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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)

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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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 )
Spirituality

Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary

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Historically, October 7th was the feast of Saints Sergius and Bacchus – and so of particular relevance to same – sex lovers, and to all gay or lesbian Christians. In the modern Catholic lectionary, however, it is celebrated as the “Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary”.

rainbow rosary

The lectionary readings for today’s Mass (which do not refer directly to the rosary), have much fruitful material for queer reflection. Continue reading Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary →

History, Queer Saints and Martyrs, Spirituality

St John of the Cross: 14th December

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John of the Cross was born in Fontiveros, in Spain, in about 1542. He spent some time as a Carmelite friar before, in 1568, Saint Teresa of Ávila persuaded him to pioneer the reform of the Carmelite order. This was a difficult task and a dangerous one: he suffered imprisonment and severe punishment at the hands of the Church authorities. He died at the monastery of Ubeda in Andalusia on 14 December 1591: the monks there had initially treated him as the worst of sinners, but by the time he died they had recognised his sanctity and his funeral was the occasion of a great outburst of enthusiasm. His works include two major mystical poems – he is considered one of the great poets of the Spanish language – and detailed commentaries on them and the spiritual truths they convey. He was canonized in 1726 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1926.
He is important for queer Christians, especially gay men, for two reasons. First, because he is a great teacher of spirituality, and the cultivation of spiritual practice, by enabling a more direct experience of the divine, is an excellent way to immunize ourselves from toxic and misguided teaching on human sexuality. Second, and more interestingly, because his language at times uses imagery which is plainly homoerotic, and so easily usable by gay men in their own prayer.

Continue reading St John of the Cross: 14th December →

History, Queer Saints and Martyrs, Spirituality

St John of the Cross: 14th December

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John of the Cross is important for queer Catholics, especially gay men, for two reasons. First, because he is a great teacher of spirituality, and the cultivation of spiritual practice, by enabling a more direct experience of the divine, is an excellent way to immunize ourselves from toxic and misguided teaching on human sexuality. Second, and more interestingly, because his language at times uses imagery which is plainly homoerotic, and so easily usable by gay men in their own prayer.

From the Calendar of LGBT Saints:

1542-1591

St. John of the Cross was one of the great Spanish mystics, whose outstanding Dark Night of the Soul is still read by all interested in Catholic mysticism. He also wrote a series of intense religious canticles. St. John, like other mystics such as St. Theresa of Avila, used the language of courtly love to describe his relationship with Christ. He also discussed, with rare candor, the sexual stimulation of prayer, the fact that mystics experience sexual arousal during prayer. With the male Christ of course, this amounts to a homoeroticism of prayer. It must be said that St. John was not entirely happy with this aspect of prayer. He was beatified by Clement X in 1675, canonized by Benedict XIII in 1726, and declared a Doctor of Church Universal by Pius XI in 1926

Quoted at The Wild Reed:

(from ) On a Dark Night

……..

……..
“Oh, night that guided me,
 Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
 Oh, night that joined
 Beloved with lover,
 Lover transformed in the Beloved!

Upon my flowery breast,
 Kept wholly for himself alone,
 There he stayed sleeping,
 and I caressed him,
 And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

The breeze blew from the turret
 As I parted his locks;
 With his gentle hand
 He caressed my neck
 And caused all my senses to be suspended.

I remained, lost in oblivion;
 My face I reclined on the Beloved.
 All ceased and I abandoned myself,
 Leaving my cares
 forgotten among the lilies.”

 

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Sexuality and gender, Spirituality

Hunter Flournoy’s “Erotic Body of Christ”

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In the modern Western church, we have developed an unfortunate tendency to think of the person of Jesus Christ as definitely male, but also decidedly sexless, neutered. This is patently ridiculous. As one who was fully human, he will most certainly have possessed sexual attributes, physical and emotional. Fortunately, modern theologians are rediscovering this – as earlier Christians understood, and the Eastern churches still do.

Kittredge Cherry is an ordained MCC pastor, and a published writer  whose novel “Jesus in Love” considers the erotic attachments that may have existed in Christ’s life. At her blog, Jesus in Love, she posted an interview early last month with Hunter Flournoy, a psychotherapist and shamanic healer who teaches “Erotic Body of Christ” workshops for gay and bisexual men:

Based in North Carolina and New Mexico, Flournoy has been leading workshops and ceremonies in awareness, creativity, healing, passionate living and personal freedom for 19 years. His next Erotic Body of Christ workshop will be March 17-20 at the Kirkridge Retreat Center in Delaware Water Gap, PA. He has just launched a new website, eroticbodyofchrist.org, full of valuable resources for uniting sexuality and spirituality.

Others have also written of the value of incorporating the erotic into spirituality, either as professional theologians and spiritual directors, or from personal experience. In doing so, they are returning to the earlier tradition of the church, in which the great mystics did not shirk from the erotic, but incorporated erotic imagination into their spiritual lives and writing.

Here are some extracts from Kittredge Cherry’s interview with Hunter Flournoy:

Kittredge Cherry: Who is “the erotic Christ”? How does the “erotic Christ” relate to the “historical Jesus” of scholarly research, the gay Jesus or black Jesus of liberation theology, and the traditional Jesus of churches?

Hunter Flournoy:

We are Christ, the anointed one, and His Body is our own, as individuals, as a community, and as a world. At one point, the New Testament says, Christ had only one body – the body of Jesus – but he poured out his Spirit on the World, anointing us all, making us His body. That body, in the eastern traditions of Christianity, is a passionately erotic one; our erotic experience is the place we encounter God most directly, and the energy of Eros — our sensuous experience of pleasure, desire, ecstasy and union . . . is the fuel for our journey of Theosis, or union with God. Eros transfigured through our act of giving ourselves and receiving each other completely, becomes agape. The erotic body of Christ is not a scholastic conceptualization of Jesus – it is a visceral experience of God through our bodies, individually and collectively, modeled by Jesus, lived by the erotic Christian mystics throughout the ages, and felt directly in our own experience.

KC: When and how did you first get involved with the idea of the erotic Christ?

HF: My first intimation of Christ as a living reality in my body goes back to my earliest communion at about age ten. My whole body thrilled when I knelt at the altar rail and the priest’s hand brushed against my own as he pressed the wafer into my palm and lifted the chalice of warm, sweet wine to my lips. I felt that it was Jesus there before me and in me, in everything, penetrating everything and taking it all into him. As I matured, that experience only deepened; every sensation seemed to be infused with a passionately loving presence, and sometimes I would see an astounding light shining out of other peoples’ eyes, kindling bliss in my whole body.

I tried to suppress this unsettling experience for years, since the Christianity of my youth had no room for it. I didn’t realize what a deeply Christian experience it really was until I discovered a small eastern orthodox monastery in New Mexico. There I learned that Christianity had once been something very different: experiential, sensuous, mystical, and profoundly grounded in the sacredness of our bodies and our world. Though many of the eastern churches have more recently become mired in a frightening cultural conservatism, they kept a breathtakingly erotic, incarnational Christianity alive for two thousand years.

KC: Many LGBT people have been wounded by the false teaching that homosexuality is a sin. What message does the erotic Christ have for them?


HF: Our sexual energy is the most powerful tool we have to shatter the illusion of separation, which is what the original Christians meant by “sin.” The essential question we must ask ourselves is, am I using sex to bring myself alive, to overcome separation and incarnate the divine, or am I using it to medicate or avoid my own experience of being alive? This was the original understanding of chastity: it calls us to the highest possible relationship with our own sexual energy. All sexual experience can break down the boundaries and defenses we use to separate ourselves from each other and from God – we become one body, one being. Sex can also teach us how to give ourselves totally (kenosis) to each other, how to receive each other completely (plerosis), and how to surrender to the transfiguring power of our own erotic experience. As LGBT people, we also have an innate understanding that our erotic experience, our pleasure, desire, ecstasy, and union, can serve a purpose other than reproduction. Our erotic joy is a source of profound creativity, deep empathy, and a wild ecstasy that can take us out of who we are into a far greater sense of being.

(Read the full interview at Jesus in Love)

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Spirituality

“Finding God in the Erotic”: Fr Donal Godfrey SJ

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The Christian faith in general, and the Catholic Church in particular, are widely perceived as being inherently anti-erotic, and hostile to the idea of sexual pleasure, of sex outside of procreation. The perception is well-founded in historical fact. Some early theologians praised virginity as an ideal even inside marriage, at a time when the expectation of the imminent parousia created a belief that humanity had no need to procreate. Later, the insistence on clerical celibacy arose in part from an idea that sexual intercourse the night before celebrating Mass was inappropriate, as somehow defiling and unclean. The imposition of compulsory clerical celibacy in turn led to a distinct two-caste system within the Church, with the celibate clergy seen as more “pure” than those laity living normal sexual lives.

The perception is soundly based in history, but not in Scripture, or even in Catholic theology. There is nothing in Scripture that is inherently hostile to sexual love, and much to celebrate it, notably the Song of Songs. Notable mystics such as St John of the Cross,Theresa of Avila and numerous others have described their prayer in notably erotic (even homoerotic) imagery. Since the Reformation, Protestant theologians have recognised that the value of sexual love within marriage. Even the Vatican overturned centuries of tradition with Humanae Vitae, recognizing for the first time that sexual intercourse has a unitive as well as a procreative value.

Ecstasy of St Teresa (Bernini)
 Increasingly, theologians (Catholic as well as Protestant) are going beyond this to acknowledge that there can also be a specifically spiritual dimension to the erotic: the Presbyterian Chris Glaser, for instance, has written movingly on how the attempt to deny either the sexual or the spiritual in life impoverishes the other, while by embracing both, each strengthens and enriches the other.

Yet there remain vocal lobbies within the Church which continue to howl in protest whenever any churchman dares to speak of sexual pleasure in anything but negative terms, or to say publicly what so many people know from experience. So it is that the California Catholic Daily can hardly hide its glee that Fr Donal Godfrey is no longer serving as executive director of University Ministry at the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco: among the black marks the CCD holds against Fr Godfrey is a homily he once delivered on this theme, which was later published at Gay Catholic Forum (where it is still available on-line).I am grateful to California Catholic Daily for this: as so often when they squeal most loudly about something they find objectionable, I took care to seek out the text that upset them, and was glad that I did. (I am equally grateful to them for drawing my attention to another useful homily by Fr Godfrey,“The Call to Come Out”, which  likened Jesus’ calling Lazarus to come out of the tomb to same-sex attracted persons “coming out of the closet.” That homily was also published in the “Gay Catholic Forum.”

Fr Godfrey’s homily on the erotic was based on the Gospel passage in which the Pharisees asked Jesus about divorce. As he points out, this was an attempt by the Pharisees to trap the Lord in a controversial question about sexuality and quotations from Scripture – but Jesus does not see sexuality in the clinical, impersonal terms of the Pharisees. His message is much gentler. This leads on to a more extended reflection on the value of eros in our spiritual lives.
Here is the opening of the homily:
The Pharisees approached and asked, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?”  They were testing him.  He said to them in reply, “What did Moses command you?”  They replied, “Moses permitted him to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her.”  But Jesus told them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.  For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother (and be joined to his wife), and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh.  Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”
In the house the disciples again questioned him about this.  He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”   (Mark 10:2-12)
Jesus, in this morning’s Gospel is caught up in a religious conflict about sexuality and some people who quote scripture at him. Doesn’t that sound familiar?
And so it is interesting to see how Jesus deals with this situation.
Jesus wasn’t a biblical conservative. But he wasn’t a biblical liberal either.  He expected something important from the scriptures, he expected to be challenged and surprised by God and he also expected that when you are challenged and surprised by God some of the details in the sacred scripture will have to go, because they will be revealed as concessions to our hardness of hearts.
Read the full text at Gay Catholic Forum

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Books and other resources, Spirituality

Coming Out as Spiritual Experience

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Over 40 years since Stonewall, it has become commonplace to recognise the value of coming out as a growth experience, bringing benefits to mental health, self-esteem and personal integrity. Less widely recognised is the value of coming out as spiritual growth. This idea, which well deserves to be better known, gets extensive treatment in Daniel Helminiak’s book, Sex and the Sacred: Gay Identity and Spiritual Growth

(Helminiak is an openly gay Catholic priest with doctorates in both spirituality and psychology, who teaches spirituality in a faculty of psychology – so he is eminently well qualified to write on the subject. For more  on Daniel Helminiak, see his own website, “Visions of Daniel“)

Sex and Sacred

In his preface, Helminiak notes that the arguments in the early days of the gay liberation movement were purely reactive & defensive, making the case that homosexuality is NOT a sin, NOT a sickness, and NOT a mental disorder.

Now, he says, we need to move on, and that is what he does. Throughout the book, he affirms that the state of homosexuality in itself inherently puts us on a quest for self-transcendence, which is what he defines as “spirituality”, whether  or not that includes a specifically religious or God-oriented element. If we move beyond the simple state of homosexuality to self-acceptance, coming out and authentically living in accordance with that identity, then, he says, we open ourselves to both emotional/human and spiritual development, to a degree that is greater than that of people who have not had to face such a journey. Although he begins his book by looking at “spirituality” from a nontheistic position independently of any religious consideration, he then moves on to elaborate the theme from within the Christian, and then specifically Catholic, traditions.

He does not pussyfoot around the matter of of the physical expression of sex. In Chapter 5 of the book, “Sexual Pathways to Spiritual Growth”, he describes the beneficial aspects of physical, sexual arousal and release on first the individual, then on the couple, on society as a whole, on the potential for “grasping the infinite”, and for the hope of union with God:

On the individual:

“The experience of sexual arousal and orgasm has a physical healing effect.  It reduces stress and relaxes and calms the body. During sexual arousal, there occurs in the psyche the concomitant release of emotions, images and experiences…..a flood of powerful psychic material may flow out of psyche’s secret caverns…… It invites the healthy acceptance of your bodiliness.”




And (writing of Oriental practice):

“A natural human activity, sex, frees and opens the mind to experiences similar to those induced through other spiritual practices….. or induced chemically.  Sexual arousal becomes a doorway to profound psychic and spiritual experiences”

On the Couple:

“Such sharing, continued authentically with openness, honesty and love, is as much a spiritual discipline as any fasting, prayer, retreat, spiritual counselling, or vigil. “

“All the while thick bonds of sexual desire, physical and emotional, hold them entwined and force them to resolve their differences…..Thus organic and psychic sexual processes serve spiritual ends. Sexual togetherness serves interpersonal sharing and growth”

On society as a whole:

“Beyond the individual and the couple, sexual sharing involves the family and, indeed, the cosmos.  Inherent in the experience of sexual love is a movement beyond yourself….. Love opens our eys to a world of beauty beyond ourselves.  Loving another person opens you to identify with all people….Since authentic human love is an integrating experience, it leads you to identify with the whole human race.”

Of God:

“For the theist believer, sex is a gift of God……horniness, romance and caring… are inherent aspects of human life designed so by the creator. Therefore, they must be good and wholesome. Their authentic experience inserts us ever further into the ultimate Mystery of the unfolding universe.  God is the source and the sustenance – as well as the goal – of human sexual love.”

It may be wise to insert here a caution.  Helminiak clearly values and celebrates the authentic expression of human sexuality, including physical expression.  He does repeatedly warn though, of the parallel dangers of inauthentic and inappropriate expression. With the official teaching of the church on all matters so profoundly misguided, it is valuable to have the helpful guidance of a thoughtful and realistic commentary.  If I have ignored that part of the book here, it is only because it is quite a separatae theme, which will require quite a different post on another occasion.

Overall, this is a most useful book, worth returning to again and again.  I particularly recommended it to those of you who, like myself, have grown weary of endless defences against our critics.  Especially at this season of Pride, it is important to proclaim and affirm the positive value of who we are.

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