What We Are Now Living Through Creates a Serious Crisis of Religious Faith

In the video above, discussing the death of 16-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez in a detention center for immigrants this past May, Mika Brzezinski states that Nancy Pelosi is filling a leadership void and a moral void in this country. Joe Scarborough then states that evangelicals used to fill this moral void and no longer do so:

Newman Canonized, and Talk of His Love for Ambrose St. John Rocks the World of Macho-Heterosexist Clerics: My Thoughts

1/ It has long been a tactic of homophobes to claim that one cannot identify people in the past as gay when they did not identify themselves that way, even when they spoke or wrote about same-sex relationships in their own lives. This tactic wants to invisibilize gay people.

— 𝕎𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕒𝕞 𝔻. 𝕃𝕚𝕟𝕕𝕤𝕖𝕪 🌈 (@wdlindsy) October 14, 2019

Indianapolis Archbishop Claims Firing of Gay Employees Necessary to Address "Public Situations": My Response

Masha Gessen, "Coming Out, and Rising Up, in the Fifty Years After Stonewall," on the Supreme Court ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986)

Associated Press, "Indiana archbishop defends firing of teacher in gay marriage": 

Archbishop Charles Thompson said during a news conference that he didn't seek out information about the marriages involving the teachers but had to respond to what he called a "public situation" of Catholic school employees not following church doctrine.

John Gehring on Why Catholic Bishops Need a Year of Abstinence on Preaching about Sexuality

John Gehring, "Why Catholic bishops need a year of abstinence on preaching about sexuality":

"Everything in This Spreading Crisis Revolves Around Structural Mendacity"; "Poland's Most Senior Nun Has Been Banned from Further Media Contact": Talking Abuse

Poland's most senior nun has been banned from further media contact after condemning the sexual abuse of religious sisters by Catholic priests in her country https://t.co/Jrf8GRhDFi

— Pope news (@Pope_news) February 19, 2019

 

Talking abuse, Catholic context and Southern Baptist context: good things I've been reading and want to share with you:

McCarrick Defrocked, Abuse Summit Convening, and NY Times Lets Gay Priests Speak: My Twitter Commentary

For years, Roman Catholic Church leaders have driven gay congregants away in shame. And yet, thousands of ministers are gay men.

Two dozen gay priests have shared with us the stories of their lives in the Catholic closet. https://t.co/BN0Dy6Zn0i

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 17, 2019

Like the man in the White House, I've been tweeting this morning — but what preoccupies my attention is perhaps quite different from what preoccupies his. Here's a selection of tweets from this morning that, to my way of thinking, tell a certain story when they're read together.

"All" Francis Is Doing Is Calling Gay Priests to Keep Vows of Celibacy: A Rebuttal

People say Pope Francis' maliciously silly comments about gay priests are about underscoring that gay priests vowed to celibacy shouldn't be sexually active.

Fine. Priests both straight and gay who take vows of celibacy should not be sexually active, period. /1

— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) December 3, 2018

I Have a Dream: As Pope Francis Announces that Gay Men Shouldn't Enter Priesthood, as Advent Begins — "Leave the LGBTQ Community the Hell Alone"

This is a meditation for the first Sunday of Advent. It has specific reference to what Pope Francis said (or is said to have said: let the Catholic games begin!) in a book released in Italy yesterday, which is being represented widely in headlines throughout the mainstream media like this one today from The Guardian in London: "Gay people should not join Catholic clergy, Pope Francis says." Given that we know that there already are gay men in the Catholic priesthood and hierarchy — galore — this statement will rightly strike people with functioning consciences and access to much information at all as downright silly. As malicious….

"Boy Erased" and the Destructive Effects of So-Called "Conversion" Therapy: Commentary on the Film

American Psychiatric Association, "APA Reiterates Strong Opposition to Conversion Therapy":

National Catholic Reporter Addresses Wave of Catholic Hate Against Queer Community: My Response — Listening Means Listening

The hatred is breathtaking. Online and in person. I've been a Jesuit 30 years and it was only this year that I've had people (literally) screaming at me, poking their fingers into my chest, and calling me "heretic," "apostate," "false priest," "pansy" "faggot" and "sodomite." https://t.co/SAZzc9kuXM

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) November 2, 2018

For my starting point today, as I direct you to two statements at National Catholic Reporter yesterday decrying the wave of homophobic hate raging through sectors of the U.S. Catholic church now, I want to talk about the media and listening. To be specific: I want to talk about the mainstream media (including the Catholic mainstream media) and listening — or not — to members of marginalized minority communities.

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):

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:

Just Me, Mouthing Off About Crux and America and Large Investment of U.S. Catholic Intellectual Elites in Upholding Heterosexual Male Entitlement

I'm just an old poofter and what I have to say doesn't matter to anyone at all, but Jesum Pete: 

Kavanaugh Hearing and Catholic Abuse: Overlapping Narratives — Same Catholics Who Support Viganò's Allegations Dismiss Kavanaugh's Accusers

Today I'm thinking of how many students, over the course of my teaching career, have recoiled, outraged at the thought that a woman's testimony had historically and biblically been deemed unreliable unless corroborated by a man's.

— Natalia Imperatori (@nimperatori) September 27, 2018

Crux on Cardinal McCarrick's "Sexually Deviant Behavior": U.S. Catholic Church Continues to Be Unsafe for LGBTQ People

I went to bed last night more than a little troubled by something Crux reporter Christopher White states in his report on a presentation John Carr has just given at Georgetown's Initiative for Catholic Social Thought and Public Life. The presentation is entitled "Confronting a Moral Catastrophe: Lay Leadership, Catholic Social Teaching, and the Sexual Abuse Crisis." In his lecture, Carr, who was previously Director of the U.S. Catholic Bishops' Department on Justice, Peace and Human Development, and who has been a friend of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, revealed that he had been sexually abused by priests as a minor seminarian. John Carr is a married Catholic layman with children.

More on the Jesuit Elite Boys' Club from Which Kavanaugh and Judge Emerged: Need to Rethink Jesuit Claims re: Inculcating Healthy Masculinity in Students?

1) There is a serious problem in American Catholic conversations that is glaringly obvious in the discussion of Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, and their "man for others" Jesuit education at Georgetown Prep.

— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) September 25, 2018

Emily Witt on the (Jesuit Elite) Boys' Club That Protects Kavanaugh: Need to Rethink Jesuit Claims re: Inculcating Healthy Masculinity in Students?

Mark Judge's Page, Georgetown Prep Yearbook The Cupola, 1983

Read the following statement by Emily Witt side by side with my posting yesterday, which suggested that there may be something more than a little flawed about the magical-mystical approach to militaristic masculinity — "We're men for others, a band of brothers!" — fostered by all-male Jesuit prep schools, which have long been breeding grounds for elite males who will step from their educational years into prestigious jobs tailor-made for men like themselves by other men like themselves.

Recent Discussion of Brett Kavanaugh's Jesuit Prep-School "Man for Others" Training: Ambiguity of Jesuit "Band of Brothers" Ethos

John Gehring, "Improper Formation? Kavanaugh & the Prep-School Culture": 

Right-Wing Christian Support for Kavanaugh & Dismissal of Male Violence Towards Women: Fight to Keep Patria Potestas as Foundation of "Christian" Culture

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

David Badash, "'Not Relevant': Franklin Graham Says Alleged Kavanaugh Assault Just Something 'He Did as a Teenager'":

What Do Discussions of the Abuse Crisis in the Catholic Church Have to Do with the Kavanaugh Hearing? A Lot

Ellen interviews Shelly Fitzgerald, who is threatened with firing by Roncalli Catholic High in Indianapolis for her same-sex marriage.

As I said yesterday, how the abuse situation in the Catholic church is discussed — with an obsessive focus on homosexuality, with little attention at all to the overwhelmingly dominant social (and ecclesial) problem of male abuse of vulnerable women — is not in the least disconnected from the conversations now going on about Brett Kavanaugh as a potential Supreme. Here are some statements that, to my mind, need to be read side by side, if we're going to gain a glimpse of the bigger picture facing us in these discussions: