Soul Making a Path through Shouting

Again, I'm borrowing here a posting from an ongoing discussion at the web cafe of National Catholic Reporter, where the thread "The Intrinsic Disorder Question Revisited (Again)" at http://ncrcafe.org/node/1337 gathers a group of us to talk about the churches and their response to the gay community.

The posting below follows through as well on my previous two Bilgrimage postings tracking what now seems a trend in Europe: the deliberate adoption of U.S.-style gay bashing as a political wedge tool, in nations where gay rights have far more legal protection than in the U.S. Something is going on here, and it needs to be monitored. As this kind of gay bashing begins to lose traction in the U.S., it's being deliberately provoked by "Christian" groups in gay-friendly countries in Europe.

Why, I wonder. And where is the funding coming from?

My posting to the NCR thread today follows:

"Dear Butterfly, I appreciate your response very much. I sometimes think that, by blogging about these issues, I'm committing the unpardonable sin of being humorless. I bore even myself, repeating the same mantra over and over!

So I tell myself to stop blogging, do something I enjoy doing (my rose bed really needs to be tidied for spring; haven't been to an art museum in aeons), and let the issues resolve themselves.

But then I read the news, and I feel I have no choice except to keep speaking out, tedious though I may be even to myself. The morning's news brings reports of assaults on the house of a gay couple in Northern Ireland, with death threats against the couple. One of the men is disabled. At the same time, a group calling itself Christian Congress for Traditional Values has put up huge signs in London claiming that the aim of gays is destruction of the "traditional family." The signs show a beaming young couple (white) with two children--as if the middle-class nuclear family is the end-all and be-all of the gospels and of what Jesus proclaimed. (The signs have been judged by the courts to be hate speech, by the way, and are to be taken down.)

Put the two stories together, and you have the nexus from which my concern to keep on shouting flows. When the church speaks hatefully about a stigmatized minority, when its teaching demeans and assaults that minority, when it lies about that minority, it becomes a vehicle for violence. And that's something the church ought never to be.

There is a link--and a very clear one--between what churches say about and do to LGBT people, and social violence against LGBT people. Creating linguistic structures of violence (e.g., calling gays intrinsically disordered) lays the foundations for overt expressions of violence, especially when the one fabricating the linguistic structures claims to speak in the name of God.

Fortunately, even as it seems there's a worldwide attempt to adopt American-style gay-bashing for political ends and to ratchet up the anti-gay agenda even in countries where this has not been a major issue, some ministers are now courageously speaking out. An interfaith group of ministers in Sydney calling themselves 100Revs has just issued a statement apologizing to the LGBT community for what the church persists in doing to us. The statement is on the group's website at http://100revs.blogspot.com/2008/02/100revs-statement.html. An excerpt:

'As ministers of various churches and denominations we recognise that the churches we belong to, and the church in general, have not been places of welcome for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people. Indeed the church has often been profoundly unloving toward the GLBT community. For these things we apologise, whatever the distinctive of our Christian position on human sexuality – to which we remain committed. We are deeply sorry and ask for the forgiveness of the GLBT community. We long that the church would be a place of welcome for all people and commit ourselves to pursuing this goal.'

It's noteworthy that this statement comes from Sydney, where Anglican bishop Peter Jensen has just announced he will not attend this year's Lambeth Conference as a protest against acceptance of openly gay ministers, and where Cardinal Pell, a close friend of Pope Benedict, has been less than supportive (to say the least) of gay/lesbian Catholics. Sydney has also seen a spike in violence against gays this year, with reports that the police have been very slow to investigate the problem or offer assistance to the gay community in combating the violence.

As I think about all these stories, I suppose what constantly puzzles me is the inability of some Christians to see that this affects all of us. We have to take a stand. Where people are being assaulted--simply because of who they are--we cannot stand by in silence. Not once we see. We cannot shrug our shoulders and pass by.

Seeing, hearing, understanding implicates us. And, of course, that's an uncomfortable place to be, and we would like to do all we can to distance ourselves from the voice that persists in telling us to keep our eyes and ears open.

I understand that tendency myself. Some of the most brutal experiences I have had in recent years, as a gay man, have been at the hands of two African-American women. I wish I could respond to those experiences by washing my hands of African Americans and of women. I wish I could simply conclude that I have been misled in seeing people of color and women as oppressed. I would like very much to shrug my shoulders and dig up my rose bed, visit the local art museum.

I can't do that, unfortunately. I have to distinguish between two individuals who, for whatever reason, seem not to have learned from their own considerable oppression that others can suffer, too, and a whole group of people--people of color and women--with whom I still must stand in solidarity. I have to do that because I cannot stop seeing the oppression of black people or of women, or hearing the voices that call out for my solidarity.

What puzzles me in the church is the ability of so many of us just to walk past and do nothing, to shut the church door and drown out that voice of the outsider that makes us uncomfortable as we are at our prayers.

Thank you, Butterfly, for prodding me (even if that wasn't your intent) to keep on flapping my wings...."

I'd like to give credit for my title to poet Cyrus Cassells, whose book Soul Make a Path Through Shouting should be on the list of any gay person interested in the interplay of spirituality and social activism.

The 2008 Compendium: Whys and Wherefores

Readers of the preceding compendium might think I’m stretching, finding an anti-gay agenda in numerous current initiatives of the Catholic church at its highest levels of leadership.

Yet there it is, a scarlet thread running through the heart of the chronicle, weaving together disparate “pastoral” statements and political actions of the church as 2008 gets underway to form one coherent narrative: a decidedly anti-gay one. Everywhere one looks, there is a concerted effort to turn back attempts to accord LGBT persons human rights.

The concern is certainly about more than gay marriage. Though the official teaching of the Catholic church decries violence against LGBT persons, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “every sign of unjust discrimination” towards gay/lesbian persons must be avoided, the actual record of the Catholic church—at its highest levels of pastoral leadership—has been deplorable for some time now, re: human rights for LGBT persons.

In the 1980s and 1990s, bishops in many places actively resisted the implementation of laws protecting LGBT persons from discrimination in areas such as employment and housing. At its top leadership levels, the Catholic church has resisted not merely gay unions or gay marriage: it has intentionally kicked against (often bitterly so) legislation of any sort designed to protect the human rights of LGBT persons. Money has flowed out of bishops’ coffers (which is to say, out of the pockets of the faithful) to movements opposing laws forbidding discrimination against LGBT persons. Bishops have sought to coerce Catholic political leaders to vote against legislation protecting gay/lesbian citizens from discrimination.

Still today, few Catholic institutions have policies protecting LGBT persons from discrimination. In many Catholic institutions, LGBT persons in fact still experience overt or subtle discrimination, including the possibility of being fired if they are open about their lives and relationships.

To anyone reading the preceding chronicle, the question that must be asked is the one my astute reader and friend, colkoch, raises in her comments about my 3 Feb. posting, Why now? Why has the Catholic church decided to up the ante re: gay rights at a time when almost every Catholic nation in Europe has accepted the anti-discrimination covenant of the European Union, and many Catholic countries outside the former Eastern bloc area—across Europe and in Latin America as well—have legalized gay unions or even sanctioned gay marriage?

What’s going on with the heightened hostility the Catholic church seeks to demonstrate, at its highest leadership levels, to LGBT persons and to gay rights at this particular movement in history?

It must first be noted that it’s no secret that, at its top levels, the Catholic church, has been at war with gay persons for some time now. Certainly many in the church would place the blame for this on the shoulders of LGBT people. For several decades, now, right-wing Catholic publications and websites have carried screaming headlines about ACT-UP members desecrating the Eucharist, about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence daring to receive the Eucharist while wearing drag, about the alleged dissoluteness, immorality, and wicked intentions of an organized gay conspiracy to undermine Christian civilization.

But to most LGBT people—and in particular, those of us who had hoped to receive an authentic pastoral response from our church—this rhetoric is not merely overblown, but deeply malicious. From where the church has placed us, things seem entirely different: we have been demonized by “pastoral leaders,” told to remain closeted, that we should not be surprised to find ourselves susceptible to violence if we claim our identity and stop living in shame, that we are disordered in our very nature, and that that we are simply unwelcome as we are within Catholic parishes and institutions.

From one standpoint, the 2008 Catholic anti-gay war is hardly a new story: it is another chapter in an ongoing story. For many of us who have followed that ongoing narrative carefully, it’s clearly rooted in the theological and political penchants of our current pope, Benedict XVI. Here are the main features of the plot, which will be well-known to many LGBT Catholics. Because they may perhaps be less familiar to many other Catholics, they deserve to be recounted by anyone attempting to unravel the text of homophobic hostility that currently seems to govern the official Catholic response to the gay community:

▪ 1 Oct. 1986: Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict), as head of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDC), issues a fateful document purporting to be about pastoral care of gay/lesbian Catholics. Because of the publication date, this “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,” has come to be known as Ratzinger’s “Hallowe’en Letter.” The CDC document decries violence against LGBT persons, but it simultaneously emphasizes a phrase that had first appeared in a 1975 CDC document, “Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics.”

Ratzinger’s 1986 document defines the “homosexual inclination” as “an intrinsic disorder.” It states, “Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.”

The “intrinsic disorder” language—which is new to the Catholic tradition as it examines the morality of homosexuality—has come to represent, for many LGBT Catholics and our allies, a gross abdication of pastoral leadership on the part of the church. As many theologians have noted, the phrase ups the ante re: the Catholic moral analysis of homosexuality.

Previously, a longstanding pastoral tradition well-rooted in classic Catholic theology had noted that one’s sexual orientation is morally neutral. The tradition speaks of homosexual acts, rather than persons, as disordered.

The introduction of the term “intrinsic disorder” has had fateful—and dismal—consequences for many Catholics wishing to retain some positive connection to the Catholic church. In speaking of gay/lesbian persons, rather than acts, as disordered, official Catholic teaching now draws a clear demarcation line between LGBT human beings and the church community as a whole.

In tagging one group of believers as, in their very nature, “intrinsically disordered”—a term not applied to any other group of believers—the church sets up a social mechanism that justifies the dehumanization of LGBT believers. This social mechanism has fueled a strong exclusionary impulse within contemporary Catholicism, which drives gay/lesbian believers out of the Christian community. With the “intrinsic disorder” phrase dominating its “pastoral approach” to gay/lesbian believers, the Catholic church has come to be seen as an ally of the most viciously homophobic movements within Christianity today—including the “religious right” in the United States.

▪ 1986-1990: Cardinal Ratzinger’s introduction of the “intrinsic disorder” distinction at the highest levels of Catholic teaching immediately results in acts of hostility on the part of many Catholic organizations against LGBT believers. It results in an increasing hardening of lines between the Catholic community and the gay community in many areas of the world.

Immediately following the publication of the 1986 document, the organization Dignity, which had been formed to create a safe pastoral space for gay/lesbian Catholics, is evicted by bishop after bishop from Catholic premises. Throughout 1986 and 1987, one Dignity chapter after another finds itself barred from meeting in Catholic churches or church halls in which it has, up to 1986, found welcome.

▪ 1997: Despite the increasingly belligerent attitude the Catholic church displays to gay/lesbian persons from 1986 forward under the leadership of Cardinal Ratzinger as CDC head, some U.S. bishops continue to seek ways to engage in positive pastoral outreach to gay/lesbian Catholics. In 1997, the U.S. Bishops Conference (USCCB) issues a pastoral document entitled “Always Our Children,” which encourages Catholic parents to accept their gay/lesbian children, and Catholic communities to affirm gay/lesbian members and refrain from discrimination against them. This pastoral document is noteworthy for avoiding the phrase “intrinsic disorder,” which gay/lesbian Catholics continue to identify as an assault on our human dignity.

▪ 1997: a revised edition of the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church is issued. The new catechism, to be used in the religious formation of all Catholics, adopts the term highlighted by Cardinal Ratzinger in 1986—intrinsic disorder. But even as it does so, the Catechism continues to deplore discrimination, stating: “The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition” (#2358).

▪ 1999: Despite the Catechism’s appeal to Catholics to refrain from discrimination, this appeal strikes many LGBT Catholics as nonsensical in an institution whose definition of gay/lesbian personhood relegates gay/lesbian persons to a sub-normal status, and in which active discrimination against LGBT persons continues unabated. Many LGBT Catholics by this point are simply giving up on the church; in some cases, high-profile gay/lesbian Catholics move to the Episcopalian or Anglican church, whose approach to gay/lesbian members seems more just and humane. In some places, when Dignity is expelled from Catholic premises, entire chapters of Dignity move to the Episcopalian church.

The sense that the church simply wishes to wash its hands of gay/lesbian members—particularly those who refuse to remain closeted and ashamed—grows sharper in the gay community throughout the final decade of the 20^th century. In 1999, Sister Jeanine Gramick and Father Bob Nugent, founders of a ministry called New Ways, which had continued to seek a positive pastoral space within the church for gay believers, are silenced. Many gay/lesbian Catholics shrug, noting that this is what we have come to expect from the church, with Cardinal Ratzinger heading the CDC.

▪ 19 April 2005: Cardinal Ratzinger is elected pope. For LGBT Catholics, this implies that his approach to LGBT persons, and his enshrining of the phrase “intrinsic disorder” in official Catholic teaching, will dominate the church’s approach to the “pastoral care” of gay/lesbian Catholics.

▪ 19 Sept. 2005: the media in the U.S. announce that they have received copies of a 12-page document from the Vatican calling for an apostolic visitation of the 229 Catholic seminaries in the U.S. Investigators are instructed to review seminaries for "evidence of homosexuality." This is viewed by many theologians and by the LGBT community as an attempt to suggest that the sexual abuse crisis—which has dominated news about the Catholic church worldwide since 2002—is due to the purported increase in numbers of gay seminarians and priests. LGBT Catholics and their allies are outraged by the overt scapegoating of gay priests for the abuse crisis, which has been going on for many years in the church, with priests abusing both male and female minors.

▪ 14 Nov. 2006: In conjunction with their annual meeting, the U.S. Catholic bishops issue a document entitled "Ministry to Persons with Homosexual Inclinations." The USCCB document uses the “intrinsic disorder” distinction, seeking to distinguish inclinations from person. The document states, “It is crucially important to understand that saying a person has a particular inclination that is disordered is not to say that the person as a whole is disordered. … Nevertheless, while the particular inclination to homosexual acts is disordered, the person retains his or her intrinsic human dignity and value.”

This statement is viewed by many theologians and most LGBT Catholics as excruciating parsing of the now commonly used “intrinsic disorder” phrase. The 2006 USCCB document employs tortuous logic to try to rehabilitate a phrase that, in its very intent, is an assault on the human dignity of those defined as intrinsically disordered. The USCCB document confirms the intent to preserve a status of second-class citizenship for gay/lesbian Catholics by stating, “In the context of parish life, however, general public self-disclosures are not helpful and should not be encouraged.”

This injunction to gay/lesbian Catholics to remain invisible in the heart of the Christian community echoes a statement in Cardinal Ratzinger’s 1986 letter that had already struck LGBT Catholics as ominous: “But the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase.”

The 1986 statement is widely viewed today by LGBT Catholics as a warning of what we are to expect, if we ask to be visible within Christian communities, and to claim personal dignity in the face of definitions of our personhood that regard us as uniquely disordered members of the body of Christ. Though the church professes to deplore violence against gay/lesbian persons, in its very definition of us and in how it treats us, it engages in violence—and at a very profound level.

And so back to the question: Why now? Why is the Catholic church, at its highest levels of leadership, ratcheting up anti-gay activity in 2008, when it has seemingly already successfully “managed” gay/lesbian Catholics, and when few self-affirming gay/lesbian persons even seek inclusion any longer in a community in which we have been made so conspicuously unwelcome? I’d like to suggest several brief reasons that the Catholic church is making anti-gay initiatives a central aspect of its political thrust in 2008:

▪ It’s about the political utility of LGBT persons, not about pastoral care. Throughout the final decades of the 20^th century, particularly in the U.S., gay persons have been very useful political footballs in a game that is not really about us at all. Up to the 1980s, the right wing in the U.S. explicitly and adroitly used race to create the political momentum to gain control of the nation.

As the 20^th century ended, it became less acceptable to be openly racist, and the divide-and-conquer tactics used by right-wing political operatives to create momentum for their movement shifted to the LGBT community. It is still useful to employ demonizing, scapegoating, fear-mongering, and hate-baiting tactics re: the gay community.

▪ It is becoming less acceptable, however, to engage in these tactics—even in the U.S. They have, by now, become far less acceptable in Europe, largely due to the human rights covenant governing the EU. It is interesting that, with acceptance of gay human rights a de facto accomplishment all across Europe and just as the politics of gay-bashing wanes in the U.S., it is picked up by the Vatican. What is going on here?

In the first place, the religious right is in disarray in the U.S. as the 2006 election approaches. That means that, for the first time in several decades, the U.S. bishops do not have a clear candidate to promote as “the” candidate for Catholic voters to elect. There is a growing sense (a covert one) of alarm in the circles of the religious right (and I place the Catholic church in this camp, in its levels of highest leadership) about its ability to control the political sphere. There is the need to float new wedge issues, or to try to retrieve the utility of ones whose utility has been waning.

▪ The fear of loss of control that is at the very heart of current attempts to revitalize anti-gay sentiment in some Catholic countries in Europe is clearly being fed by currents of American political and religious thought that are no longer so viable in the U.S. as they have been. When embattled, reactionary movements quite frequently try to replicate patterns that have worked in the past, but which may no longer work in the future. Since reaction is about resisting change, there is a hidebound determination to try control mechanisms that were useful in the past. There is little imagination, among reactionaries, about any other social possibilities: determination to hold the line at all costs reigns supreme.

▪ Finally, underlying the rather perfervid reaction of the Catholic church, at its highest levels of leadership, to the worldwide extension of LGBT rights as the 21^st century begins is the fear that, with a shift in the political climate in the U.S., there will be increasing scrutiny of the files of the Catholic church, in the U.S. and abroad, re: cases of clerical sexual abuse of minors. Everywhere, but particularly at its highest levels of leadership, the Catholic church is resisting such disclosure—such accountability and transparency. The leaders of the church do not want information to come out—re: how they handled abuse cases in the past, re: the sums of money spent to pay off complaints, about what they knew when, about how they were protected by governmental authorities and wealthy donors, and so on.

Nor do the highest leaders of the church want information disclosed about the fact that some of the most rabidly homophobic leaders in the Catholic church are themselves leading hidden gay lives....

In Sept. 2005, Pope Benedict was named as a defendant in an American lawsuit seeking to force disclosure of information about what the Vatican and dioceses around the world have known about the abuse crisis for years, and how they have handled the information available to them. When this suit was filed, the current American administration granted the pope immunity. A change in the political leadership of the U.S. could well change what happens in such legal actions in the future.

In the person of its chief dignitaries, the church wants to resist accountability and transparency at all costs. Hounding LGBT persons is a brilliant—if tragically unchristian and deeply unpastoral—attempt to divert attention from the real problems the church should be addressing. This is the church behaving as a political entity—and not a redemptive political entity—rather than as a pastoral one.

Compendium of Recent Catholic Anti-Gay Initiatives

The following chronicle captures significant events in what commentators are seeing as an unprecedented attempt of the Catholic church to influence government policies regarding LGBT persons as 2008 begins. The Vatican’s direct intervention in many of these instances represents a new development in how the Catholic church relates to the political sphere (at least from a 20^th-century perspective)—an attempt to control, rather than dialogue. At the very center of this renewed political activism on the part of the Catholic church is a persistent attempt to undermine initiatives to afford equal rights to gay and lesbian citizens of various nations.

I am offering this chronicle to assist anyone tracking these developments to see them as a single narrative, rather than disparate strands. This is a selective list. I am not even touching on some similar controversies or initiatives in the Catholic nations of the former Eastern bloc, where the church has recently become similarly belligerent.

This is a narrative that should concern LGBT persons and their allies everywhere, as well as anyone interested in safeguarding human rights and preventing violence.

30 Dec. 2007: The tenor for Vatican involvement in politics affecting the lives of LGBT people was set as 2007 ended. On 30 December, when Pope Benedict addressed the faithful in St. Peter’s Square for the noon Angelus on the feast of the Holy Family, he was simultaneously beamed to a large “pro-family” demonstration in Madrid organized by the Spanish bishops.

The demonstration, spearheaded by Cardinal Antonio María Rouco Varela of Madrid, was well-organized and carefully orchestrated. The European media reported that busloads were brought from all over Spain and Portugal. Reports on European websites noted that demonstrators also came from France, Germany, and Austria. Though the Madrid police reported the numbers of demonstrators at 150,000 to 200,000, several right-wing Catholic websites had the figure as high as 2 million.

Huge television screens were set up on which Benedict addressed the crowd in Spanish. Benedict told the crowd that Catholics must resolutely hold to the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman for life. At this comment, news reports say, the crowd roared approval. Rouco Varela informed the faithful gathered for this political rally that Spain's ordinance permitting gay marriage violates the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. Another speaker at the mass demonstration, Archbishop Agustin García-Gasco of Valencia, said that the current Spanish government’s policies re: family "effect the dissolution of democracy."

The Secretary of Spain's governing party, José Blanco, responded by describing the Madrid rally as an overt political action on the part of some Spanish Cardinals, designed to challenge the Socialist party in Spain's upcoming elections by signaling how "authentic" Catholics will cast their vote.

Blanco noted that the comments of the two Archbishops appealed to "false realities and data" (that is, they distorted the truth). He noted that, in addition to legalizing gay marriage, the current Spanish government has implemented a system of financial support for all couples who have babies. The facts, in other words, support the conclusion that this government which has accorded civil rights to gays is pro- rather than anti-family.

Blanco also zeroed in on Rouco Varela's astonishing claim that acceptance of gay marriage contradicts the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. Blanco asked Rouco Varela to corroborate the claim. To my knowledge, the Cardinal has not yet done so.

Another commentator, Gaspar Llamazares, Coordinator General of Spain's Izquierda Unida party, argued that the mass demonstration harmed the church, since it allowed the extreme conservative wing of the Spanish church to represent itself as the voice of Spanish Catholicism. Polls indicate that the large majority of Catholics in Spain favor gay marriage.

Following the rally, the Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, reiterated that gay marriage is supported by the "immense majority" of the Spanish people, adding that in Spain, everyone has rights. Following the Madrid demonstration, 150 grass-roots Catholic communities in Spain issued a statement accusing the bishops who orchestrated the event of ignoring the will of the vast majority of Spanish Catholics, who are strongly committed to human rights for all.

Both in the past year and recently, several Spanish bishops have sought to portray homosexuality as either pedophilia or mental illness. In 2007, Bishop Bernardo Álvarez of Tenerife equated homosexuality with pedophilia, a statement for which the Spanish Federation of Lesbians, Gays Transsexuals, and Bisexuals (FELGTB) has filed suit against Álvarez.

In January, 2008, Bishop Rafael Palmero of Orihuela-Alicante stated to the Valencia newspaper Levante, "Biology says that normally it's an illness. What happens is that in some case there might be a concrete situation that has another explanation and such, but normally no one wants to be a homosexual." Palermo added that "same sex marriage" is unnatural and wrong.

More information on these events is in postings I made on 3 Jan. and 10 Jan. to the National Catholic Reporter’s thread, “The Intrinsic Disorder Question Revisited (Again)” at http://ncrcafe.org/node/1337.

As the preceding account indicates, the Vatican and other senior Catholic officials appear to have made a deliberate decision, as the new year begins, to mount a strong attack on gay marriage (and gay rights in general). At its level of highest official leadership, the Catholic church seems intent on making the gay issue a central political-religious issue for this year.

1 Jan. 2008: On new year's day, Pope Benedict fulfilled a promise he made in mid-December, when he first issued the text of his new year's address, to make the so-called attack on the Christian model of the family the centerpiece of his new year's statement. In it, Benedict declares that "everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and woman ... constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace." Gay unions threaten world peace…. (again, for my take on this statement, see my 3 Jan. posting at NCR http://ncrcafe.org/node/1337).

7 Jan. 2008: As the Jesuits gathered in Rome to elect a new Father General, Cardinal Franc Rodé, head of the Vatican congregation that oversees religious communities, gave a homily at their opening Mass of the General Congregation. In the homily, he gave the Jesuits a dressing down that some commentators have found rather harsh: he spoke of his “sadness and anxiety” about aspects of Jesuit life today, and said, “I see a growing distancing from the hierarchy.” That these remarks had, in part, an anti-gay subtext became apparent in a letter Pope Benedict sent the Jesuits on 10 Jan.

10 Jan. 2008: Pope Benedict sent a message to the Jesuit General Congregation. The letter was made public on January 18. It calls on the Jesuits to renew their fidelity to the papacy. In particular, it addresses the Jesuits' position regarding certain "neuralgic points" in the dialogue between the church and contemporary culture. These include "the pastoral care of homosexual persons." (For my take, see a posting I made on 25 Jan. at NCR’s intrinsic disorder thread, http://ncrcafe.org/node/1337).

17 Jan. 2008: Italian Justice Minister Clemente Mastella resigned after he and his wife were implicated in a cash-for-favors scheme. According to the Italian newspaper La Stampa, before doing so, Mastella consulted with Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the Italian bishops' conference. It was foreseen that Mastella’s resignation would bring down the center-left coalition government of Romano Prodi. Previously, Mastella had stated that his party would continue to support the Prodi government. However, at the time of his resignation, Mastella reneged on this promise and denounced Prodi. La Stampa reported that the Vatican had leaned on Mastella to change his mind in order to bring down Prodi, stating, “Prodi’s government dared to challenge the ecclesiastical hierarchy for the second time and this time it has had its hands burned.” Among the most neuralgic issues in the dealings of the Italian government with the Vatican is gay marriage. Last year the publication The Trumpet noted that the Vatican had been seeking to force Prodi to toe its line when it came to same-sex unions.

20 Jan. 2008: another mass demonstration was organized at a Sunday Angelus gathering in Rome, this time to show solidarity with the Pope, who has been portrayed as embattled following protests preceding a lecture he was scheduled to give at Rome’s La Sapienza Univeristy. Following the 20 Jan. demonostration, on 23 Jan., Christoph Prantner wrote in the Standard (Vienna) that European politics were being “retheologized” through Vatican intervention. Prantner interpreted papal involvement in the political life of Spain and Italy as an attempt to stage "a politicized Reconquista."

In a 21 Jan. article, the German paper Die Welt characterized the 10 Jan. Angelus demonstration as the "largest demonstration of solidarity with the Papacy since the Middle Ages." The following day, John Hooper of the English paper The Guardian recounted how the “long arm of the Vatican” had been reaching into current Italian politics. (For more on these stories, see my postings at a thread of the National Catholic Reporter café, http://ncrcafe.org/node/1542, 17 Jan. and 25 Jan.)

22 Jan. 2008: Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, whom Clement Mastella had consulted before he resigned, bringing down the Prodi government, gave an interview to Osservatore Romano. In it, he mounted a head-on attack against the Prodi government and called for Catholics to enter the public square courageously and promote "non-negotiable values" there. The phrase “non-negotiable values” echoes a statement made by Pope Benedict on 13 March 2007, in which he says that Catholics must not vote for laws that contradict the Catholic position issues where “non-negotiable values” are at stake. The statement specifically draws attention to gay marriage as such an issue.

23 Jan. 2008: Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver published an article in the diocesan newspaper the Register. In it, he attacks a bill before the Colorado General Assembly which, as he described it, would restrict the ability of charities sponsored by religious groups to hire and fire personnel on the basis of religious beliefs. Specifically, if passed, the bill will bar charitable agencies that receive state funding from discriminating on the basis of religion in personnel policies.

Though media treatment of this story (other than articles by National Catholic Reporter’s John Allen) has ignored the fact, Chaput’s resistance to the bill is fueled by resistance to gay rights. In April 2006, the Boston diocese shut down the adoption services of its Catholic Charities program after it failed to win an exemption from a state law that required adoption agencies receiving public funding to provide services to same-sex couples. A majority of board members of this chapter of Catholic Charities resigned in protest against the church’s refusal to accord equal rights to gay couples.

Around the same time, the Archdiocese of San Francisco announced that it was re-thinking its involvement in a similar adoption program. In February 2007, the English government announced that adoption agencies refusing to serve gay couples would not receive government support, resulting in the loss of over $9 million annually to Catholic charities in England.

24 Jan. 2008: Archbishop Paul-Josef Cordes, President of the Vatican’s main charitable office “Cor Unum,” called for clearer provisions in the Code of Canon Law to underscore the duty and authority of bishops to defend the Catholic identity of church-run charitable agencies. This clearly reflects the Catholic Charities controversy discussed above.

On the same day, Romano Prodi resigned. As he did so, Cardinal José Saraiva Martins stated, “What has happened is a result of a lack of dialogue with Catholics, which has penalized Catholic values in particular. Without this dialogue, the country cannot go forward.”

28 Jan 2008: The homophobic subtext of the Vatican attack on the Italian government became explicit when the news media noted that Senator Stefano Cusumano of the Christian Democratic Udeur Party, to which Clemente Mastella belongs, had been spat upon in the Italian Parliament and called a “faggot,” “a dirty queen,” and a “traitor” after he broke ranks with his small Catholic-oriented party and announced he would vote to defend Italian Premier Romano Prodi against a resolution aimed at bringing down his center-left government. (For more on the story, see my 1 Feb. comments on NCR’s thread at http://ncrcafe.org/node/1337).

Jan. 30: the Spanish Bishops’ Conference announced that Spanish voters should not back parties that support gay marriage or other social reforms on which the church frowns. Spain will go to the polls in March—an upcoming event that clearly has motivated much of the church’s attempt to put pressure on the existing government, which has permitted gay marriage.

2 Feb. 2008: Cardinal Franc Rodé published his 7 Jan. remarks critical of the Jesuits in L’Avvenire, reiterating his concerns that the Jesuits display fidelity to the Vatican.

On the same day, the Spanish ambassador to the Holy See, Francisco Vazquez, met with a Vatican official to express "perplexity and surprise" over the 1 Feb. Spanish bishops’ statement. In announcing this in Cordoba, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said that the church hierarchy in Spain is reverting to a "fundamentalist and neo-conservative" position, and that the church does not represent a majority of Spanish Catholics. Moratinos accused the bishops of "using terrorism politically to divide all Spaniards."

The Sounds of Silence

“I have never heard a sermon that offered wisdom as to how a gay man should live his life in a faithful Christian manner. All I have heard is silence, or when there was something other than silence, the words have been condemning" ~ Rev. Paul Capetz.

Presbyterian News Service for Jan. 28 carries an interesting article by Duane Sweep, entitled "Twin Cities' Presbytery Restores Capetz' Ordination (www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2008/08063.htm).

The story concerns a Presbyterian (PC USA) minister Paul Capetz, who renounced his ordination in 2000 after the PC USA added to its Book of Discipline a 1997 statement requiring ordained ministers to practice “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and woman or chastity in singleness.”

As many commentators noted at the time the policy was implemented, it was primarily aimed at lesbian and gay ministers living with partners--that is, lesbian-gay ministers who potentially might reveal their sexual orientation to the public, rather than living silent, closeted lives. Commentators in the Presbyterian church and other churches that have adopted similar policies note that they tend to be used almost exclusively to weed out openly gay-lesbian ministers. Straight (or straight-identifying) ministers who are unmarried are not normally subjected to such stringent scrutiny re: their "celibacy" as are lesbian-gay ones.

Capetz recently decided to ask for reinstatement to ordination, on the ground that the implied "vow of celibacy" that the PC USA requires of non-married clergy represents a theology of "works righteousness" antithetical to Reformed theology. His appeal was upheld on Jan. 26 by the presbytery of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

What strikes me in Capetz's testimony to the presbytery, as reported in the article cited above, is the pronounced theme of calling and witness running through it. Capetz reports that it was the church which, from childhood forward, nurtured his life of faith. It was within the church that, as a young man, he discovered a strong sense of vocation, a calling to follow in Jesus's footsteps and minister to his flock.

And it was the same church--the church that had nurtured him and provided a context within which he heard the calling to ministry--that then attacked him when he sought to integrate the experience of being gay with his vocation. It was that church that told him to live in silence about his very personhood, or incur penalties.

It is out of this painful exclusion that Capetz addresses his experience (and that of other openly gay-lesbian believers) in the church: either silence or condemnation; either the injunction (tacit or spoken) to remain hidden, defined the shameful member of the family who is never spoken of, or direct assaults on his personhood, from the very community that nurtured his faith and vocation.

Capetz's testimony strikes me powerfully, because his story could be mine. It is also the story of countless other LGBT members of Christian communities around the world, whose entire experience of grace and vocation is framed by our natures, by who we are, by what we have experienced as LGBT children of God. We experience the divine as LGBT persons. We cannot experience God in any other way. To ask us to deny our natures or pretend to be who we are not is to ask us to forfeit the experience of a God who comes to each person just as that person is....We experience God through the mediating structures of our own personhood, of our personalities, predispositions, our unique way of being in the world.

The ultimate cruelty of the churches' assault on us as LGBT persons--specifically and precisely because we are LGBT--is the churches' denial that we lead graced lives. In telling us that our nature is malformed, or that our love is inauthentic, the churches tell us that we have no witness of grace to offer the Christian community.

Yet the powerful testimony of LGBT Christians everywhere--there is a veritable cloud of witnesses--repudiates the validity of the church's judgment of us. Not only can we live lives of grace, vocational lives within the Christian community, we do live such lives.

To their shame, the churches are unable to recognize this. The loss is surely the churches' loss. In behaving so savagely, by excluding LGBT members who refuse to live in quiet shame, not only do churches undercut their claims to be church: the family of God in which everyone is welcome. In behaving thus, the churches also diminish the significance of their many ministries to heal, make whole, right the wrongs of society.

The churches cannot stand to claim for love, inclusion, healing, and justice, when they conspicuously deny those ideals by their shameful treatment of their gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered members.

Silence is never an adequate response to persons in need of love, affirmation, and healing. The Jewish and Christian scriptures show prophets and holy people, as well as Jesus, consistently reaching out to anyone in need, to speak words of healing and consolation. God is forever speaking....

A church that employs silence as a way of avoiding speaking words of healing and blessing to one group of human beings can hardly speak effective words of healing and blessing to others. Silence is an indefensible response on the part of churches to anyone in need.

Between silence and condemnation: this is not a place in which human beings can live and thrive.

The Churches and Gay Folks: Ignorance or Malice?

A church ally we in the LGBT community who still search for spiritual foundations should celebrate is Peter J. Gomes. I saw him recently in the documentary "For the Bible Tells Me So," and was taken with his calm wisdom and pastoral leadership. In a presidential campaign in which questions of gender and race loom large, and in which there have been important discussions of the sometime inability of both the women's movement and the African-American community to form solidarity with the gay community, Gomes's voice is important.

The following are excerpts from his new book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2007):

"The contemporary fear gripping America appears to be a fear of the normalization of homosexuality. What a strange pathology this is--fear that the sexual identity and practices of a minority will somehow taint the identity and practices of the majority....Gay marriage is seen to threaten heterosexual marriage to such an extent that constitutional amendments must be designed to prevent it, although no one seems prepared to propose similar legislation to prohibit divorce, which is a far greater threat to marriage and the family, and on which subject Jesus himself had distinct views. On homosexuality, he had nothing to say. This irrational fear of the sexual other is all the more dangerous because it conceals itself within the sanctions of religion. Homophobia is the most current example of how good people can end up doing and beliving bad things" (106; emphasis added).

"If there remains one area in which our parochial obduracy continues to obtain, however, it is in the church's treatment of its homosexual brothers and sisters; if there is an area in which we are to be weighed and found wanting, this is it. It is not out of ignorance alone that we behave as we do toward sexual minorities; it is out of ignorance, fear, and in certain cases, malice. None of it is excusable: private judgment on sexual matters does not excuse our unwillingness to include in full participation in the household of faith those who engage in sex differently. Two generations of biblical scholarship have shown that the scriptures cannot be used as a basis for our discrimination on the subject of homosexuality, so why are our churches as divided on this subject today as they were a generation ago on the subject of women, or a century ago on the subject of slavery?...

Thuis I have been disappointed, to say the least, to find that the Bible becomes the first refuge of those who are unwilling to reconsider their extrabiblical prejudices against including homosexuals in the full life and ministry of the church. I had hoped that, as has happened with women and racial minorities, our predominantly Christian culture would recognize that God's children, the homosexuals in our midst, cry out for our compassion and acceptance. In this decade, alas, exactly the opposite has happened. Positions have hardened and homosexuals have been demonized, condemned to a 'lifestyle' rather than invited to a life in the household of faith. It amazes me that any thoughtful homosexuals would continue to want any part of a community, religious or otherwise, that in the name of God has behaved toward them with such contempt. ...

People outside the Christian community wonder what all the fuss is about, many within the Christian community are discouraged by militant homophobia, and too many in the Christian community see homosexuality as the only available proxy to be fought in the pervasive culture wars. With so much going wrong in the world, one might think that we would have more important things with which to concern ourselves" (200-201; emphasis added).

"I once preached a sermon on why God should love us if we did not love what God loves, in which Iargued that by the example of Jesus and the words of the prophets, God loves the marginalized, the outcast, and the questionable in society--the very people whom we, as a rule, keep out of our churches and out of positions of leadership. It is fashionable to help the poor but not to empower them, and until recently, for many Christians it was acceptable to confine the spiritual gifts of women to a lessor order of magnitude within the church. Today it remains acceptable among far too many Christians to regard homosexuals as beyond the pale of the church unless, while remaining homosexual, they cease to behave as such. For certain Anglican prelates, including the archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, to argue that they are defending the faith by excluding the homosexual faithful on biblical grounds represents a degree of hubris, ignorance, and noncharity that baffles the mind" (242).

Do Gays Leave the Church? Or Vice Versa?

Again, this posting is part of an ongoing dialogue on a thread at National Catholic Reporter's blog site, the NCR Cafe. The thread deals with the Catholic church's approach to LGBT persons, and is entitled "The Intrinsic Disorder Revisited (Again)." For anyone reading these postings from the NCR cafe on the Bilgrimage blog, it might be helpful to look at the NCR site to see the context of my remarks: http://ncrcafe.org/node/1337. If nothing else, Bilgrimage will document, for anyone interested, the attempt of one member of the gay community as the 21st century begins to open a dialogic space in the churches for honest, redemptive discussion of the impact of church teaching on the real lives of gay folks. Here's my NCR posting:

"Marie, you've addressed Dennis, and I don't want to interrupt. But your post also addresses issues I've raised and names me, so I hope my response won't be intrusive.

I think I glimpse your point--well, perhaps. If I'm missing your point, please tell me. If it's a question of calling on GLBT believers to interact with the church and expect good shepherding, it's a point well-taken.

Still, there are some sound reasons, I believe, that a large number of gay (I will use the term inclusively here) Christians shun the churches. It's because we feel shunned ourselves. Shunning makes it psychologically difficult, if not impossible, to interact with the institution doing the shunning.

The experience of gay Christians in the U.S. varies, of course, depending on one's geographical locale. In large urban areas, especially on the two coasts, many gay Catholics can find a variety of liturgical experiences, parishes, and ministries that allow one to be unapologetically gay and continue to have some connection to the church. That is, if one wants this, when the institution itself teaches at its highest level that one's very nature is intrinsically disordered....

The situation in the heartland (where I live) is, of course, different. There, especially in rural parishes, many Catholics can imagine they have never even met or interacted with a gay person. This imagination reflects the reality of many gay lives in the heartland: many of us cannot safely disclose our identity, and church is one of the least safe places to do so.

I could say a lot more about this, but I might wander from my main point if I do so. To try to say what I would like to say as briefly as possible, I'll tell a quick story. I know a good Catholic family living in the Midwest, in which ten siblings of a family of twelve married, producing 72 children. This is a family without strong anti-gay bias in the older generation. Talk to the ten older folks with the 72 children, and they'll say that they don't believe they ever met gay folks growing up. If they do so today, they do not feel inclined to judge them. Their Catholic faith teaches them not to be inhospitable, and it teaches them that judgment belongs only to the Lord.

I know this family well, and I know that of the 72 members of the next generation, a certain percentage are gay. Several of these are out of the closet and at peace with their identity--though, in each case, the decision to come out has placed them at odds with the church. There is also, in their generation, increasing polarization over the issue of gay folks, and some of their siblings and cousins have chosen fundamentalisms, both Catholic and otherwise, which target the gay siblings/cousins.

Point of parable: I suspect that even in the good Catholic parishes and families of the heartland, there has always been an abundance of gay folks. In previous generations, many of these may have gone into religious life or the priesthood, perhaps without having any notion of their orientation. The tenor of Catholic life was not disrupted in any way by the open presence of gay folks, and many Catholics in this region can still, today, assume they do not know any gay folks.

You ask, 'How can we fault the Church for not meeting the spiritual needs of homosexuals when homosexuals do not present themselves at the churches at all or if they come expecting confrontation?' In the kind of parishes I'm describing, here's what often happens when we try your strategy.

First, we find that if we expect to be visible, we create controversy. For many of us, that alone is a psychological barrier. I'd like very much to go to church and simply pray and participate--period. But with a partner whom I love and will not deny, with whom I share a relationship that God has richly blessed, a graced relationship I'd like to celebrate.

I do not want to go to church and be a gay poster statement. I do not want to make a scene. I simply want to worship along with the liturgical community, feel a part of the family of Christ, pray and bring the resources of liturgical involvement into my daily life. But I want to remain myself as I worship, since who else can worship for me? Certainly not the pretend-straight persona the church asks me to don as a costume when I walk through the church door?

For that matter, I would much prefer being included in a 'regular' parish as opposed to an exclusively gay one. To me, though I understand why some folks go that direction, there's a ghettoization about being within a gay worshiping community. I cherish the reminder of 'ordinary' parish life that we're all in it together: old, young, sick, well, rich, poor, black, white, male, female, gay, straight.

The initial barrier for many gay Catholics who seek a liturgical community, then, is the question of disclosure/concealment. For gay Catholics who are honest about their identity in their daily lives, concealment in the parish is not an option. For those who are still hidden, being hidden in church life can add to the toxic shame one can already feel deeply, as a closeted person. Going to church can rub salt in wounds that are already raw....

For those who are out, there can be a gamut of experiences in church life. I recently read a blog account of a gay couple who went to the childhood parish of one of the partners in Pennsylvania this past Christmas. There, they endured a sermon in which the pastor fomented against gay rights and gay unions, and the leaflet displays at the back of the church were full of rabidly anti-gay literature. Under such circumstances, church can be a direct assault on the core of one's humanity.

I have heard of parishes in the heartland in which some homophobic parishioners have succeeded in having the pastor deny communion to openly gay couples. On Pentecost Sunday, gay or gay-affirming Catholics in some heartland parishes have had fellow Catholics threaten them if they approached the communion rail, or try to prevent them from going to communion wearing rainbow sashes. The media have reported on this.

I go to church only sporadically now. My own experience has included going to church some Sundays to hear rocking and rolling anti-gay homilies, including one not too many months back that pinned the blame for the abuse crisis in the church on gays. I have heard reports from friends and relatives of similar homilies in parishes in my area; some of these folks, who are not gay, have walked out in disgust when those homilies are preached, because they have gay family members and friends whom they cherish and will not see abused.

I'm not sure if this is a turn-the-other-cheek situation, frankly. Of course, one can and must forgive such malice. One can and must turn the other cheek. But what we're talking about is not simply a kind of ignorant doltishness that unintentionally runs roughshod over the feelings and rights of others. As Peter Gomes's recent book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus notes, we're talking about actual, intentional malice. This abuse of Christian faith and values needs not merely to be forgiven. It needs to be resisted, critiqued, weeded from church life.

I don't think one is compelled to submit oneself on a routine basis to malicious treatment aimed at demolishing one's very sense of self worth. Few folks have the psychological stamina to stand up to such treatment week after week, day after day--especially when it's coming from an institution that claims to represent a God of love and welcome for all.

Finally, there's the question of a kind of uncritiqued heterosexism that is simply the air we breathe, in Catholic parishes. In my experiences of going to liturgy in recent years, I never hear family described, prayed about, spoken of, in any way that does not implicitly assume all families consist of a husband and wife, married for life, with each assuming his/her proper role. This in the face of the sociological reality that not only do parishes include gay parishioners, but they also include divorced parishioners who may or may not be remarried, single folks who may never wish to marry, blended families, and so on.

We still talk about family as if we live in the 1950s. And this is very oppressive for many of us, gay and straight alike.

(As an aside, not sure what you're getting at with the Leviticus holiness code quotation above, unless you mean to say that the Christian experience abrogates the law?)"

When You Go on a Pilgrimage....

"Most pilgrims don't know why they're walking....Over the centuries the material trappings [of pilgrimages] have changed, but the concept of paring life down to its basic form has remained. When you go on pilgrimage, you put yourself on the margins of society. You escape its rules, but by the same token you put yourself at the mercy of a rather lawless frontier" (Jane Christmas, What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim [Vancouver: Greystone, 2007], 41).

For me, starting to journal in blog form definitely is pilgrimage. Same itchy uncertainty one has in setting forth on a journey into the unknown, with a horizon of hope in the distance. And when journaling turns into blogging, there's the added sense of self-exposure, with all the risks attendant on disclosing oneself to others.

Journaling is old hat to me. I've done it since I was in high school. When I review my journals over the 40 years that I've been keeping them, I'm amazed at the constancy of the preoccupations in them: God; how to talk about God in a world full of pain; the interface of religion and culture/politics; family and shifting definitions of family; how to claim identity, when aspects of one's identity seem shameful or tarnished (I'm both Southern and gay); dreams.

When I'm the only audience for my journal's soul-searching (well, when I and that unrelenting observer self who lives in the depths of the soul), I have a certain assurance about what it means to journal. The pilgrimage of conventional journaling at least follows a well-trodden road.

But blogging as a way of journaling? Perhaps that's as insane as setting out into the wildnerness on pilgrimage, putting oneself on the margins of society with a group of fellow travelers searching together for a goal that seems totally opaque to others.

Who's the audience for a journal-cum-blog? It seems extraordinarily solipsistic to think that anyone would want to read one's private meanderings on a regular basis.

What motivates me to want to try at least to share is twofold. First, there's the hope (a constant one running through my whole life journey) of finding fellow pilgrims, others moved by dreams, goals, and horizons similar to the ones that draw me forward.

And second, there's the increasing sense, as one moves through midlife, that it's important to leave something behind. To say something that counts. As Audre Lorde faced the terminal cancer that eventually took her life, she wrote, "I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and to share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigating pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk through the rain."

Yes. I understand that sense, the need to find transformative truth (for myself, for others) and to speak it, even when I pay a cost for doing so. To share it.

One of the reasons I've created links for this blog, to sites of fellow pilgrims as well as to news sites I visit frequently, is to point others to places in which I find truth that is not ordinarily discussed, printed, and shared. Many of the links are to sites that the mainstream media would quickly identify as "gay" sites.

I resist labeling them with that label, because in my view, though they are definitely gay information sites and are proud to claim the label, they are also sites to hear overlooked truths that need to find their way into the "mainstream." They are sites that insist on talking about what we don't want to talk about, but need to talk about, if we're to be a whole and humane society. They insist on delving into truth that promises social transformation and social healing, if it can be incorporated into our social (and ecclesial) structures.

To find that kind of truth, we--I--have to go on pilgrimage, away from safe and secure places, to places where such truth resides, even if it's in rocky pockets of hidden-away cliffs or at the bottom of the sea.