On the Church’s Influence in the Public Square Today

Good to hear from you, KensyJ. It's interesting to me that you say, "I'm not sure that limbo and the older version of the Roman rite...are quite the most pressing issues in the mind of the Church (or the Holy Father) today." You go on to say that abortion, poverty, and inter-religious relations, etc., have received more focus and attention.

Though your posting seems to take issue with my original posting for this thread, this is actually the point I'm making. Why, when it would seem that the issues you note deserve so much attention these days, do we hear exclusively of limbo and Latin?

And yet in recent days, the news from Rome is all Latin and the exclusive ownership of truth by the Roman Catholic church. From my perspective, the leaders of our church seem to be in some kind of cocoon these days. They seem to be inhabiting a planet different from the one many of the rest of us inhabit. We receive their transmissions from afar, and wonder what on earth these cryptic messages from the other side can possibly mean--in the real world the rest of us inhabit.

Are they simply diversion from the pressing issues at hand, these musings about limbo, meanderings into Latin, or broadsides against other churches? If they're intended to address and solve real-world problems, they are hardly achieving their goals. I have been reading German, French, and other European commentary daily following the latest proclamations. It would be an understatement to say that, in the view of many commentators abroad, the latest decrees from Rome are not helping inter-religious dialogue!

Re: theologians who are clerics, I think your interpretation of what Rome can do (and has done) to many of these theologians is falsely benign. They certainly can be silenced. Rome has ordered a number of priest-theologians in recent years to stop teaching and/or publishing or speaking in public about certain theological issues.

Typically, these theologians are not allowed to know precisely what charges have been made against them, or to prepare a defense against charges that may well be baseless. Have you considered what it does to the human mind and soul to experience a strong calling to study and teach theology, and then be told to remain silent, without even understanding why one is being silenced?

And, though these theologians do often have the financial support of a religious community or diocese, they still suffer when they lose their jobs and are black-balled by Catholic institutions. Few pains equal the inexplicable exclusion from one's family....

I don't think I can agree with your conclusion that "[t]he worst they seem to suffer is the removal of the 'mandatum' which allows them to teach in the Church's name at Catholic universities."

William D. Lindsey

Another point that I did not state explicitly is that there are different stages of faith development and different levels of moral development and different levels of spiritual attainment and that our church communities, optimally, should accomodate them all. Things like imperfect contrition and love of God for sake of self, however minimalistic, do meet the criteria of being both necessary and sufficient for salvation. Another way of saying this is that the Old Covenant still works. What is poignantly sad is that we are invited to a whole other level of intimacy and many settle for less. The purgative is both necessary and sufficient but, still, the illuminative and unitive beckon. Same applies to the Degrees of Humility, Bernardian love and all other stage paradigms, both psychological and spiritual. The invitation is there --- to travel beyond. Will we RSVP?

NCR senior correspondent John Allen will be with the pope in Brazil. He will post daily reports on the cafe: ncrcafe.org/node/507. On that page, you can find an excellent introduction to the pope's trip: A look ahead to Benedict in Brazil.

Dennis Coday, NCR cafe management

Dennis, thanks for reminding me about that editorial. I had read it with interest when it was published, and I do now recall the statements about the lace and finery that seem to be slowly making their way back in with discussions of limbo and Latin.

William D. Lindsey

How can the oceans, yes OCEANS, of grief that our Church's teaching about Limbo has caused bereaved parents be dismissed in this way?

Jim Houston

When I was serving a hospital chaplaincy I knew a physician who also was anguished in this way. He told me that he performed Baptisms all the time despite the fact that neither is he a licenced lay minister of any denomination nor does he purport to be a particularly "religious" person. His fear was superstitious and his "solution", magic.

Anguish like this breeds a bigger tragedy that accompanies false doctrine: the repudiation of God's Covenant in favor of infantile superstition & fear.

The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy

"Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen." (Luke 24:5)

Frannie, spoken with your usual wit and verve. You're right to note something that has been contested over and over on these threads by some of Benedict's staunchest allies: to admit that one teaching is not etched forever in stone is implicitly to admit that others can--and must--change, too.

I think it's interesting to note that Benedict's new book on christology states that God is beyond gender, while some "orthodox" posters on the NCR threads have been shouting for months now that God is male, full-stop. The bible tells me so.

There may be a downside, for the "orthodox" faithful few, in the fact that Benedict is a trained theologian, albeit one whose theology took a sharp turn towards apotheosizing the institution once he gained power in the top ranks of the institution.

William D. Lindsey

You are aware that limbo was never more than theological speculation? So no teaching of the Church is being touched, just the ending of an experimental line of thought (although I do wonder how that line took root so well)

No, I'm not aware that "limbo was never more than theological speculation". It was taught to me in Scotland, and to the best of my knowledge in England and Ireland, as a truth and a core Catholic teaching just as much as Heaven and Hell and the Final Judgment. If it is to be dropped as a core Catholic teaching then the pain and suffering this teaching has caused vulnerable parents needs to be acknowledged and not dismissed.

Jim Houston

Jim, your comments remind me of a cartoon I seem to recall from the period when the prohibition of meat on Fridays was dropped. It showed hell full of sinners with devils tormenting them, and asking, "What are we supposed to do now with the ones who ate meat on Friday?"

You're raising a pastoral point that, in my view, deserves attention. When the church changes its teachings, and when its previous teachings have inflicted pain on somebody, does the church not have a pastoral responsibility to deal with the consequences of the pain it has inflicted?

I first began thinking seriously about this when John Paul II issued an apology for how the church has historically treated women and people of color--in both cases, on the basis of firmly held church teachings that have now fallen into abeyance.

Issuing an apology is easy. But it would seem to be not quite enough, in a church concerned about pastoral behavior.

I doubt an apology will be issued in my lifetime to the gay and lesbian Catholics, their families and friends, who have had countless misery inflicted on us by church teaching that will one day change. I do hope, though, down the road that, when it does change, there will be pastoral action to try to mend many broken lives.

William D. Lindsey

Hmm, eating meat on Friday is a matter of discipline (which btw, is still required, or some other form of penance, vis Can 1251: "Can. 1251 Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.")

The sin in eating meat on Friday is one of disobedience.

Here Today, you keep surprising me. Can you really be unaware that eating meat on Friday before Vatican II was considered a mortal sin? That is, it was considered a sin for which one would roast in hell, if one died unrepentant and unshriven.

This was among the shibboleths of Catholic culture (and belief) that set Catholics apart from those slipshod Protestants--something similar to having girls who forgot a mantilla or scarf pin a tissue on their head before they went into church.

Though I did not grow up Catholic, I found the myriad ways Catholics in my community sought to get around the prohibition...well, interesting. I remember a friend whose Catholic girlfriend would have a hamburger every Friday night somewhere between 11:30 and midnight, reasoning that it was after midnight in another time zone.

And when I went off to college in New Orleans, I found it fascinating that the standard Friday night penance was to go out for a huge seafood dinner (no meat involved, so it was obviously penitential). One can do quite a bit of penance with an oyster po' boy or barbecued shrimp....

Ah, for the good old days of discipline and conformity, when every question had an answer and the questions were few and far between....

William D. Lindsey

I am aware that it is a sin and, unlike some, I am aware of why it is a sin. As I have stated before it is matter of (dis)obedience. The Church has lessened the restriction, but the requirement to then substitute another penance remains.

The fact that so few understand, or internalize, the purpose of giving up meat does not lessen the command or the necessity of doing penance. It is our fallen nature that seeks to escape the least dictate, so little of a sacrifice compared to the Cross.

Your post brings up a question I have wrestled with for years. I understand about the disobedience. I also remember that we were taught that such a sin was mortal.

Jesus gave the keys of the kingdom to the church. I alwaya assumed (rashly perhaps) that since Jesus had gone to considerable trouble to open those gates, the church's function was to assist souls' in entering.

In 2000 years how many souls of good will and admirable life have disobeyed one or more of those disciplinary matters and therefore been barred from heaven? It must be billions. In that light it would seem the church has caused the damnation of far more souls than the devil ever could.

Could it be that "mortal" sin and damnation are rather like the practice of usury: it keeps the indebted tethered to yoke of unpaid debt and the one who holds the harness always "employed"?

[But I bet the One who already paid the debts is mightily pissed off ...]

The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy

"Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen." (Luke 24:5)

I fervently pray that you give up reading the catechism and cannon law and start reading something by Richard Rorh.

Actually I've been working on a little Francis deSales this past week, today is a biography of the founders of the Cistercians (re-read), tomorrow probably start the Sermons of the Cure of Ars. Haven't read either the Catechism or Canon Law all the way through yet, but time enough for that later. :-)

We now know that a significant factor in the high rate of suicide by young males is concern about being homosexual. What part our Church's description of them as being "intrinsically disordered" played in their tragic decision is of course unknown to us. But the Christ who said "my yoke is easy and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:30) knows.

Jim Houston

JimH, this is a posting that hits home with me for a number of reasons.

First is that I have a young relative about whom I am deeply worried, who has made two attempts at suicide. I have an inkling that dealing with sexual orientation issues is a large part of what's going on with this precious, talented young person, and I worry and pray constantly.

Second, as an educator I see on a daily basis what silence, the lack of role models, lack of good information--but above all, hateful rhetoric and hateful actions, very often fueled by religion--do to young gay men and women. I have joined an educators' network to offer my services to deal with school bullying. I am deeply concerned about that issue, and the way it is so often rooted in homophobia, to which far too many teachers and school administrators turn a blind eye.

Third, information fell into my lap a decade or go re: the suicide of a brother of someone subsequently made bishop. The information I received made it obvious to me that a HUGE part of the pain this young Catholic man was bearing, which resulted in his suicide, was his attempt to deal with a family that will not budge on any word that emanates from the papal mouth. When the brother was made a bishop, his mother told the media that if the pope says to do it, her son will do it.

How do pastoral leaders reconcile the ravages the church inflicts on gay family members with such unquestioning obedience to teachings that are obviously cruel? How can a family exclude someone, using church teaching as its basis, to the point that the family member considers his life worthless--and continue defending ALL papal teachings of any sort whatsoever?

This is a mystery to me.

William D. Lindsey

Bill one other thing that bothers me about youth suicides is that in many cases these youth are still virginal, or their sexual experiences have been uninitiated abuse. So the pain isn't caused from sinful acts on their part, but personal perception of worthlessness transmitted to them from authoritarian structures and people. And the suicide rate doesn't include the disproportianate number of gay youth who make up our runaway statistics.

You ask: "How can a family can exclude someone using church teaching as it's basis, to the point that the family member considers his life worthless." I guess you can do that when you've never learned the real issue is personal responsibility. I wonder how far the excuse 'the Church said so' will fly in the after life? Hopefully no further than "I was only following orders" flew at Nuremburg.

Colkoch, your remark is right on the money. I wonder if you and other readers saw today's NY Times article on a growing recognition that many homeless youth are gay or lesbian youth rejected by their families?

The article notes that a high percentage of suicide cases among youth stems from being perceived as gay or lesbian. It also notes that some of the bullying around these issues is bullying based on perception: as you say, the youth themselves may not even have sexual experience, or may not have identified themselves as gay. This doesn't exempt them from violence, either in school or at home, or both.

I managed to grow up so sheltered from information about sex that I had never even heard the word "queer" until it was applied to me by classmates when I was 13 or so. I can remember going home and asking my mother what the word meant. She gave me a version of the same answer she gave when I learned the 10 commandments and asked what adultery was.

In the case of adultery, the definition was, "When mommies and daddies do bad things." In the case of "queer," her definition was, "When two men do bad things."

Less than enlightening, but enough to let me know the word was somehow linked to the totally taboo and mysterious world of sex.

Point of autobiographical digression: I can attest from experience that one can be totally virginal, and still susceptible to being identified as gay and being abused as a result of it. My abuse occurred mostly in the gym, when coaches turned a blind eye to boys like me being knocked down or kicked by hulking classmates.

I'd like to think we live in a more "enlightened" or "better" time, but I'm not sure that's the case--at least not in middle America, where teachers and school officials still routinely protect those who bully children on the basis of perceived sexual orientation.

William D. Lindsey

As you indicate, the bullying that involves calling someone gay, or one of the other words that connotes the same thing but in an even more negative way, is not based on someone recognizing that a person is gay, but rather on the fact that the word can be used disparagingly. Of course, the negative connotation is found in the Bible, but those who are doing this are not likely well educated in religious matters. They probably have little precise understanding of what it is they are indicating by their name-calling, but merely find this an accepted way of referring to someone they have decided would be a good target for their negative attention.

I think it is very difficult to distinguish between causes and effects in the case of anti-social behavior, including but not limited to bullying. While the victim is clearly suffering, the bully likely is also. People almost never think to think what might be wrong in the life of the bully that makes him or her so hostile. In my experience, in Lutheran parochial school, for a period of time, I was verbally picked on by a girl to the point that it made me unhappy at home. Her commentary had nothing to do with sexual matters, but was merely vicious. The teachers never noticed and the other children merely snickered. She became a heroin addict who was in trouble most of her life. Despite giving the appearance of being normal, her family was suffering from problems to do with the father's mental health.

It recently came to my attention that an organization known as The Catholic Medical Association has determined that homosexuality can be cured because some priests who engaged in homosexual acts and were otherwise preoccupied with sexual pursuits were able to come to peace with their celibacy requirement after receiving treatment for their other mental health issues. To my way of thinking, this hardly gives any evidence of "curing" the "disease" of homosexuality, but merely shows that one symptom of having emotional or mental health problems is inappropriate sexual behavior.

On the other hand, there are people who clearly find themselves responding sexually to members of the same sex and not responding to members of the other sex, who are otherwise not troubled and actually may be rather high functioning except for the fact that they are not given a comfortable place in society. These people, unfortunately, are not what most people think of when they think of someone being homosexual. A wider acceptance of this image, might lead to homosexual terminology falling out of favor with bullies, but it seems that a lot more attention needs to go to the overall circumstances of young people's lives when they are supposedly rejected by their families for being gay or lesbian--whether their low self-esteem may be making them impose the label gay or lesbian on themselves because these are looked down upon, for example.

I might offer an alternative explanation for why being called gay is a term of derision. Someone who is gay may commonly be called a sissy. Sissy comes from sister. A gay man who rejects his role and participation in the mysogynistic patriarchy identifies himself with the despised class of women. Ultimately I think homophobia is an extrapolated form of hating women.

Frannie, I completely agree. My perception is that our society has fewer issues with lesbianism than with male homosexuality.

At the heart of the difference in the way the two are treated, I think, is a perception that lesbians are at least trying to climb up the scale toward the ideal--machismo--while gay men are going down the scale towards despised femininity. (Of course, lesbians may also be more tolerated because women in general are more ignored by the powers that be than men are.)

I notice that when people are polled about their "problems" with homosexuality--e.g., about gay marriage--they almost always seem to be imagining male-male relationships. There's far more pressure in early childhood on the part of schools, parents, church, to force boys with feminine traits to be little men, than there is to force girls with male traits to be little women.

I suspect homosexuality threatens so many people because it causes us to look at what we don't want to look closely at: the arbitrary assignment of gender roles and gender characteristics on the basis of biology, and then the differing ways (and often very unjust ways) of valuing human beings on the basis of those gender roles.

William D. Lindsey

Your comment about lesbianism being considered less important than male homosexuality is right. Think about seeing two women dancing--a not infrequent sight at weddings in our culture. People think nothing of it other than that their husbands do not like to dance. On the other hand, were two men to get up to dance together, people would laugh, thinking it was a joke. If it were for real, they would be disgusted, but why?

Remember the handholding between the representative of the Saudi royal family and George Bush? It was considered very comical here, but apparently not too unusual in Saudi Arabia, a nation that we believe oppresses women. Also, Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography of Abraham Lincoln went to great lengths to dispute that Lincoln's early friendship and bedsharing had a homosexual element. She writes that close friendships between men were not unusual in those days.

Our culture at this point in history has special issues with sexuality and gender. Because it has moved so far from being a subsistance culture, it has lost respect for the contributions traditionally made by women, causing it to revisit those issues relating to sexual behavior that have been with us since at least the beginning of recorded history. If we were to go back to everyone fulfilling their roles or dying, there would be no reduction in homosexuality, but there might be a change in what is considered important about a person, what behavior is condemned, and what is overlooked.

Marie, I agree: our culture has "special issues" with sexuality and gender. Renegotiating these topics involves renegotiating how power and control are allocated and used in our culture. So the discussion is fraught with even greater complexity than appears on the surface: talking about gender is not talking about gender at all: it's talking about how and why we give unfair advantage to one gender, why we distribute power and privilege as we do throughout the culture (and in the church).

As a footnote to the discussion on gay bullying: I read a very interesting article yesterday in this month's Advocate magazine. It's an interview with T.R. Knight, a gay actor on "Grey's Anatomy" who was outed this season when a co-star called him a f----t.

Colkoch notes above that many gay/lesbian adolescents are entirely inactive sexually, when they are identified as gay/lesbian and subjected to torment by peers because of that identification. In response to Colkoch, I told a portion of my own story, noting that school bullying of those perceived to be gay troubles me greatly--in particular, it troubles me that school officials all too often do nothing when such bullying occurs.

In his interview with the Advocate, Knight reports that when he was in junior high, someone donated a play-set to his school. It arrived with "T.R. Knight is a homosexual" spray-painted all over it--apparently by fellow students. Knight notes that "the most unsettling part [of this incident] wasn't the juvenile name-calling but that the people who were running the Catholic school did nothing. He was just expected to keep quiet."

I fear that all too many of our schools still expect students taunted as gay/lesbian "just...to keep quiet."

This needs to change.

William D. Lindsey

As I read your comments on this thread, Bill, I was reminded of an article written in the 90's by a former collegue of mine, Lenore Gordon. "What do we say when we hear faggot in the classroom?" is included in dozens of books on modern education, but I've been unsuccessful at finding it on the web. It's well worth reading. Perhaps some of our gifted surfers could uncover the link.

I could not access the article to which you refer, but I won't let that stop me...

Not to make excuses for people that I don't know, but it is possible that the response of the administration of the school was not to jump to the defense of young Knight because in their view he was not a homosexual unless he was actively pursuing that lifestyle. Also, by doing something, they would, in essence be saying "homosexual is a terrible thing to call someone" when being a homosexual is not a terrible thing. Nevertheless, the intent to antagonize someone should have been addressed.

I have met many homosexual people who are not struggling with their sexuality the way T.R. Knight still seems to be. They have identified themselves as homosexual (gay or lesbian). They have their relationships. Some have the kind of personalities that are comfortable with the teasing of others. Others are simply matter-of-fact about it. These people have careers and hobbies that have nothing to do with their sexuality. They have been rewarded based on their competence.

It seems particularly unusual for someone in the arts to be concerned to the degree that T.R. Knight seems to be about being perceived to be a homosexual. Is it possible that he isn't, but that he has let the stereotypes define him? A lot of young, sensitive people are subject to teasing, and homosexual is just one label that teasers direct at those who take interest in the stereotypically "sissy" things.

In my son's school, those who sing and dance are considered both cool and likely to be gay even when they are not. The problem in some places, it seems to me, is that the gay/lesbian label amounts to taunting.

Frannie and Marie, I've been traveling and am only now seeing your two postings. I appreciate the responses. If you can find a reference to that article, Frannie, I'd like very much to read it.

My own take, Marie, is that it's still all too easy for schools to excuse use of the f- word and gay slurs. I found it interesting that the media reaction to Ann Coulter's use of the f- word was nowhere so intense as the reaction to Imus's equally despicable slur. It still seems acceptable in many cultural contexts to taunt people for being gay.

When that taunting targets early adolescents whose sense of self is just beginning to crystallize, it can do lots of harm. When it's attended by total silence--and this is what strikes me in the piece about T.R. Knight--then it is really, really damaging, it seems to me.

Silence creates dead space. It's that dead space that the church asks gay people to occupy when the bishops issue statements telling gay people to remain hidden in parish life: we're welcomed to the extent that we do not reveal our identities.

I once wrote a meditation on how the church's use of silence to control people--and to make some of us vanish--runs counter to a rich strand of biblical reflection in which God is always speaking. God is Word. A community that chooses silence--not the silence of meditation, but of dead space--over fruitful dialogue seems to me to miss the point of much of our scriptural basis.

I suppose I'm not really surprised, either, that even people in the arts still find it difficult to declare their sexual orientation, in a culture that still penalizes such declarations in many ways. Research suggests that the majority of gay people in our culture still marry and remain hidden, silent, furtive.

As more and more folks make their identities known, this will no doubt change. But in many geographic areas--and many fields of work--there's still a steep price to be paid for being honest.

William D. Lindsey

I think I would agree with you that to declare oneself gay is not a simple matter. The mere fact of doing so is considered to be an act of social defiance by many who speculate and accept that this person or that is gay. Likely, too, the majority of gay people do marry and remain hidden; even gay people find a certain comfort in having things go along in traditional ways and may get married without even realizing their situation.

I am not sure that you mean bishops wish for gay peole to remain hidden or whether you mean that they are to keep it to themselves that they are attracted to members of the same sex. I feel that involving oneself without calling attention to one's sexuality is more what they have in mind. While people assume that the married people they know have sex, even that is something of which they do not wish to have too much information.

However, certain language is unacceptable. It is one thing to make a statement of fact about someone, but another to use language to antagonize people or rouse hostility toward an individual or group. This has been something that likely has been going on among young people forever while adults have looked the other way, but these days certain media personalities behave no differently than mean kids in the schoolyard, and this is unacceptable. It sets a terrible example to young people and may make it seem to the victims of bullying that the whole world is against them.

In this climate, it is important that reasonable adults come forward to speak against the hate-mongers. In doing so, they are likely to feel the same ostracism that the victim is experiencing, but then isn't this following the example of Jesus?

...involving oneself without calling attention to one's sexuality ...

Sexuality and sex are not the same thing. Calling attention to one's sex life in the public square can be really tacky. But calling attention to one's sexuality as most of us do is really a matter of freedom. Having a photo of one's spouse on the desk at work, wearing a ring, celebrating a wedding, refering casually to a spouse's bithday or an upcoming anniversary or vacation--all the subtle but joyful acts of self-disclosure that heterosexuals take for granted are most often denied to gay folk.

Marie, thanks for a very thoughtful response. I agree very much with your conclusion:

"In this climate, it is important that reasonable adults come forward to speak against the hate-mongers."

The problem is, the stance the church has taken DOES militate against gay-lesbian people speaking out. Even when the current pope was head of the CDF, he began upping the ante against gay Catholics by inventing the language of intrinsic disorder, and by stating, in a pastoral document about the status of gay folks in the church, that while violence against gays and lesbians is deplorable, it is understandable, if gay people insist on making their identities known.

In such a social context, silence is complicity with structures of violence. The approach the church takes objectifies gay folks. It reduces us to the status of objects--objects of pity, compassion, fear, loathing, scientific "analysis." What it does not allow us to do is to speak as subjects of our own lives, from where we live and move and have our being. It does not allow us to speak on our own behalf, to give testimony to the grace that is in our lives and relationships.

Whenever people are defined by others, even if those others are "compassionate," the group being defined is dehumanized and reduced to the status of an object. In telling gay people to remain invisible within parish life, the U.S. bishops are certainly being consistent with the stance of Ratzinger/Benedict XVI.

They are also doing something that is ultimately quite atrocious to gay and lesbian folks: they are seeking to make us invisible in the body of Christ. They are erasing us and our contributions.

Such an approach contributes to fear, loathing, and prejduce, and no amount of hand-wringing about homophobic violence on the part of the magisterium will cover over their complicity in that violence, as long as they call on gay folks to remain hidden, to be silent objects whose real identities are not known. All parishes everywhere have gay and lesbian members. In some areas, where awareness of the lives of gay and lesbian folks is not heightened, and where openly gay and lesbian people may be coerced into invisibility by strong social strictures, parishioners may think they do not know anyone gay or lesbian. In thinking this, they are deceiving themselves.

Ultimately, the Christian community is the real loser here, since the gifts that gay believers bring the community are abundant. Those gifts need to be acknowledged and celebrated, and their source--the loving compassion of gay people who have struggled to affirm their identity as God-given--needs to be recognized and blessed.

William D. Lindsey

I tend to agree that the Church is objectifying gay people in its official writings. It does so with "the poor" also.

I have met gay people who were the victims of unprovoked violent attacks because of the attackers' (it's usually a group) prejudice against gays. I find it a little difficult to accept that this should not be classified as a hate crime to be federally prosecuted when it is not properly addressed by local authorities.

Still, I do not sense that if the Catholic Church were to take the same open approach to gay people that the United Church of Christ does, for example, that this would cause a reduction in these crimes or a reclassification of them as hate crimes. It would have no impact, I think, on those fundamentalist type religions that I think have more culpability in anti-gay violence.

I do, however, agree completely with your last sentence that the gifts of gay people "need to be acknowledged and celebrated, and their source--the loving compassion of gay people who have struggled to affirm their identity as God-given--needs to be recognized and blessed". I just would not expect anything resembling a sacrament to provide the blessing.

Tfhe love between a gay couple is a sacrament in its most fundamental meaning, an experience which makes manifest the presence of God. As such it is a blessing and needs no other. It's just a matter of scales falling from eyes for others to recognize it. Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God where God has always been.

Marie, your response made me take a brief trip down memory lane.

Fortunately, I have never been subject to physical violence as a gay person--except for the school-bullying incidents I recounted in a previous posting, and at that time, I had no awareness of myself as having ANY sexual orientation. I was simply identified as gay by classmates, before I even knew what the language they were using meant.

However, I can think of three incidents of gay bashing that have happened in close proximity to my life. I haven't led a very out-and-about life of any sort. I tend to be a bit reclusive, and haven't ever had really close ties to what folks call "the" gay community--though I stand in solidarity with all gay persons.

All of that to say that if someone so relatively sheltered as I am has come into close contact with three gay-bashing incidents, I wonder how common these are in other folks' experience.

One incident occurred when I was teaching theology in a Catholic university. A colleague came to work one day badly bruised and obviously having been beaten. No one in that school talked about sexual orientation. But the fact that some faculty were gay was an open secret.

I knew that the colleague was gay, though neither he nor anyone else ever told me this. He had been grocery shopping, and as he walked to his car, a gang of teens attacked him. He managed to scramble under a parked car so that they couldn't do more damage, and they left when they couldn't fish him out. The colleague never told any of us that his attack was a gay-bashing, by the way. Everyone simply knew that this was the case.

The nuns who ran the school were actually rather decent to gay folks, though they didn't encourage any open discussion of these issues. This was in sharp contrast to my experience teaching in a Catholic college owned by a community of male religious, who were anything but decent to gay folks.

Second incident: a lawyer friend of mine was on vacation several years ago, and walked out of a gay bar in a largely gay area of a large city. Again, a gang of teens descended on him and beat him so badly he almost lost an eye. He did nothing to provoke the attack, as the colleague at the Catholic university also did not--or so both said.

Third incident: a close friend of mine, who lived a dangerously promiscuous life in a large city, brought someone home one night who beat him very badly. He called the police, who took him to the hospital, laughing at and mocking him as they drove him there.

This friend was the first person ever to tell me he had been physically assaulted for being gay (and I will surely admit that bringing a stranger home with you period is an invitation to violence). When he told me his story, he also told me--at a point of naivete in my life about how common such crimes are--that he was convinced that such incidents are vastly under-reported all over the nation. We tolerate them as Southerners tolerated incidents of lynching in the Jim Crow period. In that case, too, lynchings were so common that they were taken for granted, and were seldom reported in the newspaper.

I recently heard theologian Carter Heyward interviewed. She is an out lesbian. She noted that, after she came out as a lesbian, her mother offered to send her any news that mentioned the word "gay," "lesbian," or "homosexual" from her local newspaper. In a five-year period, in the mid-sized city in North Carolina in which her mother was scanning the news daily for her daughter, the word "gay" appeared in print three times.

Silence makes folks invisible. I do think that it would make a tremendous difference worldwide if the Catholic church took a more "open approach to gay people." The Catholic church is a worldwide institution, unlike the United Church of Christ. It also exercises enormous moral (and political) influence in many places in the world.

I personally view the counsel of the Catholic church to gay people to remain silent and invisible as a lethal form of violence. This stance legitimates all kinds of violence against gay people, from outright physical attack to denial of housing rights, loss of jobs, denial of the right to visit a partner in the hospital, and so on.

After I was fired by a Catholic college and the president of the college, along with some of the monks owning the institution, used my sexual orientation (which I had never made public) as one reason for the firing, when I sought to tell the story in a major Catholic newspaper, I was told that such incidents are so common in Catholic institutions in the U.S. that they aren't truly newsworthy!

William D. Lindsey

Postscript: the gangs who beat the two men in stories one and two were both gangs of teenaged males. As you probably know, these incidents of gay-bashing almost always involve males attacking those who are gay/lesbian or perceived to be gay/lesbian. And the gangs committing such violence are frequently adolescent, as well.

In support of your historical analysis: I think it's no accident that the first states to give wiomen the vote and to elect women to public office were western where a woman with a plow or a gun was as useful as a man. However, taking the culture as a whole women today are able to contribute more significantly in a far broader range of endeavor. No, I truly think the violence and vituperation aimed at women and gay folk comes from the fear in straight men that their stranglehold on the control of the society is in jeopardy.

"intrinsically disordered" is a modified term and hardly depicts the degree of disdain for homosexual orientation held by and communicated by the religious right (not only RC) over generations even centuries. Maybe the impact cannot be quantified but it cannot be denied.

The disdain, dislike to hatred, religious exclusion and call for social marginalization was bolstered by its theological, philosophical, ethical and social rationalizations. These gave/gives license to the real depraved to injure in any way deemed appropriate to the opportunity and severely increased/increases the, more often than not, secret pain of the "afflicted".

There is a sense in which being considered "sinful" the Church felt an obligation to "convert"; "intrinsic disorder" is like a mental illness for which it is much easier for the Church to wash its hands.

Referring back to the Bible, which many of the religious right take literally, there is the story of Esau and Jacob. I would like to offer a bit of revision to the usual interpretation.

Esau is Isaac's favorite because of his masculine qualities, while Jacob, the less masculine one, is his mother's favorite. Jacob (and his mother) deceive Esau and Isaac and obtain the blessing that ultimately leads to Jacob's handing down of his nature genetically through the generations of Israelites. Jacob has many wives, perhaps because the twelve tribes of Israel were not supposed to be too related to one another. His quirk of not being able to take repeated interest in one woman, always needing apparently the novelty to offset the fact that they were not that enticing to him, was ideal for meeting the requirement of being only somewhat related. However, this characteristic being present, makes it necessary to strongly encourage heterosexuality by condemning homosexuality, lest the Israelites not perpetuate themselves.

In other words, the parts of the Bible condemning homosexuality should be taken to apply to that time, place, and people for simple practical reasons. When I read "intrinsically disordered", I read it as applying not to individuals, but as not contributing to the primary goal of perpetuating the species. I don't think it is meant as harshly as it sounds.

I have to disagree with you here MarieR. I think it's meant exactly as harsh as it sounds. If you're correct and 'intrinsically disorderd' refers to 'not contributing the the primary goal of perpetuating the species' than this description would also apply to people who choose religious celibacy, for they too don't contribute to the primary goal.

In the one case this willfull violating of the prime directive is a lofty choice and a noble sacrifice, in the other it's a product of being intrinsically disordered. And now with the witchhunt on in the seminaries a gay person can no longer join in the noble lofty sacrifice of religious celibacy. They're expected to maintain celibacy as the price of their existence, and oh yeah, they also can't talk about it.

Marie, Colkoch et al, your excellent exchange re: relative *harshness* brings to mind one of my own "issues" with certain church moral teachings. There is a philosophical concept called "parvity of matter" that deals with how serious, how grave, how weighty this or that sin or dis-order, moral or pre-moral, may be.

Even if the church's natural law interpretations were not too biologistic and physicalistic, which they are, and even if the church properly and more broadly conceived the procreative and unitive values of sex, which it does not, still, a problem would persist in that the church does not recognize a parvity of matter regarding sex. All sexual sins are equally grave, serious, weighty, or, in a word, mortal.

How did the church ever come to equate contracepting couples, masturbating adolescents and homosexual eroticism with such a grave immoral action such as murder? Essentially, the church's stance toward our human generative faculties is that we have NO dominion of such biological functions. This differs from its its stance of LIMITED dominion in the art and science of medicine. Supposedly, this differs because our generative faculties involve sacred human life, itself. At least this is a reasonable inference from Paul VI's interpretation of Pope John's encyclical Mater et Magistra. Bernard Haring countered this reasoning because it employed unequal members in comparison of the absolute sacredness of human life with a supposed absolute sacredness of biological laws and rhythms.

Richard McBrien describes the natural law theory of those who support the traditional teaching: "It is a concept of nature as something so mysterious and sacred, they maintain, that any human intervention tends to destroy rather than to perfect this very nature. Because of this mentality, many advances in medical science were prohibited for a time, and the same was true for other areas of scientific experimentation."

The majority theologians on the papal commission would thus counter this: "The dignity of the human person consist in this, that God wished man to SHARE in His dominion ... ... In the course of his life man must attain his perfection in difficult and adverse conditions, he must accept the consequences of his responsibility, etc Therefore, the dominion of God is exercised through man, who can use nature for his own perfection according to the dictates of right reason."

Finally, even if the church's narrow conceptualizations of procreative and unitive values were correct, even if its lack of parvity of matter for sex was correct, and even if its "no dominion " approach to generative biological functions was correct, still, following its own doctrine of original sin, it could properly exercise a great deal more compassion and pastoral sensitivity by applying its traditional realist approach to the human condition over against any overemphasis of essentialistic moral idealizations at the expense of our ever-faltering and always-feeble existential realizations of such values.

In other words, there are a LOT of ways to justify a much more loving embrace of our homosexual sisters and brothers and, yes, even those who are "pract