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DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - ANGLICANORUM COETIBUS

2009-11-09T22:39:00.011+11:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's latest column for syndication is on the Vatican's response to "those Anglican faithful who desire to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church in a corporate manner". It ran in The Record newspaper two weeks ago.

:: BEING HEARD - ‘Our Beloved Brothers and Sisters’ ::

By John Heard

This is a moment of grace, perhaps even a moment of history, not because the past is undone, but because the past is transformed - John Hepworth (Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion)

When I lived at Newman College, the Jesuit-led residential community at the University of Melbourne, I had an Anglo-Catholic friend. That is, I always thought of him as specifically Anglo-Catholic, rather than something else, because he attended services in both chapels, sang in the (Anglican) Trinity College choir and listened to Gimmel recordings of early sacred (Catholic) music. Certainly, he wavered between what he saw as compelling, and in some respects competing, traditions. He was raised in the Anglican Communion, but I know he was drawn to catholicism intellectually and spiritually (doctrinally he was quite sound). Still, he was not sure – when I knew him – whether or not he could find the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church in Rome, attached to the See of Canterbury, or somewhere in the Christian East.

The poignancy of his situation, living as he did in a college named for one of the most famous Anglican converts to Catholicism, was not lost on him (and it was not lost on me). I frequently urged him to “come home”.

Regardless, I have known few men of a more profoundly Christian sensibility. His witness, important during my formative years, was impressive and serious. He introduced me to Lectio Divina. It was my Anglo-Catholic friend who encouraged me to study the debates that swirled, in the early Noughties, around the Radical Orthodoxy school of theological and philosophical thought, an engagement which led – in turn – to a thesis in natural law. And it was he, ambling down the hall, rumbling at my door (he had a distracted, donnish mien), asking me to come aside and pray evening prayer with him, who first showed me what catholicism might mean, what it might demand of those who profess to “hold and teach the Catholic faith that comes to us from the Apostles”.

I thought of my old friend this week when I read about the Holy Father’s plans for individuals and whole communities from the Anglican tradition. I thought of him, a man I have always considered a spiritual brother. I thought of him, someone who was a signal guide in my own journey of faith and obedience, even though we mostly lost touch when he went up to Cambridge. What a wonderful thing the Pope has wrought, I thought. This gesture of tremendous solicitude, this great gift to Anglo-Catholics, this is – in part – for him.

It is also, however, for us – for Catholics everywhere. In the same way that my friend’s witness and example surely strengthened my faith, the witness and example of those who choose to return under these provisions will strengthen and sustain the whole Church. Particularly in English-speaking countries, the closer union and collaboration of Catholics, the witness of diversity, the bond of unity, G-d-willing - these may flower and bear much fruit.

Of course, some will fuss. Some Catholics will think to bring up thorny issues at first instance, and complain about married priests. Some Anglicans, on the other hand, will point to the Catholic teaching on Anglican Orders (i.e. they are invalid - Apostolicae Curae), but in the main, the quotation from John Hepworth describes how many people are feeling. The past cannot be undone, but by this gesture, the Holy Father has moved decisively to transform the history of English-speaking Christianity.

It is perhaps no coincidence, then, that the website of the Cause for the Canonisation of John Henry Newman had this message as its “thought” for Wednesday October 21, 2009:

To the narrow-minded and the bigoted the history of the Church for eighteen centuries is unintelligible and useless; but where there is Faith, it is full of sacred principles, ever the same in substance, ever varying in accidentals, and is a continual lesson of "the manifold Wisdom of God".*

Ever the same in substance, ever varying in accidentals, the faith is rich, pure, and true.

:: The Upshot ::

It is with great joy, and profound gratitude, then, that English-speaking Christians everywhere will receive, and prayerfully support, the Holy Father’s gesture. Our beloved brothers and sisters are home at last. “Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers…”

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

:: Resources ::

- The Cause for the Canonisation of Ven. John Henry Newman; and

- Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus (Full Text - English).

*(John Henry Newman, ‘Wisdom, as Contrasted with Faith and with Bigotry’, 1841).

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - Same Sex Attraction, Catholicism & Beauty

2009-10-24T14:53:00.002+11:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's latest column for syndication is on beauty, same sex attraction, and the persistence of faith. It ran last week in The Record newspaper.

:: BEING HEARD – ‘Beautiful Wounds’ ::

By John Heard

People often want to know why I am (still) a Catholic. The “still”, of course, implies that a same sex attracted man should, as a default position, find the Church at best inhospitable and at worst – totally repulsive.

Indeed, I received an email the other day that was full of the most remarkable claims. You are “stifling” yourself, my interlocutor – a total stranger – wrote. You have “given up your own mind to allow a man who sits on a high chair in the center of Rome, Italy” to take over. I must be a slave to that “Vatican Church”, he claimed, and recent events in Boston and a sordid history everywhere had shown it to have “inhumane attitudes about sex”. In the mind of my reader, Catholicism is nothing more than a pernicious lie, a monstrosity that takes “glorious pleasure” and turns it into abuse, “soul-killing guilt”, and shame.

The exaggerated claims aside, what impressed me about the email was its literary richness. It is difficult for anyone with a public profile to avoid brickbats, but rarely are they so expressive. No one writes about “glorious” this, and “stifling” that, indeed, unless he is alive to beauty. No one bothers to write an email full of such things unless he suspects the person at the other end is similarly alive, and might demonstrate some fellow feeling. That sense, that longing, I recognize and cherish. It is, of course, in discussions on the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, the first place to look for common ground.

Typically, too, honesty – upfront, raw, and personal, if necessary – works wonders. Sometimes, indeed, when asked why I am a Catholic, I respond that I have been “wounded by Christ”. Occasionally, depending on my interlocutors, I vary the wording, “I have been wounded by the crucified One” I say, or I have been “wounded by Him”. This is not hyperbole; it is a condensed version of my re-conversion story, however purple the language.

Still, I have learned that when speaking to those who are profoundly secular, whether willfully so (i.e. apostates) or because of their cultural and social experiences (i.e. closer to what Christians once called heathens, without malice, and some now refer to as neo-Pagans), it is best to speak to beauty first.

Certainly, it might be better to say – in some contexts – when asked about my faith and its persistence, that I have been wounded by Beauty. When people start to get alarmed, modernity abhors discomfort after all, there is an opportunity to introduce some other ideas: virtue, suffering, love, truth, and what Aristotle knew as telos (the end of things). From beauty, the discussion, then, can flower.

Beauty hunts me, I might say – and, when we really get going – Christ hunted me down and would not let me escape Him. Of course, it is never as planned and formulaic as that, nor can a Catholic aim for stilted phrases when speaking to non-believers. Rather, the goal is to be as eloquent and compelling as Francis Thompson. He wrote of the persistence of faith - the “unhurrying chase, // And unperturbèd pace, // Deliberate speed, majestic instancy” - in his celebrated poem The Hound of Heaven.

Here is the Holy Father on the same notion:

“The beautiful wounds, but this is exactly how it summons man to his final destiny. [It]…has nothing to do with superficial aestheticism and irrationalism or with the flight from clarity and the importance of reason. The beautiful is knowledge certainly, but, in a superior form, since it arouses man to the real greatness of the truth”.

The hound of heaven, the beauty that arouses man to the real greatness of the truth, these are things to offer when someone questions one’s faith.

In my experience, certainly, there are few people indeed who are totally dead to beauty. Even the most rabid anti-Catholic will know, then, and respond graciously to, an invitation to shift from polemic / apologetic, to a less fraught mode.

Especially in the context of a discussion about the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, it is usually better to start at beauty, to discuss truth and goodness, and then – when some agreement has been reached about those enduring topics – to invite one’s interlocutor to wade out a little further in the waters of Christian thinking.

This helps me answer the question: Why are you (still) a Catholic? Beauty, truth, goodness, Him.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

DREADTALK: 'On Gay Couples & The Help Of Gracious Friendship' John Heard - September 30, 2009 At The University Of New South Wales - Remarks

2009-10-06T21:07:00.009+11:00

DREADNOUGHT delivered the following prepared remarks during an event at the University of New South Wales.

-- ON GAY COUPLES AND THE "HELP OF GRACIOUS FRIENDSHIP" --

THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

What does it mean to be faithful to each other amicitiae gratuitae auxilio?

John Heard

Thank you very much for being here with me. I must thank the Catholic Chaplaincy, and Daniel, for inviting me, and I must express my gratitude to the Archdiocese of Sydney. I appreciate your efforts on my behalf.

My comments here, at UNSW, come at the end of a loose, three part series of discussions, wherein I have engaged the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. Earlier this year I introduced the topic “Holy Sex and Christian Friendship” at the University of Sydney, and I spoke then about what someone might mean by that phrase: “holy sex”.

I also spoke about what someone cannot mean by it, and I discussed an idea of friendship that holds male on male bonds to be beautiful (good and true). I also acknowledged, of course, that many people today find Christian friendship – indeed, perhaps much of Christian thinking generally – challenging. I sought to engage that reticence. I seek to do that today, as well. I sent a direct invitation to the Queer Representatives at this university, and I hope some of them have joined us today.

In this context, at Sydney, I talked:

- about the condemnation of homosexual acts;

- about marriage and the family;

- about how, in Catholic thought, there is no such thing as a sexual orientation, beyond “male” and “female”;

- about how holy sex might be said to make us more human; and

- about a series of lectures given by Pope John Paul II, the Theology of the Body – which I chacterised as a profound attempt to speak meaningfully of man’s original nature (including about our original sexual nature).

Yesterday, at Macquarie University, I spoke about a Platonic conception of the ascent to beauty, about the "ladder of love" described in Plato’s Symposium, and about how a same sex attracted man might start to answer the question: what happens to eros in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality? I introduced the idea of sublimation, and discussed why someone might want to discipline erotic inspiration and direct the energy towards creative, beautiful ends. I spoke of how this effort, that discipline, might offer something unique to same sex attracted men and women seeking a middle ground between so-called “reparative therapy” techniques, on the one hand, and the glorification of sex per se that tends to characterise so much of late modern “gay culture”.

At Sydney, then, I focused on right action and Christian truth; on what we can discover about properly ordered relationships (both horizontal relationships, those we have with each other, and vertical ones, those we might want to enter into with G-d), and I suggested ways in which Christian friendship might be considered worthwhile and compelling. At Macquarie, I constrained myself to a discussion of beauty and sublimation. Today, however, I want to bring those two threads together.

I am interested, finally, in what might be called, in another context, “gay relationships’.

In the previous discussions I returned time and again to an excerpt from the Catechism , which deals specifically with same sex attraction. It is relevant here, too. The Catechism states, in the context of a universal vocation to chastity, that:

“Homosexual persons are called to chastity [too]. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.”

I have previously unpacked various parts of this teaching, but let us zone in on that phrase, “disinterested friendship”.

First a note about the translation. In the original Latin, the Catechism phrase is:

“Personae homosexuales ad castitatem vocantur. Ipsae, dominii virtutibus quae libertatem educant interiorem, quandoque amicitiae gratuitae auxilio, oratione et gratia sacramentali, possunt et debent ad perfectionem christianam gradatim et obfirmate appropinquare.”

In my shoddy rendering, that comes out somewhere near “with the help of gracious friendship”. The official English translation, however, has the more opaque reference (to “the support of disinterested friendship”), which appears to be a direct translation from the Italian version (which speaks of “un'amicizia disinteressata”). The German, if anyone is interested, has something like “with the help of selfless friendship”.

I will use “with the help of gracious friendship” from now on, because that translation helps to pick out the most important parts of the phrase, for our purposes.

In any event, the phrase is provocative. What does it mean?

Some Catholics, particularly in the United States, have taken “the help of gracious friendship” to refer to group therapy, or to recommend so-called “reparative therapy” techniques. I spoke at length, yesterday, about some problems I have identified with “reparative therapy”, from a Catholic perspective, and how some allied approaches seem to me to distort the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, especially as it bears on a Christian understanding of the passions, and the discipline of “self-mastery”. Today, then, let me just follow that up by listing some problems I think of as ancillary to the general problem of offering therapy, at first instance, to same sex attracted Catholics.

In the efforts that have grown out of this interpretation, indeed, there has too often been a stress on the professional mode. Priests, for instance, are sometimes encouraged to recommend psychological methods in the confessional, and too much of the language of “reparative therapy” seems to me to be co-opted, and quasi-religious. The worst of it reads, indeed, as psycho-babble. On the website for a so-called “Reparational Group”, one of a number attached to the otherwise commendable Courage apostolate, for instance, I found a reference to “those of us who struggle homo-emotionally”. That is a phrase laden with concepts that are not found in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. This is an important point.

Further, inasmuch as such efforts often centre on a detached facilitator, therapist or support group, surrounded by a network of same sex attracted people, they also seem to me to fall short of the Catechism’s reference to “the help of gracious friendship”. Certainly, where same sex attracted Catholics are encouraged to pay for psychological services, the fact of payment alone would render the help offered in that context somewhat less gracious ("gratuitous") than the Catechism demands. Finally, those who seek guidance on the Catholic teaching on human sexuality should not, simply because of the therapeutic context of some of the reponses to the phenomenon, and the nomenclature attached to those responses, be treated as though they were suffering from a mental disorder.

Nor, however, should Catholics respond to the challenges posed by the Catechism reference to “gracious friendship” by impossibly glorifying same sex relationships. Like all human interactions, same sex interactions are only as virtuous and worthy as the actions and intentions of the relevant parties allows. As Michael Kirby is fond of repeating, “gay people are as boring”, and I might add, as prone to error, “as everybody else”. It is no secret, either, certainly not to same sex attracted men in particular, that too many same sex interactions fall far short of even common standards of decency, love, and consideration.

Let us return, however, and try to pick out a properly Catholic approach. What does “gracious friendship mean”?

On a popular Catholic blog, What Does the Prayer Really Say, the phrase came up in the context of a fraught discussion. One of the posters there asked for a:

“plausible description of what the Catechism means for gay and lesbian couples? What does it mean [he asked] to be faithful to each other “[with the help of gracious friendship]”?”

It seems to me that the answer to this question is not tremendously tricky. Nor is it harsh. But it will take us some time to unravel, first because of the complex nature of Catholic thought generally, second because we want to be sure that we are always referring back to the properly Catholic understanding of human sexuality, and third because some of us are living the answer, or trying to model it, and we are not perfect, and we cannot always trust our self-reports.

The first thing to say, on this, is that, of course, “the help of gracious friendship” means precisely what it says. In the Catholic context, we might think of this concept as the assistance same sex attracted Catholics receive from (A) other Catholics, and (B) each other. It is important here to note that the Catechism specifically assumes that the assistance offered models a particular sort of relationship, one that is characterized by grace (a vertical element) and friendship (a more horizontal notion).

On the help same sex attracted Catholics receive, then, from other Catholics, we might say that the “help of gracious friendship” must refer, at first instance, to the pastoral attention offered by properly formed priests and religious. Such help cannot be underestimated. When I had my first same sex sexual encounter, the first person I told was my confessor. The first words I heard, about same sex acts, were the words he spoke. In the sacramental context, of course, those words took on a particular resonance and power, the friendship was already gracious, but where priests and religious interact with same sex attracted men and women in other contexts, let me suggest - humbly - that they might recall the Catechism reference to the “help of gracious friendship”.

Parents, relatives, and friends, these people also have a role to play in terms of the help same sex attracted Catholics receive from other Catholics. Their responses must always aspire to the “gracious friendship” that the Catechism models.

What interests us most, however, is the second sort of help I mentioned, the “gracious friendship” same sex attracted men and women might offer to one another.

In this context I think, first, of the thousands of readers who write to me and comment on my writing, those who write to offer corrections to my ideas, in particular. Over the years, indeed, a community has developed and we now call call its members DREADNOUGHTERS. DREADNOUGHTERS are Christians, agnostics, Jews, and other seekers. We form a diverse collection. DREADNOUGHTERS are men and women who are same sex attracted and own sex attracted, priests and laymen, older and (mostly) younger - but all of us are open to engaging the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. We discuss homosexuality and other allied issues. By supporting each other – prayerfully, graciously, and lovingly – in a sincere and hopeful effort at Christian friendship, we attempt to model “gracious friendship”. There are currently more than 200 people, from all over the world, who collect together on a Facebook Group called, simply, DREADNOUGHTERS. I think of the DREADNOUGHTERS, when I think of "gracious friendship".

Second, and perhaps more provocatively, I have never lost faith in the idea that two men might, if properly formed and worthily inclined, model for each other the most loving and enduring sort of friendship. Let me move, now, to a discussion of some of the problems and opportunities I see, then, in this more fraught context. What we want to know here is, indeed, what does it mean to be faithful to each other “with the help of gracious friendship”?

My ideas on this part of the topic are still unsettled, as you will notice. I am living this, and some of you will be living it too.

One of the most frequent questions I receive, indeed, via email is any of a number of variations on “yes, but can a Catholic male have a boyfriend?”

The “yes” typically implies some sort of acceptance of the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. This is important. No one is going to make an effort to find out what it means to be faithful to someone else with the “help of gracious friendship” unless it really bears upon his life; unless the person thinks the answer will transform the nature and quality of his interpersonal relationships.

The rest of the question betrays a yearning for friendship, for companionship, however expressed. I cannot think of this yearning, the basic need for closeness with others, as anything other than worthy.

Often, however, this yearning is couched in jarring, or as described before, co-opted language. Some people use the language of late modern romantic narratives. They claim to be waiting for their one great love, and they hope to meet someone who will sweep them off their feet. Other times, although less frequently, one of my readers will write in a style heavily inflected with the language of marital union, even though this language will not admit male on male coupling (without great stress to the syntax and grammar of the marriage claim).

It is important, then, to get this yearning right. The best way to understand what it is that a same sex attracted man wants from another same sex attracted man, then, in this specific context is not a “boyfriend”, or a “husband” – rather he wants the “help of a gracious friendship”.

What might such a thing look like? Unlike some commentators, while I am wary of what Catholic experience calls “near occasions of sin”, I do not think the Catholic teaching on human sexuality necessarily precludes same sex attracted individuals living together. Certainly, same sex attracted individuals – like all other Christians – must keep in mind, and attempt to limit, those situations which we might wander into willingly, despite the fact that we know they will make us more inclined to choose the wrong course of action. But the analogy here is with cohabitation, with mixed dorm rooms and male and female campuses. If the Church trusts male and female university students to live together side by side, in some situations, without that experience unduly restricting their horizons for right action, there can be no proper blanket reason for rejecting all cohabitation arrangements that might spring up between same sex attracted men and women.

So, living together is not immediately out of the picture. What else is there? Well it must be repeated that, if the individuals are truly interested in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, homogenital acts cannot figure in any properly Catholic understanding of the “help of a gracious friendship”. I do not think, at this slightly more mature stage in the public discourse on sex and religion, a discourse characterized by freedom of religion and expression, that voluntary adherence to a religious creed should continue to prove controversial in this respect. No-one, after all, is forcing me to live my life as a Catholic human being. I joyfully choose this path, however useless and unworthy I might prove to be.

So, same sex attracted Catholics might live together, but there is no place for homogenital acts. What else? At this stage, some of my readers get very specific. "What about caresses?" "What about sharing a bed?" "I sometimes see my friend naked, and I like it, what am I to do?" Such questions, while obviously immediately and sincerely vexing for the individual involved, are not really amenable to general directives. There is a reason, after all, that the Church has not spelled out the finer details of all moral and sexual matters – she provides spiritual directors, confessors and others to help any individual to discern the best path to holiness in light of the particular sorrows and blessings of his or her given experience.

The important thing to note, in this context, is that the discernment process should be characterized by joy. If we are constantly grumbling about the restrictions imposed, then we are not modeling “gracious friendship”, for we would be lacking either the vertical aspect, which speaks to one’s right relationship with G-d and His laws, or we would be deficient along the horizontal dimension, for failing to see why this particular relationship is worthy of my time and effort.

Finally, let me say something further about the idea of “disinterested friendship”. There is a tradition, in the Christian Church, of discouraging what have been called “particular friendships”. The reference to “disinterested friendship” is, especially in the context of writings on relationships between Christian religious, a response to this tradition. I first encountered the phrase in the writings of St Aelred (of Rievaulx), which will be known to his same sex attracted readers, in particular, as an expressive and early body of writing which explicitly engages some of these issues, albeit in the context of what St Aelred calls “spiritual friendship”. It might be worthwhile, at this point, to indicate that I think that whatever it is that we mean by “gracious friendship” must align, in its broad outlines and in many of its practical applications, with what St Aelred meant by “spiritual friendship”.

Let me finish, then, by asking you to give me your thoughts on these ideas. What does the phrase “gracious friendship” suggest to you? What do you think of the ideas surveyed (of “reparative therapy”, of same sex attracted men and women living together and attempting, in that context, to remain faithful to the Catholic teaching on human sexuality)?

Thank you very much.

- - ENDS - -

:: The Upshot ::

After the prepared remarks, there was a one and a half hour question / wide-ranging discussion session. I was privileged to speak with so many keenly intelligent young people. DREADNOUGHT is grateful to the organizers, and to the men and women who asked questions. This has been a marvellous series.

:: Resources ::

A selection of photographs taken on the day:

John Heard speaks at the University of New South Wales (Discussion).

John Heard speaks at the University of New South Wales.

John Heard speaks at the University of New South Wales (Lecture).

DREADTALK: 'On Self Mastery and the Scala Amoris' John Heard - September 29 2009 At Macquarie University - Remarks

2009-10-03T21:38:00.011+10:00

DREADNOUGHT delivered the following prepared remarks during an appearance at Macquarie University.

-- ON SELF MASTERY AND THE SCALA AMORIS --

MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA

What Happens to Eros in the Catholic Teaching on Human Sexuality?

John Heard

Some months ago, I was invited to speak at the University of Sydney. I chose to discuss the topic Holy Sex & Christian Friendship; and I structured my comments there around the concepts: history, communion, and innocence.

While at Sydney, then, I had an opportunity to discuss what someone might mean by that phrase: “holy sex”. I also spoke about what someone cannot mean by it, and I discussed an idea of friendship that holds male on male bonds to be beautiful (good and true). I also acknowledged, of course, that many people today find Christian friendship – indeed, perhaps much of Christian thinking generally – challenging. I sought to engage this reticence.

In this context, I talked:

- about the condemnation of homosexual acts;

- about marriage and the family;

- about how, in Catholic thought, there is no such thing as a sexual orientation, beyond “male” and “female”;

- about how holy sex might be said to make us more human; and

At the end of that discussion, a representative of the Queer Action Collective said, in effect, very well – you may have made a compelling and apparently intelligent defence of the ideas you have been discussing, but what happens to eros (or erotic love) in the Christian teaching on human sexuality?

In particular, she wanted to know what happens to erotic love in the context of holy sex and Christian friendship?

This question, which I could not engage at the time, animates our discussion today. For it reveals, of course, the wider problem of what there is in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality for same sex attracted men (and women)?

The discussion today is the second in a loose series of three talks on the broad topic of holy sex and Christian friendship. So, Sydney some months ago, Macquarie today, and then UNSW tomorrow.

The remarks from the first discussion are already available online.

It will help to know that while in the first lecture I spoke to the topic generally, and quite broadly, today I will focus on what might be thought of as some problems and opportunities that beauty presents in the context of the Catholic thinking on sex and morality. Specifically, I want to engage the question – what happens to eros? – by investigating the erotic charge associated with naked male imagery, and seeing where that ends up after it has been put through the Catholic wringer.

Tomorrow, for those who are interested, I will present some ideas about living together, or sharing one’s life with a mate. Tomorrow might be thought of as the practical side of things (praxis), then, an attempt to respond to the hundreds of emails I have received asking me some variation on the question: “can I have a boyfriend?”

Today, however, and in preparation for that, I want to start thinking (theoria) about sublimation – about what a Catholic might do with erotic love, and how the process of self-mastery and self-discipline might be considered appealing, or even noble.

My ideas on this are still nebulous, as you will hear. This is at least in part because of the fact that I am living this. Some of you may be living it too.

What we are really looking for is an answer to the topic question, then. What happens to eros in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality?

Eros is one of three concepts that are typically used to get a grip on what we mean when we talk about love. I spoke of the other two, about agape and, briefly, philia, in the first lecture. Tomorrow, I will speak at length about philia. Today, however, we are all about eros.

Eros is, of course, a concept that covers erotic love, what today we might think of as (1) initial arousal and sexual interest, and (2) what has sometimes been called, in various strains of psychoanalysis, the life-force, the love and energy, that opposes us to death.

It is the first idea of eros, of eros as arousal and sexual impulse, that I am interested in today. It is this idea of love that speaks most pointedly to us, especially those who are trying to work out what the Church might have to offer us in terms of our sexual feelings and impulses.

Pope Benedict XVI in his Encyclical Letter Deus Caritas Est described eros as:

“That love…which is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings...”

We should contrast this idea of eros as unplanned and unwilled, as a force that imposes itself on human beings, with the treatment of the passions in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“…passions are emotions or movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to act…The passions are natural components of the human psyche…In themselves passions are neither good nor evil. They are morally qualified only to the extent that they effectively engage reason and will. Passions are [only] said to be voluntary, [when]…they are commanded by the will or because the will does not place obstacles in their way...It belongs to the perfection of the moral or human good that the passions be governed by reason."

Here we have, albeit in a very condensed form, the answer to our questions about what happens to eros in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. For, indeed, inasmuch as eros is experienced as a passion, the Catholic teaching on sex and morality understands it in a very precise way. As the Catechism continues:

“Strong feelings are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons; they are simply the inexhaustible reservoir of images and affections in which the moral life is expressed. Passions are morally good when they contribute to a good action, evil in the opposite case. The upright will orders the movements of the senses it appropriates to the good and to beatitude; an evil will succumbs to disordered passions and exacerbates them. Emotions and feelings can be taken up into the virtues or perverted by the vices.”

This is why, indeed, I constantly make the point to Catholic audiences, and to my homoactivist interlocutors alike, that same sex attraction, understood as a passion, is morally neutral. It is neither sinful nor virtuous. As anyone can tell you, and as the Pope understands, eros imposes itself on us. What matters is how we deal with love when it arrives.

Against some people, then, especially those who might be taken with so-called “reparative therapy” techniques, I have consistently stated that it is not clear, then, that a Catholic ought to attempt to re-program his passions. There is no Catholic sense in which a passion, simpliciter, needs "repair". Same sex attracted Catholics do not, as a matter of fact, need psychotherapy to alter their attractions. No one does. That sort of thinking has nothing to do with the properly Christian discourse on eros and moral responsibility.

Against some homoactivists, however, I must use the same argument, but in a different way. For, indeed, it is often said that a man’s private sexual interests and activities are not the proper subject of moral or religious interest at all, except that some people want to extol them. A late modern sort of hedonism seems to hold in much of what now passes for gay culture, and it is not hard to see it as another sort of quasi-religious ideology. This time, the ideas are tied up in a recognizably neo-Pagan context. Gay culture and practice returns time and again to body worship, to muscle worship, penis-worship, and anus-worship, always with an emphasis on sex for the sake of gratification, or domination, or any of a number of superstitious add-ons, including Romanticism and Hollywood-type fantasies - which draw their potency from the idea of sex as always good. It is not, in this context, even so much about hedonism, because pleasure need not be part of the mix.

"In the Christian life…[in contrast with both the previous ideas, and uniquely, it is thought that]…the Holy Spirit himself accomplishes his work by mobilizing the whole being, with all its sorrows, fears and sadness, as is visible in the Lord's agony and passion. In Christ human feelings are able to reach their consummation in charity and divine beatitude. Moral perfection [then] consists in man's being moved to the good not by his will alone, but also by his sensitive appetite, as in the words of the psalm: "My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.""

I want to engage this Christian understanding, distinct from reparative therapy, on the one hand, and from the glorification of sex per se on the other, to see how a same sex attracted Catholic might learn to understand himself, and to learn to position himself vis a vis eros, so as he might start to say that his heart and flesh sing for joy.

In the Catechism, at 2358, the Church teaches that the "inclination...to homosexual acts" is mostly experienced as a "trial". When engaged a step earlier, however, when the inclination is still unformed (i.e. it has not been perverted by the vices), one can - I would like to suggest - receive the erotic inspiration as a challenge. One might engage reason and will to direct one's passions towards the service of virtue.

Indeed, at 2359, the Catechism teaches that:

"Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection".

There is mention here of "the virtues of self-mastery", "disinterested friendship", "prayer", and "sacramental grace", but no mention of "reparative therapy" or even of psychological treatments taken as a type.

A defence of "reparative therapy" would, I think, and as an aside, need therefore to be couched in these terms. How does it help a Catholic to grow in the "virtues of self-mastery"?

Passions are disordered, remember, inasmuch as they "effectively engage reason and will" AND they "are perverted by the vices". This is why, indeed, the condemnation of "homosexual acts" is found in Catholic teaching, while there is no condemnation of homosexuals per se.

But to serve virtue, one must discipline one’s will and look to one's acts. These are the activities of reason and will which relate to volition; the ways in which the Catholic teaching on human sexuality can be said to lead to human flourishing.

One obvious benefit, right at the outset, is that the Catholic path promotes self-knowledge.

There is also a sense in which it can be said that the Catholic teaching on erotic love, the exhortation to “self-mastery which teaches…inner-freedom”, derives from Greek, indeed, Platonic understandings of the value of philosophy, and what might be called an “ascent to the beautiful”.

It is the central claim of this discussion, in fact, that the scala amoris introduced in Plato's Symposium might provide a way for a same sex attracted man to get a grip on what happens to eros in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality.

In the Symposium, then, Plato includes a series of attempts to describe the nature of love. He puts various ideas into the mouths of various interlocutors. Two of the speakers (Phaedrus and Pausanius) focus on the Athenian tradition of an older male lover with a teenage boy. Eryximachus is close to us today in that he gives a view of love as craft and science – he is something like a technocrat, in love with his specialization – in love with specialization itself. Aristophanes and Agathon describe love in the language of comedy and tragedy, their respective vocations.

Alciabiades, however, is the most interesting for our current purposes. We might contrast the view of love that he is given to offer, with the true version revealed later in the speech of Socrates. Alcibiades seems to me to read like something of a spokesman for the running “gay culture” ideal of sex, while the idea of a ladder of love that comes through in Soctrates’ speech aligns with the Catechism call to “self-mastery”, “inner freedom”, and “Christian perfection”.

There is no time now to properly interrogate both speeches. It is enough, however, to pick out the main points.

Alcibiades was beautiful and famed for his licentiousness. He desired Socrates, and wanted him because, in a curious form of celebrity-worship, he thought that the true images, the real philosophy he discerned within Socrates could be transmitted by sexual contact. His love, then, was not totally shallow – he really saw something true and good and beautiful in Socrates, despite Socrates’ otherwise unappealing appearance - but his attempts to get a grip on love were deficient. Alcibiades failed at loving Socrates.

For Alcibiades, indeed, “sex [could] lead to virtue, without the need for hard work”. Alcibiades tells how he tried to seduce Socrates. He attempted to use his physical attributes, he is like some contemporary go-go-dancer, trading on his body so as to get at the true and good and beautiful things he has discerned, but it is all to no avail.

For Socrates is after something else. As Catholics, too, we are after something else. Socrates rebuts the speeches of all of the other guests, describing them as fantasies which participate in the creative force of love (that erotic power that the Pope spoke about), but which pervert it, making love a slave to context and personality. Socrates is not interested in sorts of love, after all, he is interested in love itself.

This sets us up for what comes next: the ladder of love.

The basic idea of the ladder of love is sublimation of the passions, in the service of real love. Instead of fixating on one particular object, one sexual partner, one apprehends the beauty in the curve of his lips, the beauty in the shape of his thigh, and tries to see that beauty in all of its manifestations. One cannot worship another person’s muscles, in this context, one should rather ascend to a higher level of contemplation. Not this muscle, not that penis – but all muscles, all penises, and then – beyond that – the recognition that one does not (and cannot, rationally speaking) worship a penis or a muscle, but rather one likes those things in the first place because it is there that one is awakened to eros, or by eros, to beauty. One can then begin to see beauty elsewhere, and to move ever higher on the ladder of love until one comes, at last, to love beauty itself, and so to love truth and goodness.

In the Catholic context, truth, beauty and goodness sometimes stand in for love and Catholics worship Love Crucified. To recall Pope Benedict’s Encyclical again – for Christians – G-d is Love.

In the time that is left, we will not totally apprehend what is going on here, and we cannot hope to get a complete sense of what Plato means from this crude précis of his ideas. So I admit, indeed, that I cannot completely answer the question today about happens to eros in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. I can, however, start to show you what I mean, in part, and hopefully get you thinking in the same direction.

I was watching a television documentary on John Ruskin the other day, and the narrator intoned:

“Art is not just a distraction from the grueling trick of life, it is life. It is our imaginative proposal for what like can be”.

Taking this idea as our starting point, then, we might try to explain where eros goes in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality by looking at the agency of beauty. How does beauty figure in our understandings of morality? What can the beautiful do with / to the erotic?

If we draw on the Catholic idea of the passions, and man’s sensual appetites, it is clear that eros, and love generally are implicated wherever beauty and goodness meet.

Again, the promotion of self-knowledge and “self-mastery" in the Christian tradition, does not immediately suggest to me a reliance on a therapist as that relationship is understood in modern, secular, English-speaking models of the mental health industry - and the understandings of "disinterested" and "friendship" might actually militate against paying a "professional" for "reparative therapy".

But they do suggest the ladder of love that Plato has Socrates expound. Here is an example of how I think about the ascent to the beautiful in the context of same sex attraction.

SLIDE 1 – Highly eroticized image of a half-naked football player (it is David Williams) – we say that it is highly eroticized because it is packed with eros, it hits our eros buttons. It is designed, in fact, to do so. We are right to ask, in this context, what for? To sell something? To increase someone’s fame / notoriety? We seem to have become comfortable with deploying eros in this manner, to sell, to promote, but perhaps we might deploy eros to improve ourselves, to seek after beauty (truth and goodness)?

SLIDE 2 – This was the ideal of classical Greek sculpture. The ideal is eros transformed, in line with ideas that fed into the Platonic ladder or love, and re-deployed, so as to provide an education in virtue. The Greeks worked to sublimate the sexual (notice the penis size) to make room for other more enduring things, like civilization and excellence. Here the viewer is taught something about grace, and proportion.

SLIDE 3 – In Hellenistic sculpture, eros is more obviously sublimated. It is used to feed excitement into a narrative context. Eros is associated with, and it complicates, this depiction of The Dying Gaul – we now learn something about pity, or perhaps (from the perspective of the victor) about the ambivalent nature of victory.

SLIDE 4 – Ascending up the ladder of love, getting further away from the base sexual force we encountered in the first image, eros can also be disciplined so as to tell not just a story, but archetypal stories. Here we have Hercules, identified by his cudgel and lion’s skin.

SLIDE 5 - From archetypal stories, we can move to expressions of even more refined notions. Sublimated eros is also transformed into civic virtue. We are no longer learning about how things are, or how people say they are, but about how things should be, about how men should be. We learn how government should be done, and how men should conduct themselves.

SLIDE 6 – Finally, in this context, we might also learn about the value of abstraction, or stylization. If we are not interested, after all, in the particular – and we seek after the universal – we can approach the cool grace and serenity of this archaic kouros. We come, here, to eros deployed in the service of religious and purely philosophical ends. No longer are we focused, in the language of the ladder of love, in the beauty of a man’s thigh – but we seek after beauty itself.

SLIDE 7 – We start to notice things like the hair, in this sculpture, and we might be moved by the grace and poise depicted. We learn, too, about excellence and balance.

SLIDE 8 – The same erotic charge is discernible here, but it drives a new, elevated search. Instead of being diverted to gratification, it is disciplined and enlarged by contact with, and contemplation of, the beautiful. We start to yearn for the good, for the true.

SLIDE 9 – We seek these marks of the beautiful and true wherever we might find them. The erotic force that might have compelled us onto a sexual partner, or might have animated our sexual fantasies, is redirected toward other things. We notice the beauty of these capitals, designed by Andrea Palladio.

SLIDE 10 - We swoon at his Villa Capra, La Rotonda, and – having been challenged earlier when looking at Greek sculpture – we might note especially the grace and proportion we can see in his angles and lines. We start to appreciate angles and lines around us. We develop a taste for such things.

SLIDE 11 - We can take this knowledge, this sensibility, anywhere. Instead of just looking at things, we can start to create a world of grace and beauty.

SLIDE 12 – We might take a second look at dance, for instance, and delight in even obscure things, like this depiction of King Louis XIV of France. Louis is dancing as Apollo before his court at Versailles. In such sophisticated examples, eros sublimated vivifies new stories, this time of nationhood, manhood, and power. Eros sublimated can establish, and found. It can create.

SLIDE 13 – Angles and lines. Beauty and form.

SLIDE 14 – Style has its place, too. We might trace the pleasing lines of cut and shape, as discernible in this image from the iconic fashion book Take Ivy.

SLIDE 15 – Personal excellence suggests itself to me in the context of fashion, especially in male style. Angles and lines, more beauty and form. The act of putting on clothing, or putting on a suit or a dress, is an act of sublimation. It is also often a direct conduit to virtue, to modesty in particular. As with all of these examples, sublimation does not kill eros, it diverts eros to virtuous ends.

SLIDE 16 – We can trace pleasing shapes, and the cut of cloth, and its reflections in symbols of power and victory. Eros helps to make sense, too, of images that speak to us of defeat and shame. Here is an image of Richard Nixon that could be viewed as the 20th Century’s version of The Dying Gaul. It provokes similar mixed reactions. It provokes reactions.

SLIDE 17 – A tree installation I found beautiful, which echoed Nixon’s arm gesture.

SLIDE 18 – When we become skilled in seeking for beauty, we find its marks everywhere. Our world opens up, and we participate in a vision of creation that is quite remarkable for its depth and richness. We discern a pattern, an order, behind otherwise atomized things and people. This is Versailles.

SLIDE 19 - What about the Christian focus in all of this? It helps to know, in this context, that Christian art and imagery participate maximally and deliberately in this idea of sublimation. Images and symbols point beyond the physical facts of things and great liturgical art intends to convey something divine. By filling their Churches with things of beauty, Catholics hope to create an environment conducive to the contemplation of beauty and truth and goodness.

SLIDE 20 – Because Christian believe G-d is love, then, this contemplation ascends to Him. The Pagan ladder of love becomes the Christian’s ladder to heaven. By faithfully treading this path, same sex attracted men and women – indeed all human beings – are called to seek after G-d. This is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

SLIDE 21 – Christ is; at the end of the Christian’s striving. He is the object of our love. He is, to answer Plato’s implicit question, beauty itself. G-d is love.

SLIDE 22 – In this manner, albeit crudely, we might say we have participated to some extent in the ladder of love. Christ is the answer to what happens to eros in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. Both in the particular sense that Hugh Eakin’s erotic impulses are sublimated here into a depiction of the Cruficied Christ, but also in this richer sense that a dwelling on the ladder of love allows us to think about.

Thank you very much.

- - END - -

:: The Upshot ::

This second lecture was an attempt to engage a question held-over from a similar event at the University of Sydney in April, 2009. A slide-show accompanied the final section. The third event in the series was held at the University of New South Wales on the following day (details to come).

DREADTALK: 'On Gay Couples & Friends In Help And Grace' John Heard - September 30, 2009 At The University Of New South Wales - Sydney

2009-09-15T21:23:00.000+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT will address students and faculty on the topic (A Same Sex Attracted Catholic Speaks Out) On Gay Couples & Friends in Help and Grace at the University of New South Wales in Sydney:

- Wednesday September 30, 2009

- 1PM – 2PM (40 mins lecture, 20 mins for discussion)

- Venue (TBC)

- Subject matter (natural law generally / ancient and Christian ideas on friendship, “what does it mean to be faithful to each other in “amicitiae gratuitae auxilio?”” (as the Catechism puts it), homosexuality, love, and the Catholic teaching on human sexuality)

The event is the third in a loose series. The first address (on April 30, 2009) was instigated and organised by student leaders associated with the University of Sydney Catholic Chaplaincy. The second address will be given on Tuesday September 29, 2009 at Macquarie University.

:: The Upshot ::

UNSW is a research, publishing, and teaching powerhouse. By speaking in such venues, to such bright young people, DREADNOUGHT hopes to make a compelling contribution to the discourse on sex, politics, faithfulness, and same sex attraction. (Plus, they ask the right questions).

DREADTALK: 'On Self Mastery & The Ladder Of Love' John Heard - September 29, 2009 At Macquarie University - Sydney

2009-09-15T20:41:00.001+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT will address students and faculty on the topic (A Same Sex Attracted Catholic Speaks Out) On Self Mastery and the Ladder of Love at Macquarie University in Sydney:

- Tuesday September 29, 2009

- 1:00PM – 1:50PM (30 mins lecture, 20 mins for discussion)

- E6A 102

- Subject matter (natural law generally / Platonic and Christian conceptions of the scala amoris, the Catechism on “dominii virtutibus quae libertatem educant interiorem” (the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom), beauty, homosexuality, love, and what happens to eros in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality)

The event is the second in a loose series. The first address (on April 30, 2009) was instigated and organised by student leaders associated with the University of Sydney Catholic Chaplaincy.

:: The Upshot ::

Macquarie is an innovative university in Australia. DREADNOUGHT is grateful to the student organisers and the Catholic Society & Chaplaincy for the invitation. Contact them for more information.

:: Coming Soon ::

DREADNOUGHT has also been invited to speak at the University of New South Wales on the following afternoon.

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - The Blessed Virgin Mary, Titian, Same Sex Attracted Men & The Woman Of Revelation 12

2009-09-15T19:58:00.010+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT'S latest column for syndication is on the Blessed Virgin Mary, a painting by Titian (again), and unexpected grace and light for same sex attracted men and women.

:: BEING HEARD – ‘The Woman of Revelation 12’ ::

By John Heard

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a painting. It was more than that, of course, I wrote about the Blessed Virgin Mary and how Catholics relate, or try to relate, to her. How we try to reach up after her. I wrote about how same sex attracted Catholics, in particular, need her to model purity; about how Catholic men and women everywhere want her to stay a while, and be our Queen, our Mother - if not a constant companion in daily toil.

I attached an image of the painting to the article, and it was published alongside. Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin, however, has not left me alone. There was the time I sent off another column, one I had copied and pasted to re-write from the earlier template, only to notice afterwards that the painting was still electronically attached.

There was also the time I was checking email (as I am wont to do, on my phone, at all hours), during which the image popped up unexpectedly. Large and luminous in the darkness, the experience revealed another detail to grasp about Titian’s Virgin: she is bright. In the glow, her features shone. The Virgin reflected the light emanating from about where the throne of G-d might be (although Titian left that sort of concrete detail out). In this, I decided, Titian is a mystic.

Diego Velázquez, 'The Immaculate Conception' (1618)

Certainly, since then, I have had cause to think of Mary under another title, one additional to the many I cited in the original article. She is sometimes thought of as the “woman clothed with the sun”, who appears in the captivating twelfth chapter of Revelation. Commonly, statues of Mary, then, show her “with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars”.

Scriptural experts in the marginal notes of the Bible I’m reading claim that the woman figured here stands in for the whole people of G-d. She is Israel, ranged against the darkness.

That does not detract from the depictions of Mary as the “woman clothed with the sun”, however. Such interpretations simply complicate the reading. Mary is the Mother of the Church (another title) and Catholics understand themselves to be the people of the New Covenant – Israel.

I am not clever enough to follow this to the logical end. I cannot offer theological insights, and there is no room to make too much fuss about Mary as the Moon that mirrors the blessed light (the grace) that proceeds from the Most Blessed Trinity (her Sun, and ours).

William Blake, 'The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun' (c. 1803-1805) - Brooklyn Museum

It might be enough to say, though, that the experience of thinking on Mary, about the woman of Revelation 12, an experience prompted by spending some time with a superlative piece of art (even in reproduction, even on an iPhone screen), strikes me as a distinctly Catholic activity.

It is also, of course, and some may already be thinking this, a peculiarly queer activity. One of the common stereotypes has same sex attracted men, of course, as more sensitive to art and artistic interests. Mooning over a Titian then, particularly his Assumption of the Virgin, is a moment that is both Catholic and queer.

I do not mean to comment much about this fact, except to point it out. There might not be anything, after all, that is terribly exciting about this unexpected unity, other than the fact that I did not expect to mark it, and I doubt others would. Most people, of course, simply do not think about same sex attraction.

For those who are same sex attracted, however, especially for those who model much that is queer, and little that is currently Catholic, properly speaking – such moments are looked for, let me tell you. Many young men, in particular, but young same sex attracted women too, look for such moments. They want to see how they can fit in the Church.

Not, indeed, just because of what people say about being queer, or “gay” (a notion that has always made very little sense to me). Not even, either, because they might have a fully formed intention to choose Catholicism, to live and grow in the faith of Titian, and of (so many) other creative spirits. Many of the men who write to me do not.

They are not really looking for a reflection of themselves, then, and they do not want an insight into someone else's faith.

Rather, they look for a window onto a moment of grace. They seek truth, and goodness, and beauty. They seek, then, the Blessed Virgin, and they seek G-d.

Happy are we who already know and love Our Lady. Happy, is she, who dwells so close to the Light.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - The Latin Patrimony & The New English Translations of the Mass

2009-09-14T19:41:00.002+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's latest column for syndication is on changes to the English translations of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite. It was published in The Record newspaper two weeks ago.

:: BEING HEARD – ‘The Latin Patrimony’ ::

By John Heard

Soon, English-speaking Catholics will confront a new challenge. The English translations of the Third Edition of the Missale Romanum (2000), completed in stages during the last decade, are slated for release sometime after the Vatican grants final approval. At the time of writing, and according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, approval is expected to come through early next year.

Recently, English-speaking Catholics experienced minor changes in the 1969 Mass of Pope Paul VI. Since May 11, 2008 Australian Catholics - for instance - have been asked (.PDF) to assimilate a new posture (standing after the Priest says “Pray brethren…”) and gesture (bowing profoundly before receiving the Most Holy Sacrament).

On the follow-through, however, we have seen mixed results. Congregants are standing at the right time, perhaps because it is hard to stay seated when the priest indicates that it is time to rise, but the individual gesture of respect is sometimes lost or garbled.

Typically, indeed, and since I was an adolescent, I have knelt to receive Holy Communion (directly on the tongue) when the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered in the Ordinary Form or, where kneeling is impractical (i.e. would endanger the Host) – I usually genuflect, and then present my tongue, hands folded. Now, after the recent changes and in line with some restored directives from Pope Benedict XVI (who has confirmed that Communion on the tongue is the universal norm), I see many Catholics adopting this posture. Some others bow profoundly. Others still incline their heads slightly. Yet more simply proceed as before. They offer no gesture of respect, and none is currently demanded by the priest / bishop.

This strikes me as curious. Having been drilled in the Catholic teaching on the Eucharist (the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ) as a child, I always found it awkward and embarrassing to have to touch the Host with my hands (the fashion in the 1980s, when I was undergoing catechesis). As an altar boy, I was marked by the great piety evident at Benediction (which our Parish Priest still celebrated in Latin). The humeral veil. The double genuflection. As a same sex attracted young man, in the 1990s, I was still drawn to more pious modes and, frankly, I found it a relief not to have to associate my hands, so often the incorrigible agents of my imperfection, with the Sanctissimum during Mass.

I cannot help thinking that, benefitting from a similarly impressive (it need not be academic) education in Eucharistic theology and pious practice, more Catholics would follow the directives on gesture. It comes naturally from the Catholic ethos. As the old saying goes, if Catholics really believed what they say about the Eucharist, they would approach the altar on their hands and knees.

The new translations will present a much more profound challenge, in the same vein. There is a risk that, without a proper rollout, including (re)-education, we could see a similar gap between norm and practice. Inasmuch as the purpose of the re-translation process is to ensure that the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite more closely conveys the sacrality and beauty of the original Latin, there can be no room for a haphazard application and sloppy uptake.

Good Catholics must resolve, now, to learn as much as they can about the changes before they come into force. Those charged with responsibility for the liturgy must prepare for catechesis and (re)-instruction, so as to ensure the more perfect, seamless assimilation of the new texts.

Indeed, careful study will pay off when the full force of the changes hits. Some of the central texts of the Mass, and many common prayers, have been significantly re-worked. While it is something of a chore to re-learn prayers that one has recited all one’s life, the grace and eloquence, the elevated style, the unambiguously sacred tone of the restored translations, makes the task a joyful, prayerful experience.

Certainly, in the weeks since examples of the restored Mass texts became available for study online, many Catholics have remarked on how much of an improvement they represent.

I must admit that as a bi-Riter (someone who attends both the Ordinary Form and the usus antiquior of the Roman Rite) I was tempted to retreat completely into the unambiguously sacred liturgical architecture of the 1963 Mass of Blessed Pope John XXIII. However, that would be uncharitable. While the restoration of the English translations of the Ordinary Form will no doubt (and happily) prompt some Catholics to seek out the relatively stable usus antiquior, the Holy Father has cross-fertilization in mind. The Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms are one and the same Rite.

As Roman Catholics, it is our duty and our joy to receive both Forms, and indeed to study both, for the more perfect rendering of latria (sacrificial adoration) to the Most Holy Trinity.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - Same Sex Attracted Men, Titian & The Assumption Of The Blessed Virgin Mary

2009-08-27T19:47:00.006+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT’s last column for syndication is on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It ran in The Record newspaper on Wednesday August 12, 2009.

:: BEING HEARD – ‘The Marian Model’ ::

By John Heard

This year, the Feast of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary falls on a Saturday (August 15) - this Saturday. The Assumption is a holy day of obligation.

How Catholics speak about Mary tells other people much about our faith. There is, first, her simple name. In Catholic homes, “Mary” – regularly referred to just like that, simply as Mary - is a familiar and beloved member of the family. She is remembered amid all the accumulated joys and sorrows of daily life. She is one of us.

Indeed, Catholics frequently refer to “Our Lady”. This brings out, too, the next layer of meaning in how Catholics speak. Our Lady is revered and respected. She is given a place of honour in Catholic chapels and homes. An image of Our Lady, some icon or statue, usually features in Catholic spaces, and many people will have seen a Catholic mother for instance, while dusting, lift such an image and quietly apologize - “Sorry Mary” (that familiarity) – before returning the image to its place, sometimes with a reverential kiss (the respect).

Then there are the titles Catholics employ to call on Mary. The beautiful Litany of Loreto lists many of these. Catholics call on Mary, for instance, as the Mirror of Justice (speculum iustitiae), the Seat of Wisdom (sedes sapientiae), the Mystical Rose (rosa mystica), the Gate of Heaven (janua caeli), and the Queen of Peace (regina pacis). Here, some of the more complex theological meanings associated with the person of Mary are expressed. Jews, in particular, will notice the Scriptural associations – Mary is the Ark of the Covenant (foederis arca), the Queen of Prophets (regina prophetarum), and the Tower of David (turris Davidica).

In the East, Mary has always been known as the Theotokos – the G-d-bearer, an ancient and much revered title. More recently, she has also been called the Mother Thrice Admirable, a conflation of Mary’s attributes as the Mother of G-d, the Mother of the Redeemer, and the Mother of all men. In speaking of Mary in this way, by stressing her maternity, Catholics refer to the link between Mary and Heaven. These titles express Mary’s unique role in the salvation of mankind, and her singular position of honour. Mary is the “singular vessel of devotion” in the Litany. She is the Christian par excellence.

This draws out another layer of meaning. Catholics often refer to Mary as “spotless”. She is “stainless” in other formulas, “immaculate” and “pure”. On the Miraculous Medal, which many Catholics wear or carry, Mary is implored in this way: “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee”. Catholics also directly refer to Mary as the “Immaculate Conception”, which – alongside these other epithets - expresses a dogmatic truth (infallibly defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854) about Mary’s birth. She was conceived without sin.

Beyond these modes, there is the depiction of Mary in Christian art. There is no space here to parse all the famous examples, so let us consider one compelling painting.

Titian, Assumption of the Virgin (1516 - 1518)

Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin (1516 – 1518) shows the dramatic moment of Mary’s bodily assumption into Heaven. She is arrayed in splendour, supported by dancing cherubim, and ascending to G-d, Who gazes down on the scene with paternal benevolence. Underneath the clouds, however, all is chaos. The apostles stand transfixed in a moment of uproar. Most of them have their hands in the air, and Titian has given them expressions of shock and wonder.

Most interesting for our purposes is the figure in red, his back to the viewer, that Titian uses to tie the earthly section to the Heavenly segment. His whole body is stretched upward, and his hands grasp for where Mary’s feet must have been just moments before. The apostle, for all the commotion, is intent. In his tense, extended form and the wonderful expressiveness Titian has given to his details – the taut calf, the raised heel, the splayed fingers and the thrust back head – we have a picture of the Catholic attitude to Mary.

We strive, with our titles, with our ways of speaking about Mary to bring her back down to us, to make her one of us, to have her stay in our homes and hearts. But we also want to piggyback on her glory. Catholics implore Mary, after all, because she has clean hands. It is better that our petitions should reach G-d via His most favoured creation.

While we are implicated in the still churning dust of earth, the chaos depicted so movingly in Titian’s masterpiece, we need Mary’s intercession. Same sex attracted Catholics, in particular, sometimes feel rooted to the earth, as though we might never make it to sanctity.

:: The Upshot ::

Mary was obedient, she was pure, and her life was marked by sorrow. She sailed on up. On Assumption, and always, Catholics reach for her blessed feet – and strain every nerve - to follow after her.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

DREADPUBLISHING: John Heard Interviewed In The National Catholic Register By Barb Ernster

2009-08-07T20:59:00.011+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT was interviewed by Barb Ernster for a front page profile piece in the National Catholic Register.

John Heard in the National Catholic Register - August 9 - 22, 2009

The National Catholic Register is the oldest national Catholic newspaper in the United States. Recently, it was one of only seven Catholic media outlets (plus the Washington Post) handpicked by the White House for a meeting with President Barack Obama.

:: The Upshot ::

The full profile is now available online (subscription only). It was featured in the August 9 - 22, 2009 print edition in the United States. Welcome new DREADNOUGHTERS!

:: Resources ::

- The DREADNOUGHTERS Facebook Group; and

- Previous NCRegister articles on DREADNOUGHT, and social networking.

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - Fraternal Charity: A Young Priest Writes About Gay Catholics & Confession

2009-08-07T20:31:00.013+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT'S latest column for syndication is on valuable feedback, especially mail from readers, and one particularly important note from a young priest. It ran in The Record newspaper this week.

:: BEING HEARD - Fraternal Charity ::

By John Heard

A man cannot write for himself. As Thomas Merton rather theatrically stated:

“If you write only for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted, you will wish that you were dead”.

I would not put it so turgidly; but it is always good to receive feedback, especially constructive email. Such feedback provides human evidence that one’s writing is getting through, that a connection has been made.

The connection need not be of a standard sort, either. I get all kinds of feedback. Many people write to me of their sorrows, especially young same sex attracted men, and some describe great suffering indeed. Others want to tell me how a certain passage, or a particular line, helped to make them happy. It is always good to challenge wrong thinking, and it is marvelous to be challenged. Some readers just want to fight it out – and others still want to add some thought of their own to whatever it is that one has published. That is good too.

When writing, as a non-theologian, on religious and sexual issues – there is no such thing as too much information.

By the same logic, feedback from priests and seminarians is best of all. Indeed I have, by now, attracted a cadre of clerical correspondents – and they do not fail to keep me in line. If I write something a bit sloppy, then, I can count on a religious brother, or a secular priest, to fire off an email. Did I really mean to say that? On a few occasions, such feedback has radically altered my views. Christians have always gone in for fraternal correction, and these twinkling points of common feeling, and shared sentiment – these help me to be a better Catholic (and, I hope, a better writer).

Sometimes - although less often than usual - I can be of service to a priest or, rarer still, assist a bishop in some matter. An email I received from Illinois, recently, was of this kind.

Here was a priest, a relatively young priest, who wanted to know what he could do to be a more sympathetic and faithful pastor to the same sex attracted young men in his flock. He asked, indeed:

“...what would I - a priest trying to be good and holy - recommend to a young man…who comes to me and expresses this concern? What would I say in that situation? What would I recommend?”

I wrote back that I crave (and I have good reason to believe that many other penitents crave) for rigor and love. In the confessional, especially, same sex attracted Catholics want a priest who is subtle, and honest, and true. I told him of the years of somewhat diplomatic advice I had received from theologically flabby, but otherwise lovable, Jesuit confessors. It was only a clear, stern, booming voice out of a confessional in St Peters that finally set me to thinking about what my faith demanded of me in terms of chastity, and other matters.

He had asked me:

“So, what kind of suggestions do you think would be the most effective in maintaining the Church's teaching and yet addressing [young people’s] need… [for] …immediate, practical, measurable results?”

I told him to treat same sex attracted young people, at first instance, as he would any other penitents. I suggested that he tell them, if the Spirit moved him, what the Church wants for all men (light, happiness, love) and how same sex attracted Catholics can get there (self discipline, prayer, disinterested friendship, and grace). I related how it has always bothered me that same sex attracted men are treated, in some instances, like spiritual lepers. Fornication is fornication, I wrote. Sodomy is sodomy. Masturbation is masturbation. Pornography, too, is evil no matter what sex act is depicted.

Of course, I wrote, homogenital acts are singled out for condemnation. They are always wrong, whereas fornication simpliciter is the misuse of an otherwise holy gift. But the point I was trying to make is that I imagine that most men (SSA or otherwise) are tempted by sins of the flesh - so I might focus on the sins. On these, most priests have a good handle – and they know how to respond.

What are they? How many times?

If given the chance, most sinners would wallow. Shift the focus, I suggested, to what has been done, and what can be done. Do not make it sound like same sex attracted individuals are somehow ordered for sin, simply by virtue of experiencing same sex attraction. There is, after all, no sin in being tempted and a man is not responsible for the color of his passions – only for his responses to the same. It is only after the engagement of will and reason, after a man chooses evil, that judgment justly comes down.

I do not know if this advice will make any difference, but at least the priest had the inclination to ask, and I certainly had the desire to cooperate with him, however limited and flawed my contributions. This sort of thing, this courteous way of talking, represents a development in the way solid (usually younger) priests now engage with same sex attraction.

:: The Upshot ::

Their effort, that fraternal charity, has made DREADNOUGHT a better, more devoted Christian. I do not doubt that they will help to (re-) convert other same sex attracted men to the faith.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

DREADNEWS: Merce Cunningham Is Dead - Obituary, Last Australian Interview, Melbourne - April 2008

2009-07-28T08:00:00.032+10:00

:: Update ::

Famed choreographer Merce Cunningham, one of the masters of modern dance, has died.

Merce Cunnningham's Final Australian Interview, Melbourne April 2008 - Meanjin (Vols 66.4 / 67.1)

:: Melbourne Residency ::

DREADNOUGHT interviewed Cunningham in late 2007, for an April 2008 cover story on his October 2007 residency in Melbourne. The article ran in a special double issue of Meanjin (2007-08, Vols 66.4 / 67.1). In the interview, Cunningham commented on his career, his changing audiences, his "aleatory" choreographic method, his fascination with animal movement, his collaborations with John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Sigur Ros, and Radiohead - and his life in dance. Controversially, I also attempted to get him to speak about beauty and truth, and his responses were revealing. We discussed MySpace, YouTube, and the "possibilities for technology" that, Cunningham believed, would drive the evolution of dance / movement. The issue is available for purchase online.

:: The Upshot ::

Cunningham was, by the time of the residency, mostly confined to a wheelchair. He is seated in a wheelchair in the famous, jarring cover shot by William Yang. I will not soon forget that sight, and Cunningham's laughter when I asked him to describe Martha Graham's scent. Requiescat in pace.

:: Resources ::

- Merce Cunningham's Living Legacy Plan;

- Online Image Gallery of Cunningham's Work; and

- Merce Cunningham Dance Company Archives.

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - The Faith Of Our Fathers Is Tradition, Scripture & Magisterium

2009-07-23T17:43:00.006+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's latest column for syndication is on the concept of living tradition in the context of Christianity. It was published in The Record newspaper this week.

:: BEING HEARD – The Faith of Our Fathers ::

By John Heard

There is little of any value in change for the sake of change, and much that can be oppressive. That is the summary, the crude summary, of a noble tradition in Western (and, often, specifically English-speaking) thought. That tradition, depending on the prism through which it is viewed, is variously termed orthodoxy, conservatism, common sense, and / or simply “culture”, and it aligns with notions such as the rule of law, precedent, natural justice and constitutionalism in legal thinking, and prudence, temperance, and diligence in the language of virtue ethics. There are probably other terms and ideas that fit here, including some of the better sorts of urges typically grouped under the banner of progressive politics, but it will not help to list them all. It is enough to gesture towards some of the most impressive titles, to discern underneath something of real value for our civilization.

In Catholic circles, tradition is superlative, but there is less of a stress on politics, and more of a sense of obedience and an acknowledgment of love. The deposit of faith, the core of Christian religion, cannot change. A good Christian serves the faith, he does not seek to undermine, or subvert it – certainly not in the pursuit of his extra-curricular interests and ambitions. The faith endures, from age to age, and it does so because of the love of G-d. That the faith professed, defined, and defended by the Church will be the one true faith is, after all, the unique and outstanding guarantee of the Holy Spirit.

Thus, when a bishop, say, defends some teaching that has fallen into momentary disrepute, he stands with the entire Church – understood as both the timeless communion of saints and the intimately historical people of G-d - including at any given time, those people who form the bishop’s flock.

Similarly, when we pray as Catholics, we utter the words that countless Christians have used over more than two millennia. Further, during the holy sacrifice of the Mass, certain words and prayers – Amen, Alleluia, Hosanna alongside the prayers over the bread and wine, for instance – come to us from the Jews. These are ancient in a way that stretches human understanding. It is not wrong to state that, as long as there have been things such as history and religion and language and law, men have used such as these to praise and implore the one true G-d.

So what happens to creativity? Isn’t this way of thinking about faith necessarily restrictive? Certainly, one of the most powerful critiques of this tradition of tradition is that it can quickly lead to stagnation, on the one hand, stifling creativity and stamping out any nascent growth. On the other hand, critics claim, a community wedded to tradition risks glorifying nonsense, simply because it is old. Some of the criticism leveled at the usus antiquior of the Roman Rite comes packaged in this language.

It helps to recall, then, that tradition is – in the Catholic context – only one of the pillars upon which the faith endures. The other two are revelation, which is made up of G-d’s holy Word and His deeds in human history, and the magisterium - helpfully understood as the teaching authority of the bishops (with the pope).

These ensure that while the faith cannot change, human understanding of things that are, in fact, ineffable and mysterious, can develop.

In terms of revelation, the process is most obvious. One must pay homage to the teachings of the past, but not simply because they are ancient, rather because they are known to be of G-d. Christians strive to understand what it is that G-d is saying to man, and that understanding can develop. From the earliest days of the Church, for instance, Christians have come together to understand better Christ’s nature (true G-d and true man), the privileges and prizes of the Blessed Virgin Mary (the theotokos, the Mother of G-d), and to regulate and improve ritual worship (the reforms of Trent and the Second Vatican Council are representative of this process).

The teaching authority of the bishops, always with the pope, is obvious to Christianity in a different way. If the Church is of G-d, as Catholics have been promised and profess her to be, her true ministers must do G-d’s work. Even when they are personally compromised, their priestly acts are valid, and nourishing.

:: The Upshot ::

These ideas of the faith, understood under the terms Tradition, Revelation, and Magisterium are, then, organic, unified - and they are coherent. Each of the concepts works happily alongside the others. Combined, they express something unique, and enduring about Catholicism.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - A Miracle Of The Mass

2009-07-04T18:05:00.021+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's latest column for syndication is on an extraordinary experience of an otherwise "ordinary" Sunday. It was published in The Record newspaper last week.

:: BEING HEARD - 'A Miracle of the Mass' ::

By John Heard

We cannot help attaching an outsize weight to coincidence and synchronicity. These are the clever names that we give, of course, to quite simple events that seem to hold much greater meaning. In the course of an otherwise ordinary day, something will happen, and it will seem to overflow the normal limits of meaning. The bare facts might never suggest some great wonder, and when retold, they seem to lose their spark, they are hard to communicate – but for a moment, a wondrous moment, some very magnificent thing rises before us.

Try this one. A young man, not yet thirty, attends the holy sacrifice of the Mass. It is close to the Feast of the Sacred Heart, and he has a particular devotion to the Sacred Heart, but otherwise there is nothing outwardly startling about the event.

The choir sings to the usual standard. The priest offers the Mass, and the faithful worship. As much as any of these things can be described as ordinary, this Sunday is ordinary. It would not qualify for inclusion in a Catholic’s list of the “most memorable Sundays”.

Except, of course, that this Mass is different for the young man. For, you see, in the midst of all the wonder and meaning, all the miraculous liturgical “wow” otherwise associated with a faithfully and beautifully offered Mass, there seems to be something in a minor key, a barely perceptible, but nagging melody – and it seems to sing just for him.

At first he simply spies a note in the bulletin indicating that the organist will play J.S. Bach’s Fugue in C (BWV 564) for the Recessional. Oh, the young man thinks. Very good. He has been listening to Bach’s The Art of Fugue all week. The coincidence, as most are wont to be, is most surprising. He smiles.

He sits still. He follows prayerfully as the Mass unfolds. The first reading is from the Book of Job. Strange, again, he thinks. He told a friend just last night that he likes the name Job, and he was set to thinking then about the man G-d tested so severely. Now he hears some of Job’s story. The reading – as it is declaimed – is undeniably wondrous. G-d sets the boundaries of the sea, and works other miracles. It feels as though the reading answers the minor melody, and the whole thing is gaining force.

What can it mean?

The readings, summarized on the bulletin, run like this:

I. Here I have set the boundaries of the sea (Job 38:1-11)

II. Give thanks to the Lord, His love is everlasting (Psalm 106:23-26. 28-31)

III. All things are made new (2 Corinthians 5:14-17)

IV. Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey Him (Mark 4:35-41)

As each is proclaimed, and culminating in the Gospel, the young man is transfixed. There is a private meaning here, and a sense of purpose, that he feels he cannot ignore. Even the entrance hymn, and the motets are apposite. They seem to modify the metaphorical melody, and take it to new places. He feels enormous gratitude. Meaning washes over him. It is as if the whole cathedral is ringing for him, well – not for Him, the sacrifice is Christ’s, the sacrifice is Christ – but the young man feels the weight of that love coming down on him, specifically on him.

He looks around to see if anyone else is enraptured. He breathes. He can’t tell. He wonders if others can see anything unusual on his face. He is smiling gently, but there is no call for arm-flapping, and it would be wrong to shout. Still, he feels he must radiate. Now, the Mass is drawing to its end.

How can a man parse that sort of experience? Psychologists, and those philosophers who believe there is nothing more to the world than matter (and perhaps time / space) would turn to narrow readings. It was neuronal activity, something sparked in the man’s hard wiring, and it produced an effect like déjà vu.

I don’t know about that, and I don’t know what to think of the experience. It was mine, of course, I am the young man. On so-called personal revelation, the Church teaches that nothing that separates us from G-d can come from Him, but otherwise leaves it to the individual to “discern the spirits” (with the aide of a spiritual advisor), if prudent. I would not say that I had been blessed with any serious revelation, just the particular, and welcome sense that I am loved, and that the holy sacrifice of the Mass reaches out for me, that I am included among “the many”.

:: The Upshot ::

A Catholic must not get carried away. We are not superstitious. Still, the feeling is fresh on me, and the melody rings – in a key I now know by heart. “Do not forgot His mercies”, it trills, “poured out in love for one so unworthy”.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writings on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

DREADCLARITY: On NARTH, Courage, And Why DREADNOUGHT Cannot Recommend "Reparative Therapy" - The Catholic Teaching On Human Sexuality / Homosexuality

2009-06-12T00:23:00.042+10:00

[UPDATE] In a new, timely intervention in ZENIT, the former president of NARTH indirectly clarifies the claims DREADNOUGHT has made about the links between NARTH / "reparative therapy" and Courage International. The former president confirms, indeed, that NARTH is a "non-religious" organisation. Curiously, however - and as DREADNOUGHTERS might have predicted - he then says:

"So when a 15-year-old boy goes to a priest and says, 'Father I have these feelings, I have these temptations,' that priest should say, 'you have a choice; if you don't want to be gay there are things that you can do...Nicolosi said."

As DREADNOUGHT has objected (and this interview demonstrates), NARTH's impoverished, secular view of "sexual orientation", and its "reparative therapies" are being recommended - via elements within the Courage leadership - for use by Catholic priests (perhaps even, given the context, recommended for use in the confessional).

Further, there appears to be no distinction in the NARTH president's formulation between inclinations or "temptations" (which are "objectively" wrong) to homogenital acts (which are "intrinsically" wrong) and those "feelings" which might otherwise be experienced by same sex attracted individuals (same sex friendship, love, happiness in male company). There is also the sense, against the Catholic teaching on human sexuality and probably borrowed from the language of homoactivism, that one's "feelings" or "temptations" are constitutive - that one might "be gay", rather than merely same sex attracted at any given time. What is unique to NARTH is the sense that simply being "gay" (or, translated into Catholic language, simply experiencing same sex attractions) is pathological - and, perhaps by extension, sinful per se. This is what happens when the moral distinctions are forgotten. They are absolutely central to the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. They are very important to same sex attracted Catholics. When missing them, or obscuring them, NARTH approaches must stray from orthodoxy.

Even if the boy in the example experienced "temptations" to homogenital acts, then, he need not complain of "being gay" or "feeling gay", rather he need only confess to sinning (on the properly Catholic view), like anyone else, and only if he has willfully sinned - by entertaining sinful thoughts, for instance, or by willfully participating in homogential acts. Only these acts are homosexual / (or more precisely) homogenital. He is, himself, simply male, Catholic, a penitent, etc. Indeed, the Catechism dictates, he must be "accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity".

Where he merely experiences same sex attraction, a need to be close to another male, or to share a loving friendship, it would certainly seem that the Catechism exhortation to charity, alongside the teaching that every "sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided" would make it imprudent (at the very least) for priests to recommend that he seek out "reparative therapy". Certainly, where a priest urges only same sex attracted individuals to seek out "reparative therapy", this might constitute that "unjust discrimination" which is prohibited in Catholic teaching.

DREADNOUGHT must ask again, then, what an obviously and avowedly "non-religious" (non-Catholic, for-profit)^ organisation is doing telling priests what to say to same sex attracted young men? Why should a good, holy priest credit the former NARTH president's secular claims and recommend, without caveat, the anecdotally disturbing cluster of phenomena, the professionally doubted method called "reparative therapy"? Is it prudent for confessors to act as secular mental health counsellors, or to take their cues from the same? Why is Courage, an organisation attempting to establish itself as an apostolate, as an official organ of the Catholic Church, so closely linked with the founders and leaders of NARTH? On the DREADNOUGHTERS Facebook Group we have asked: "Does Courage Have A NARTH Problem?" The answer is becoming clearer, and it appears to be yes.

[My thanks to the DREADNOUGHTER who forwarded the ZENIT article].

:: A History ::

For some time, DREADNOUGHT has felt uneasy about the (relatively minor, but persistent) influence of NARTH on Catholic pastoral responses to same sex attraction. I have always resisted recommending the quasi-psychological / psychiatric methods adopted by some same sex attracted individuals. I have written previously of my concerns about purely secular, materialist responses to the moral, and religious issues raised by same sex attraction, and I have attempted to set out how so-called “reparative therapy” techniques bear upon the properly Catholic teaching on human sexuality:

“… while NARTH counts among its numbers various doctors who belong to the Catholic Church, it is not itself a canonical Catholic body. It has no official links to the Catholic Church and many of the positions it advocates, being merely medical or psychiatric, are not therefore binding Vatican pronouncements, authoritative transmissions of the deposit of faith or otherwise prima facie compelling for Catholics.”

Further, DREADNOUGHT has explained that while:

“NARTH-endorsed approaches might indeed prove useful for some, let us pray they do…nothing means they must be good per se, nor that Catholics who are same sex attracted or otherwise inclined must find NARTH's arguments or positions immediately convincing and/or authoritative.”

In light of recent developments, however, a more detailed engagement might be prudent.

:: An Invitation ::

Earlier this year, and after DREADNOUGHT had made a number of public statements further to the same effect (NARTH is not a Catholic body, its statements are not binding, I have been told repeatedly by DREADNOUGHTERS that “reparative therapy” methods cause great discomfort, where they do not damage young people) I was invited to speak at a conference organized by a chapter of Courage.

Courage, as many DREADNOUGHTERS will know, is an apostolate set up by Terence Cardinal Cooke, and co-founded by Fathers John Harvey, and Benedict Groeschel. Unlike NARTH, Courage has obtained – in various dioceses – varying degrees of official acceptance (although the apostolate is still mostly concentrated in specific areas in the United States). Some same sex attracted Catholics are sent to Courage, or asked to consult Courage, by serious, holy priests who want them to flourish, and grow in the faith.

DREADNOUGHT is not a member of Courage, and while I have been in contact with members at various levels, I have had no official contact with the Courage founders. It came as some surprise, then, to be invited to speak at this Courage conference in Australia, an event apparently being arranged such that DREADNOUGHT and the other speakers would appear alongside the new Courage director Father Paul Check. While I am wary of statements which conflate same sex attraction with a medical pathology / mental disorder, and Father Check has said that "[p]eople are relieved to know the condition [same sex attraction] is both treatable and preventable", I told the organisers that I would be delighted to discuss the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, and agreed in principle to appear.

:: A Thoughtful Reply ::

In the course of planning for the event, however, I asked the organisers for a clarification. I wanted assurances, I told them, that the event would not be used to promote so-called “reparative therapy” techniques, or any other methods that were not properly Catholic (i.e., recommendations for activities not directly implicated in the Catholic moral teaching on human sexuality). After some very genuine, very thoughtful replies, (for which I thank them) the organisers offered that while the conference would be in line with the general Courage goals (goals that are otherwise solidly Catholic), at least one “reparative therapist” would be featured, and that this was in line with the pastoral posture of Courage worldwide.

In good faith, DREADNOUGHT declined the invitation and all of the attendant benefits.

:: An Explanation ::

Now I want to state publicly why I declined the invitation. The reasons are four:

1. “Reparative therapy”, both what I have seen of it vicariously, and what I have managed to read of it, is – as DREADNOUGHT has repeatedly written – extra-religious. It denotes a cluster of secular, quasi-psychological / psychiatric approaches, most of which have been rejected by medical and mental health experts.* It is not, therefore, properly within the ambit of the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, and it is not a going concern in mainstream medical culture. The average medical doctor will never ask same sex attracted patients to see a “reparative therapist”, and the Church will never compel an otherwise good Catholic to seek a purely behaviouristic, or therapeutic treatment for his various inclinations toward sin. To do so, the Church would have to teach that some efforts at sanctity are never enough, as though same sex attracted men and women in particular - alone among all creation - are somehow “damaged”, and damaged in some way that cannot be met by those methods the Church recommends to any man for sanctity: good deeds, prayer, fasting, and mortification - with the help of grace. She will never so teach.

2. A significant number of DREADNOUGHTERS, certainly many more than speak in favour, have spoken against “reparative therapy”, and allied “ex-gay” approaches. Indeed, only two DREADNOUGHTERS out of thousands have ever recommended the treatment. Against their, to be frank, fairly unconvincing – and at times deeply uncharitable - testimony, DREADNOUGHT must set all of the other voices. Many of these have been compelling. One young woman, and two young men told me of their particular suffering after the "reparative therapy", recounting experiences so disturbing and so extreme that they eventually attempted suicide.

3. DREADNOUGHT rejects the equation of same sex attraction at first instance with a mental disorder, however currently defined. As I have written previously, the “disordered” in “intrinsically disordered” borrows from the nomenclature of normative morality. It refers to homogenital acts. Inclinations to homogenital acts are described, indeed, as "objectively disordered", but this describes the moral nature of that specific inclination (i.e., an inclination to always wrong acts is always, objectively, wrong in itself). That says nothing of the subjective (in the sense of particular) moral status of the person who passively experiences disordered inclinations (unwilled), except that such people "must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity" - and it does not condemn those who experience otherwise morally neutral (or even commendable) inclinations (e.g., to same sex friendship). At least inasmuch as same sex attracted individuals experience inclinations that are unwilled / unbidden, and / or not properly described as "objectively disordered", they are not implicated in the Catholic teaching against homogenital acts. This is unambiguous in Catholic thought. Efforts to describe same sex attraction per se as merely (or predominantly) a mental disorder, then, miss out on this rich tradition. They may fail to distinguish between homogenital acts (intrinsically wrong), inclinations to homogenital acts (objectively wrong), and other inclinations (otherwise morally neutral, or else commendable) and they therefore risk stigmatising same sex attracted individuals. Further, no authoritative Catholic document on human sexuality speaks of same sex attraction as a mental (psychological / psychiatric) disorder. Any material that does is, therefore, and necessarily, outside orthodoxy. At best, it is extra-religious. Indeed, it is possible that some of this material will conflict with Catholic teaching. Finally, Catholics believe that all men are born into a disordered reality. We believe that if any man is in need of “repair”, all men are properly understood to need such repair. It makes no sense to single out all same sex attracted individuals, then, for morally-motivated "reparative therapy" except in the context of anecdotally unfortunate, and professionally disavowed, secular, and historical attempts to program sexual "conversion". While the genesis of same sex attraction remains – for the moment – unknown to science, it is already clear that such attempts to program virtue, by behaviouristic, genetic, or other techniques, while possibly useful for some, are not a properly Catholic concern. They are, moreover, potentially limiting (if one mistakenly seeks "reparative therapy", for instance, for one's inclinations, but does not go to confession after performing homogenital acts) and they must fall short of the Catholic understanding of human sexuality, a teaching that seeks to fashion fully integrated human beings for flourishing, in line with a faith that demands a total conversion, not just behavioristic tinkering about the edges of the psyche.

4. Too often, good people associated with Courage allow themselves to be associated with such “reparative therapy” techniques and boosters. Just as the conference DREADNOUGHT could not in good faith attend was to feature a “reparative therapist”, the 2009 Courage conference will feature the former president of NARTH. While the serious, orthodox objections to “reparative therapy” in 1 – 3 remain unanswered, Courage should not associate with NARTH. While it does so, it will continue to alarm DREADNOUGHT, and many other same sex attracted Catholics, indeed it will risk alienating Catholics committed to the properly Catholic teaching (and only the Catholic teaching) on human sexuality. Many of us would otherwise embrace the apostolate, and DREADNOUGHT supports its worthy goals.

In various discussions with Courage members, and NARTH collaborators, these concerns have never been quieted. I offer this public statement as a self-explanation, then, DREADNOUGHTERS now have some way to explain my historical reticence in recommending Courage (and you will know now why I have always distanced myself from NARTH), but I also offer the statement as a challenge.

:: The Upshot ::

As already stated, many good people, many holy priests recommend Courage – and some recommend “reparative therapy”. DREADNOUGHT hopes that this post (offered respectfully and obediently to ordinaries and superiors everywhere, and charitably to fellow Catholics associated with Courage and, to a lesser extent, NARTH), will help to demonstrate why such recommendations can no longer go unqualified. While Courage operates, at an official and / or pastoral level, as though the goals, methods, and results of NARTH and “reparative therapy” treatments were always consistent with and / or essential to the properly Catholic teaching on human sexuality, DREADNOUGHT cannot recommend its efforts. Rather, NARTH and its methods should be separated from Courage, officially and on the ground, and any associated movements and phenomena described appropriately - as a professionally doubted, often anecdotally disturbing, completely secular response to same sex attraction, one no good Catholic should feel obligated to heed, certainly not one the Church always and everywhere endorses.

* (Experts whose apparently professional statements are themselves problematic / political).

^ (DREADNOUGHTERS, both those pro- and anti-"reparative therapy", have written of the high cost of the treatment).

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - At The End Of The Beginning Of The "Gay Marriage" Debate, A Christian Perspective

2009-05-30T19:55:00.032+10:00

By John Heard

Those who defend marriage and the family are quickly discerning that we face new challenges. The “gay marriage” debate threatens to outrun our best instincts. Whereas in the past the threat came mainly from without – from activist courts, say, such as the Supreme Court in California that briefly allowed “gay marriage” - new gaps have appeared inside the marriage camp. These threaten to leave holes in the rhetoric of life, and cause new fissures to open up between marriage defenders and the voting public.

After a period of significant advance - the same court in California just handed down a judgement affirming the democratic outcome of Proposition 8, and the ALP National Conference in July will confirm (.PDF, at 127) that no major political party in Australia supports “gay marriage” – there is time now for consolidation.

Certainly, if those who seek to defend marriage and the family learn nothing from the recent history of legislative action, judicial turmoil, and cultural angst, we will fail in future struggles.

It is timely, then, to consider some key lessons.

First, those who oppose “gay marriage’ for religious reasons, or because of serious philosophical convictions, cannot simply state their faith, or describe their convictions, and then leave the debate. While it is true that Christians make up the majority of the voting public in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, and any fact of widespread aspiration – of deeply held, tremendously meaningful shared values - should be impressive in any properly democratic society, Christians and others will not prevail in an explicitly secular context, on any issue – let alone on debates concerning heavily secularized legal institutions such as marriage - while deploying merely religious arguments.

This first lesson leads into the second. Legal marriage is, in most jurisdictions, something other than the Sacrament of Matrimony. While some might challenge the historical movements, the cultural changes and legal upheavals that have resulted in certain civil marriage schemes, one will not win the current “gay marriage” argument by pretending that the law is other than it is (and has been) for some time.^

Third, the historical experience of the English-speaking peoples has been such that, for the most part (Britain’s Established Church is an historical anomaly) we celebrate the doctrine of the separation of church and state. It is crazy for those who defend marriage and the family to ignore the popular force of that doctrine (not to mention its legal definition). Certainly Christians have reason to believe that, in some (but not all) cases, the separation of church and state has been a good thing (although, c.f. the condemnations detailed here). It has, in some instances, historically operated so as to protect believers from an overweening state, whether an heretical ruler bent on crushing the popes, or the various forms of totalizing atheism that roiled the Twentieth Century and early modern Europe. English Catholics, in particular, have good historical cause to lament too much political interference in matters of doctrine.

Christians who seek to defend marriage must recognise, then (the fourth lesson), that a pluralistic, explicitly secular nation demands a peculiar sort of politics. While we must not pollute our ethical perspective, and we cannot equivocate on matters of faith and morals, we must continue to formulate and apply extra-religious arguments (e.g., facts from social science, sound logic, evidence from the natural sciences) to make ourselves relevant to, and heard within the context of, a web of secular institutions – marriage included. Simply being Christians, or any other sort of conscientious objectors to “gay marriage”, simply being in the majority or part of an historically important bloc, will not always help the case for marriage. Those who seek to defend marriage and the family in the secular context must appeal to so-called universal norms, then, adopting the language of international human rights, the rhetoric of common sense - and we must always speak of freedom.

This is because, and it is the fifth point, those who seek to impose “gay marriage” often mistake it for a civil rights issue. In the same way, then, that the courts imposed desegregation in the “Jim Crow” South – and were justified, indeed virtuous, loving, and correct - in doing so (for the sake of human rights, recognising the dignity of those who were called slaves, serving the enduring call of freedom) those who credit the arguments for “gay marriage” think they are the right side of history. As the Abolitionist Theodore Parker stated, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”. This is the sort of rhetoric that the most successful homoactivists deploy.

Christians who, by our common beliefs, and shared values, are (1) called to defend fundamental human rights, (2) recognise everywhere the dignity of all human beings from conception until natural death, and (3) have something uniquely redemptive to say about human freedom, should not shrink from this language. It is, after all, properly ours.

This is the sixth lesson.

Those who seek to defend marriage and the family serve the common good. Our movement is defined by a humanism of breathtaking depth, and we venerate an idea of flourishing that is singularly beautiful. Catholics must not forget this fact. We must not allow ourselves to be characterised as bigots, and we must not act like bigots. We must resist efforts to restrict our freedom of religion with legislative penalties. We must wage the good fight and, where we lose for the moment, we must demand conscience clauses to protect employees, professionals, pastors and others from coercion. Good people everywhere must speak joyfully of marriage, and defend the happy home, avoiding all bitterness and spite.

Because, finally, “you catch more flies with honey”. The proverb is pragmatic, but the seventh and final lesson is also instructive for another reason. Christianity is a love religion. Catholics worship the G-d Who is Love. We profess Christ nailed to a tree, for love. Any properly formed, any reasonably argued, any freedom-defending intervention on behalf of marriage and the family must be made lovingly. Those who seek to influence the “gay marriage” debate in any other way will fail, and we will deserve our failure.

[An edited version of this article, DREADNOUGHT's latest column for syndication, appeared in The Record newspaper].

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion and politics online and on Facebook, join the DREADNOUGHTERS group.

* (Evangelium Vitae).

^ (There is scope here for a discussion of the revolutionary potential of the natural law).

DREADCLARITY: Robert Reynolds, Post-Gay Sydney, John Heard, Rembrandt Weakland, Homosexuality, Catholicism, Miss California & The Marriage Generation

2009-05-22T18:02:00.012+10:00

[UPDATE] Australia's only sex-change clinic shut down amid scandal, gruesome claims of misdiagnosis. One former patients says Dr Trudy Kennedy, the co-founder of the clinic, made him a "mutilated freak". Kennedy claims "political forces" are trying to shut her down. If the grave charges from multiple former patients are true, one would hope someone would push to have the clinic permanently closed.

:: All Of It, All At Once ::

DREADNOUGHT's roundup of recent developments, from near and far.

:: Is The Gay Marriage Debate Decadent? ::

Watching this peculiar video - featuring its variously grotesque, wary, and baffling antagonists - DREADNOUGHT couldn't help thinking that the "gay marriage" debate has become decadent:

Does either party really represent (speak for) serious, loving same sex attracted men and women, on either side of the debate? Are these the spokespeople for a generation? Is this the way that fundamental issues about marriage and the family should be raised, and debated? I write this as a man who once thought that the only prudent way to engage the "talking heads [that] scream on cable" was to scream back. Surely it possible (and preferable), however, that we try to do better?

:: Religious Freedom ::

One issue of significance raised by the Miss California / Miss USA flap - a debacle that has been otherwise vapid, angry, and unhelpful - is how to deal with the threat of discrimination against those who hold fast to a conscientious / religious objection to "gay marriage". DREADNOUGHT has written before on the challenge to religious freedom posed by the totalizing project of militant homoactivism.

:: Scandalizing The Faithful ::

DREADNOUGHTERS will remember Rembrandt Weakland, the disgraced former Archbishop of Milwaukee. He has, rather unhappily, penned a book. One might contrast Weakland with SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson. Both men are standard-bearers, in an important sense (they are fallen exemplars, respectively) for what the secular media terms liberal and conservative Catholicism. The lesson is, of course, that one cannot be a liberal Catholic, no more than one can be a conservative Catholic. One is simply Catholic, and faithful, or not - and the determination, the judgement of whether or not one has lived up to that designation, is not always within the grasp of the individual Catholic. One must live one's faith in the context of the wider Church, or risk privileging other modes over orthodoxy.

:: Post-Gay Life ::

Robert Reynolds is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales. He has written a paper "Unremarkably Gay: Post-Gay Life In Sydney" published in Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender, and Culture (Vol. 6, No. 2 / 3, Summer 2007 / Winter 2008). It may be of some interest to DREADNOUGHTERS. In the paper Reynolds quotes, and then engages my comments on "post-gay" life, and the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras.

:: The Upshot ::

The response to DREADNOUGHT's speech at the University of Sydney was quite remarkable. Thank you very much for your feedback, and thank you for your support!

DREADTALK: 'Holy Sex & Christian Friendship' John Heard - Life Week 2009 At The University Of Sydney - Remarks

2009-05-04T15:33:00.016+10:00

DREADNOUGHT delivered the following prepared remarks during a Life Week event at the University of Sydney. Afterwards, there was a lively question and answer session. Audio (and some iPhone video) might be forthcoming.

:: A Same Sex Attracted Catholic Speaks Out ::

-- LIFE WEEK ADDRESS --

THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Holy Sex And Christian Friendship

John Heard*

Before we begin, let me thank His Eminence George Cardinal Pell, the Patron; Father Dominic Murphy, the University Chaplain; and Thomas Waugh, the Catholic Chaplaincy Convenor. It is an honour to speak during Life Week this year. I must also mention Mary, and the rest of the Catholic Chaplaincy team, and applaud them for all their hard work. I am delighted to be here with you.

That great Catholic, the American Southern writer, Flannery O’Connor would introduce herself to college audiences in the middle of last century by saying that she was:

"…a Catholic peculiarly possessed of the modern consciousness, that thing Jung describes as unhistorical, solitary and guilty".

At quite a remove in terms of years and experience, not to mention geography, and a same sex attracted man from a generation known for its relative traditionalism, I find that I am not quite like O’Connor. I am, indeed in some profound ways, a modern peculiarly possessed of the Catholic consciousness, that thing Ratzinger describes as historical, communal / communio, and innocent.

Those concepts - the historical, the communal, and the innocent - will help us as we venture to say something of some value about holy sex, and Christian friendship.

I was tempted to take the topic, generally, in two parts. Holy sex, of course, and then Christian friendship - but, as you will hear, the two are not properly conceived of as discrete.

The reason why is that the Catholic tradition encourages us to think of life as a unity ("from conception, until natural death"), and a flourishing human being as a properly integrated whole, rather than as a more or less chaotic association of desires (c.f. Nietzschean flux).

It is a fact of the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, then, that there is no such thing as a "sexual orientation", not at least as that phrase has been used in the secular world. There is, after Genesis, simply the knowledge that "male and female He created them". Everything else - one’s sexual nature, his experience, her love - is human. There is no great gulf, no fragmentation, no split other than that – "male and female He created them".

All men have a sexual orientation, then, and all women, too, have a sexual orientation. That sexual orientation is human, understood as male and female, a division that is - nonetheless - complementary.

The Historical

So let us start with the historical. Here, of course, many people find cause against the Church. History is not an easy thing to pin down, but there is a sense that – at least since the Enlightenment – the Western world has moved beyond religious proscriptions, and achieved a certain level of freedom, and a particular kind of happiness, unchained from superstition. We have been set free from so-called Christian bigotry.

This critique is popular, after previously being merely political (although it might be political again, in places such as New South Wales). It was first seriously advanced, by figures high and low, during the French Revolution – that great dilution of the bonds of family, state, and Church - and it has come to dominate the discourse, even to set the limits of the debate, in centres of learning such as the University of Sydney.

In many respects, then, history is against the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. Why, however, might Pope Benedict XVI describe the historical sense as important to Christians’ efforts in the world?

Well, to tighten the language, it helps to know that the Pope does not speak directly about history; rather he regularly expresses his regard for continuity: for development in continuity. He has spoken of a "hermeneutic [or a method] of continuity". Continuity, of course, makes no sense without history – we cannot know if we continue the work of others if we have no knowledge of their work – but the meaning of the word "history" does not exhaust the meaning of the word "continuity".

Not, at least, in the way that the Pope uses the word. When he speaks of continuity, the Pope presupposes a sort of charity.

Charity has, in the Catholic tradition, a peculiar meaning and a body of knowledge – but the contemporary English meaning of the word – self-giving, or service to the poor and vulnerable – is not far off the mark.

What is missing from the contemporary definition is, however, a more solid stress on the relationship between charity and love. Caritas, the Latin word from which charity is derived, means, of course, love – and the Catholic understanding of continuity, the whole pattern of history, must be read with the emphasis on love.

In this way, and against some of the more shrill claims of activists and others, the history of the Catholic teaching on human sexuality must be a history of love. When the Pope speaks about marriage, he speaks about the continuity of love. When the Church issues a document on family, or homosexual acts, she is conscious at all times of being part of a dialogue stretching through the centuries, a dialogue of and on love - a discussion about man’s sexual nature - his desires and urges, her experience of and in the world - and the demands of love.

This view is complicated further by the fact that Christians believe that G-d is love. Christ is, for us, love crucified. Love is not some abstract notion, some Hollywood fantasy, and it is not necessarily whatever it is that one feels at ejaculation!

The Communal

Which brings us, inevitably, to the communal.

Love, conceived of as Christians conceive of the concept, always sends the individual out from herself. The Christian is sent out to others. In his first Encyclical, on Christian Love, Pope Benedict wrote that:

"Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction."

The Pope wrote of "the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others".

We are called into community with others.

The Catholic teaching on human sexuality is, then, a communal teaching. It presupposes a community of individuals, and – shifting the discussion slightly to sexual ethics – it imagines a community of moral agents. On this view, my actions in relation to sex can, and often do have important, sometimes life-changing repercussions, quite beyond the incredible biological fact of reproduction. Sex is a significant consideration - with regard to my flourishing, in relation to my moral standing - not least because it can influence the happiness of others.

This fact about the Catholic teaching on human sexuality sets it up against rival views, especially those that treat sex as an always-private phenomenon. In Catholicism, the space of sexual activity is never a "judgement free" zone.

Sex is always meaningful, then, and Catholic sex is always ethically meaningful. The importance that Catholics place on the teaching on human sexuality relates, therefore, to the understanding that love is at the centre of the Christian’s view of the world.

There we have, very briefly, the historical, and the communal contexts for any discussion of human sexuality.

We have already touched on the Catholic teaching on human sexuality as it relates to sexual orientations – (i.e., there is no such thing, beyond male and female) – and we have had a quick look at how Christians think of love, and how that thinking colours the ethics of sexual activity.

Now, then, let us look at the innocent.

The Innocent

I wanted to speak about the innocent because, whereas as Flannery O’Connor, paying homage to Jung, stressed the guilt that characterised the modern experience, the Catholic Church actually speaks about sex in the language of innocence. Certainly, my experience as a same sex attracted Catholic has not been one of crushing guilt.

This is not a small distinction.

One of the liveliest criticisms of the Catholic Church, one of the most frequent claims made about her teachings on sex, is that she unfairly, wrongly, and / or unnecessarily induces massive guilt in otherwise functioning individuals.

There are clichés, of course: the repressed priest who leers after choirboys. The compacted nun whose sexuality is so tamped down, and locked up, that she beats and beats, can barely suppress, the nubile teenagers under her care. In movies, music, and other artefacts of popular, English speaking (post-Christian?) culture, the Christian is likely to be depicted as the prude, the buttoned up wowser, and /or the skulking hypocrite.

Such depictions, however, have always sat uneasily alongside what we know of the vibrant, exuberantly sexual cultures of Latin countries such as Spain, Italy, and Mexico – and they clash with that other popular Catholic cliché – the mega family in a people mover.

It is also interesting to note, that Latin prayers, incense, fine vestments, flowers, and other distinctly Catholic and so-called "Popish" [sic] attributes were considered in Victorian England, and beforehand, to be effeminate, and their defenders regularly characterised as queer. Catholic priests were thought to reek of sexual sin, and anti-Catholics attacked monasteries as hotbeds of sodomy. Catholic priests were, right up until the late modern period, regularly depicted as masturbatory confessors, feeding off the improprieties and peccadilloes of their randy flocks.

So, on the one hand, we have the Catholic prude – and on the other – the Catholic sex fiend. The popular, cultural treatment of the Church – even in our own times - typically swings between these poles, sometimes in the same instance. Many Sydneysiders will remember, of course, the almost schizophrenic attitude of some protesters at World Youth Day, those who denounced the pilgrims’ commitment to abstinence and purity, and simultaneously, decided that those same pilgrims would need, really need, thousands of condoms during the event.

Let me say, then, against most of the clichés, certainly against the prude, and against the naughty nun – an outrageous regular at Sydney’s Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras - that the Catholic teaching on human sexuality is – perhaps uniquely among world religions – joyous, and pro-sex.

But it is, explicitly, innocent.

Sex Without Limits

The important thing to say about Christian sex is, then, that the Christian is striving, in sex as in all things, to return to a state of innocence before G-d.

For it is the case that Christians believe that the world is broken, and that human beings, because of what we call "original sin", are particularly vulnerable. We experience profound passions, and because the world is warped, we sometimes choose to entertain warped desires. At times, we act out on these desires. We sin.

So, in the Catechism, the Church calls the desire to perform homosexual acts, for instance, "objectively disordered" (or, warped towards sin); and she describes homosexual sex acts themselves as "intrinsically disordered" (that is, always sinful).

Disorder in this context does not refer, of course, to a psychological disorder. That must be made clear. The Catholic teaching on human sexuality, indeed Catholic teaching on all moral issues does not prescribe or participate in, any particular psychological explanation or suggested psychiatric treatment. The Church is not a medical fraternity, and there are no Catholic, properly Catholic, "reparative therapy" courses.

I cannot stress this enough.

The passions anyone experiences are, indeed, properly understood as morally neutral. No man is guilty of sinning because he finds himself thrown, unwilled, into a state of shock at the sight of a particularly beautiful thing – be it a pile of gold, or another man at the beach.

Only afterwards does judgement come down, when the moral agent makes a choice, and exercises his will; when he entertains warped desires, or performs sinful acts. There must be a conscious, informed choice, against what is good, true, and beautiful – otherwise there is no sin.

On same sex attraction, then, the Church teaches against homosexual (or homogenital) acts, she does not teach against those who might experience same sex attraction. In fact, the Church does not teach against intense friendships. She does not even bar two men from prudently living together. She does not teach against mingling estates, or leaving your superannuation to your same sex companion.

The Catholic Church does not, of course, condemn homosexuals as a class.

In fact, the Catechism specifically forbids any "unjust discrimination" against same sex attracted men, and women.

This is because, remember, the Catholic teaching on human sexuality is innocent of "sexual orientations". It is innocent of sexual classes.

Sodomy is condemned, then, likewise with fellatio, - certain acts are off limits - but the Catholics who might feel – from time to time - drawn to those acts, whether male or female, whether with someone of the same sex or someone of the opposite sex, are not divided up into separate pens. Again - there are only the acts, which are condemned, and individual Christians - those of us who are called to return to innocence, in sex as in all things, before G-d.

All of us are in the same boat, then. This is the sensibility that permeates the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. There is a profound sense of sexual innocence lost, across the board.

So, how do I get my innocence back? In relation to sex, at least, we have some remarkable guides.

Holy Sex

In the Theology Of The Body, certainly, the Christian has a blueprint for modelling perfect, or innocent sex.

What is the Theology Of The Body? It is a troubling, profound, typically beautiful approach to many of the questions we ask about the human person.

Unfolding during audiences given at the Vatican between 1979 and 1984, the Theology Of The Body was outlined by Pope John Paul the Great, and it is - as Dr Christopher West has written - an "integrated vision of the human person". In brief, and:

"As [the Pope explained, the idea is that the]…physical human body has a specific meaning and is capable of revealing answers regarding fundamental questions about us and our lives".

Those answers, as David B. Hart has written (.PDF), "enunciate…with extraordinary fullness a complete vision of the spiritual and corporeal life of the human being". It is, getting back to something I was saying at the beginning, not a properly modern work. Given as a series of lectures, the Theology Of The Body introduced, explained, and developed a program for holy sex.

Indeed, the Theology Of The Body describes, in some fairly profound language, an attempt to reach back beyond the first Fall of Adam and Eve, a path back to the Garden of Eden, and it enables Catholics to speak meaningfully of man’s original nature. In the Theology Of The Body Pope John Paul II spoke, then, of how we were meant to be, he tried to sketch out ways of thinking about how we were meant to love one another - and at the same time, marked out quite a unique diversion in the stream of contemporary thought.

With regard to the Christian understanding of "original sin", indeed, the prehistoric error that Christians believe first led humanity away from happiness, the Holy Father wrote – rather densely that:

"If this sin [original sin] signifies, in every historical man, a state of lost grace, then it also contains a reference to that grace, which was precisely the grace of original innocence… Precisely [the Christian's] perspective of the redemption of the body guarantees the continuity and unity between the hereditary state of man's sin and his original innocence..."

What this means, when it is unpacked, is that holy sex enables a return to innocence. Or, better, it is a participation in that innocence that men and women knew before sin. Inasmuch as Christians believe that our bodies were changed after original sin, holy sex is a participation in our true nature.

The Theology of The Body is in this way partly mystical, properly Scriptural, and profoundly intellectual. I am no expert, and some of the concepts escape my grasp, but the lectures are objectively beautiful. The Catholic teaching on human sexuality is said to put man in touch with his true self. The notion is deeply impressive. It demands attention.

It is not perverted, and it is not prudish. Catholic sex, as explained by the Popes, is historically implicated, gender communal, and fundamentally innocent. Sex is a mighty thing.

A mighty thing is, of course, not treated lightly and – without going into too much detail, I am not a Scripture scholar, and I am no theologian – this properly Catholic treatment of sex helps to explain why there is so much controversy over the Church's view of human sexuality. At times, it seems as though a great many rules - some have said too many rules - regulate the sexual conduct of Christians.

But nothing less than our true selves are at stake.

When Catholic sex is even partially unwound, then, as we have started to do here, we begin to glimpse a tradition that understands our bodies as vehicles of goodness, in the service of love. We do not just interact without anything of much consequence going on. Human bodies come together, and spark.

If love really does make the world go round, Catholic sex, then, has the whole universe (physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual) jumping.

Unjust Discrimination?

Which brings us, loving and human, sparking - apparently - to whatever it is that falls short of holy sex.

Unholy sex - or better yet, masturbation, fellatio, sodomy, etc., let's talk about acts as acts - describes those acts that fall short of innocence. They are condemned in Christian Scripture, in the living tradition of love in the Church, and when implicated in public legislation and judicial rulings, they are properly understood as sins against the unity, and tranquillity of a well-ordered community.

Indeed, instead of getting human beings back to innocence, at the very best unholy sex acts make us tolerate the status quo. Laws that enshrine a right to, or encourage a fixation with, such acts are obviously unjust. We come to think that ordinary sex, or what has been called, in some practical ethics courses, "just sex" - sex without commitment, sex without love - is okay. At the worst, unholy sex acts may draw us even further down into the mess of the world.

So what?

For Catholics, the consequences are obvious. A woman who cannot get back to innocence cannot fulfil her potential. She is blocked, and stunted. She cannot properly reconcile herself to herself, and she cannot become fully human. And a sinful individual - Christians believe – can have no proper part in the life of the Divine.

Is this view unfair?

Certainly, I regularly hear from some activists who claim that the Catholic teaching on human sexuality is, specifically, unfair. They often point out that one of the rules about holy sex is that it can only be had by one man, and one woman, in the context of marriage.

Yes, I say to them, and so what?

Well, they ask, what about same sex attracted individuals who do not think they can be good husbands, or faithful wives? Doesn’t the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, therefore, unjustly discriminate against them? Aren’t we consigned to miserable lives, to being lonely, to being characterised by what amounts to hate speech?

What I think the activists might be asking is, indeed, something like this: does the Church leave same sex attracted men and women any other option?

The answer is, of course, that she does, because the Catholic understanding of flourishing is not limited to marriage. One need not participate in holy sex to return to the sort of innocence, the righteousness, that Pope John Paul described so profoundly in the Theology Of The Body.

Christian Friendship

So what else is there? Well, there is Christian friendship. The other side of the coin.

The first thing to say about friendship is that it is not, of course, secondary to, or worse than, or somehow inferior to – holy sex. A friend – properly understood – is a life partner as rich and rewarding as a lover.

If holy sex gets the universe jumping, Christian friendship taps the "love that moves the sun and other stars" - to borrow Dante’s remarkable description.

Indeed, Christians understand friendship as a manifestation of the One Love, the One G-d Who is Love, under a different name. Love cannot be divided against itself, and true love cannot be separated into greater, or lesser sorts.

In fact, the Christian understanding of love borrows from the Greeks, and we think of love under the names eros, agape, and philia. Eros relates to erotic love, the love of the bedroom, whereas agape describes a more mature love, untainted by jealousy, a love that is not even necessarily sexual.

Think of a newlywed couple.

Now, think of your grandparents.

Chances are, the newlyweds will be taken with erotic love, a love that will move - if properly cultivated - into agape, the sort of love, that your grandparents show to you - chances are - and to each other.

Philia is the third variety of love, and it relates to concepts like brotherhood, or sisterhood. Philia describes the love, then, between soldiers, for instance, or teammates, or the bonds between family members related by blood.

It would be a brave man, and a silly one, who would try to say that one or other of these three sorts of love is the better one.

So it is with those who attack the Church. They are right, after all, to point out that the Church teaches that sex is only holy, and innocent, when shared freely and openly as a gift between one man and one women inside marriage.

But that does not mean that Catholics thereby condemn same sex attracted men and women – indeed all unmarried people – to a loveless life. To claim as much would be to miss at least two thirds of the love picture. It would be to denigrate philia, and agape – and to elevate the erotic above all other sorts of love.

The Catholic teaching on human sexuality cannot be so glibly, or crudely misstated. It is - as we have seen - historical, communal, and innocent - implicating my passions, your desires, our actions in the great sweep of human love. If anything, the Church's position has much to say to the secular world, and it continues to perfect the lives - and discipline the loves - of good people everywhere.

Thank you very much.

- - END - -

30 Mins

:: The Upshot ::

DREADNOUGHT will address another university audience in the coming months. Given the limitations on this speech (length, time, etc.), and some of the follow-up questions asked by the wonderful students, I will likely use that next appearance to attempt an answer to the question: "what happens to erotic love in Christian friendship?"

:: Resources ::

- A selection of photographs taken on the day:

Carslaw Lecture Theatre 173 Begins To Fill.

(L) Father Dominic Murphy O. P. University Chaplain, and (R) Mr John Heard.

The University Of Sydney, Australia.

Life Week Posters.

Catholic Sydney, St Mary's Cathedral.

John Heard Speaks At The University of Sydney.

DREADTALK: 'Holy Sex & Christian Friendship' John Heard - Life Week 2009 At The University Of Sydney

2009-04-27T21:17:00.003+10:00

[UPDATE] DREADNOUGHT will be in Sydney this week!

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT will address students and faculty on the topic (A Same Sex Attracted Catholic Speaks Out) On Holy Sex & Christian Friendship at the University of Sydney:

- Thursday April 30, 2009
- 1PM - 2PM (40 mins lecture, 20 mins for discussion)
- Carslaw Lecture Theatre 173
- Subject Matter (natural law generally / complementarity of man and woman, homosexuality, love, and the Catholic teaching on human sexuality)

The University of Sydney, Australia

The event is part of the 2009 Life Week program(.PDF), organised by the University of Sydney Catholic Chaplaincy. Other speakers include (28 April 2009) The Most Reverend Anthony Fisher OP DD VG Auxiliary Bishop for the Archdiocese of Sydney on stem cell research, (29 April 2009) Mr Chris Meney of the Archdiocesan Life Office who will speak on eugenics, and (1 May 2009) Sydney's beloved Dominican Sister Mary Madeline OP on pro-woman / pro-life efforts.

:: The Upshot ::

Sydney is the oldest university in Australia, with a celebrated list of alumni. DREADNOUGHT is grateful to George Cardinal Pell, Father Dominic Murphy O. P. (the University Chaplain), and the indomitable student organisers for the invitation. Contact the Chaplaincy for more information.

:: Coming Soon ::

DREADNOUGHT has also been invited to speak at another university campus. While the details are being worked out I am keen to hear DREADNOUGHTER suggestions for possible topics / burning issues for discussion. Please send email, and / or contribute to the DREADNOUGHTERS Group discussion on Facebook. Suggestions for / insights into the Sydney Uni event are also welcome.

:: Resources ::

- On October 3 - 5, 2008 (Remarks) DREADNOUGHT Addressed an Advanced Liberty & Society Conference of the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney;

- On April 7, 2008 (Audio) DREADNOUGHT Addressed 600+ College Students / WYD Pilgrims in Sydney;

- On March 11, 2008 (Remarks) DREADNOUGHT Addressed the Melbourne Catholic Lawyers Association in Melbourne;

- On February 8, 2008 (Remarks) DREADNOUGHT Addressed the NSW Law Society (Young Lawyers) in Sydney; and

- Request DREADNOUGHT for your event.

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - 'Nos Autem' Easter Splendour, Isaac Watts, "When I Survey The Wondrous Cross" & The Sacred Triduum

2009-04-14T22:53:00.006+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's latest column for syndication is on a beloved Christian hymn, non-belief, and Easter joy.

:: BEING HEARD - ‘Nos Autem’ ::

By John Heard

Let our glory be in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; in Him we have salvation, life and resurrection; through Him we are rescued and set free.

In the rapture of Easter night, Christianity puts on new splendour. All our sorrows, all our sins are left behind, and overcome. Catholics everywhere strain forward for this night, the summit of the year, and we hold onto memories of it to help us through any trouble we might face in the future.

It is happiness, after all - an Easter hope - that is born of blood and suffering. It is real. We can overcome sin because Christ died for us, we are taught, and we can start afresh because He rose from the dead.

What a peculiar thing to believe.

Certainly, taking a moment out from the Maundy Thursday Mass that starts the Sacred Triduum, I caught myself.

In the rites and liturgy offered on that night, Catholics recall the institution of the Eucharist, and prepare for the stark grief – the altar is stripped; the Most Holy Sacrament reposed – of Good Friday.

It might have been the man in front of me. He looked and acted like a non-believer come along to sit beside his Catholic wife. He stood hesitantly. He did not kneel, and he waited alone, a little defiant, while everyone else went for communion.

What could he see in our rites and our emotion, all of it intensified by Holy Week fervour?

Certainly, without a firm belief in Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist - the conviction that His body and blood, His soul and divinity are truly there after the consecration of the bread and wine - most of the Maundy Thursday Mass looks bizarre.

Similarly, what do outsiders make of Good Friday? Why kiss a cross? It is like venerating an electric chair, after all, or saluting a noose. Why go without meat and other things?

Without faith in Christ’s resurrection, indeed, the Sacred Triduum is a sometimes vicious, baffling, otherwise aesthetically intriguing rehearsal of peculiarities and arcana. It is so much nonsense, arranged splendidly, for sure - few non-believers will fault the beauty of the musical and other traditions – and it does not appear to make a bit of difference.

On Easter morning, men are still wicked. Regardless of what Catholics believe and celebrate, humanity carries on, broken and stumbling, and the world just seems to decline.

In this context, Christians would do well to turn away from our rites, and start to do something a little more practical.

Not for the Catholic, however, is that sort of thinking.

Indeed, at this time of the year, many congregations will sing a version of Isaac Watts’ beloved hymn, When I Survey The Wondrous Cross, which sets out a totally different reading of the events of Easter.

“Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast” Watts wrote and Catholics sing, “save in the death of Christ my God…[T]he vain delights that charm me most: I sacrifice them to His blood”:

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
What grief and love flow mingling down;
When did such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

In the gritty, all too real, bloody facts of the Crucifixion, then, Christians grapple with the truth at the heart of all our Easter striving: the love that proves that G-d is Love. The Man, the suffering G-d, Who changed men so long ago in Palestine, and Who continues to transform our hearts – this is the One Who makes our Triduum sacred.

Christ is the reason for our rites, and He is the only excuse for Easter.

Knowing this, singing Watts’ lines, I sang a little louder at Mass, and hoped that the man in front of me – the non-believer – might come to be transformed too. I prayed for him, like Catholics pray for all non-believers on Good Friday, and I tried to temper my experience of the Triduum with a proper respect for what it might be like had Christ not come. How could this knowledge, this potential absence, make us better Christians?

:: The Upshot ::

It should make us more profoundly grateful for the fact of Easter, and even more intense in our devotions.

Watts, again, has the program:

Were all the realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

A blessed Easter to all readers, and a safe holiday.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion and politics online and on Facebook, join the DREADNOUGHTERS group.

DREADCLARITY: On Nancy Polikoff, Gay Marriage Reconciliation, Mardi Gras 2009, Testing Melbourne Gay Priests & Cardinal Pell's Intolerance Speech

2009-04-03T22:09:00.015+11:00

:: All Of It, All At Once ::

DREADNOUGHT's roundup of recent developments, from near and far.

:: A Way Forward? ::

David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch, from opposing sides of the "gay marriage" debate, propose a compromise:

"It would work like this: Congress would bestow the status of federal civil unions on same-sex marriages and civil unions granted at the state level, thereby conferring upon them most or all of the federal benefits and rights of marriage. But there would be a condition: Washington would recognize only those unions licensed in states with robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will. The federal government would also enact religious-conscience protections of its own. All of these changes would be enacted in the same bill..."

As DREADNOUGHT does not agree with the first premise that grounds their shared consensus, that "...most gay and lesbian Americans feel they need and deserve the perquisites and protections that accompany legal marriage", I cannot support the compromise as crafted. Further, Catholics cannot be isolationist, and good people cannot simply retreat from the common good. Marriage and the family are vital for all citizens, not least for the human rights reasons Cardinal Pell describes (below), and a regime that does not protect, promote, and edify the family is a tyranny. That said, a compromise is already on the table, and it has worked in places as diverse as San Francisco, and South America.

:: Plain English ::

When challenged at public fora, and other events, "gay marriage" advocates regularly state that they have no intention of either undermining, and / or destroying marriage and the family. Despite being wary of hyperbole, DREADNOUGHT has always found those particular denials difficult to believe. After all, homoactivists do propose to radically alter the definition of marriage. It certainly doesn't help the deniers, then, when leading homoactivists clearly state that they are indeed bent on re-writing all laws that support marriage and the family:

"American University law professor Nancy Polikoff argues that, while same-sex marriage is a civil rights victory for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, it's not the fix to what's wrong with the law of families. The fix is implementing laws that break down the bright line between married couples and everyone else...Professor Polikoff proposes identifying the purpose of each law that now treats couples differently from other households and relationships and then rewriting the law to better meet its purpose".

Polikoff's efforts demonstrate again how the push for "gay marriage" is too rarely about marriage. It is hardly ever about children. It is never about human rights. Too often it is about "gay liberation", and its associated, anti-human ideologies.

:: Mixed Messages ::

In line with previous instances, and against organisers' claims that the event has changed, many of the groups marching in the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras 2009 deliberately set out to vilify, and offend Christians (especially Catholics). Note, however, how the The Sydney Morning Herald reported this bigotry as a "message of acceptance and equal rights". There is a hypocritical standard at play. Those who defend the parade and its current form as necessary, who say its vulgarity is useful, would not abide a rival parade - much propped up by public money - that showcased all of the vileness and cruelty homophobes could muster. DREADNOUGHT would denounce such an event. Yet, Mardi Gras remains; a vicious, public celebration of intolerance. No wonder the "gay" crowds dwindle, then, and families of all kinds flee. Everyone else has moved on.

:: Moral Clarity ::

Sydney's George Cardinal Pell (regularly attacked at Mardi Gras) addressed the Newman Society at Oxford University on religious intolerance and "gay marriage". The state-of-play overview Cardinal Pell included at the beginning is heartening, while the militant trend (to legally enshrine intolerance, after political efforts fail) remains disturbing.

:: A Melbourne Model? ::

Some DREADNOUGHTERS have queried news reports of a "testing" policy to "ID gay priests" at Corpus Christi College, the seminary that serves South Eastern Australia (Melbourne, and Tasmania). DREADNOUGHTERS should know that the policy is in line with the Vatican guidelines released last year, and the seminary is applying the standards set out in all the documents previously parsed, in the way they have been explained. DREADNOUGHT should repeat, because DREADNOUGHTERS (especially seminarians and priests) are sensitive to any ambiguity, that the policy as parsed is everywhere endorsed. That a Catholic seminary should adopt Vatican guidance is not newsworthy, then, except to a certain sort of reader. The timing of the reports, however, is curious. The documents in question were released, and debated, months (and years) ago.

:: The Common Good ::

As DREADNOUGHT is not properly political, I have set up an entirely separate site to collect my latest writing on politics, and political philosophy. For the first time (and gradually), the Wordpress site will also bring together all of my previously published articles, opinion editorials, columns, essays, papers, etc. on a political theme.

:: A Community, A Brotherhood ::

Emails, messages, and discussion topics / contributions from DREADNOUGHTERS continue to arrive daily (sometimes, hourly). Thank you very much for your careful, clever insights. You continue to delight me, and DREADNOUGHT is privileged indeed to receive DREADNOUGHTERS' incredibly personal stories. So many are sorrowful, while a solid, growing number are joyful - especially from young same sex attracted Catholic men. Thank you to the mothers, priests, lawyers, academics, and others who offer guidance, and to all who send prayers. Thank you for the hints and news tips. I respond to every message I receive.

:: The Upshot ::

Welcome, new DREADNOUGHTERS! Come to hear DREADNOUGHT speak at the University of Sydney (April 30, 2009). Join DREADNOUGHTERS on Facebook now.