and Catholic Discussion of Welcoming the Gays: Theological Soundings

Yesterday, I shared some reflections about the old spiritual, "I'm Going to Sit at the Welcome Table." I did so, obviously, because, at its highest levels of leadership, my own Catholic church continues to find it exceptionally difficult to say the simple word "welcome" to me and others like me — to openly gay human beings. At the highest level of its leadership structures, many of its pastors continue to wish to give us the message that we do not belong and that we are not welcome at the Catholic table.

Charlotte Catholic High School Controversy: "When the Church Treats People as Things . . . It Undermines the Very Meaning of the Eucharist"

For an explanation of the context of this posting, please see this preceding posting. In light of the controversy that has developed in the diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina, in recent days due to deplorable statements Sister Jane Dominic Laurel made about gay human beings at Charlotte Catholic High School, I'm posting excerpts from letters I wrote to the bishop of Charlotte, William J. Curlin, in the second half of the 1990s. The following posting replicates a posting I made here on 19 March 2010:

Agni Asks If I Go to Church: Another Excerpt from My Letters to the Bishop of Charlotte — Eucharistic Bread and Daily Bread Connected

In a comment here yesterday responding to my posting about the recent uproar in the diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina, Agni asks if I attend a Catholic church in Arkansas. I replied to Agni, trying to condense a lot of information into the brief space of a combox.

Dirty Freddie and the Gays: Cardinal Dolan Explains Catholic Welcome of LGBT Persons

I get the feeling that the leader of the U.S. Catholic bishops, Cardinal Dolan, may not have been taught much about manners as he was growing up. Or any time since then, for that matter.

Whores and Tax Collectors and a Table Open to All: Adam Gopnik on Jesus's Eating with Outcasts

I just finished Adam Gopnik's book The Table Comes First (NY: Vintage Books, 2011), and found this observation in the final pages of the book insightful:

Remembering Dietrich Bonhöffer: "The Table Fellowship of Christians Implies Obligation"

As the anniversary of German theologian Dietrich Bonhöffer's execution by the Nazi regime passes (it was on 9 April), I think of an observation he makes in his book Life Together that has long formed the framework of my understanding of the eucharist:

Here Be Dragons: Tribalistic Patrolling of Catholic-Identity Boundaries and Pushback Against Garry Wills

Over the lunch hour and after we had met friends for lunch, Steve had a bit of business to conduct. As I often do while I wait in the car for him, I turned on a "Christian" radio program to catch up on what the "Christians" (the folks who hold forth on this channel are very much what Andrew Sullivan would call Christianists) are saying these days.

Quote of the Day: "The Eucharist Meal Was Not Intended to Be an Event Mainly to Be Monopolized and Controlled by a 'Mystical' Celibate Male Priesthood"

A powerfully insightful observation by Jerry Slevin at his Christian Catholicism blog site:

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "I Used to Think We, My Church and I, Were about Love"

My first posting this morning spoke of the heart pain I experience right now as I see a church I chose in the 1960s because its welcome table appeared open to all--the Catholic church--mount a brutal attack on LGBT human beings designed quite specifically to communicate to me and mine that we are not welcome at the Catholic table.

The Welcome Table: Further Reflections

After I blogged about the welcome table this past Sunday, I began doing a bit of online reading.  The Mountain Dulcimer Noter and Drone blog, to which I provided a link in my Sunday posting, sparked my interest in the history of the old American hymn "Welcome Table."  My online reading has led me to YouTube, where I've now listened to a series of recordings of the hymn by various artists and groups.  I want to share three of these with readers.

Sunday Thoughts: Pho, Fried Plantains, and Welcome Tables

Lines overheard in a Vietnamese restaurant in St. Paul:

More Signposts for Exiled Believers, More Reflections on the Mike and Cathy Club

More signposts for me from people who speak to my soul as I flounder in the wilderness, crying out to God, asking how to sustain a spiritual life--any kind of spiritual life at all--when the church that has been foundational to my spiritual life betrays its originating vision (and its founder) in its ugly, unrelenting attacks on gay and lesbian human beings (on me) at this point in history: