“After a year of dialogue and prayer…”
There are lots of people out there who ask the man
in the sky for answers to puzzling questions and believe somehow in unearthly
signs. And in a God who steps in and
makes things happen, makes you win the lottery, the football game, the girl of
your dreams. Or who becomes the voice in
your head that tells you what decision you should take.
I’ve been watching several religious groups like the
Methodists and the Episcopalians lately collectively praying over the decision whether or
not to allow their members to marry persons of the same sex. In the end they do or they don’t. We don't know, of course, whether God steps in and controls the vote. It's a matter of faith that he gives you the answer you need to have and not just the one you want to hear. You can't help but notice that he works to make some people go one way one day
and those same people go another way another day, and maybe he gets confused by all the conflicting prayers from people seeking confirmation that they are right in what they're asking for. I don’t know the mind of God, so I can’t
explain how he responds to prayerful questions, when he answers “not yet” and
when he answers “it’s time.” I have
noticed, though, whether it’s God speaking or simply human societies
approaching an ever increasing appreciation of human rights on their own, that
the tendency is toward greater and greater personal freedoms.
Exodus International, an organization put together to “bring
gay people to God” is no more. They
have, “after a year of dialogue and prayer” now disbanded.
Who am I to say it wasn’t God quietly whispering in their
ears, “It’s time!” I should perhaps be
more generous. But to my eyes it looks
like it was a whole lot less a concern of God’s than something the Germans call
“the spirit of the times.” The
Zeitgeist.
The spirit, divine or otherwise, has spoken. It’s time to give up the notion there is
something “inherently disordered,” as the Catholic Church puts it, about having
a sexuality which directs you toward a person or people of the same sex, or both sexes to a greater or lesser degree. People are increasingly willing to
acknowledge that your sexual nature is something you discover as you grow and
go out into the world and encounter people who inspire strong feelings in you –
fear, loathing, admiration, respect, lust.
You name it, the feelings will have a voice of their own.
We can argue till the cows come home whether it was God who
spoke to the Mormon president and told him it was time to stop polygamy as a
sacred duty – just at the time when Utah wanted to become a state – or whether
it was the zeitgeist. And again when the
larger American society had come to see that racism was incompatible with
democracy, God/the zeitgeist told the Mormon leader it was time to change the
policy about accepting blacks into the church.
The Catholic Church likes to speak of “eternal truths” –
ideas that don’t change – and scatters sand in your eyes and makes you think they
have never changed. They have changed no
less than the Mormons. It’s just that
the Mormons, as Americans, do it when it’s practical, and relatively quickly
compared to Mother Church with their medieval sense of time. It’s like the difference between turning a
sailboat and an aircraft carrier in the water.
The point is one can turn an aircraft carrier. One simply has to want to make it
happen. The Catholic Church can do what
Exodus International did and admit that their hounding of gay people is an idea
which belongs in the past. No longer
applies. No longer makes sense.
And don’t be surprised, when the change is finally made, that
they discover the old ideas begin to look no smarter than the condemning of
Galileo for pushing an idea that was contradicted by the bible. How could I ever have believed that Jews
drank the blood of Christian babies? How
could I ever have believed that Africans had no moral reasoning power? How could I ever have believed it made sense
to put eight-year-olds in factories eight hours a day? We all live and learn.
The time has come to take a real close look at the Roman
Catholic idea that one should address sexuality as a force to be shut down, and
all that implies. It’s time to recognize
the harm the church continues to do in the world.
If you’ve never had a sexual encounter that thrilled you to
the core of your being, this may not speak to you. If you have, though, you will know what I am
talking about. Sexuality is not of the
same order of things as a talent for music or a curiosity about plants and
animals. Like talents and aptitudes,
sexuality reveals itself over time, but it is far closer to the center of our
being. If allowed to grow and flourish
it becomes indistinguishable from the essence of life. It is the thing around which one builds a way
of relating, not just to sex partners but the entire world of men and
women. A man or woman “bien dans sa
peau” (sitting well in his/her own skin) is comfortable with their body, uses
it enthusiastically, and comes away from sexual encounters with a feeling that
all’s right with the world.
There is a famous Christopher Isherwood story about entering
England with his German lover back in the days of killer homophobia. He sees in the eyes of the immigration
officer that he is in trouble. Nobody is
more dangerous to gay people than another gay person who has chosen to
sublimate his sexuality. He projects
that need to choke those feelings till they die and takes out on others the
loathing he feels for himself. When an
anti-gay preacher turns out to enjoy gay sex on the side, it comes as no
surprise.
Gay literature is filled with coming-out stories, many of
which involve coming out to oneself.
Armisted Maupin writes of a time at the age of thirty-five or so when he
finds himself necking at the back of a bus coming back from a gay baseball
game. It was something he should have
done at age sixteen but was denied. Something
which should have been part of his natural physical and spiritual development
that was blocked. Like plaque in an
artery it can lead to something like a heart attack, as in the case where it
gets diverted into an exercise of power over children, for example.
The Catholic Church’s imposition of celibacy on its priests
requires that they channel their sexual energy into a tightly closed place
where it dies of lack of oxygen or explodes into aggressive behavior. The notion that sexual energy gets diverted
into good works and leaves you with more time for others is a myth. Priests are no more charitable than people
with healthy sex lives. Some of them are
considerably less so.
When you cannot have sex with another human being you have
it with yourself. Solitary masturbation is much more fun than going on a diet, maybe, but
it’s a distant second from the sense of happiness that comes from the physical expression
of love for another human being.
And that the church then labels even that form of sex
sinful, something requiring confession and contrition, staggers the
imagination.
Catholics
are not the only Christians urging gay people to live a celibate life. But they are a primary
force in American society for conveying the message that sexuality should be
limited to reproduction, and we have allowed that message to float in the air
without regard for the damage it does to ourselves and the world we live in.
Crushing sexuality is like walking into a rose garden,
placing your hand over a beautiful blossom and squeezing the life out of
it. It’s an act of violence. A destructive act. It serves no purpose and makes the world a
darker, colder, more hostile place. As
Sister Jeannine Gramick told Frank Bruni, of The New York Times, “It’s
like saying, ‘You’re a bird, but you can’t fly.’”
The
collapse of the Exodus International group and their brain-washing techniques
is a thing to be celebrated. But
what of the Roman Church? How closely
have we examined the connection between sex and power at the heart of that
institution? It’s not rocket science to
connect the stifling of healthy sexual expression
characteristic of that organization with the abuser priests and ultimately with throwing child victims under the
bus. It's all about institutional thinking and self-denial and sublimation to the powerful collective. Chastity as a policy was
instituted, after all, to assure that priests and monks who inherited or acquired wealth would leave
it to the church and not to their families. Citing biblical references for the policy
can’t explain why it took a thousand years before the church acquired the power
to pull it off. And why the Bible, so
rich in contradictions, can be read in so many ways to suit one’s purpose.
And while
we’re at it, why are we still giving them a place at the table of moral
arbiters after their demonstrated willingness to protect abusive priests at the
expense of the children they abused?
Who are these people to dictate anything?
As always, we should keep in mind that those speaking for
the church are not necessarily the body of believers so much as they are men
who have managed to grab the mike. Out
in the real church are the voices like Sister Jeannine’s. She, and others like her working from
within, may one day free Catholics from this pernicious doctrine that sex is dirty and allow them
once again to fly.
Or not. There is
another option for Catholics who want to fly.
They can leave the church behind.
Simply fly away.
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