Cuz, Life is like that.

You know who should swim the Tibor?

2010-10-18T14:24:00.000-07:00

I think that the Episcopalian Church in the United States tend to have very beautiful, traditional liturgies. I never see liturgical dance or streamers or guitars.

It seems to me that many of the Catholics who complain about these things (dancing, streamers, fun vestments, gender inclusive language) might be happier if they went to another Church.

Just saying.

Awww, shut up alread

2010-10-12T12:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&entry_id=3390

James Martin provides a link to an editorial in First Things about the question of tolerance. Spurred on by high profile incidents of gay teen suicides and a vicious act of violence in New York, it would appear that more and more Christians are asking themselves what they can do to stop the violence.

I have a few suggestions:

One, you are talking about the Church in many of these cases of LGBT youth killing themselves. LGBT people do not exist outside of the Church, but are a part of it. I think everybody who writes sentences along the lines of "what can the Church do for LGBT people" should re-examine their sentence. The real issue, is what the church can do for its own members who are either contemplating suicide or attempting suicide. We can no longer allow the Church and its followers to talk about us - they need to talk to us. This has been an ongoing situation of rhetorical dishonesty for far too long. If you want to compare my marriage to adultery or my sexual orientation to drug addiction do it to my face and don't talk about me in the abstract. If you want to talk about reaching out to me than reach out to me and stop talking about me as if I am not in the room.

Two, LGBT Christians have to stand up for themselves in the public square and stop allowing the proponents of hate to dominate the conversation. This means being vocal, this means writing, this means coming out of the closet if you are a lesbian or gay religious.

Three, demand honesty. The bishops have lied about us for far too long. The pope lies about us and the Christian right lies to us. We don't need to defend ourselves, we need to put their hate speech in the spot light and make them logically defend their arguments. What the Church teaches is very different from what many in the Church are teaching.

I think it was Jesus who said something about throwing pearls before swine. We need cut the trolls off cold. We need to deny the Donahue's and those of their ilk the attention they seek. We need to tell our on-line friends that we will no longer support their homophobia even if that means removing them from our Facebook or whatever. We need to tell our family members how they have hurt us and be willing to cut them off if necessary. I don't think we are teaching homophobes any lessons by being friends with them. I think the reverse is true, we become the gay friend they use to justify spreading hate, "I don't hate gays, some of my best friends..." Don't give them the ammunition.

At the same time, we need to demand that LGBT adults within the Church be honest about who they are. We need to be willing to take heat, if that's what it takes.

In support of intolerance

2010-10-08T09:14:00.000-07:00

I’ve noticed kind of an odd double standard. When I see blogs that are written by progressives there is always someone who lectures them against being angry or judgmental when they are calling people to the carpet. When I look at conservative blogs nobody ever calls these people on the rug for being angry and judgmental when they go off.

I could start this trend, but I won’t.

Personally, I think it is a good thing to be angry and judgmental. I think it is an essential part of being a Christian and not a door map. We have plenty of examples of Jesus getting his anger on. If we put the money changers in the temple incident aside (it really is overused), we have plenty of examples of him trashing Pharisees, telling apostles to basically shut up and listen and even being rude to his mom.

I think the difference is, Jesus wasn’t selling people down the river. He could pass out some harsh medicine, but he did it cuz he cared.

We see the same thing happen with some of the saints. There were times when they could get a bit salty. Its part of being human.

Going back to my Blessed Mother trip. If we are to be mothers to one another, don’t we need to correct each other from time-to-time? Don’t we get angry with each other? My mom gets mad at me and I get mad at her. Fortunately we have a functional relationship so anger doesn’t automatically mean that we sell each other down the river. I think that might be what Paul means when he writes about not letting the sun set on our anger. I don’t think he is being literal here, I think he is calling for a sense of proportion.

I have actually seen people argue that it was a good thing that the Vatican II crowd were getting older and dying off. Wow, now that’s different from anger (IMHO) that’s just hate. That’s selling people down the river rather than engaging them in a good angry argument that the sun can set on.

Tolerance is wildly overrated. There are things that we need to be intolerant of (both in ourselves and in others). For instance, we really don’t need to tolerate the KKK having a rally on Martin Luther King’s birthday. We don’t need to tolerate people gay bashing or advocating killing people.

Tolerance has its limits.

Homosexuals As "Victim Souls" - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

2010-10-07T10:20:00.001-07:00

Hmmm, as much as I agree with the idea of victim souls, I think it might be more of an individual vocation than a vocation for an entire group of people.

Following this logic, I guess everyone gay or straight is called to be a victim soul on some level and at some time.

Homosexuals As "Victim Souls" - The Daily Dish By Andrew Sullivan

Homosexuals As "Victim Souls" - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

2010-10-07T10:20:00.000-07:00

Hmmm, as much as I agree with the idea of victim souls, I think it might be more of an individual vocation than a vocation for an entire group of people.

Homosexuals As "Victim Souls" - The Daily Dish By Andrew Sullivan

Homophobia in Catholic Communities.

2010-10-07T09:12:00.000-07:00

There was an article on the Advocate website about a series of ads that are targeted at African American and Latino gay men.The stated goal of the ads is to address HIV awareness and homophobia in communities of color.

Now, for once, one of the comments actually had an interesting point. The comment was from someone identifed as Raul and went like this:

"Funny Bill, I don't recall anyone demanding we address homophobia in the white community every time we see something that portrays white people and homosexuality. In fact, when does anyone EVER use the phrase "homophobia within the white community"? The only reason you say that is because you see blacks and latinos in these articles and instantly your racist worldview kicks in. Anytime you see a dark face you have to easily connect it to "homophobia in the black and latino communities" and will never see past it. "

I would only differ with his comment on a very minor point of semantics. I would argue that white is so normative to the way issues are discussed that when we say the sentence, “battle homophobia” our default understanding is white communities, or among white folks. It is only when specific communities of color come under the microscope that we actually say “homophobia in the Black community” for example.

This lead to a thought: When homophobia and Catholicism is discussed it is always discussed within the framework of “homophobia and the Church.” The Church in this instance being the Meta Church of Popes, Bishops,f formal letters, etc. It is never discussed as “homophobia in the Catholic community” or the Micro Church.

I think it might be time to change that.

Now, this is just a short blog post, so I don’t have the time or resources to do a well-studied sociological thesis, but I do have the time to throw out a hypothesis. My hypothesis is this. When discussing homophobia in the Catholic Church, it is actually just as important to address the issue of homophobia in Catholic Communities as it is to discuss homophobia in Catholic teachings. This is important because there are differences in the ways Catholics live their lives to what the “church” teaches. This is really obvious when we look at poll numbers that show a slim majority of Catholics support gay rights. I would add here, that this doesn't indicate a wilful ignorance of Chruch teaching, nor does it indicate a spirit of rebellion. Faithful Catholics are answering these questions, people struggle with issues around sexuality, within the context of their faith communitiy. They are active participants in the growth of Catholic tradition, and I think this understanding is pretty implicit in the minds of most practicing Catholics.

The other presupposition I would bring into this is that Catholicism is cultural, at least among "cradle Catholics". It is possible for an individual LGBT person to join a church other than the Roman Catholic Church, but I think the individual is still going to interact with Roman Catholic culture in terms of their extended family, cultural attitudes, etc. I think this might be part of the reason for the conventional wisdom that Roman Catholics don’t change churches, they just stop going. One of the reasons so few people actually "leave the Church" is that the Church is so ingrained into all aspects of life that it is impossible to leave the Church without completely abandoning one's culture. This differs by community, but I think it might be a adequate rule of thumb.

One thing I have noticed in discussions on the question, “How can you remain Catholic if you’re a gay man?” is a certain degree of disconnect between what points the two sides are arguing. In the broadest possible terms, it seems that the folks who think its impossible to be gay and Catholic are arguing based on the writings and actions of bishops, popes and a increasingly decreasing number of theologians. They are arguing from the perspective of the Meta Church, which appears (and is) to be a monolithically homophobic entity.

On the reverse side, the gay men who are arguing from the position that it is possible to be gay and Catholic are focusing their arguments more on a micro level. They have particular experiences of acceptance from within their parishes, universities, religious orders, families. They are involved in a living sacramental life that is in tension with the messages and actions of the Meta Church. It is also possible to draw upon instances in Catholic tradition that are friendly to same gender love in different cultural contexts (writings of various saints, hagiography, LGBT exegesis).

For these reasons, I think we need to move away from arguing, “The Church is homophobic” and instead address the question as “homophobia in Catholic communities.” I think this will allow us to move away from a strict dichotomy on the question of how LGBT people interact with their church and understand their faith; I think it will also give a better understanding of how heterosexual Catholics understand these issues. Anecdotatally, this might be one reason why I see so many gay men at Latin mass, despite the fact that most of the material about the Latin Mass (from societies, etc) are wildly homophobic.

Most importantly, it is important to understanding how Church teaching and doctrine comes about how our understanding of that doctrine changes. Catholicism is not merely a centralized understanding of revelation. There are various relational understandings between devotions, popular Catholicism, theology and the Magesterium. Or, to put it briefly, Micro Catholicism does impact our understanding of Macro Catholicism (i.e., the dogma of the Immaculate Conception).

My Purple Heaven

2010-10-06T09:50:00.000-07:00

I've had writer's block. I can write a sentence here and there, but I just haven't been able to get it together enough to write a whole paragraph and then link that paragraph to other ideas and then go with it.

Perhaps part of the reason for this block is because I have been wanting to write about the teen suicides that have been making the news. In the reporting on one of the young people who recently killed themselves there has been You Tube footage of him playing the violin in his church choir. If you follow the comments (and I know that Internet comments are not always the greatest source of accurate information) you will learn that his church was not accepting of gay people.

This disturbs me. It disturbs me because I think that the anti-gay rhetoric in some Christian circles has become increasingly loud and increasingly insensitive to the people who it is actually hurting. As Stephen Sondheim points out, "careful what you say, children will listen."

They are listening now. Children hear the debates in the news, the hear what people say around the dinner table and on the phone. They read the Internet and look at our newspapers.

What is the message we are sending young people?

So, since this is my spiritual journal I will touch on Churchy type stuff for a while. Believe it or not, but when I was coming to terms with my sexuality the Roman Catholic Church was a bit of a safe space. What I mean by this, is that many of the people I have met through my acquaintance with Roman Catholicism helped me to navigate the homophobia of society, the self hatred I felt and gave me a bit of a safe space.

Now, this was before the headlines were populated with stories about Catholic schools kicking out the children of lesbian parents, or firing out teachers. This was back in the days with the child abuse scandal was still a widely discussed secret. The Catholic Church really isn't exercising its authority the same way it did a few years ago. This isn't a question of orthodoxy, its a question of who is left.

Was it perfect? No. But, I never doubted for a minute that God loved me, that Jesus and Mary could be turned to in times of need. In short, the Church (through its members) communicated to me that I was redeemed and that I was invited to the table.

This story wasn't true for everyone in my generation. The only reason it was true for me was because there were people in the church who I came in contact with who were willing to embody Christian virtues.

One of the people I met was Mary.

Mary was a mother - I guess you could say that is her claim to fame. It seems like she was a really good mother, even when her son was kind of rude to her.

A lot of people think Catholics should imitate Mary. What does that mean?

I think that part of imitating Mary is to imitate her virtues and I think that her virtues are tied into her being a mother. In so far as it goes, all Christians are called to be mothers to one another and to the young people in our midst. I think one of the things that mother's do is give their children the messages about themselves that they carry into adulthood. What messages did Mary give Jesus? What messages did Joseph give Jesus? Are those the messages we are giving our young people? What can we do to be mothering? To be like Mary.

I think Mary was approachable. I think she also approached others. She visits Elizabeth, she travels to the wedding, she is present among the apostles. If we take apparitions like Lourdes seriously, she appears to outcasts and gives messages of hope when they are most needed.

She urges us to pray. We pray to change ourselves, but I think we also pray because it is in prayers that we are able to fully realize how closely God want to hold us. I think this might be why there are so many liturgy queens. At the height of the liturgy, or in the thrall of the mysteries, we are in the ultimate safe space.

Mary never offended the little ones. She stands among them and is one of them - just look at some of her friends. She isn't appearing to popes, she is appearing to peasants.

Mary shows up when folks are in troble. For most of the Gospels we don't hear about Mary, but there she is at the crucifixion. If we have fair weathered friends, it might be said she is a foul weathered friend. When things are bad, there she is.

Just saying.

2010-09-17T09:40:00.000-07:00

http://www.magnificat.ca/cal/engl/09-17.htm

Today is the Feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis. Odds are your parish will be celebrating another memorial today, but in the Franciscan world the stigmata wins out.

It seems sort of odd to me that there is a "feast" day celebrating an event that is so gruesome and austere. Seems to me that the stigmata represented, for Francis, the ultimate affirmation of his decision to walk down the road with Christ that we all have to walk and don't want to walk: the road to Golgotha.

Francis did this through poverty. Poverty in material things (he didn't even own books), but also a poverty of spirit that sought to be humble, little, even abused. Francis took all those quotes from the Gospels "give your cloak", "turn the other cheek", "give all your money to the poor" and ran with them. He didn't do it from a comfortable place of privilege and wealth, he did it from the gutter.

The stigmata is a stark and brutal reminder that to follow Christ means following that uncomfortable road of giving up the rights of power, revenge, personal gain and greed. It flies in the face of pretty much all the values that human civilizations have been founded on. It is both apolitical and deeply subversive, both forgiving but casting a judgement by its very existence.

I believe that stigmata occurs. I believe that for most of us it is something that we shouldn't gawk at, but something that should remind us that we are all called to emulate the crucified Christ. Jesus' yoke may be easy, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a yoke.

No comment, I just like the picture.

2010-09-07T09:40:00.000-07:00

More on the Newsboys

2010-09-02T14:12:00.001-07:00

I am hopelessly addicted to their worship music. Maybe I should try listening to some Gregorian Chant just to balance this out.

Also, I have an urge to try and get a Douay-Rheims translation of the bible. I seem to have lost mine. This is bad, because these get pretty expensive. Also, I want to buy it new, since I like to support the efforts to keep this translation in print.

Hoping to visit one of the missions during the long weekend. Lots of fun, been to about six of them. If you live in CA they are definitely worth checking out.

Evil is as evil does

2010-08-31T09:40:00.000-07:00

http://authormichaelprescott.blogspot.com/2005/03/was-ayn-rand-evil.html

Michael Prescott has written an interesting post in which he asks whether or not Ayn Rand was evil.

I don't want to discuss whether Ayn Rand was evil. I will leave that one alone and assume that she was a well meaning individualism. I do think, though, that her philosophy, "Objectivism" was evil. With its focus on greed and hatred of most Christian virtues (such as charity).

This leaves me to wonder. Can a good person promote evil ideas?

I think it is possible. I think that one of the roles of religion is to offer limits to what kind of ideas we can embrace to prevent us from going off the deep end.

Call me intellectually weak, but I like having limit situations (or imperatives) that I have to answer to when I try to solve a problem.

This isn't always easy. It would be fun to believe a lot of bad things (like its ok to only think of myself and not other people) and it might even make my life easier. However, would it make my life better? Probably not.

Terrible Confession

2010-08-30T10:36:00.001-07:00

I secretly find the music of The Newsboys to be satisfying.