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Spirituality

For October, a Queer Rosary

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In Catholic tradition, October is the rosary month. In keeping with this tradition, I offer two separate takes on a queer rosary, for LGBT Catholics. Here’s the first:

Taking his lead from Pope John Paul II, who added to the traditional rosary the “Mysteries of Light”, Stephen Lovatt has developed a set of five meditations for a rosary specifically for gay men:

  1. The healing of the Centurion’s Boy.
  2. The answering of the Rich Young Ruler.
  3. The raising from the dead of Lazarus.
  4. The Last Supper.
  5. The Kiss of Judas.

michael

Bookended by two entirely traditional Catholic prayers, to St Michael the Archangel and the “Hail Holy Queen”, each part of this rosary meditation is accompanied by a suitable picture, as well as words form meditation.

As a taster, here are his notes for the opening meditation, the healing of the centurion’s “boy”:

The Healing of the Centurion’s boy [Mat 8: 5-13; Lk 7:1-10; Jn 4:46-54]

    1. How much the officer loved his young batman. Now, the youth was near death and he was desperate. Perhaps the wonder working Rabbi would help?

    2. But why should a Pharisee condescend to help a gentile and an officer of the Roman Occupation at that? Why should he heal a pagan catamite?

    3. Still, the centurion would do anything for his boy, even if it risked humiliation at the hands of a Jew. Moreover, the Rabbi had a reputation for compassion as well as for miracles.

    4. The God of Israel was just and kind and could not refuse a request made for the sake of love. The Centurion plucked up his courage and decided that he would ask in confidence! “Lord, my boy is paralysed, in terrible distress.”

    5. Touched by the officer’s appeal, Jesus said: “Don’t be upset any more, everything will be all right. I will come and cure him.”

    6. The Centurion, knowing his ritual impurity protested: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof: but say only the word and my boy will be healed.”

    7. And the Master said: “Truly, I have never met faith like this in the whole of respectable Israel. Go, your boy is healed.”

    8. Now, the prayer of the Centurion is at the heart of the Roman Mass: the prayer of a gay man, whom Jesus commended as having more faith than any other He had met!

    9. Jesus reaches out to the despised and unlovely, the hated and feared: because God loves all that He has made. His arms are open to heal all kinds of his creatures and gather them to His Sacred Heart.

 

Jesus, healing the centurion’s servant (picture – Wikimedia)

Let us have faith that there is no unlovely part of our lives that His grace cannot touch and sanitize. . Let us only ask in confidence, knowing that He inspires, hears and answers all our prayers.

Lovatt’s interpretation is particularly appropriate for gay men rather than lesbians, but he is not the only one to have developed a rosary for our community. Another version, developed by the Metropolitan Community Church Berkeley, is suitable for both women and men. Eugene McMullan, a Catholic who was teaching a course with the MCC Berkeley, developed a set of “Relational Mysteries” which caused an uproar among conservative Catholic groups when they were described as “Queering the Rosary”. Since then, he has added Prophetic and Incarnational Mysteries, to form what he calls a Peace and Justice rosary. In a comment to my original post on the relational mysteries, McMullen described how he came to develop these, and included a useful link which I included in an update to my original post – but that link is now broken. However, Dignity San Francisco has combined all  three of these Justice and Peace mysteries of the rosary with the traditional three (Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious) and the Luminous Mysteries, making a full complement of seven, for the seven days of the week:

SUNDAY: The Glorious Mysteries (1-5 traditional)

1. The Resurrection
2. The Ascension
3. The Descent of the Holy Spirit
4. The Assumption
5. The Coronation of Mary
6. The Wolf Lies Down with the Lamb (Isaiah 11:6)
7. Love Reigns

MONDAY: The Relational Mysteries

1. Ruth’s Pledge to Naomi (Ruth 1:16-18)
2. The Parting of David and Jonathan (I Samuel 20:35-42)
3. Esther Intercedes for Her People (Esther 4:9-5:2)
4. The Raising of Lazarus (John 11:38-44)
5. The Two Encounter Christ on the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35)
6. The Beloved Community Shares All Things in Common (Acts 2:44-45)
7. Love Reigns

TUESDAY: The Prophetic Mysteries

1. The Spirit Moves on the Face of the Deep (Genesis 1:2)
2. The Angel Appears to Hagar (Genesis 16:7-12)
3. The Parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21-22)
4. Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55)
5. Jesus’ Action in the Temple (Mark 11:15-17)
6. A New Heaven and a New Earth (Revelation 21:1)
7. Love Reigns

WEDNESDAY: The Joyful Mysteries (1-5 traditional)

1. The Annunciation
2. The Visitation
3. The Nativity
4. The Presentation
5. The Finding of Jesus in the Temple
6. Jesus Becomes a Man (Luke 2:52)
7. Love Reigns

THURSDAY: The Luminous Mysteries (1-5 traditional)

1. The Baptism of Christ in the Jordan
2. The Wedding Feast at Cana
3. The Proclamation of the Kingdom
4. The Transfiguration
5. The Institution of the Eucharist
6. The Conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26-40)
7. Love Reigns

FRIDAY: The Sorrowful Mysteries (1-5 traditional)

1. The Agony in the Garden
2. Jesus Is Scourged
3. Jesus Is Crowned with Thorns
4. Jesus Carries His Cross
5. Jesus Is Crucified
6. Mary Magdalene Weeps in the Garden (John 20:11-18)
7. Love Reigns

SATURDAY: The Incarnation Mysteries

1. God Breathes Life into Adam (Genesis 2:7)
2. Moses’ Mother Gives Nurse (Exodus 2:7-9)
3. The Bride Opens to Her Beloved (Song of Songs 5:6)
4. The Word Becomes Flesh (John 1:14)
5. Jesus Feeds the Multitude (Mark 6:30-44)
6. Thomas Touches Jesus’ Side (John 20:24-29)
7. Love Reigns

 

The Relational Mysteries:

Fidelity—Ruth’s pledge to Naomi (Ruth 1:16-18);

Grief—The parting of David and Jonathan (I Sam 20:35-42);

Intercession—Esther intercedes for her people (Est 4:9-5:2);

Restoration—the raising of Lazarus (John 11:38-44); and

Discipleship—the two encounter Christ on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35)

– Dignity San Fransisco, Rosary

 

Related Posts:

The Rosary for October: Subversive, Queer.

Therese of Lisieux: An Ally in Our Gay Great War.

Queer Stations of the Cross

Gay Passion of Christ Series (Jesus in Love blog)

Spirituality

Spirituality and LGBT Catholics

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Among many notable interviews that Fr James Martin has done about the impact of this book, “Building a Bridge” on finding a path to full inclusion of LGBT Catholics in the life of the church, is one done with Giacomo Sanfillipo, at Orthodoxy in Dialogue, a website that is pursuing much the same aims for Orthodox  Christians.

Much of the discussion will be familiar from other interviews and reviews elsewhere. However, I was struck in particular by Fr Martin’s concluding observation, on the value of  spirituality and prayer, to both sides in this debate.

It is certainly my own experience that a grounding in spirituality and prayer is the strongest possible defence against any potential harm from Vatican doctrines or hurtful rhetoric from misguided bishops. When one is struggling with messages from the institutional church, I find that it is always best to apply direct to the source of Christianity, in prayer and biblical reflection. One thing we can be sure of, is that however much it may seem that the church rejects us, God never does.

Here’s Fr Martin, concluding the interview:

GIACOMO: Your closing thoughts?

FATHER JIM: One thing that has surprised me, and even baffled me, is that most reviewers have completely ignored the entire second half of the book. The invitation to dialogue, which we’ve been talking about here, is only the first half of the book. The second part is a series of Scriptural meditations and reflection questions designed to help LGBT people reflect on their relationship with God, with the church and with themselves. So it’s surprising that very few reviewers bothered to review the whole book. It really is the most remarkable thing. When have you ever heard of reviewers only reviewing one half of a book?

Now why is that? I’ve been thinking a lot about why that is.On the secular left, perhaps they simply cannot enter into any sort of conversation about spirituality, or they think that spirituality is useless. You know, if you don’t believe God exists, then it’s going to be hard to appreciate an invitation to prayer. On the far right, perhaps they cannot admit that these passages might have something new to say to them about LGBT people. When I’m feeling in a darker mood, I wonder if it’s because a few on the far right, even in the church, feel that LGBT people can’t have a spiritual life. Or that they don’t deserve one. Or maybe, on both sides, on the far right and the far left, people are more comfortable with debate than they are with prayer.

Spirituality, Testimony

Krzysztof Charamsa: “”God loves me, because I love my husband”(German Interview)

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It is always worth paying close attention to press interviews with Msgr Krysztof Charamsa, the Catholic theologian at the CDF who came out as both gay and partnered, on the eve of the 2015 Synod on /marriage and family. There have been several of these, initially on the occasion of his coming out, and later with the launch of his book, in the original Italian and the later translations.  Sadly, as far as I am aware, none of these have yet appeared in English.

I therefore provide below, my own free translation (based on a modified Google translation), of his most recent (German) interview with Berliner Zeitung. In this post, I present the interview in full, without comment. My responses will follow, in a series of follow-up posts.

Openly gay Msgr Krysztof Charamsa (left), with partner

Ex-Monsignore Krzysztof Charamsa “Gott liebt mich, weil ich meinen Mann liebe”

(Translation: “God loves me, because I love my husband”)

We meet in the breakfast room of a small hotel at Hamburg main station. Krzysztof Charamsa, 44, has presented his book here. He wears a light, waisted jacket, with a blue handkerchief, if I remember correctly. A white shirt. Blue jeans. He looks very elegant. The most striking however is orange glasses. Krzysztof Charamsa laughs and loves to cry. I had not imagined the Grand Inquisitor of the Catholic Church so. Not even one of his staff. Krzysztof Charamsa is a Pole, but speaks German. Very rarely does he search for a word.




What is Spinning?

This is my sport: cycling in the gym. At the bottom I am struggling, everything is going through my head. I can think clearly.

One does not step forward. This is your favourite sport?

It is like liberation. You kick wildly into the pedals. They sweat. You are exhausted. But you do not have to worry about anything. Your head is free. It hits the spot.

That’s why you wrote a book about the “immutability of God”.

My dissertation. At that time I did not know Spinning. I was looking for security, for a solid foundation. It seemed to me to offer me a God who is self-sufficient. This was a God who does not lean toward his creature. No God of friendship, no God in the world, in history. A very sad image of God, I find today. I’ve been thinking about why we’re going to suffer during my studies. Where we have a gracious God. That was my determining question. I have no answer. But today I think it was my homosexuality, my suffering for it, which made suffering such a big subject. I did not know anything about the pleasures of love, nor of gay love.

When masturbating did you have homosexual fantasies?

Yes.

That was not nice?

I was anxious. I spent my puberty in communist Poland, in the Catholic Church. Both hyper-homophobic facilities! With whom could I have spoken? How? I had no words for it. I had feelings of guilt. I would have had them, even if I had been heterosexual. But my gay fantasies increased my insecurity.

You were ten, eleven years in Hamburg. You  must have seen homosexuals at least at the Hauptbahnhof.

I did not see them. Because I could not see them. In the world I lived in, there were no homosexuals. People just did not talk about them. They did not exist. As one says in Chechnya today: homosexuals can not be suppressed, because they do not exist. This is the way the Catholic Church behaved.

How many homosexuals are there in the Catholic Church?

Nobody can tell you. There are no surveys. I can only g. Based guess. Based on my experience. I was in priestly seminaries, I taught. I have always lived among priests. I was not a monk who lived in a single monastery. I believe that, cautiously estimated, fifty percent of the Catholic clergy is homosexual.

The total population is assumed to be 10%.

The priesthood is a fantastic space to conceal homosexuality when it is not socially accepted. For this reason the priestly life attracts many homosexuals. It does not matter that you are not interested in women. One is always in male company.

A homophobic organization of homosexuals

This is the dilemma of the Church. Hence much of the suffering and despair of the priests. Homosexuals are persecuted and at the same time homosexuality is celebrated. Aesthetic. Pope Benedict XVI has greatly aggravated the hatred of homosexuals. At the same time, however, under his pontificate, it was as gay as never before in the modern age: the red shoes, the peaks, tassels, and fringes that were on display everywhere. “Soon we will all have to wear lace underwear,” one of the papal ceremonial masters complained. See for yourself on Youtube how Ratzinger and other dignitaries of the Vatican look at the naked torsos of the brother Pellegrini! That same Ratzinger writes that homosexuals can not love. They have, he says, only this morbid desire.

Perhaps the Ratzinger’s own – deep-rooted – life experience … He is doomed to non-love.

That I do not know. But I do know that is precisely the situation in which many thousands of priests find themselves. The situation I was in, it took very long before I realized: it is not homosexuality that is sinful, but the church. Many, many homosexual priests are very good priests.

You were a member of the Congregation for the Congregation for twelve years. You persecuted the devil on behalf of the church. Then, on October 3, 2015, you publicly declared to the world : I, Krzysztof Charamsa, Catholic priest and member of the Congregation of the Faith, am gay, and this is my partner, Eduard Planas, whom I love. You changed from Saul to Paul.

I inherited the place, which became free, when Georg Gänswein became Ratzinger’s private secretary. I inherited his computer, his office, his chair. Paul followed the truth. When he persecuted the Christians, he believed that he had to do so for the sake of the truth. Then he recognized his error and became a Christian. I thought God was against my homosexuality, so I fought it. Then I discovered that God had nothing against my homosexuality. He had given something against which my love was strugling. I was an official of a truth office, a Stasi. I was perfect in this office. I put together, for every question, the views that the Church had represented over the centuries. The new knowledge of science did not matter. The church was in possession of the truth. This treasure was to be lifted. I did not do that as a cynic. I did it because I believed in it.

This was the purpose from one minute to the next.

I had nothing but a suitcase and my husband. That was a liberation. And peace. The first time: peace. A new security. I am a believing man, so I know: That was a gift from God.

You always have to get everything from the top!

Yes, yes. Of course I also have to develop energy and strength. But they also come from God. Life needs a foundation. If you have that, you can let go. This was the experience of Paul. This was also my experience. But it took me a long time to realize that the ecclesiastical texts against homosexuality speak about me. In the Catechism, for example, it says of homosexual relations: “They violate the natural law, for the transmission of life is excluded in sexual act. They do not arise from a true affective and sexual supplementary need. They are in no way to be approved.” Today I know that the catechism preaches homophobia and not the love of God. That’s why I introduced my partner at my coming out. This was a theological statement. I wanted to make it clear: I’m not looking for sex. I’m looking for love. Sex I can have anywhere. For me, it’s about love. Homosexual love.

Is the doctrine that the Father has the Son nailed to the cross in order to save mankind, not unloving?

The suffering, the self-sacrificing God – that is the mystery of religion.

This God, who always kills whole tribes of nations, would not you weep for the dead of Sodom and Gomorrah?

It is impossible to understand how God can allow this. But I believe it is his respect for human freedom. His respect for our freedom. It is the limit of the action of God.

But the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah did not perish because they were fighting each other. God eradicated them.

In the Old Testament there is this image of God. Jesus corrects this. The relationship between God, suffering and freedom is the greatest question of religion. That is their secret. I took the liberty to first acknowledge my homosexuality before God. He accepted me. When I did it before the church, she rejected me.

Sodom and Gomorrah?

When you read the text in the Old Testament, it was not about homosexuality – the later tradition shifted the emphasis to the sexual – but about xenophobia and the refusal of hospitality. Lot receives the strangers, in truth God’s angels, with friendship and is attacked by his fellow citizens. It is – in this the story is quite topical – about the correct handling of refugees and migrants. The Sodom of today is my home country Poland. No one is willing to accept refugees. There is no place for a Syrian family in all Poland. Poland is Catholic, but no one opens strangers to his house. This is just one example of the terrible confusion in the Catholic Church.

Spirituality

Men’s Retreat, Spain

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For many years now Fr David Birchall SJ has been running retreats for men by the sea in Calpe, Spain, on the Mediterranean. Fr David writes:

“These have always proved popular with the vast majority of participants. The dates are 14-21 of June, and the presenter is Fr Russell Pollitt SJ, a South African Jesuit who can be relied upon for a lively, thought and prayer provoking retreat. “

The men who have attended in the past, as i have done, would certainly confirm that these are indeed highly popular, and simultaneously valuable as both high quality spirituality, and also extraordinarily good value time to simply relax in amenable company, on the Spanish coast.

Calpe 2017The daily programme features a spiritual focus in the mornings, with afternoons left free.  From the brochure:

This retreat is a combination of mornings with a presentation of a theme and material for reflection, some prayer, time to ponder and share. A substantial lunch, with space for a siesta will follow. Early afternoon is free. Late afternoon sessions are followed by Mass. The day’s programme ends with a stroll to a restaurant for the evening meal.

This structure works well, enabling both formal time for prayer and reflection, and also time to relax with and bond with others (perhaps on the beach?), or in quiet time alone. When I first saw publicity for these retreats several years ago, I was puzzled: was this a genuine retreat, or just an excuse for a men’s holiday in the sun? In fact, it’s both, with good reason. The free time in the afternoons and evenings (often over a sing-song and drinks) is valuable in building community, and some informal sharing (including faith sharing) that reinforces the more formal spiritual work in the mornings.

The retreat director this year will be Fr Russell Pollitt SJ, director of the Jesuit Institute of South Africa.  Of interest to gay Catholics, is that during his time as parish priest of Holy Trinity parish, Johannesburg (my former home parish), he responded to a need identified by a group of parishioners, and started an LGBT support group within the parish. When the group later asked him for approval to join in Johannesburg’s gay pride march, he not only agreed, but joined the parade himself, for that part of the route within the parish area.  For this retreat, says the brochure,

Fr Russell will be helping us look at and ponder on our encounters with Jesus. He will do this by using scripture, some of the writings of holy men and women of Reform and Catholic tradition, as well as some of the major documents of Pope Francis whose writings are addressed not just to Catholics but all people of goodwill.

Fr Russell says, “In the book of Revelation we are told that Jesus stands at the door and knocks. Pope Francis suggests that he is knocking from the inside, wanting to get out of a Church that has locked him up. We are being challenged to think differently and creatively about God, faith, the Church and life in today – our personal encounters with Jesus will free him, free us, fuel our creativity and shape our vision”

It’s also worth noting that this retreat is extraordinarily good value. “All-inclusive” here, really does mean “all”, apart from airfare.

The cost of the retreat includes

✔ Accommodation in rooms with en-suite facilities. (Many rooms are twin-bedded but we shall allocate all rooms as singles unless requested otherwise )

✔ Full board, which usually involves a three course meal at a beach-side restaurant.

✔ Drinks – soft and alcoholic

✔ Transfers from Alicante airport to the house in Calpe.

✔ All costs of the retreat giver and materials.

For more details, see the full retreat brochure – Retreat for men in Calpe, Costa Blanca

 

Sexuality and gender, Spirituality

Coming Out as Wrestling with the Divine

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At this time of Pride, marking the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, I wanted to post something on the important legacy of visibilty and coming out. (Now the 41st anniversary – this is a re-post)

After mulling over some thoughts on what to say, I picked up Richard Cleaver’s “Know My Name” for re-reading, and was delighted by the synchronicity of finding that his Chapter 2, “Knowing and Naming”, deals with exactly this subject.  So instead of rehashing or expanding the ideas I presented in my opening post 6 months ago (“Welcome:  Come in, and Come out”), I thought I would share with you some of Cleaver’s insights.

First, Cleaver points out that in addition to the modern association of “coming out” with escaping the closet, there are two other important contexts. It can also call to mind the Exodus story of coming out of the land of Egypt, of escaping slavery and oppression; and it was used before Stonewall to mimic the English debutante ritual of “coming out” into society, of achieving the first recognition as an adult in polite society .  For us then, coming out is both a liberation from oppression and an acceptance and a welcome into a new society.  He then continues by arguing that coming out in the modern sense is an essential first step in hearing the Gospel message of liberation .

To do so, he points to the well-known costs of nto coming out:  psychological self-oppression,  increased suicide risk (especially in the young), and the arrests for sexual activity in restrooms / cottages of men who are usually married or otherwise closeted.  Against that, he contrats the perosnal rewards of coming out.  After speaking the truth to ourselves, the next stage, of meeting with others like ourselves,

“is generally even more of a transforming moment than the private recognition and acceptance of our gayness….Coming out publicly (a continuous process, not a single  event) brings a sense of freedom that must be experienced to be believed.  Coming out is one of our many seasons of joy.”

This is a sentiment which, from my own experience, I heartily endorse, and to which I would add the observation that  ”Joy is an infallible sign of the Holy Spirit.”

He then turns to some possible costs of coming out: active discrimination, including in employment; difficulties in securing adequate access to children; a misguided steering into inappropriate marriage, in the expectation of a ‘cure’;  and finally the hostility or even misguided interference of the churches.  This leads to a stinging repudiation of the Church’s involvement:

“It is no surprise that whether we leave or stay, we react to the church with suspicion.  Something about what the church is teaching, something about how the church conceives itself, is not right.  In the case of the church’s relation to gay men and lesbians, we can dissect out two particular explanations for this suspicion.

First, the church has allowed itself to subordinate the commandment of love to the demands of heterosexist culture, defying Paul’s injunction, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” (Rom 12:2) ……It is.. the result of the church’s long-standing obsession with sexual activity, which leads to a reduction of the lives of lesbians and gay men to the realm of sexual experience.”

“This brings me to my second suspicion about the church, which is why it is willing to accmomodate itself to the mind of the age, to compromise with bourgeois culture:  it hopes to maintain its authority and thus its institutional power in society by preventing lesbians and gay men from speaking about their own experiences. The institution benefits.. from a theology that permits it to hand down decisions without any data even being collected, let alone examined“.  (Emphasis added).

To which I add once again that this is why I am convinced we need to be out and visible in the church.  As long as we remain closeted and out of sight, as long as we refrain from speaking of our own experiences, we are complicit in our own oppression.

Cleaver then goes on to discuss several well-known Gospel stories, drawing from them important lessons for us in the LGBT community.

Reflecting on the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, he avoids some of the better known observations, and makes two other  points.  He notes that while recognising her sexual noncomformity, Jesus notably does not admonish or condemn her, nor does she express repentance.

“Jesus is no welfare caseworker… his goal is to transform society, not to ‘fix’ those who suffer injustice so that the existing social order may run more smoothly.”

The second point is that after the initial exchange, the woman proceeds to put to Him some “theological” questions on worship.  The story, notes Cleaver, is not about promiscuity at all, but about “who is capable of doing theology” .

This point on doing theology is made again when he looks at the story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10).  While Martha works, Mary sits and listens to Jesus speak.  Mary complains, but the reply is that Mary  “has chosen the better part”. In Jewish society, women were expected to do the domestic work, only the men participated in religious study or debates, and the sexes sat apart when guests were present for meals.  It would have been unheard of for women to participate in religious discussions, yet Christ not only condones this, he commends her for it.  Jewish women and other social outcasts were expected to be invisible:  but for the Lord, no-one is invisible, all are welcome to join in making theology.

In telling of the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19 -31), Cleaver compares Lazarus with the LGBT community “outside the door” of the church, while the rich man is compared with the institutional church, which even by its indifference  contributes to our oppression.

His final biblical reflection is an extended discussion of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel at Peniel (Gen 32:  22-32). For Cleaver, there arae two important themes in this story:  the wrestling itself, and the act of naming. From this he reflects on the importance to us of naming honestly our oppression.  Noting that

“We learn to name our oppression by struggling with it”,

he insists that we should present ourselves in full frankness and honesty, implying that we should resist the temptation to mimic conventional patterns of morality out of a mere desire to avoid offence:

“The strategy of putting forward only “acceptable” images of ourselves is doomed to failure… We should be forthright about who we are.”

For me, the 3 key lessons from Cleaver, all of which I endorse whole-heartedly, are:

In spite of the obvious dangers and costs, coming out publicly is invigorating, liberating and life-giving;

We need to extend the  ”coming out” process into our lives in the Church, where we should expect to be fully visible, and to speak out frankly and honestly of our views and experiencces;

and that by doing so, we will be exercising our right to share in making theology, in spite of the efforts of the institutional church to exercise a monopoly.

“We must speak with our own voices, in all their imperfections, when responding to God’s overtures.  Moses stuttered;  Israel limped.  What matters is not image but inegrity.  If God calls, we must know who answers. We answer to our true names, because these are the names God calls us by.  The cost of learning them is wrestling with the divine.”

Amen to that.

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Pastoral Ministry, Spirituality

Ignatian Spirituality and LGBT Inclusion

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In referring to my own faith journey, I have often referred to the value that I have derived from my time exploring Ignatian spirituality, in a Jesuit parish, and in the Jesuit – sponsored lay movement, the Christian Life Community (CLC). It has given me a firm conviction that there simply is no contradiction between a life of integrity as an openly gay man, and my Catholic faith. This conviction, developed over many years, was based initially on extensive Ignatian prayer, spiritual direction, and an extraordinarily intense, genuinely mystical, Ignatian directed retreat.

In my earliest encounter with the Jesuits and sexuality, I was told by a parish priest that “faith” is not a matter of the intellect, but of experience.  Based on that definition, I have the faith. Conversely, one definition of theology, is “faith seeking understanding”. I have the faith – what I have been doing these past dozen years or so, has been a search for understanding. All that I have learned, from explorations of the bible, of LGBT and church history, social anthropology, natural science, and theology, has left me more convinced than ever, that this is indeed so. “Gay Catholic” is not an oxymoron, but for those of us with a natural same – sex affectional orientation, a simple statement of personal integrity and honesty.

The notable Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner has written that it is possible for each of us to experience what he calls a “personal encounter with God”. Once experienced, he notes, nothing can stand between us and that experience: not the Church, not the Bible itself. It is my firm belief that in the retreat I referred to earlier, I was blessed with just such an experience – thus reinforcing even further my deep conviction that for gay Catholics, coming out and accepting that sexuality as part of our “sexual identity” is no more than adherence to an important Catechism command.  And so, I strongly advise anyone still struggling to reconcile sexuality and Catholic faith, to explore the riches of Ignatian spirituality.

There is no need to do this alone. My own experience was immeasurably helped by membership of a Jesuit parish, and a particularly strong CLC group, but there are other routes. The Jesuits have a well – deserved reputation as a gay – friendly order of priests, for which the evidence is clear. Of the explicitly gay welcoming parishes worldwide, a high proportion are Jesuit led.   In many countries, there are Jesuit priests who run spiritual retreats, specifically tailored to LGBT needs and concerns. One final indicator of the value of Jesuit support, is found in the program for the “Ways of Love” conference, to held in Rome this October, as part of the foundation meeting of the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics. Of the 10 headline speakers for this conference, three are Jesuit priests, and two are religious women in orders shaped by the Ignatian tradition.

One of these, works directly with the CLC community. In a notable article earlier this year, he describes how openly acknowledging their sexuality, enabled a gay CLC group not merely to find acceptance by other CLC groups and the national CLC community, but also to break down prejudice, and even develop straight allies.

Read his full article in Spanish, or below, in an English translation, courtesy of Gionata.

A.M.D.G.

(“Ad maiorem Dei Gloriam”).

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Liturgy Reflections, Spirituality

"Heal the Broken – Hearted"

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“Healing” is the central them for today’s Mass (5th Sunday of Ordinary Time, year B). This healing can be either physical (as in Mark’s Gospel, where Jesus heals Simon’s mother – in- law, among others, or it can be emotional and spiritual, as clearly expressed in the response to the psalm:

Praise the Lord who heals the broken-hearted.

For LGBT Christians, it is this spiritual healing that will have particular relevance. Just like everybody else, we too will have need for physical healing at different times and to varying degrees, but will also have a particular need to be healed from the hurt and pain unnecessarily inflicted on us by some elements of Church teaching, and by some other Christians, in defiance of the clear Gospel message of inclusion and love for all. When we feel hurt in this way, we need to remember that while some people may reject us, God will never do so. When we turn to Him,  Christ will indeed “heal the broken- hearted” – and we can receive that healing either by turning to the texts of the Bible (especially the Gospels), which really are “Good news”, as Paul says, or even better, by applying direct, in prayer

There is more to the day’s reading though, than just the reminder of God’s healing for us. There is also an implicit command to take that message, and offer it to others, so that they too may be healed. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul stresses that preaching the gospel is “a duty which has been laid on me”. That duty however is shared by us all, as Pope Frnncis spelled out in “Evangelii Gaudium”.

(Readings for the day:

  • First reading: Job 7:1-4,6-7
  • Psalm: 146:1-6
  • Second reading: 1 Corinthians 9:16-19,22-23
  • Gospel Acclamation: Jn8:12 or Mt8:17
  • Gospel: Mark 1:29-39 )