Thanksgiving Dinner with the Forebears: Questions I'd Love to Ask

A wild change of subject from my usual political-religious analysis (some might say rants): I don't want U.S. Thanksgiving to recede too far in the past without sharing some of my obsessions from another aspect of my life, researching my family tree. I offer this first tidbit because it amuses me, and will perhaps offer amusement to others. It shows how precise the focus of DNA research is becoming for those engaged in genealogical study — if, that is, you believe in the validity of this kind of analysis.

Remembering a Grandfather on the Anniversary of His Death: "Everything, in Time, Gets Lost"

As I've said here before, Daniel Mendelsohn's book The Lost is one of the most powerful books I've read in my long lifetime of voracious reading. I read it soon after it came out in 2006. It recounts the engrossing tale of Mendelsohn's years of searching for information about what happened to his relatives in Ukraine during the Nazi period. Mendelsohn’s obsession to find out the fates of his relatives began when he was a young teen, and continued into his adult life — and The Lost recounts the story of how, miraculously, he eventually discovered details about the final days of these relatives, their murder during the Holocaust.

My Father at Pearl Harbor As It Was Bombed, and DNA Discoveries in Genealogical Research: An Account

My father, Benjmain Dennis Lindsey, Jr., at Pearl Harbor during WWII (on left).

This is one of those "personal" postings that seem to have become rarer as I maintain this blog. I'm not sure why I post less and less about my own personal history here, or my family's history. I think I may have been spurred to do so now by two fascinating statements I've read in the past several days about the use of DNA to discover one's ancestry or family history (here and here). As my posting  says, I had a DNA surprise some months back — that is, I learned some information about a family member close to me whom I knew very well as I grew up, which I never expected to find and never set out to find, but which I'm now having to process. In part, because this family member represents a staunchly evangelical — Southern Baptist, in particular — branch of my family, and what I have learned about his life and history complicates that picture to a large degree…. So here goes with the personal posting, about which I'm forewarning you if these aren't your cup of tea:

Google Top Stories Featuring Catholic Homophobic Bile in "Top Stories" re: World Meeting of Families

Look at the Catholic homophobic bile Google is billing right now as its set of "top stories" if you google Fr. James Martin and his presentation at World Meeting of Families (I'm obviously not referring to the NCR article or the America one when I speak of "homophobic bile").

Refusal of Catholic Hierarchy to Get Abuse Situation Parallels Refusal to Get LGBTQ People: World Meeting of Families Reminds Us, It's Not Going to Get Better

Massive media turnout for lgbtq choir singing “Something Inside So Strong,” an Anti-Apartheid song, outside the walls of the World Meeting of Families. #WorldMeetingofFamilies pic.twitter.com/ukTgfFMoaY

— Jamie L. Manson (@jamielmanson) August 23, 2018

Put together the quite shameful way in which LGBTQ people are being treated by the World Meeting of Families with the obstinate, blame-passing game that the same Catholic hierarchs excluding LGBTQ families from this gathering continue playing with clerical sexual crimes, and I wonder why any Catholics still hold hope that the Catholic church will provide them a welcome table.

Two Obituaries, Two Very Different Stories of What Family Is About: Who Counts, Who Doesn't, and the Role Churches Play

Two obituaries, two very different stories about what family is about — who counts, who doesn't, who is included, who may be excluded, looked down on, denigrated, told that he/she is worthless when family gathers:

People Who Have Been Told That Their Gifts and Talents Don't Count: Unearthing Buried Stories of LGBT Family Members

I shared some of this story here a number of years back. Because I told the story again on Facebook today and a Facebook friend encouraged me to share it with wider circles, I'm going to tell it here again, with apologies if you read my previous posting in the same vein several years ago:

Unearthing Hidden LGBTQ Stories in Family History Research: The Mirror That Reflects Nothing Back

A warning before you dive in: this is one of those postings about one of my particular interests, tracking family history. And so it may not be of interest to all readers. It's also, however, about the challenge of unearthing buried stories about LGBT relatives, in particular, as we pore over historical records.

Catholic Scholars Ask About Silence of Liberal Catholics re: LGBTQ Issues as They Praise Amoris Laetitia, While Vatican Official Attacks LGBTQ Community

About a month ago, I summed up my response to so-called liberal or progressive Catholics who praise the recent papal document on the family, Amoris Laetitia, despite its ugly trajectory of combined silence and condemnation as it speaks of LGBTQ human beings, as follows: 

Two More Takes on Amoris Laetitia — Daniel Maguire and Carol Christ: "The Document Should Have Been Called The Joy of Heterosexual Love"

Two more takes on Amoris Laetitia that friends or readers of this blog have recommended to me: the first is by Catholic moral theologian Daniel Maguire at the Consortiumnews site:

A Question for "Liberal" Catholics Now Praising Amoris Laetitia: What Kind of Holiness Is Purchased at the Price of Making LGBTQ Lives Miserable?

Conferences (when they're good) become thinking spaces for me. At many thought-provoking, energizing meetings like the one we attended this weekend on embracing LGBTQ diversity in the black church, I find myself jotting notes in the margins of my program — notes about seemingly unrelated discussions in which I'm involved which, to my way of thinking, relate intently to the conversations I'm hearing at the conference I'm attending. 

Keeping the Conversation about Amoris Laetitia Real: "There Are Absolutely No Grounds for Considering Homosexual Unions to Be in Any Way Similar or Even Remotely Analogous to God’s Plan for Mar­riage and Family"

Father Francis X. Clooney looks at Pope Francis's statement in Amoris Laetitia (§251) that there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family, and confesses himself perplexed:

Keeping the Conversation about Amoris Laetitia Real: New Commentary by Mary Hunt, Jeannine Gramick, and Massimo Faggioli

Good morning! Are you as tired as I am of hearing about Amoris Laetitia? I know full well I have made myself tiresome talking about it to some folks connected to me on social media, who have entrée of a kind I will never have in Catholic institutional circles, though they're gay — and who do not want to hear that this papal exhortation betokens no good news to LGBTQ human beings. One of those gay friends, who has just come back from an audience with Pope Francis and who has always had entrée in the Vatican because her family is extremely wealthy, tried to shut me down on Facebook yesterday by telling me we all are broken, after all — a bullying tactic designed to shame me for calling on her institution (it's far more hers than mine) to live what it proclaims when it talks about mercy and justice.

Keeping the Conversation about Amoris Laetitia Real: "Everyone Uses and Throws Away, Takes and Breaks, Exploits and Squeezes to the Last Drop. Then, Goodbye"

I'm now reading Amoris Laetitia — slowly — and am taking some notes on it. Here's a passage from §39 that makes me stop and think. These statements are embedded in a section of the exhortation speaking about impediments to family life in contemporary culture, and how the church should respond to those. 

Father Thomas Reese on John Paul II As a Loving Grandfather: Whose Experience of the Church Counts, As Pope Francis's Exhortation on the Family Is Published?

Father Thomas Reese thinks John Paul II came across as "a loving but benighted grandfather." And as I read that baffling observation, I try to place myself inside the circle of experience of those Catholics for whom John Paul II appeared to be loving.

National Catholic Reporter Editorializes: "How Will We As a Church Live with Our Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Brothers and Sisters?"

Let the Church always be a place of mercy and hope, where everyone is welcomed, loved and forgiven.

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) June 16, 2013

National Catholic Reporter names Catholic couple Greg Bourke and Michael DeLeon of Louisville, lead plaintiffs in the Obergefell case, persons of the year. NCR writes, 

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."

In Holiday Season, Reminder That LGBT Folks Often Experience Exclusion and Isolation from Family: Derrick De Lise on How Homophobia Hurts

In this holiday season, I want to share with you a timely reminder from blogger Derrick De Lise, who publishes the journal Queer Voices and maintains a blog about Christian spirituality called The Inexorable Pilgrim. Yesterday, Derrick posted a valuable essay at Huffington Post reminding all of us that many LGBTQIA+ folks experience exclusion from their family circles at the very time of the year in which we're bombarded by images of happy families gathering around festive tables. 

On History and the Importance of Remembering: An American Family Story for You

I think that perhaps too many postings from me are a big bore. They bore me, if no one else in the world. With that warning, I have thought to share something with you from the previous two weeks in which I worked intensively on getting that book project underway — keeping in mind your many good suggestions to me about that project.

Ragged Questions After the Synod — Deafening Silence About How the Homosexuals Took Another One Upside the Head to Facilitate Pastoral Breakthrough for Everyone Else

A stray (but not really) thought as we pack for our drive back home in a few minutes: