At the end of this month, I will join LGBT Catholics and their parents in Munich for conference of the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics. This follows an earlier gathering in Rome, 2015, where we appointed a steering committee to formally set up the legal and procedural framework for a permanent body. The forthcoming conference will approve the statutes, and begin the serious work of expanding pastoral care for LGBT Catholics, extending dialogue and advocacy work with Catholic bishops, and countering church support for legal sanctions against LGBT people.
The German theologian Michael Brinkschroder has, for the past two years, been one of the two co-presidents of the steering committee. In this article published on the GNRC website, he discusses his experience of being both gay and Catholic, as well as his hopes for the GNRC.
The Catholic theologian, sociologist (PhD) and religious education teacher Michael Brinkschröder is gay. Instead of turning his back on the church, he is fighting for acceptance and equality for gays and lesbians in the Roman Catholic Church.
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.
My life as a gay Catholic man, father, husband and Domer started many years ago being brought up in a traditional middle-class Irish Catholic family in the suburbs of Boston. Both my parents were school teachers who strongly valued hard work ethic, advanced education and bringing their children up in the Catholic religion. My life’s path was to study hard, get into a good college, get married and have children. This was not thrust upon me, just assumed. Does this sound familiar?
While attending Notre Dame back in the mid ’70s, I thoroughly enjoyed attending Mass in the basement of Alumni Hall with my dorm mates. Mass at ND was a true community event that provided time for reflection and a break from the hectic study and social schedule. I truly feel I was spoiled by that experience.
After graduating, I followed the expected path: obtained an MBA, got married, had a child and settled into a “normal” life of working hard and advancing up the corporate ladder. After about eight years of marriage, I began to suspect that something wasn’t right. After much soul searching, I realized I had to be truthful to myself and my family.
Continuing with my free translation of gay theologian Monsignor Charamsa’s interview in Religion Digital.
Msgr Krzysztof Charamsa
Will you remain a priest, will you ask for secularization or will they impose a penalty?
I am and I remain a priest. I’m a better priest than I was before today. Conversely, it is I who will ask Church to open eyes.
Do you plan to write a book about his experiences in the Vatican?
Yes, I believe it my duty to further explain my experience in the Church, and do it for the good of the Church itself, which must become and apologize for their institutional scandals, for its delays, its irrational paranoia of homophobia. Anyone who sees and experiences it has a duty to awaken the Church, which has already exceeded all tolerable limit.
If the pope asked you personally, would you leave your partner and return to the Vatican?
No, I would not leave my partner because I love him and because there is no doctrinal reason to. For a priest having a partner, whether male or female, is not against the faith, it is not against the doctrine of our faith. Conversely, it is the Church and the Pope who should start thinking seriously about the inhuman discipline of mandatory celibacy and the Church’s obsession with homosexuality and human sexuality in general.
Go back to the Vatican? No, never. I would be a masochist, a person who seeks suffering and offennds against their own identity. I’m not a masochist. The Vatican is one of the least holy places I’ve ever met in my life. I want to live happy, I want to be holy, what it means to be happy and live in the light of God and the dignity of man. In the Vatican most people are not happy. It is a place that needs a spiritual and mental conversion. It needs the air of God. air that is lacking there.
“Witness” is the root of the very Catholic word, “martyr”. In this sense, we are all called to martyrdom. Joseph Gentilini’s “Hounded by God” is a powerful, moving example of of the witness demonstrated by one gay Catholic’s triumphant, faithful witness.
I have just finished reading this book, which I did in two short sittings, over two days – but that is not the way to approach it, to derive the greatest benefit. That is not the way it is structured, nor the intention in the original writing. The structure is a selection of extracts from Gentilini’s spiritual journal over four decades, arranged not chronologically, but in thematic chapters. These extracts are interspersed with excerpts from a previously unpublished autobiography, and supplemented by a chapter reproducing some of the countless letters he has written over the years to Catholic bishops, Catholic papers, to politicians, including a US president – and to Anita Bryant.
So there is no clear narrative thread, and even within chapters, there is thematic unity and some chronological sequencing, but the extracts do not always flow neatly, from one to another. And that is to the good, for forcing the reader at times, in between skimming from one idea or event to the next, to stop and think deeply about the importance of a particular section, to savour it, to reflect on it, just as one would one reading scripture.
In Ignatian spirituality, journalling is an important form of prayer, ideally undertaken daily. The point is that by reflecting prayerfully on our experiences after the event, and assessing our responses, we are able to discern the movement of the Holy Spirit deep within our hears – “Heart speaking to heart”. Journalling then, is a form of prayer that enables us not simply to speak directly and frankly to God, but also to learn from the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to us. This process of listening (helped by a regular spiritual director) is what enabled Gentilini through many difficult years of substantial criticism and near rejection by his family, and the horrors of reparative therapy, to fully accept himself, first as gay, then as gay and Catholic – and finally to integrate the two.
Many of us who are also gay and Catholic (and others) will have grappled likewise with some or all of the themes that he works through. Through the evident honesty and frankness of his writing (he was writing, after all, for himself and for God, and not for publication), he does more than respond to the voice of the Spirit speaking to him: he channels and repeats that voice for his readers to hear, also.
Perhaps the single chapter where this is most important, is where he describes a period of sexual promiscuity, contrasted with his subsequent growth in loving and committed union with a loving partner.Throughout his references to nights at the baths or other casual sexual encounters, he often writes of his awareness, afterwards, of feelings of dissatisfaction or worse. Occasions, that is, which may have been pleasurable at the time – but in which God was not present. In contrast, as he describes the gradually developing relationship with Leo, who became his life partner, and especially as he describes in joyful gratitude the continuing pleasure and satisfaction of giving himself in intimacy even into his seventh decade, the pleasures do not fade after ejaculation, or the end of the embrace. This is absolutely a love in which God is present, and several extracts describe explicitly how he and Leo at times find God directly in physical love, in simple touch, and in dancing together.
This matters for the rest of us. The orthodox doctrine is self-evidently unrealistic (and so disordered), in its insistence that this self- giving in physical intimacy is licit only within heterosexual marriage, open to procreation – and so denied to those with a same – sex affectional orientation. (And to all others who are unmarried, or not yet ready to produce children). In the real world, the majority of Catholics reject the Vatican line – but having done so, what are they to put into its place? Far too many gay Catholics respond as Gentilini did in the beginning, by slipping into a life of promiscuity and hedonism (what some writers on gay spirituality describe as a second closet).
To steer a sound path between the sterility of a single life, devoid of physical love and self-giving, and the recklessness of selfish promiscuity, takes careful discernment. Gentilini’s frank reports of his experiences, and is conversations with God on the subject, can help us as well as him to negotiate the treacherous waters.
In referred yesterday to Duigan McGinley’s view that gay Catholic autobiographies should be seen as “sacred texts”. This descriptor applies to “Hounded by God” more completely than most. The nature of the text, with its origin in prayerful sharing with God, and in its structure, with its series of short extracts not always following directly on each other, lends itself admirably for use precisely in the same way as the primary sacred text, the Bible. I have now read it in full, to get the flavour and primary message. I will now return to it in small doses, picking up on short extracts or specific themes. I will reflect on them, think about them – even at times pray, not on the texts themselves, but for guidance on what lessons I can draw from them. Some of these reflections and conclusions, I will spin out into posts, here at Queering the Church.
I strongly encourage my gay Catholic readers, unless they are those rare creatures who have already worked out for themselves a completely satisfactory and complete, workable system of sexual ethics, to do so too.
When I reached the stage of my life that I was ready to come out as gay, I was fortunate in the knowledge that I would not face the remotest risk of rejection by my family. By then into my thirties, I was clearly no longer a child or teenager going through a “phase” that i might grow out of. Having already been through a disastrous marriage, it was unlikely that marrying another woman would cure me of homosexuality. I had also seen, from the family reaction to my siblings who had found themselves in difficulty or trouble, that rejection was something that our family just did not do.
Joseph Gentilini was less fortunate. As the story emerges in “Hounded by God: A Gay Man’s Journey to Self-Acceptance, Love, and Relationship”, it seems that pretty emphatic rejection of his orientation (if not of himself) was for many years a constant part of the ordeal he suffered from his staunchly Catholic parents, acting in terms of their understanding of their Catholic obligation:
“In 1968, my mother and I attended the investiture of my good friend as a Dominican novice. By that time, I was coming out as gay. As I was driving Mom to the church, she told me that she and Dad had prayed about me an my homosexuality, adding that if Dad had a heart attack it would be my fault. Later, in the church, she passed a holy card to me that said that prayer is powerful, and she suggested that I had not prayed hard enough or even at all.
I found a small piece of paper under the statue of St Joseph in my parents’ home several years ago. On it my mother had written, “St Joseph, save Joe. Please!!!”
This rejection of Joseph’s gayness extended, naturally enough, to rejection of his partner. Unable to socialize freely with his partner and his family at the same family gatherings, left Joseph effectively withdrawing from those gatherings, except for occasional very brief visits.
My mother was depressed last week and called. I was also low, and she knew that and wanted to call and see how I was. I was somewhat low and depressed because my sister can bring her twice- divorced boyfriend to Mom and Dad’s, but I can’t bring over my partner, Leo. Mom says it’s her conscience, but I don’t believe that.It is a social embarrassment, and I feel the judgement! I told her it made me angry.
But relationships develop, and can improve. Early in life, it seemed that his father was the more critical, but came to a degree of accommodation and friendship with his son, that his mother seemed unable to achieve. Joseph however, had a regular spiritual director, a religious sister, who formed a personal friendship with his mother. Slowly, she came fully to accept Joseph and his life partner Leo as part of their family.
My spiritual director, who is a religious sister, befriended my mother. She and my mother would talk on the phone every Thursday evening. It became an event that she looked forward to, although she would not say so to me. ….
In October, my mother was having a surprise 80th birthday party for Dad, and Leo was invited! She even kissed Leo! and, wonder of wonders, he was invited that year to our family Christmas! What a wonderful healing! After this, Leo was considered part of the family and invited to everything. With the help of my spiritual director, my mother broke through her barrier to loving me fully as her gay son.
My prayer has been answered. For years, I have prayed for reconciliation with my family. It is a grace, a total gift from God.
(Joseph’s mother is emphatically not the only parent who has prayed for her gay son to be “healed” – and found instead that it was she who needed to be healed, of her rejection).
Later she did even more, and went out of her way to show other mothers of gay sons the importance of maintaining loving relationships with all their extended family, gay and straight, and their partners. Reading this story of family reconciliation and healing, in a profound demonstration of authentic Catholic family values, brought tears to my eyes.
In 1999, I had heard that my mother read an obituary of a woman she knew whose son had died of AIDS. She went to the funeral home and spoke to the woman, who had not been reconciled with her son before his death.. She was able to bring peace to that woman. Mom told my spiritual director, “If God could give me grace, in spite of my stubborn righteousness, I had to be there for that mother.” What I didn’t know was that she went to the hospital and nursing home for other mothers whose sons were dying of AIDS. My spiritual director told me of one story when Mom went to a hospital. The son was dying in the room, but the mother was in the hall, refusing to go in and touch her son. My mother sat with her, comforted her, and asked, “If you, his mother, will not go in and touch your son, how will God touch him?” The mother got up and made peace with her son before he died. My Mother!”
In “Acts of Faith, Acts of Love, McGinley, Dugan describes gay Catholic autobiographies as “sacred texts”, which other gay Catholics can profitably use for reflection and study .Joseph Gentilini’s “Hounded by God: A Gay Man’s Journey to Self-Acceptance, Love, and Relationship” a selection of extracts from the extensive series of spiritual journals he has kept over several decades, interspersed with short excerpts from an unpublished autobiography, certainly qualifies as deserving that descriptor (“sacred text”). I will have intermittent additional posts on thoughts arising from Joseph’s reflections, which raise some important points about what it is to be both gay and Catholic.
In his useful review of Catholics theologians’ work on homosexuality, James Keenan organises his material in three broad divisions: critical reaction, specific moral theological investigations, and power, language, and experience. “Experience” then is formally included in the third of these divisions – but in fact, the importance of experience is a recurring theme throughout.
For instance, under critical reaction to the CDF’s 1986 Pastoral Letter, he includes the complaint by Mary Segers that the Letter “succumbs to the tendency to focus on homosexuality as a male phenomenon and to ignore completely the experience of lesbian women.” By ignoring women’s experiences, the Letter overlooks “the many diverse forms of human friendship and affection which bind people together in relationships and communities”. But it was not only women’s experience, with the diversity of their relationships that was ignored. Men’s experience and relationships were also ignored, with the emphasis on a relentless focus on genital acts. The experience of being a gay man is not simply a matter of sexual attraction and genital obsessions, but also a matter of relationships. The dominican theologian Gerald Moore puts it precisely in “A Question of Truth”, noting that a same – sex attraction is more about who one “takes delight in”, than who one has sex with, and the Baptist gay theologian does even speak of sexual orientation, but of “affectional” orientation.
Keenan also includes in his discussion of critical reaction, the observation by J. Giles Milhaven that it is not only gays and lesbians whose experience is ignored, but that of all loving couples:
“Catholic theologians are only beginning to recognize that there is a number of different kinds of couples who out of their personal lives make the point to the teaching Church. They say to the Church: sex is important for the two of us. You do not take its importance into account in your teaching. You must not know it.”
To this, the only possible response can be of course they “must not know it”. How could they, having taken vows of celibacy for themselves, have any personal experience of loving sexual relationships on which to base that understanding?
In the second division of his analysis on, on “moral investigations”, Keenan begins by noting that the judgement on the moral acceptance of homosexuality requires a judgement on whether it is “good and “normal”, and lists several theologians who have concluded that while not matching the ideal of heterosexual marriage, for some individuals, same – sex relationships should be judged as subjectively good and normal – for them. This then, raises the challenge of addressing the paradox of general norms that insist that such relationships are wrong – but subjectively, in particular lives, they may be good. To resolve this conflict,
many moral theologians have accepted the responsibility to examine the morality of the lives of gay and lesbian persons and have used one of three traditional resources: biblical theology, natural law, and theological anthropology.
But to examine the lives of gay and lesbian, requires an awareness of the experience of those lives. This is especially important in the approaches from natural law, for which an important concept is that what is “natural” is that which leads to human flourishing – and to discern what leads to human flourishing for gay and lesbian people, we need to listen to their experience: Continue reading Share Your Stories – It’s a Theological Obligation.→
I first came across the phrase, “The Hound of Heaven” when it was used by my religion teacher, an O.M.I. priest, at secondary school in Johannesburg, many years ago. At first I had difficulty understanding the concept, unable to grasp the idea of God as a dog. But then, I did not yet appreciate the difference in sense between “dog”, as any canine (in my experience, always a household pet), and “hound” – as a working dog, chasing down the object of its pursuit. Once I did finally get the point, it became a vivid metaphor that has never left me. An explanation at the Neumann Book of Verse, quoted on Wikipedia, conveys the sense of the metaphor:
The name is strange. It startles one at first. It is so bold, so new, so fearless. It does not attract, rather the reverse. But when one reads the poem this strangeness disappears. The meaning is understood. As the hound follows the hare, never ceasing in its running, ever drawing nearer in the chase, with unhurrying and imperturbed pace, so does God follow the fleeing soul by His Divine grace. And though in sin or in human love, away from God it seeks to hide itself, Divine grace follows after, unwearyingly follows ever after, till the soul feels its pressure forcing it to turn to Him alone in that never ending pursuit.
Joseph Gentilini, whom I referred to earlier this week for his long ministry of writing to the American bishops about matters of gay inclusion in church, has used the image in the title of a forthcoming autobiography, “Hounded by God”. This image is entirely appropriate, as a description of how for years he felt tormented by a perceived conflict between what he knew to be his natural affectional and sexual orientation, and the formal, proclaimed sexual doctrines of the church – conflict which led nightly, to thoughts of suicide. Many Catholic gay men and lesbians will have no difficulty recognising this experience, as one that they too have endured.
In “Hounded by God”, the author writes about his struggle to integrate his homosexuality with his personality and his Catholic-Christian spirituality. He grew up in the late ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s when homosexuality was considered either a mental illness or a major sin. In 1968, he had his first homosexual experience. Feeling shame and trying to repress his feelings, he spent over six years in therapy.
Raised a strict Roman Catholic, Joseph confessed his many “sins” to a priest and attended Mass daily. He felt hopeless in accepting his homosexuality and living happily as a gay man, repeating nightly, “If it gets too bad, I can always kill myself.” By 1974, he knew that therapy was not changing his sexual orientation and felt desperate.
Some older Catholics, but perhaps rather fewer younger people will also recognize the resolution of the conflict – that while the institutional church may appear to reject us, that is never true of God, who like a hound will follow us relentlessly, as God did in pursuit of Joseph, until we are able to recognize and accept God’s unconditional love for us all – no exceptions.
Joseph experienced God as hounding him to accept his gay identity and to believe that God loves him as he is. His autobiographical journal reveals his gradual awakening to live his vocation, not only as a gay man in relationship with his partner and with God, but also as someone willing to share his journey with those who struggle with their homosexuality and their faith.
The two passages quoted above are from a summary of the book that I received yesterday by email, together with two reviews, in advance of publication later this year. These gay Catholic biographies are important. Dugan McGinley has written an entire critical analysis of the genre “Acts of Faith, Acts of Love”, which he has sub-titled “Gay Catholic Autobiographies as Sacred Texts”. To call them “sacred” texts may appear to many to be a step too far, but I think the description is entirely appropriate. These stories, if they are honest and sufficiently reflective on the writer’s life of struggle and resolution, can help us all in a similar predicament to find illumination and support in our own search for reconciliation, with God and the Church.
This could be particularly true of this book. Whether we know it yet or not, it will certainly be true that whatever our response to the Church, whatever our perceptions of its doctrines or pastoral practice, whatever our decision or strategies in our lives so far, to deal with and attempt to reconcile the conflicts that we, like Joseph, probably felt or perhaps still feel about our sexuality and our faith – God is constantly chasing us down, hound – like.
I look forward to reading this book once it has been published. I hope you will look out for it, too. Meanwhile, to whet your appetites, I include two short reviews, but theologian John McNeill, and by Mark Matson, a former president of Dignity USA,
St. Augustine put it beautifully into words: “You made us for yourself, Oh Lord, and our- hearts will never rest until they rest in you.” Most of us go through life covering over that yearning at the heart of every human, distracting ourselves with the desires of this world. Not so Joseph Gentilini. God gave Joseph an extraordinary awareness of that call to union with God.
In his autobiographical journal, Joe spells out his painful journey as an active gay man, from revolt against that voice of God to final acceptance with God’s grace of his gay identity given to him by God—a remarkable journey which brings hope to all of us that God’s call to union is to the authentic self. God dwells within us, and the only way to union with that God is through the authentic self.
John McNeill, theologian, former Jesuit priest and author
and
Anyone who has had their sexuality shamed by their religious tradition should relate to Joe’s story of staying connected to his Catholicism while rejecting the teaching of Catholic Bishops on homosexuality and replacing it with a truly authentic spiritual connection with his Creator. He give the reader access to his most intimate thoughts, fears, and experiences—all of which provide the fuel for a seminal work in LGBT spirituality.
I first came across the phrase, “The Hound of Heaven” when it was used by my religion teacher, an O.M.I. priest, at secondary school in Johannesburg, many years ago. At first I had difficulty understanding the concept, unable to grasp the idea of God as a dog. But then, I did not yet appreciate the difference in sense between “dog”, as any canine (in my experience, always a household pet), and “hound” – as a working dog, chasing down the object of its pursuit. Once I did finally get the point, it became a vivid metaphor that has never left me. An explanation at the Neumann Book of Verse, quoted on Wikipedia, conveys the sense of the metaphor:
The name is strange. It startles one at first. It is so bold, so new, so fearless. It does not attract, rather the reverse. But when one reads the poem this strangeness disappears. The meaning is understood. As the hound follows the hare, never ceasing in its running, ever drawing nearer in the chase, with unhurrying and imperturbed pace, so does God follow the fleeing soul by His Divine grace. And though in sin or in human love, away from God it seeks to hide itself, Divine grace follows after, unwearyingly follows ever after, till the soul feels its pressure forcing it to turn to Him alone in that never ending pursuit.
Joseph Gentilini, whom I referred to earlier this week for his long ministry of writing to the American bishops about matters of gay inclusion in church, has used the image in the title of a forthcoming autobiography, “Hounded by God”. This image is entirely appropriate, as a description of how for years he felt tormented by a perceived conflict between what he knew to be his natural affectional and sexual orientation, and the formal, proclaimed sexual doctrines of the church – conflict which led nightly, to thoughts of suicide. Many Catholic gay men and lesbians will have no difficulty recognising this experience, as one that they too have endured.
In Hounded by God, the author writes about his struggle to integrate his homosexuality with his personality and his Catholic-Christian spirituality. He grew up in the late ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s when homosexuality was considered either a mental illness or a major sin. In 1968, he had his first homosexual experience. Feeling shame and trying to repress his feelings, he spent over six years in therapy.
Raised a strict Roman Catholic, Joseph confessed his many “sins” to a priest and attended Mass daily. He felt hopeless in accepting his homosexuality and living happily as a gay man, repeating nightly, “If it gets too bad, I can always kill myself.” By 1974, he knew that therapy was not changing his sexual orientation and felt desperate.
Some older Catholic, but perhaps rather fewer younger people will also recognize the resolution of the conflict – that while the institutional church may appear to reject us, that is never true of God, who like a hound will follow us relentlessly, as God did in pursuit of Joseph, until we are able to recognize and accept God’s unconditional love for us all – no exceptions.
Joseph experienced God as hounding him to accept his gay identity and to believe that God loves him as he is. His autobiographical journal reveals his gradual awakening to live his vocation, not only as a gay man in relationship with his partner and with God, but also as someone willing to share his journey with those who struggle with their homosexuality and their faith.
The two passages quoted above are from a summary of the book that I received yesterday by email, together with two reviews, in advance of publication later this year. These gay Catholic biographies are important. Dugan McGinley has written an entire critical analysis of the genre “Acts of Faith, Acts of Love”, which he has sub-titled “Gay Catholic Autobiographies as Sacred Texts”. To call them “sacred” texts may appear to many to be a step too far, but I think the description is entirely appropriate. These stories, if they are honest and sufficiently reflective on the writer’s life of struggle and resolution, can help us all in a similar predicament to find illumination and support in our own search for reconciliation, with God and the Church.
This could be particularly true of this book. Whether we know it yet or not, it will certainly be true that whatever our response to the Church, whatever our perceptions of its doctrines or pastoral practice, whatever our decision or strategies in our lives so far, to deal with and attempt to reconcile the conflicts that we, like Joseph, probably felt or perhaps still feel about our sexuality and our faith – God is constantly chasing us down, hound – like.
I look forward to reading this book once it has been published. I hope you will look out for it, too. Meanwhile, to whet your appetites, I include two short reviews, but theologian John McNeill, and by Mark Matson, a former president of Dignity USA,
St. Augustine put it beautifully into words: “You made us for yourself, Oh Lord, and our- hearts will never rest until they rest in you.” Most of us go through life covering over that yearning at the heart of every human, distracting ourselves with the desires of this world. Not so Joseph Gentilini. God gave Joseph an extraordinary awareness of that call to union with God.
In his autobiographical journal, Joe spells out his painful journey as an active gay man, from revolt against that voice of God to final acceptance with God’s grace of his gay identity given to him by God—a remarkable journey which brings hope to all of us that God’s call to union is to the authentic self. God dwells within us, and the only way to union with that God is through the authentic self.
John McNeill, theologian, former Jesuit priest and author
and
Anyone who has had their sexuality shamed by their religious tradition should relate to Joe’s story of staying connected to his Catholicism while rejecting the teaching of Catholic Bishops on homosexuality and replacing it with a truly authentic spiritual connection with his Creator. He give the reader access to his most intimate thoughts, fears, and experiences—all of which provide the fuel for a seminal work in LGBT spirituality.
Mark Matson, former president of Dignity USA
Books
John McNeill:
The Church and the Homosexual; Taking a Chance on God;
Freedom, Glorious Freedom;
and My Spiritual Journey: Both Feet Planted In Midair
Hello all. This is Robynn, Terence’s daughter, responding to his invitation to comment for myself on the terrible, terrible hardship I suffered growing up with a gay father. Wait, that’s not quite right…I feel a little out of place writing here, as I am not Catholic; indeed, not a believer at all. Normally I am happy to stick to what I know and keep my opinions on Church policies to myself, but then, the Church doesn’t seem to follow the same principle, insisting as it does on telling us all that gay couples make terrible parents. Not only do the bishops not have any special knowledge on the subject, they seem to be denying what evidence and experience is in fact out there. And they’re certainly not keeping their prejudices opinions to themselves.
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deal he suffered from his staunchly Catholic parents, acting in terms of their understanding of their Catholic obligation:
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