The Wild Reed

A Priest Reflects on God and the Problem of Evil

2008-07-23T10:02:00.000-07:00

My friends Charlie and Maria recently brought to my attention the following reflection by a local priest. As you’ll see, it’s a very humble and honest sharing of his thoughts on the age-old problem of evil in the world.

What struck me most about this particular reflection was how refreshing it was to hear a priest actually ponder, question, and acknowledge his “limited viewpoint” and thus his willingness to simply “bow before the mystery” of God. It makes a welcome change from the pontificating we so often hear from clerics, and their insistence that they or the Church itself has all possible answers to the complexities of life.

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Dear People Whom God Loves,

I don’t pretend to solve a problem that has vexed philosophers and theologians for centuries. These are just my personal thoughts that are helpful to me. The following is the way the issue is usually framed:

1. Evil exists.
2. God is benevolent (loving).
3. God is omnipotent (all powerful).

Is it possible to rationally hold all three statements as true?

1. That evil exists is common (maybe universal) experience.

2. If God is benevolent, then God will want to eliminate evil. If God wants to eliminate all evil but does not, it means that God is not omnipotent.

3. If God is omnipotent, he can eliminate all evils. If he doesn’t, it means that God is not benevolent.

Some philosophers have held to belief in God and given explanations about why evil can exist with a God who is benevolent and omnipotent.

Some philosophers hold that reason compels us to deny that there is a God. Better to have no God than one that is either a monster or a weakling.

From my limited viewpoint, it seems to me that they are all thinking of God as a being. An infinite Being. A being as we are beings, but infinitely greater. With that starting point, I doubt that there can be a satisfactory solution. When we think of God as an infinite Being, we are presupposing that God acts like other beings but on a much larger scale. This makes God the biggest being in the universe but still one of its beings.

When we image God not as a being but as the source of being – the non-being – the emptiness (i.e., the non-being) from which all beings come, we will not be trapped into the box of thinking that God acts by cause and effect as we do. Then we can bow before the mystery.

To put this in traditional theological language, God is being, God is not being, God is more than being.

If you have read this far, you may think that this is just a bunch of nonsense. That’s okay. Just throw it away. I throw it away, too, when I am with God.

I believe that God is. I believe that God loves us. I believe that God helps us. I believe in the power of prayer. I don’t pretend to believe that I know how God works.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Elizabeth Johnson and Images of God (Part 1)
Elizabeth Johnson and Images of God (Part 2)
In the Garden of Spirituality: Paul Collins
In the Garden of Spirituality: Uta Ranke-Heinemann
Revisiting a Groovy Jesus (and a Dysfunctional Theology)

Mary of Magdala

2008-07-22T21:06:00.001-07:00

Today is the Feast Day of Mary of Magdala (also known as Mary Magdalene).

I can think of no better way to celebrate this day on The Wild Reed than by sharing excerpts from a very scholarly tract (from FutureChurch.org) about this remarkable woman of the New Testament. Enjoy!

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Mary Magdala – Apostle to the Apostles

Mary of Magdala is perhaps the most maligned and misunderstood figure in early Christianity. In Christian art and hagiography, Mary has been romanticized, allegorized, and mythologized beyond recognition. Since the fourth century, she has been portrayed as a prostitute and public sinner who, after encountering Jesus, repented and spent the rest of her life in private prayer and penitence. Paintings, some little more than pious pornography, reinforce the mistaken belief that sexuality, especially female sexuality, is shameful, sinful, and worthy of repentance. Yet the actual biblical account of Mary of Magdala paints a far different portrait than that of the bare-breasted reformed harlot of Renaissance art.

First Witness to the Resurrection

Nowhere in scripture is Mary of Magdala identified as a public sinner or a prostitute. Instead, scripture shows her as the primary witness to the most central events of Christian faith, named in exactly the same way (Maria e Magdalena) in each of four gospels written for diverse communities throughout the Mediterranean world. It was impossible to relate the story of the Resurrection without including “Mary, the one from Magdala.”

Luke 8,1-3 tells us that Mary traveled with Jesus in the Galilean discipleship and, with Joanna and Susanna, supported his mission from her own financial resources. In the synoptic gospels, Mary leads the group of women who witness Jesus’ death, burial, the empty tomb, and His Resurrection. The synoptics contrast Jesus’ abandonment by the male disciples with the faithful strength of the women disciples who, led by Mary, accompany him to his death. John’s gospel names Mary of Magdala as the first to discover the empty tomb and shows the Risen Christ sending her to announce the Good News of his resurrection to the other disciples. This prompted early church Fathers to name her “the Apostle to the Apostles.”

That the message of the resurrection was first entrusted to women is regarded by scripture scholars as strong proof for the historicity of the resurrection accounts. Had accounts of Jesus’ resurrection been fabricated, women would never have been chosen as witnesses, since Jewish law did not acknowledge the testimony of women.

Early non-canonical Christian writings show faith communities growing up around Mary’s ministry, where she is portrayed as understanding Jesus’ message better than did Peter and the male disciples. Scholars tell us that these writings are not about the historical persons Mary and Peter but instead reflect tensions over women’s roles in the early church. Prominent leaders such as Mary and Peter were evoked to justify opposing points of view. What is not disputed is the recognition of Mary of Magdala as an important woman leader in earliest Christianity.

What Happened?

Why are contemporary Christians uninformed about Mary’s faithful discipleship and prominent leadership role in the infant church? One explanation is a common misreading of Luke’s gospel which tells us that “seven demons had gone out of her.” (Luke 8,1-3) To first century ears, this meant only that Mary had been cured of serious illness, not that she was sinful. According to biblical scholars such as Sr. Mary Thompson, illness was commonly attributed to the work of evil spirits, although not necessarily associated with sinfulness. The number seven symbolized that her illness was either chronic or very severe.

Women Leaders Suppressed

In 312, when Constantine made Christianity the religion of the empire, the Christian community was caught in a cultural conflict as it moved from worship in house churches where women’s leadership was accepted, to worship in public places where women’s leadership violated Roman social codes of honor and shame. In the fourth century, male church leaders at the Council of Laodicea suppressed women leaders because of the belief that women were created subordinate to men. During this same time period, we see the memory of Mary of Magdala changing from that of a strong female disciple and proclaimer of the Resurrection to a repentant prostitute and public sinner. Scholars such as Dr. Jane Schaberg believe this was done deliberately to discourage female leadership in the church.

As knowledge of Jesus’ many women disciples faded from historical memory, their stories merged and blurred. The tender anointing of Mary of Bethany prior to Jesus’ passion was linked to the woman “known to be a sinner” whose tears washed and anointed Jesus’ feet at Simon’s house. The anointing texts combined all of these women into one generic public sinner, “Magdalen.” Misidentification of Mary as reformed public sinner achieved official standing with a powerful homily by Pope Gregory the Great (540-604).

Henceforth, Mary of Magdala became known in the west, not as the strong woman leader who accompanied Jesus through a tortuous death, first witnessed his Resurrection, and proclaimed the Risen Savior to the early church, but as a wanton woman in need of repentance and a life of hidden (and hopefully silent) penitence. Interestingly, the eastern church never identified her as a prostitute, but honored her throughout history as “the Apostle to the Apostles.”

“Mary Magdalene” by Sally K. Green.

Writes artist Sally K. Green:

Saint Mary Magdalene was a dear friend of Jesus. She was also a wealthy woman of stature in her community. She was there when Jesus was crucified, while other disciples fled.

Ancient tradition of the Eastern Church says that after Christ’s Ascension, Mary traveled to Rome. Due to her high social standing she was admitted to appear before Caesar to tell him of how poorly Pilate had administered Jesus’ trial.

To make her point, she picked up an egg from the banquet table, explaining that Jesus came out of the tomb like a chicken breaking out of its shell. Caesar scoffed and said, “a human could no more rise from the dead than that egg could turn red. ” As he said the words, the egg turned red!

It is believed that this red egg inspired the tradition of coloring Easter eggs.

Opening Image: Artist unknown.
Image 2: Eileen Cantlin Verbus.
Image 3: Sofia Christine.
Image 4: Artist unknown.
Image 5: Sally K. Green.
Image 6 (right): Janet McKenzie.

Recommended Off-site Links:
Who Framed Mary Magdalene - Heidi Schlumpf (U.S. Catholic).
What The Da Vinci Code Owes to Women - Christine Schenk (National Catholic Reporter, July 15, 2005).

See also the previous Wild Reed post:
Thoughts on The Da Vinci Code

An Action Plan for the Future of the Church, Disguised as a Novel

2008-07-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

Yes, that’s how veteran journalist and author, Robert Blair Kaiser (pictured at right), describes his latest book, Cardinal Mahony - A Novel.

Kaiser was in the Twin Cities this past weekend, and I plan on writing a future post about his shared recollections of Vatican II (which he covered for Time Magazine), and his current efforts to inspire and establish a constitution for the American Catholic Church. (It’s Kaiser belief that such a constitution would help create a church that is “accountable,” primarily because it would be autochthonous, i.e., “home grown,” and thus distinct from the Roman system without being disassociated from it - not unlike the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches and what some have said the Catholic Church in China has, in some ways, become.)

For now, though, I’d simply like to share excepts from a review of Kaiser’s Cardinal Mahony - A Novel. This particular review is written by “Peregrinus” and was originally published on the Catholica Australia website.

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The Church likened to a giant iceberg . . .

Icebergs are handy for metaphors because, as everyone knows, the great bulk of any iceberg is hidden; only the very top can be seen. A Google search returns 3.3 million hits for the phrase “tip of the iceberg.” If more than a handful of those refer to an actual iceberg, I’ll be astonished.

But icebergs have another feature almost equally useful to the maker of metaphors. They shrink in a very irregular fashion. Icebergs change shape all the time, through bits breaking off, through wind and wave erosion, through localized melting. The result is that an iceberg’s centre of gravity is constantly shifting.

. . . ready to roll

Most of the time this isn’t noticeable but, when the centre of gravity shifts just far enough, an iceberg will roll over without warning. If you happen to be nearby when that happens, you’ll certainly notice. An iceberg can weigh up to 200,000 tons, and it displaces a similar mass of water. That makes for some very big waves when a berg rolls. If you survive the turmoil, when the waves die down you’ll see what looks like a completely different iceberg.

For Robert Blair Kaiser, the American church is an iceberg, just waiting for the choppy wave, or the slightly warm wind from the right quarter, or the fracture at just the right point which will nudge the centre of gravity past the tipping point. And then the berg will roll.

An overview of Cardinal Mahony – A Novel

In this novel, Kaiser imagines the American church rolling, or at least starting to roll.

To do this, he has to start with the nudge, the small impulse that sets off the chain of large events. For this purpose he rather implausibly imagines the Archbishop of Los Angeles being kidnapped by a group of militant liberation theologians, brought to a remote jungle location and subjected to a show trial for his sins and failings as a bishop. This takes up the first five chapters of the novel; the remainder is devoted to exploring how the Archbishop is changed by this experience, how he seeks to change the American church, and how Powerful Vested Interests seek to stop him.

The novel is written in a genre new to me; reality fiction. The archbishop who is subjected to this ordeal is not a fictional character; but the current real-life current archbishop of Los Angeles, Roger Mahony. And, Kaiser assures us in his foreword, the facts brought out in his trial are real, and can be documented. The trial itself and subsequent events are of course imagined but, Kaiser tells us, he has tried to write so that Mahony’s response to these imagined events, and indeed the actions of other characters borrowed from reality, is “in character,” or at least plausible.

Mahony is not alone; the book abounds in real characters, drawn from the church, American politics and the American media – the worlds most familiar to the author. Apart from Roger Mahony; Pope Benedict, the current US President and Secretary of Defense, Cardinal Re of the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Bertone of the Vatican Secretariat of State, Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter, the filmmaker Michael Moore, the retired Archbishop Quinn of San Francisco, Fr Richard John Neuhaus, Sr Joan Chittister and a host of others all have speaking parts of greater or lesser significance.

Fictional characters to carry the plot along

There are fictional characters as well; there have to be, in order to carry the plot along. In particular, the villains of the piece have to be fictional. So we have a fictional Archbishop of Philadelphia, a fictional chancellor of the Diocese of Los Angeles, and so forth.

The book has an entertaining plot, which I don’t want to give away. It’s enough to say that it’s a ripping yarn. But this book is not really plot-driven; the plot is mostly just a vehicle for Kaiser to lay out his vision of how the American church could be, and how it might get there from where it is today. So we can excuse a few gaps and implausibilities. . . .

No articulate case for a conservative vision

But fun can slip over into indulgence. There are a number of television discussions about the future of the church between progressive and conservative Catholics; invariably the progressives score astute and witty points, while the conservatives end up spluttering or floundering. And the most prominent opponents of the conservative vision turn out to be motivated by financial corruption and sexual hypocrisy. Sympathetic as I am to Kaiser’s vision, all this is gratifying to me, but it is a bit of a cop-out. Despite the set-piece debates nobody ever puts an articulate case for a conservative vision, or even subjects Kaiser’s vision to any serious critique.

The result, ironically, is that Kaiser’s vision of the church is not explored as fully as it might be. Kaiser’s characters argue, for instance, that the American church doesn’t need the pope’s permission to govern itself in disciplinary matters, while remaining fully in communion. I can’t help suspecting that the true position is more nuanced than that, though. The pope's permission may not be needed, but his agreement certainly is.

I think this book is more likely to please those who already share Kaiser’s vision than it is to win over those who don’t. But its purpose may not be to win people over, so much as to encourage the true believers, and to suggest that the possibility of change could be closer than it sometimes seems. While the imagined events which lead Mahony to change his mind are fairly far-fetched, the real point is that a change of heart by just one influential church leader could have far-reaching results.

Just how far-reaching? Well, Kaiser doesn’t say. Mahony starts the iceberg rolling, but when the book rather abruptly ends it hasn’t settled in a new alignment. In fact, the really big waves are just beginning. In an afterword, Kaiser encourages the reader to “stand by for the sequel.” But I’m not convinced that he intends to write another novel. Remember, what Kaiser has written is “reality fiction”; a sequel doesn’t have to come from the “fiction” element of that expression. A novel is a work of the imagination, but imagination is also the foundation for new realities; Kaiser may be encouraging us to look to the real world for the next chapter in the church’s story.

To read Peregrinus’s review of Cardinal Mohony - A Novel in its entirety, click here.

To read Brian Coyne’s review of Cardinal Mahony - A Novel, click here.

Recommended Off-site Links:
RobertBlairKaiser.com
The Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church

Opening Image: Robert Blair Kaiser by Michael Bayly.

Still Gay

2008-07-22T12:09:00.000-07:00

Continuing with The Wild Reed’s series of gay-themed advertisements from around the world, here’s a humorous one for Chemistry.com.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
An Israeli Gay-themed Advertisement
If the Jeans Fit . . .
Simple Yet Powerful
Oops!
One Out of Ten
A Beer Ad with a Difference
Those Europeans are at it Again

Remembering Alfred Kinsey's Legacy of Liberation

2008-07-21T07:16:00.000-07:00

There’s a scene toward the end of the 2004 film Kinsey , Bill Condon’s biopic on renowned sexologist, Alfred Kinsey, that, for me, is quite simply unforgettable.

Steven Winn of the San Francisco Chronicle describes this particular scene as follows:

Lynn Redgrave plays a woman who tells Kinsey his work freed her from guilt to love another woman. “You saved my life,” she says, her radiantly grateful face and brimming eyes filling the screen. She gets up and lays her hand on Kinsey’s in quiet communion.

And here is critic Christopher Kelly’s appraisal of this penultimate scene:

There’s a brief, beautiful sequence near the end, featuring Lynn Redgrave as another sort of late bloomer - an elderly woman who, after reading [Kinsey’s] “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female,” finally comes to terms with the lesbian feelings she has tried to suppress for decades. The peerless Redgrave sends us out of the theater in tears of triumph, and she connects Kinsey’s science to a very human face. She shows us that, in preaching tolerance, open-mindedness and progressiveness, Alfred Kinsey was really saying this: You’re never too old to learn to love yourself.

I was reminded of Redgrave’s character’s gentle yet profound recollection of liberation when, in the July-August issue of The Gay and Lesbian Review, I read Ben Edward Akerley’s insightful and, at times, humorous “memo” marking the 60th anniversary of the publication of Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.

Of this groundbreaking study, John Gagnon, Ph.D. has written:

It was with Kinsey’s first book, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” . . . that knowledge about sexuality garnered from a scientific survey burst into the consciousness of the American public. This book and its companion, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female,” published in 1953, introduced a new way of thinking and talking about sexuality to American (and world) culture.

The practice of sexuality was quite varied in the United States before the publication of these books, but it was largely unrecorded, at least by scientists. Before the late 1940s, the sexual lives of most people were shaped by personal experiments, isolated sexual encounters, uninformed gossip, media sensation, and moral condemnation (not necessarily in that order). The national myth was that most people were obedient to a traditional set of sexual rules and those who were not were relatively rare and defective in morals or willpower.

It was against this background of repression and prurience that Kinsey asserted the right of science to speak about sexual behavior. As a scientist, Kinsey spoke and wrote plainly, using language about sexuality that was rarely heard or read at the time. The facts reported in the book on men’s sexual behavior were at fundamental variance with the myths. Kinsey reported that the practice of masturbation was nearly universal among men (90 percent did it), that homosexual relations were widely experienced (37 percent had done it once), that premarital sexual relations were common (most college men did it), that half of married men had had extramarital sexual relations, and that oral sex was routine in deed if not in public discourse (70 percent of educated husbands said they and their wives had done it).

But it was not only these facts that evoked a powerful negative response from traditional figures in churches, legislatures, and the press. The book also had a strong reformist tone, with Kinsey arguing, completely in the American grain, that progress in dealing with sexual problems could only be made by objectively uncovering the facts of sexual life. That the reported sexual practices of American men differed from moral expectations was (in Kinsey’s interpretation) evidence of the power of sexuality and not a mark of moral decay. The problems associated with sexuality were a consequence of social repression, not inherent to sexuality itself.

As an American teenager growing into awareness of his attraction to other males, Ben Edward Akerley was deeply impacted by Kinsey’s 1948 study.

“I cannot begin to describe the overwhelming sense of relief my conscience experienced,” writes Akerley in his commentary in the Gay and Lesbian Review, “as I began to devour the new sex study, which I hoped would assuage my profound sense of shame and remorse.”

Following are more excerpts from Akerley’s piece, entitled “Coming Out Kinsey: Sexual Behavior at Sixty.”

________________________________

. . . Most intriguing of all in my all-absorbing search was Kinsey’s argument that nature loves a continuum and it is only the human mind that imposes categories and pigeonholes people into discrete groups. Sexual orientation, he proposed, could be observed to occupy a spectrum with a scale from zero to six, with zero being fully heterosexual and six being fully homosexual. This seven-point scale he offered as an alternative to the existing two-point, either-or dichotomy, though he emphasized that it was still a very imprecise and imperfect measure of the tremendously wide range of human sexual behavior and did not capture its fluidity over time.

The hardest thing my still immature brain had to wrestle with was the concept that it was a sliding scale, not a fixed one. I had immediately positioned myself as a six, never anticipating in my wildest dreams that just two years into the future, at age eighteen, I would fairly easily move away from that designation. A young woman who was determined to challenge my self-identity as a hundred percent homosexual managed to seduce me into a strictly one-time, experimental sexual tryst. Much to my dismay, it worked to the point of orgasm (or to use Kinsey’s preferred term, “release”), and I reluctantly acknowledged my transition to a Kinsey 5 (predominately homo and only incidentally heterosexual). Even though my sister insistently argues that a one-and only opposite sex encounter doesn’t qualify, I have unabashedly worn that badge of being certifiably bisexual ever since.

Thanks to Alfred Kinsey, I survived that period of adolescent angst and turmoil relatively unscathed and emerged fully from the stifling confines of that now-faraway closet. Only much later in life did I fully realize how far ahead of his time the indefatigable Kinsey was when he posed the question, Why are some gay people so completely comfortable with and adjusted to their orientation while others are desperately unhappy with it, seeking to keep it a secret or to pretend it’s not a fact of life, or even to change this orientation by any means possible?

. . . Like most readers who made Kinsey’s book an overnight best-seller, I anticipated a narrative with at least some salacious details, but encountered instead a myriad of tables, charts, and graphs that only a CPA might find exciting. But buried among all of that tabulated data were some major nuggets about human sexuality. Forty years after the publication of the first volume of his magnum opus, Kinsey is credited with having established the intellectual groundwork for what would become the gay and lesbian rights movement of the 1960’s and 70’s: the idea that homosexuality is a normal and recurring feature of the human condition.

– Excerpted from “Coming Out Kinsey: Sexual Behavior at Sixty” by Ben Edward Akerley (The Gay and Lesbian Review, July-August 2008).

NOTE: The following video shows the final scenes from the film Kinsey. The first three minutes of this six minute video contain Lynn Redgrave’s scene. (The remaining three minutes are worth watching as well!)

Recommended Off-site Links:
Alfred Kinsey and the Kinsey Report: Historical Overview and Lasting Contributions - Vern L. Bullough (Journal of Sex Research, May 1998).
According to the Kinsey Reports - Jim Burroway (Box Turtle Bulletin, January 3, 2008).
The New Kinsey Report is Here! - Science Blog, April 18, 2008.
“Sexual Pioneer” – A review of the film Kinsey by Joanne Laurier (World Socialist Web Site, December 15, 2004).

See also the previous Wild Reed post:
What Scientists in the UK are Saying About Homosexuality

Beyond Courage

2008-07-17T07:02:00.000-07:00

Last week, the leadership of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM) wrote to every deacon in the state of Minnesota, calling their attention to a serious moral and pastoral care issue presented by the Region 8 Deacon Conference, scheduled to take place this weekend at the University of St Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Specifically, we expressed concern that the only person scheduled to speak on the issues of homosexuality and ministry with homosexual persons and their families, is Fr. Paul Check, the Chief Executive Officer of the Courage apostolate.

We noted that, like the vast majority of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Catholics, their parents, loved ones, and allies, we have serious concerns about the ideology and message of the Courage movement. We then shared some of these concerns (along with alternative ways of thinking about and ministering to LGBT persons than those advocated by Courage) in a position paper comprised of “talking points” grouped under four headings: “Courage’s Mission and Philosophy,” “Courage and NARTH (National Association for Research and Treatment of Homosexuality)”, “Alternative Catholic Perspectives on Homosexuality,” and “Church Teaching on Homosexuality.”

In the event that the deacons attend Fr. Check’s presentation at the upcoming deacons’ conference, we encouraged them to draw on these talking points to respectfully question and challenge the theological presuppositions and pastoral recommendations of Courage.

We concluded our letter by noting that:

It is our understanding that the diaconate ministry was developed, in large part, to provide pastoral outreach to persons on the margins of both the Church and society, and that this outreach places great emphasis on listening to where people are at on their journey rather than on preaching of doctrine. There is a place for, and value in, helping people discern where and how God is present and active in their lives – including LGBT lives. The Church itself can and has benefited from such discernment. The Vatican II document “Dei Verbum” says that the Catholic tradition develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit, and that this development of tradition occurs “through the intimate understanding of spiritual things [that believers] experience.” In this way, “Dei Verbum” states, the Church “constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth.”

This foundational teaching of Vatican II clearly teaches that the Church is still developing and growing. It’s a teaching that also refutes the idea that to be a good Catholic means, first of all, unquestioning obedience to those who have placed themselves over us and who declare that they possess truths that others do not.

Yet sadly, such an absolutist approach is exactly what the Courage apostolate advocates. From our perspective, and perhaps yours too, such an approach fails to embody those diaconate traditions and charisms of listening and openness to God in the lives and relationships of all.

We hope you will use the enclosed position paper as a resource, not only when engaging Fr. Check at the Region 8 Deacon Conference, but also in your future interactions with people in your life and ministry as deacons. A PDF version of this position paper is also available on the CPCSM website (www.cpcsm.org) for downloading and distribution. We are also including with this letter a Catholic bibliography on gay issues – a list of books and DVDs that we hope you will find of value in your ministry with and for LGBT persons and their families.

Following is the position paper that was mailed to the deacons of Minnesota by CPCSM. (NOTE: The links within the text have been added.)

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Beyond Courage to Authenticity

A Position Paper on the Courage Apostolate
prepared by the
Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities

1. Courage’s Mission and Philosophy

· The Courage apostolate purports to help people move beyond “same-sex attraction” by encouraging a life of “interior chastity in union with Christ.” The movement labels itself a “pro-chastity ministry” and equates chastity with celibacy.

· Although Courage acknowledges that the “inclination” of “homosexual attractions” is “psychologically understandable,” such attractions are nevertheless considered “objectively disordered” – a view that, though promulgated by the Vatican as church teaching, is widely questioned throughout the Church as the people of God.

· Courage insists that it “does not provide professional therapy” while, at the same time, maintaining the discredited belief that “some people, especially young people, are able to further their psychosexual development [i.e., “move beyond homosexual attractions”] with spiritual and psychological aid.”

· Courage shares with Protestant ex-gay/transformational ministries the belief that homosexuality is pathological, and not a natural, normal sexual orientation. However, unlike many of the other ministries, the Courage apostolate recognizes that adult sexual orientation is fixed and does not claim that adult gays and lesbians’ sexual orientation can be changed. Nevertheless, it still teaches that the only valid path for homosexuals is to seek celibacy.

2. Courage and NARTH (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality)

· Courage discourages the use of the terms “gay” and “lesbian,” believing such labels reduce individuals to their “sexual attractions.” Given this rationale, it seems odd that Courage uses the term “same-sex attracted” when talking about the homosexual orientation. It’s important to know that the phrase “same-sex attracted” was coined by the largely discredited U.S.-based National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). It’s a term that is unrecognized by any professional health association. Following NARTH’s lead, Courage likens homosexuality to alcoholism, and conducts its “support group” using the 12-Step format developed by Alcoholics Anonymous. Some members of Courage even consider their “disorder” to be curable, and explain its origin using debunked psychoanalytic theories of dominant mothers, distant fathers, and abusive family relations.

· NARTH, itself, is a sham organization of “therapists” that teaches that homosexuality is a disorder that is not only chosen, but can be changed through effort. Not surprisingly, NARTH’s findings and methodology are seldom, if ever, offered to peer-reviewed journals for critical analysis. In short, the group lacks any respect from the wider scientific community.

· Despite this, the founder of Courage, Fr, John Harvey, frequently invited to his workshops, as a major presenter, the late Peter Rudegeair, a member of NARTH and a clinical psychologist who was a major proponent of discredited (by all mainstream medical and mental health professional associations) theories advocating reparative, or change, therapy for gay men and lesbians.

· Since last November the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis has attempted to promote NARTH as a credible scientific organization. For instance, in the November 8 issue of The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the archdiocese, Fr. Jim Livingston (lead chaplain to the local chapter of Courage) endorsed NARTH by citing the organization as a useful resource and by encouraging people to visit its website so as “to learn . . . about the emotional root causes of homosexuality.” Fr. Livingston also recommended an audio CD of a talk given by NARTH co-founder Joseph Nicolosi, an individual whom Archbishop Nienstedt, when he was a bishop in Detroit, invited to speak to the priests of the archdiocese as an “expert” on homosexuality. Many Catholics are concerned by the archdiocese’s increasing reliance on the discredited perspective and “findings” of NARTH to support and validate Church teaching on homosexuality.

· Although Courage itself does not attempt to change adult homosexual orientation, its website has a link to NARTH’s website and to the websites of many non-Catholic so-called “ex-gay”conservative religious groups—such as, Exodus International, Homosexuals Anonymous, Hope Ministry, International Healing Foundation, JONAH, People Can Change, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), and Straightway. Furthermore, Courage is yet to refute the pseudo-science of reparative therapy these “ex-gay” groups advocate. From the perspective of all mainstream medical and mental health professional associations, homosexuality is not a disorder requiring either curing or repairing. Furthermore, many of these professional associations even hold that to attempt such “cures” is unethical and verges on malpractice.

· Yet Courage does not dissuade its members from pursuing such “therapy,” and links to NARTH’s and other ex-gay groups’ websites from its own website. We consider this to be not only unethical, but morally reprehensible. Courage is basically saying to its members that the unhealthy and damaging practice of reparative therapy is okay, but, under no circumstances are its members to consider pursuing and maintaining a loving committed same-sex relationship – relationships which, as a number of recent and reputable studies have shown, are “not atypical, psychologically immature, or malevolent contexts of development.” (Glenn I. Roisman, PhD, American Psychological Association media release, January 22, 2008.)

3. Alternative Catholic perspectives on homosexuality

· CPCSM has always supported those who feel called by God to live a celibate life. Yet we have serious concerns when Courage and the hierarchical Church insist that all gay and lesbian people are called to lifelong celibacy as a result of their God-given sexual orientation. We believe that this reflects an extremely limited and ultimately unhealthy understanding of human sexuality and of God’s presence and call in the lives and relationships of LGBT people.

· With the vast majority of LGBT Catholics, their parents, loved ones, and allies we recognize and celebrate human sexuality – gay and straight – as a God-given gift that we are called to holistically integrate into our lives. For the majority of people – gay or straight – such wholeness and authenticity means seeking and cultivating an intimate relationship with another – a relationship which by its love and commitment is pure in thought and conduct, i.e., chaste. Being authentic in this way – as many LGBT people will attest – requires great dedication and courage.

· LGBT people, along with heterosexual people, can and do experience sexual relationships marked by justice, wholeness, and life-giving love. We believe that such experiences, along with current scientific understanding of homosexuality, can and should inform church teaching on human sexuality.

· Recent data (2007) published by the Pew Forum in its study of Religion in America show that a majority of U.S. Catholics (58 percent) currently favor acceptance of gay people and relationships and that such approval is proportionately greater in the Catholic Church than in other Christian churches or in the nation as a whole. It would seem that many Catholics concur with National Catholic Reporter editor, Tom Roberts, when he states: “[Some insist] that current thinking that is tolerant of homosexuality [is] ignoring ancient wisdom. I happen to think that current wisdom that welcomes homosexuals is, more correctly, finally dropping centuries of ancient ignorance.” (NCR, January 2006.)

· The editors of the 1994 anthology, Sexuality and the Sacred: Sources of Theological Reflection, suggest that this ignorance stems, in part, from the fact that “throughout most of Christian history the vast majority of theologians who wrote about sexuality tried to approach the subject from one direction only: they began with affirmations and assertions of the faith (from scriptures, from doctrines, from churchly teachings, and so on) and then applied those to human sexuality. Now, theologians are assuming that the other direction of inquiry is important as well: What does our sexual experience reveal about God? About the ways we understand the Gospel? About the ways we read scripture and tradition and attempt to live out the faith?”

· Such questions, we admit, can be unsettling. But we think that it is not the Catholic way to shy away from them and to retreat instead into some fantasy world where, despite both scientific and experiential evidence to the contrary, we insist that we have all the possible answers (and thus knowledge) available to us about what it means to be sexual, what it means to be human.

4. Church teaching on homosexuality

· In his November 1 column in The Catholic Spirit, editor Joe Towalski notes that homosexuality is a “hot button issue for the church,” yet he does not say why this is the case. We’d like to suggest that one reason why many issues related to human sexuality remain controversial is because the majority of Catholics intuitively sense that the teachings of the church about these issues lack credibility. The reason for this is simple: the laity has had no part in shaping these teachings.

· The belief that the laity should be consulted in matters of doctrine, especially when teachings concern their lives intimately, is part of Catholicism’s rich heritage. For instance, the great English theologian, Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-90) wrote that: “The body of the faithful is one of the witnesses to the fact of the tradition of revealed doctrine, and . . . their consensus through Christendom is the voice of the Infallible Church.”

· With regards to the issue of homosexuality, the “body of the faithful” is still very much engaged in the journey towards “consensus.” (As noted above, recent data published by the Pew Forum shows that 58 percent of U.S. Catholics favor acceptance of gay people and relationships.) And in other areas, what can reasonably be viewed as consensus is actually at odds with the teaching of the hierarchical church. For instance, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops concedes that 96 percent of married Catholics use birth control. Clearly, the church’s teachings on a range of sexual issues are not set in stone. This shouldn’t be surprising, for as Jesuit Philip Endean reminds us: “Dogmas of tradition exist not as truths complete in themselves, but rather as resources for helping us discover the ever greater glory . . . of the God whose gift of self pervades all possible experience.” And “all possible experience” includes gay people’s experiences of love, intimacy, and relationship.

· All of this should serve to remind us that truth is discovered through time and that tradition evolves. The Church is currently teaching in Section 2358 of the Catechism, that homosexuals should be treated with compassion and sensitivity. That, in itself, represents an evolution of the tradition. There is no reason why the moral teaching should not evolve beyond the “intrinsic disorder” of “homosexual acts,” and there is plenty of scientific evidence and moral/pastoral reasoning that it should evolve quickly.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
The Real Meaning of Courage
The Many Form of Courage (Part 1)
The Many Forms of Courage (Part 2)
The Many Forms of Courage (Part 3)
The Dreaded “Same-Sex Attracted” View of Catholicism
When “Guidelines” Lack Guidance
Be Not Afraid: You Can Be Happy and Gay
The Many Manifestations of God’s Loving Embrace
Sons of the Church: The Witnessing of Gay Catholic Men - A Discussion Guide
Debunking NARTH (Part I)
Debunking NARTH (Part 2)
“Conversion Therapy” and the Pseudo-Science of NARTH
Former “Ex-Gay” Shares His Experience of NARTH
Far from “Innocuous”
When Quackery Goes Mainstream
No Place for Dialogue in Archdiocesan Newspaper
Archbishop Nienstedt’s “Learning Curve”: A Suggested Trajectory
What Scientists in the UK are Saying About Homosexuality
A Catholic Bibliography on LGBT Issues

Robert McClory's Latest Book Honored by Catholic Press Association

2008-07-15T20:11:00.000-07:00

Regular readers of The Wild Reed would know that earlier this year I worked with a number of other local Catholics to bring author and journalist, Robert McClory (pictured at right) to the Twin Cities for the May 3 Second Annual Prayer Breakfast for Hope and Justice.

As keynote speaker at this event, McClory spoke on the place and role of faithful dissent in the Roman Catholic Church, and shared insights gained from the research and writing of his latest book, As It Was In the Beginning: The Coming Democratization of the Catholic Church.

Recently, the Catholic Press Association awarded McClory’s As It Was In the Beginning First Place in its History category. Congratulations, Bob!

So, what’s McClory’s award-winning book all about? Well, local historian and theologian, Terry Dosh, writes:

As the title [of McClory’s book] indicates, democratic, lay participation is a deeply valued and practiced tradition of the early church, and such a tradition is a true basis for reform in tomorrow’s church. McClory persuasively argues that the time to begin the future church is now.

Of the early church’s democratic foundation, eminent medieval historian, Brian Tierney, notes:

Early Christian texts are filled with a sense of community meetings, community sharing, community participation in decisions, and above all they reflect a strong belief that the consensus of the Christian people indicates the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the church . . . Whatever power prelates possessed in the early church, they possessed it on behalf of their communities and as representing their communities.

The first six chapters of McClory’s book promote this argument and support it with historical evidence from the early church up to the mid-20th century. The next six chapters focus on the present and the role that the principles of democracy have for the church today.

For as Tierney reminds us:

The modern practices of representation and consent that characterize secular constitutional government are not alien to the tradition of the church. And if in the future the church should choose to adopt such practices to meet its own needs in a changing world, that would not be a revolutionary departure but a recovery of a lost part of the church’s own early tradition.

McClory’s award-winning book encourages and validates such recovery efforts. Summing up his conviction that the present moment augers well for the future, McClory writes:

The ongoing nature of [the current] crisis [in the Catholic Church] is so severe and so debilitating that it will eventually compel major structural changes in the church’s operational system.

The final chapter of As It Was In the Beginning explores what such structural changes might look like.

If you haven’t already read Robert McClory’s As It Was In the Beginning: The Coming Democratization of the Catholic Church, then I wholeheartedly urge you to do so. As author David Gibson says: “This book is a model for the kind of debate the church needs, but too often avoids.”

NOTE: To read two reviews of As It Was In the Beginning: The Coming Democratization of the Catholic Church, see the previous Wild Reed post, Robert McClory’s Prophetic Work.

For my April 2008 interview with Robert McClory, click here.

A Selection of Other First Place Winners in the
2008 Catholic Press Association Awards

Theology: The Quest for the Living God by Elizabeth Johnson.
Spirituality (Hard Cover): Welcome to the Wisdom of the World by Joan Chittister.
Spirituality (Soft Cover): Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu Explained: A Spirituality for the 21st Century by Louis M. Savary.
Popular Presentation of the Catholic Faith: A Jesuit Off Broadway by James Martin, SJ.
Scripture: Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels by Pheme Perkins.
Liturgy: A Commentary on the General Instruction of the Roman Missal by Ed Foley.
Reference Book: An Introductory Dictionary of Theology and Religious Studies by Orlando O. Espin and James B. Nickoloff.
Gender Issues: Green Sisters: A Spiritual Ecology by Sarah McFarland Taylor.
Family Life: Jesus in the House: Gospel Reflections on Christ's Presence in the Home by Allan F. Wright.
Children’s Book: He Said Yes: The Story of Fr. Mychal Judge by Kelley Ann Lynch.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
A Catholic Understanding of Faithful Dissent (Part 1)
A Catholic Understanding of Faithful Dissent (Part 2)
Here Comes Everybody! (featuring an April 2008 interview with Robert McClory).
Ghostwriting for the Pope (a commentary by Robert McClory).
The Second Annual Prayer Breakfast for Hope and Justice

Photo of Robert McClory: Michael J. Bayly.

Thoughts on Relativism

2008-07-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

Archbishop John C. Nienstedt writes a column in The Catholic Spirit entitled, “In God’s Good Time.” Each month the editorial team of The Progressive Catholic Voice online journal take his public statements as an opportunity to discuss his views with him and our readers.

Here’s our July 2008 installment of “Dialoguing with the Bishop” . . .

Dear Archbishop Nienstedt:

We have noticed that you and Pope Benedict XVI frequently caution us against the evils of relativism and individualism which, you say, are disastrously characteristic of US culture. Would you please tell us what you mean?

Of course, relativism and individualism can be carried to extremes, as can their opposites, absolutism and communalism. Maybe by adding an “-ism” you mean to lump these notions with other extreme ideas. If we were extreme cognitive relativists, we would accept anything anyone said as true for them. Or if it is moral relativism you are talking about, at the extreme we would accept everyone’s judgment of their own behavior as morally good. There is surely enough contention about right and wrong, true and false, among US citizens to allay the fear of too much tolerance of each other's beliefs or actions.

As for the extreme of individualism, that would mean we see ourselves as entirely independent and self-sufficient. All we need to disabuse ourselves of that idea is for an electrical grid to go down or the price of gas to inch higher. We are probably more dependent on our various communal systems than the people of many other nations of the world. There aren’t many Thoreaus carving out independent existences in the wilderness.

If you are not talking about the extremes, perhaps you are talking about an emphasis on one pole of the duality rather than an emphasis on the other pole. In the US, we might emphasize individual liberty while the Vatican emphasizes communal unity. In the US, we stand on principle for freedom of thought and speech as well as for having good reasons to restrict people’s liberty. At the other pole, the Vatican emphasizes conformity in thought and speech and uniformity in action. You could be warning us not to let the emphasis in the US go to extremes. We could respectfully return the warning.

Both questions, how humans know truth and how societies should be organized, are philosophical questions with at least twenty-five centuries of debate on record. We are not competent to survey the fields, but we are pretty sure that we humans haven’t arrived at absolute truth about either question to date.

You may not be talking about the philosophical notions of relativism or individualism at all. Rather, in cautioning against them, you are conveying this positive pastoral message to us:

“Do not worry about how to live. You can be certain that in following the Roman Catholic hierarchy you are on the path of truth and goodness. Jesus has said that His Spirit is with us in our institutionalized tradition so that we will not err in doctrine or in moral teaching. Adhere to the teachings of the Roman Catechism and commit fully to life in a Roman Catholic parish. Be so committed to and immersed in a Catholic way of thinking that you subordinate your individuality to the community. In this way you will model the Christian gospel of love and evangelize the world you interact with. This is the way of holiness.”

Do we get the message that you want to convey?

This vision has an appeal, and we believe you are trying to protect and lead us. We also believe with you that individuals, families, and whole communities can live happy, holy lives believing that the Spirit guides them through the Roman Catholic institution. For many people, that lifestyle may appear to be the only way to live a holy life. In the maelstrom of cultural, ideological, political, and religious differences in our own nation, let alone in the whole world, it is not easy for an individual to know the truth and to choose the good at each step of the path. Conforming one’s judgment of truth and goodness to the judgment of the Church leaders seems a secure choice.

But for many of us, another way of being holy, Christian, Catholics in the world at large is also possible. It is both individualistic and communal, and it recognizes that our knowledge is relative to our time in history.

In this vision, the individual cannot abdicate the responsibility to make judgments for himself or herself. This responsibility goes with the inalienable freedom of spirit rooted in the Gospel message.

But we do not believe we stand alone as individuals. We have multiple communities within which to test our thinking and judging. We have our primary relationships, family and friends, to develop a sound self and draw us out of our egotism. We have in our Roman Catholic tradition, a Eucharistic community to keep the memory of who we are as Christians alive among us. It is not just the parish we belong to, and not just the current bishop and pope, but the whole community of believers from the early Church onward. Our thinking and judging is guided by that tradition.

We learn from the Christian churches that do not report to Rome as well as from the other religions of the world. We have our own secular liberal democratic tradition to learn from with its core values of liberty and equality. We have neighbors who have been formed in other cultures. In this age of global communication, when people can Google any question to thinkers ancient and contemporary, we are connected to deep and broad communities of inquiry.

Since each of us has been formed differently by our interactions with all these traditions, wherever two or three of us are gathered we are a community of individuals with a rich experience who can help each other develop in all our human dimensions. Our faith is that we are as individuals empowered by the Holy Spirit to live in communication with the world as co-creators of the Kingdom of God.

We have no empirical evidence, but we suspect that most contemporary US Catholics form their convictions and make their moral judgments in reliance on what they have learned from broader communities than just the Catholic Church. Can we be sure that we have absolute truth? No. Depending on how much responsibility we take for inquiring, we can only get as close as humans have currently come to it. It is relative truth, relative to our time, our cultural programming, and our finite minds.

The formation of our consciences in this multiplicity of communities leads us to question some truths held by the Roman Catholic Church. We think this is an advantage for the growth of the institution. An inbred conformity does not lead to growth and renewal. This judgment may be presumptuous of us, but in reading your column in the June 19th issue of The Catholic Spirit about going to Rome to receive the pallium, we think we see into the mind of a man whose interior life has been formed entirely by his life in the Church and its culture. We have no doubt that you are a conscientious, kind, and holy man. Because your lifestyle of immersion in Catholic culture has worked for you, you may think it is the best way for all Catholics.

We ask you, as the archdiocesan leader, to recognize other cultural ways of being Catholic. We and others like us whose interior lives have been formed through interactions with the pluralism of the US culture in the twenty-first century have the same goal of holiness as you.

The pallium symbolizes unity, you say. From our point of view, unless unity is actually experienced among members of the Archdiocese, no piece of cloth can symbolize it. To accept your leadership and work together, we need your acknowledgment that our progressive Catholicism is a benefit to the Church. It would serve our Church’s mission as a sacrament of true unity in Christ to respect each other and work together.

Sincerely,

The Editorial Team of The Progressive Catholic Voice.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Archbishop Nienstedt’s “Learning Curve”: A Suggested Trajectory
No Place for Dialogue in Archdiocesan Newspaper
When Quackery Goes Mainstream
Interesting Times Ahead
Monitoring Nienstedt
An Open Letter to Archbishop Nienstedt
Nienstedt’s “Trauma of His Own”
300+ People Vigil at the Cathedral in Solidarity with LGBT Catholics
Why We Gathered
NCR’s Coverage of December 2 “Vigil for Solidarity”
Local Media Coverage of December 2 Vigil Falls Short
Far from Innocuous
My Advent Prayer for the Church
The Talk of the Archdiocese
Thoughts on Archbishop Nienstedt

Summer Blooms

2008-07-13T18:04:00.000-07:00

I’ve spent much of the weekend working in the garden - planting, weeding, watering. I’ve enjoyed it immensely.

And, as you’ll see from the following photos, such enjoyment is not at all surprising given the exquisite beauty that surrounds us at this time of year.

Images: Michael J. Bayly.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
“Jubilation is My Name”: Spring in Minnesota
A Springtime Visitor
Spring in Minnesota (2007)
A Snowy December