Draft of an essay for a campus feminist review

[tocryabout]

1000 words, and needs tightening. I'm interested in hearing thoughts, especially from people who aren't religious in the slightest and think the Church is too homophobic and misogynist to be saved -- am I strawmanning your side too much? Does my perspective make sense or do I come off like a raving loony? Is this a satisfying answer to the question? Too personal, not personal enough? Preachy? Irreverent?

(Stylistic suggestions and criticisms are also welcome, if you want.)
______________

Homo Adorans: Being Catholic and Lesbian

As I'm writing this, the Catholic Church is releasing a document banning men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" from the priesthood. Seven months after liberals flounced into the bedroom in a huff, shouting that Benedict is not our real dad and nobody understands us, we're starting to see why conservatives got such a boner back when the Habemus Papam was first announced.

When I talk to non-Catholic liberals about the Church's quixotic quest to bang her head on as many brick walls as possible, their reaction can usually be summed up as, "What did you expect?" Some people are angry at the Church, and they turn that anger on me. "Why don't you leave? How can you support an institution that does this to people?" Since I'm a convert, I get the additional question: "Why the hell did you join in the first place? You knew where they stand."

These are valid questions, although they aren't easy to answer. Both sexuality and religion are private matters, and they don't stand up well to logic and analysis. I can't explain why I think dark-haired girls are sexy, and I also couldn't tell you why I converted. Love and faith both happen under the surface, with the will playing a very shadowy role. Quantifying these impulses into arguments and proofs is just building up kindling in hopes that a spark will descend.

All this is to say that I joined the Church because I fell in love with it, and that is the shortest and truest answer to the convert question. Yes, I knew exactly where they stood on homosexuality. I dealt with it by heading back into the closet. When I first spoke to my sponsor, an older woman I knew only slightly, she asked if I had a boyfriend. I said no, not mentioning the pretty dark-haired girl I was dating at the time. In the confessional, I admitted my past sins of the flesh but again failed to bring up the gender of the parties involved. Mortal sin is mortal sin, I thought, and it's not as though fucking a boy would have been any better for my soul.

Surround yourself with good people who sincerely believe that homosexual sex is disordered, and the thought will eventually creep in that they just might be right. It's only a maybe, but a dangerous maybe, prime material for neuroses. So when the pretty girl dumped me, I didn't look for someone else. I've always been good for a guilt trip, and I never had a chance against Rome. These are professionals we're talking about.

"Homosexual persons are called to chastity," says the catechism. I gave it a shot. I was continent, avoided the gay scene, confessed the impure thoughts that drifted in, and tried to be at peace with the fact that this was all I would ever have.

This did not last very long, but it wasn't the sex that broke me. What did it was hearing from other Catholics that even being chaste as St Joseph himself, gays were still not good enough to enter the priesthood. Or being told that celibate homosexuals should not define themselves as gay or lesbian, and that we shouldn't identify with queer causes or fight for civil rights. The general atmosphere in the Catholic Church says, "You are not welcome here. No matter what you do, you will never be good enough. You deserve nothing and you're lucky we let you in the door." I got paranoid. I started imagining that the priest was hesitating before he handed me the Host, wondering what this dykey-looking girl with the emo glasses and the green hair was doing at Mass.

I cannot leave the Church any more than I can stop being a lesbian. Staying in the Church has become a threat to my mental health. Conservatives take every opportunity to say that if I disagree with Rome I should leave, and liberals have now taken up the same tune. Get out. Be an Anglican or a Presbyterian. Find a nice girl and get married. Screw Benedict and the Popemobile he drove in on.
None of those are an option for me. I have two reasons.

One is beauty. The Church of Rome is a jewelled old woman, with a long memory full of suitors who offered her all the beauty in the world — the Botticellis, the Caravaggios, the Michelangelos. Women like Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila were influential reformers of the Church. Clare of Assisi fled her home in the middle of the night to do what she believed was right. Joan of Arc defied the bishops and was acquitted of heresy 23 years after her execution; there's something to be said for admitting mistakes. At the centre of this web of unlikely stories and extravagant promises is the most impossible story and the most unbelievable promise of them all, which is that God wants to be with us. He overlooks the genocide, exploitation, bad driving, the B.O., and is still right on board. It is this embrace of humanity in all its frailty and triviality that I love, that I cannot leave behind. God loves the stupid Church, and he loves stupid neurotic gay me, and eventually we'll iron out the details of who should stop fucking who.

It's harder to stay than to leave. I don't blame those who left — you were provoked — but I don't think leaving will fix the problem. All it does is teach that inconvenient people will go away if you treat them badly enough, and that's not a good lesson to reinforce. I still believe that the Holy Spirit is guiding her shambling, crazy Church, and she will help us work for peace if only we decide that peace is what we want.

Comments

[broken-anthem.livejournal.com]

I know I'm not exactly the type of person you were hoping for critique from, being a straight Catholic male, but I want to thank you for writing this and I want to thank you for not giving up and leaving the church. It pains me as well to hear the letters from my Archbishop and from Rome condemming Gays in the church and disparaging the secular government for recognising their civil rights and I want to let you know that even if 1000 Catholics come up to you and tell you that you aren't welcome, or behave towards you as though you are not good enough to be a member of the body of Christ, God knows different and I know different and would hazard that there are quite a few other folks who would agree with me. It's people like you who keep the church from becoming like the Pharasies in the Gospels, it's people like you who are part of the church that I love.

Ps. if you don't end up getting it published where you're sending it I'd love to publish it in the January issue of my zine.

[kwokj.livejournal.com]

...would hazard that there are quite a few other folks who would agree with me.

*straight Catholic girl raising her hand*

[mlfoley.livejournal.com]

It's honestly things like this that make me NOT want to consider the Roman Catholic Church. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I cannot fathom how so many people think homosexuality is a more important sin (if it is) than numerous other sins.

[anatomiste.livejournal.com]

I don't know where the heck I stand on most of this, but that was beautiful, and it made a lot of sense.

[suckingalemon.livejournal.com]

i am religious in a jewish sense and while i think the church is hella homophobic i am an optomistic person and beleive improvements can be reached - but i think it will be done from the outside, rather than from the inside. & when i read about good kind hearted people in the church (whereever they are)i sometimes forget about not everything being awesome (your first sentence).

i like what you are saying as a spectator myself because you are not being a hateful liberal bashing everything and on the other hand you're not acting scared and going over to the conservative side.
and i don't find it biased as you're able to find the beauty in the church amongst all the ugly - the reasons why the true embrace their religion.

noone should ever push anyone away from what they want to do.
at the same time you have to live with it and you have to be ok with it.

i hope this comes out properly, but your article reminds me of one of those movies that at the end it does not solve anything/offer solutions but it acts as a reminder that everything is ok and not all is as bad as it seems, and i think hope as an alternative option is sometimes all we need.

cheers

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

That's wonderful. I too am glad you want to stay in the Church. And I especially liked your second-to-last paragraph.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well...

[whatifoundthere.livejournal.com]

Thanks for allowing me to see this. My own experience with the church is very similar to yours, and a lot of what you said resonated with me. Have you ever read Travelling Mercies by Anne Lamott? There is an excerpt here (http://www.salon.com/mwt/lamo/1999/02/19lamo.html), which chokes me up every time I read it. Your talk of falling in love reminds me a lot of what Lamott said.

The first counter-argument I can imagine to your article here is this: "Women fall in love with men who beat them, too. Whenever anyone tells such a woman to leave him, she says that love is irrational and that you can't hold her feelings against her. Wouldn't you agree that it's better for her to leave? If so, why are you staying in what amounts to an abusive relationship?"

I don't think women should stay in abusive relationships, even if they do "love" the guy (or girl). And yet, at the same time, I firmly believe that we need to try and improve the church from the inside, without fleeing or converting or turning bitter. Is this a completely inconsistent position? Is there a difference between abuse by a life-partner and abuse by an institution? I don't know the answer to that, but you may want to gesture toward it somewhere in your article.

[goreism.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my first response after reading that was (uncharitably) "Stockholm syndrome!" But I don't think this is the same thing. The Church does eventually adapt to modernity in its own sweet time: look at Yves Congar, or John Courtney Murray, both censured by the Vatican, and later offered the red hat and a position as peritus during V2, respectively. Honestly, I think the Church is more like a middle-aged parent than an abusive spouse: she's either grumbling about jazz and liquor or trying desperately to be hip and not realizing she's a few decades behind the times. That doesn't help the people who have to live during the jazz and liquor phase very much, though.

By the way, what's the second reason?

[waterstrider.livejournal.com]

Aha, thanks for spotting that. I rephrased the second reason into something else and forgot that I'd put a number in there.

Middle-aged parent is an awesome metaphor.

[waterstrider.livejournal.com]

I'm actually reading Lamott's Plan B right now, but haven't read Travelling Mercies yet.

The abuse argument is a very good point. I'm not sure what I'd say to a gay person who was seriously in danger of physical or concentrated verbal abuse by the Church -- I watched The Magdalene Sisters and couldn't blame any of the women who left the faith afterwards...but not all of them did.

I guess you could break it down by saying, "Are queer people being abused so systematically by the Church that the only option is to leave?" I'm not sure I'd say yes to that; I feel alienated and unwelcome and marginalised, but not abused. It's a difficult marriage with some very good moments, but not a violent or destructive one.

Or maybe a different metaphor would be appropriate, since this isn't really a one-to-one relationship: should black people have left the U.S. en masse during the era of Jim Crow laws? It's intuitive that they were right to flee during slavery, but I think we also want to say that America is richer and better because the civil rights movement happened. It was difficult and lives were lost, but the ultimate victory was vastly rewarding for black and white Americans both.

[brownbetty]

You say you have two reasons, and I can't find the second!

Yeah, sorry, I don't think I actually have anything constructive to say here. It's lovely, and moving.

(also, I think H.S./BVM is girl-slash)

[holyoffice.livejournal.com]

This was a very moving testimony. It's a truly difficult question because it hinges on the nature of human sexual desire, which I don't think anyone fully understands.

It seems to me the central issue is that the Church defines human sexuality as being designed for procreation. At the same time, it doesn't make sense to me that one expression of human sexuality that doesn't involve procreation should be considered as far worse than others (like, say, sex between a married couple using artificial contraception).

I have to conclude that a good deal of the fuel behind the rancor against gays comes from a very unChrist-like hatred. I don't think this is true of Benedict, and I don't think it's true of everyone who says sexually active gay men should be barred from the priesthood, but I think it explains a great deal why so many Catholics are outraged at gays but much less outraged at, say, divorced couples.

I sympathize greatly with your feelings of marginalization and loneliness in the Church. Whenever things get particularly bad, I like to remember what Frank Sheed once said:

We are not baptized into the hierarchy; do not receive the cardinals sacramentally; will not spend an eternity in the beatific vision of the Pope. Christ is the point. I, myself, admire the present Pope, but even if I criticized him as harshly as some do, even if his successors proved to be as bad as some of those who have gone before, even if I find the Church, as I have to live with it, a pain in the neck, I should still say that nothing a Pope (or a priest) could do or say would make me wish to leave the Church, although I might well wish that they would leave.

[waterstrider.livejournal.com]

I don't think Benedict is a homophobe either, but I think he is being callous towards gays because he knows it isn't his problem. (This is why I don't buy the "Benedict is gay" rumours.) It's easy for him to blame the scandals on gays, and everyone expects him to, so he does.

Certainly sexually-active gay men should be barred from the priesthood. We're either doing celibacy or we're not, but the new statement seems to suggest that you can sin without intending to, which contradicts previous statements that just being gay is morally neutral, even if disordered. (I guess we'll have to see the full text, but from what I heard it seemed pretty incoherent, the gist being that gays can't be trusted not to fornicate but straights can.)

[sugar-lumps.livejournal.com]

i thought this was great. as someone who knows little about catholicism it did make me wonder though; if god wants to be with all of us, what is the point of this institution of humans who do their best to come between you and god through their interpretation of the divine intentions? why would you need to wait for others to come around and approve what you already know to be true?
of course, i think that trying to change the church from inside is an awe inspiring task if only because it seems like the only way to change the views of those who consider themselves catholic. renouncing catholicism while the church is drenched with homophobia would never help those who are still struggling inside. i thought the part about your love for the church was beautiful. and "grumpy parent" does seem to reflect the situation more so than "abusive partner".

[waterstrider.livejournal.com]

It's a religion which is centred on community in a very important way. Ideally, the hierarchy is like a mould that shapes the way we relate to people: the best priests and bishops show us how to teach and take care of other people, and how to be taken care of in turn. It builds relationships where they need to be built, especially for the old, the lonely, and people who need more care and support than the government will give them.

We see God as working through human beings -- there's the Incarnation of Christ, and God's use of Mary to accomplish salvation, and Jesus' instruction to treat the poor as we would treat Him, and Paul's description of the Church as the Body of Christ, wherein we're all body parts with our own function. Other people have significance and their opinion matters, even if we're not always going to be right or even well-meaning.

So there is a tradition of going inward and trying to experience God directly (the mystics), but dealing with other people and their experience of God is just as important, if not more so. I think in North America we're moving towards a more individualistic view of religion, and I'm not sure that's a good thing -- it eliminates this sort of strife and disagreement, and it encourages people to try to meet God on His terms, but at the same time you get out of the habit of dealing with people qua the crazy bitches we are. A big part of Jesus' message, I think, is STAY TOGETHER -- don't splinter apart and choose sides.

Individual conscience is still the ultimate authority, but the standard is sort of high. I think I've struggled enough with this and studied it and given the Church a fair shake, so I feel like I've earned the right to say, "I've seen it from your side and I still think God's intention was something else." You have to really engage with the teaching before your conscience can honestly reject it, basically.

Also these are the descendants of the Roman Empire. Hierarchy and bureaucracy is what they do.

[sugar-lumps.livejournal.com]

thanks alex, this is very enlightening. i like your explanation of the church and agree that there's a problem with turning christianity into something that is too individualistic when being at unity with others is such a prime obligation. i'll be cheering for your ultimate success and in the meanwhile, the publication of your essay.

[tigersong.livejournal.com]

Very well written. I can definitely sympathize with your decision to remain within the Catholic Church. As much as I personally despise the hierarchy of the Church, I adore the spirituality and beauty of it.

I hope you can reconcile your desire to remain in the Church with your sexual nature. It's incredibly hard to deny your sexuality, and personally, I don't believe it's what God desires of us (or is terribly healthy). Not only is sex a physical desire, it's also a deep part of our search for comfort in partnership. In the Genesis story, God says it is not good for us to be alone -- I think that still applies. But, hell, I'm a raving liberal and I personally think the Church ought to butt out of people's bedrooms, because sex is no longer just for procreation. It never was.

(As an aside, in my opinion, the unfortunate part of the historical vilification of sex is that the sexual rebellion that followed effectively severed sex from love and companionship.)

I don't think you're being too preachy, and you've got the right amount of personal interest in it to hold my attention. Submit it! It's really well written and deserves to be published in some form or another.

[xerne.livejournal.com]

Hi. I seem to have ended up on your regular journal's flist and I found myself here. I'm not really your audience, being a poly lesbian Catholic, but I identify with what you say very much, especially:

I cannot leave the Church any more than I can stop being a lesbian. Staying in the Church has become a threat to my mental health.

And thank you for writing this, I like it very much.

[waterstrider.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I hope that's not stalker-ish or anything. I liked echthros.net and was aware of the megmurry account, so when echthros disappeared I checked the other one. (I suspect we may have crossed paths unwittingly many years ago on Saucybard, but that IS getting stalker-ish.)

You're in the audience if you could be persuaded to pick up a feminist magazine, really. I was just assuming that the people most likely to hate this article would be the ones who aren't in the Church and/or who think gays should get out of it.

[xerne.livejournal.com]

Hee, Saucybard. There's a flashback.

And I don't really get on with the feminists on campus, but I find the general idea to be a good one. =P