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tocryabout1000 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.
(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.
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 05:02 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 07:14 pm (UTC)By the way, what's the second reason?
no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 09:04 pm (UTC)Middle-aged parent is an awesome metaphor.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 09:25 pm (UTC)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.