(\u2026I\u2019m so sorry.)<\/p>\n
This round-up is going to be hampered by the facts that a) I didn\u2019t sleep well so my attention span wasn\u2019t being all it could LOOK A SQUIRREL, and also b) I left my notes at Wesley Hill\u2019s house by mistake. Bear with me.<\/p>\n
If you want some live-tweeting, Seminary Guy<\/a> was workin\u2019 hard, though his tweets are of course in reverse-chron order.<\/p>\n I opened Day 2. I basically wanted to do three things: 1) by listing several different understandings of \u201cvocation\u201d as they\u2019ve been presented in Church documents and pop-Catholic commentary, underscore just how absent this concept has been from most Catholic writing on homosexuality; 2) give a super-fast overview of vocations available to gay or same-sex attracted Christians, suggesting ways the churches themselves need to change in order to support these vocations but also how fruitful these vocations could be for the entire Body of Christ; and 3) address the fact that our discussions of \u201cdiscerning one\u2019s vocation\u201d often act as if vocation is typically a free choice in response to a dramatic and obvious call.<\/p>\n I pointed out that vocation isn\u2019t always obvious (this is where I said, \u201cYour vocation is not a Hogwarts letter,\u201d which people liked). Vocation can seep into your life slowly. It can sneak up on you. The \u201ccall\u201d can sound like the wail of an ambulance siren, when you\u2019re the only one around who knows CPR.<\/p>\n Similarly, some of us do experience our vocations as largely a matter of choice, discernment based on introspection. But for many of us vocation is a response to circumstance, including deeply unwanted circumstance: a family member\u2019s illness; your own addiction and recovery, which leads you to give and receive love by sponsoring others. \u201cThat second line comes up on the drugstore pregnancy test and suddenly you\u2019re staring down the barrel of your call from God.\u201d<\/p>\n These are the issues I raised here<\/a>, and they touch on the issues in A Queer Calling\u2019s post today<\/a> as well. I closed by suggesting that we emphasize acceptance<\/em> of vocation as much as discernment, and noting that every understanding of vocation requires a theology of suffering and failure.<\/p>\n My favorite questions were 1) How can we accept suffering but also fight against injustice? (I basically did the Miss Manners \u201cYou\u2019re fighting for other people, not just for yourself\u201d thing), and 2) What about work as a vocation? We hear a ton about work as vocation but we don\u2019t<\/em> hear a spirituality of acceptance. It\u2019s all pursue-your-dream stuff.<\/p>\n Also in the Q&A I used Leah Libresco\u2019s<\/a> really sharp line, \u201cBefore you can be your brother\u2019s keeper you have to be your brother\u2019s brother<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Next up: Chris Damian<\/strong>, \u201cDesire as Pain and Pregnancy.\u201d My main thoughts about this talk are: 1) If you did a shot every time this conference invoked Augustine you would be dead before Chris\u2019s Q&A. It might be interesting to explore the reasons for that; I\u2019d be interested if any attendees have thoughts on: why the constant melodic line of Augustinian thought?<\/p>\n 2) This was a brave presentation in multiple and contrasting ways. Chris was very comfortable invoking the concept of \u201cintellectual sodomy,\u201d using Dantean imagery of sodomy-as-pride<\/a>; yet he also marshaled Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI\u2019s work on eros in support of fruitful homoeroticism, which \u201cgives birth in the beauty\u201d of art, prayer, and friendship.<\/p>\n Also, great catch bringing up the way one translation replaced John\u2019s \u201creclining against Jesus\u2019 breast\u201d with \u201creclining next to Jesus\u201d!<\/p>\n This was my personal favorite paper and I highly recommend you check it out once it\u2019s published. Imaginative, tender, twining around the trellis of Tradition.<\/p>\n Joshua Gonnerman<\/strong>, \u201cRethinking Disorder.\u201d I was really conflicted about this paper. I suspect I just didn\u2019t get it, and especially, I didn\u2019t get how the front half (an attempt to rescue language of the \u201cintrinsic disorder\u201d of homosexuality by narrowing its scope) connected to the back half (an exploration of whether gay identity\/culture\/communities may promote a deeper understanding of friendship than mainstream society). So let me make some really scattershot points.<\/p>\n First, this conference as a whole attempted to embrace the Catholic tradition: Her Scriptural interpretation, theology, and historical practice. Can a gay person find succor, guidance, and hope in the tradition? Throughout the conference you see renewal, ressourcement<\/a>, a return to the wellsprings: an unwillingness to be purely twenty-first century creatures. On Dia de los Muertos we sought to live with the dead, with the cloud of witnesses. And the attempt to grapple with the language of \u201cintrinsic disorder\u201d was a part of this attempt to avoid simply dismissing the parts of the Tradition we don\u2019t like.<\/p>\n But \u201cintrinsic disorder\u201d is quite new language. Because of that, I\u2019m more willing to treat the Church\u2019s language here as provisional and even clumsy than I think Joshua is.<\/p>\n There are cultural problems with language of \u201cdisorder.\u201d It seems to invoke not the order of Creation, but psychological disorders: disordered eating, attention deficit disorder, etc. Given the cruelty which has attended the treatment of homosexuality as a psychological disorder, this language just strikes me as toxic. One of the Protestants asked, \u201cWhen you say \u2018disorder,\u2019 is it what we mean when we say \u2018our fallen condition\u2019?\u201d and Joshua said yes, and I thought, Why on earth don\u2019t we<\/em> say that?<\/p>\n If that\u2019s what the language means, it basically means (I think), \u201cFrom the beginning it was not so,\u201d same-sex sexual desire is the result of the Fall. I\u2019m fine with that\u2013lots of stuff is the result of the Fall btw, from journalism to America to nurses to saudade<\/em><\/a>\u2013but of course then same-sex desire could become \u201cordered\u201d in two different ways. The really obvious implication is that same-sex desire becomes ordered by becoming heterosexual<\/em>. The vastly more fruitful and less damaging approach would be to say that same-sex desire becomes ordered by expressing itself nonsexually: sublimation, or simply the intimacy of friendship. I think<\/em> Joshua was trying to make this move, helping us see this better understanding of what it would mean for same-sex desire to become \u201cordered,\u201d in the second half of his paper\u2013which was quite moving, I should add.<\/p>\n The Q&A for Joshua\u2019s paper was mostly people attempting to translate his careful distinctions into language they could better understand, which suggests to me that we should just be using other people\u2019s language to begin with. I suggested that he was \u201creally\u201d trying to baptize gay culture\u2013to take what\u2019s good and holy in it and make that its central organizing feature, as CS Lewis argued Edmund Spenser did with the \u201ccourtly love\u201d tradition\u2013but I think I was oversimplifying and\/or projecting.<\/p>\n Melinda Selmys<\/strong> and Kyle Keating<\/strong> on \u201cgender, sexuality, and trans identities\u201d and mixed-orientation marriage, respectively. I don\u2019t have much to say except that Melinda\u2019s presentation was a really good, clear, empathetic intro-to-trans\/intersex\/genderqueer issues presentation. Many Catholics seem to feel that the Church has settled trans questions, which is laughable since She has barely begun to address them. The point I most appreciated, personal-hobbyhorse-wise, was the fact that many societies have much less rigid gender boundaries than we do. Why are all the ballet clothes at the pregnancy center for girls, and all the soccer and basketball clothes for boys?<\/p>\n Kyle, too, did a highly responsible, \u201cthis is only one path, I\u2019m attracted to my wife but still pretty darn gay, please don\u2019t get married because you think you have to or because you want to be straight\u201d intro-type presentation. The most interesting thing for me came out in the Q&A, which is that he actually had an earlier heterosexual relationship, which \u201clooked great on paper\u2013but only on paper,\u201d and which broke up. So at the time that he met (the woman who became) his wife, he was actually preparing himself for a celibate life. For me that story added nuance and trustworthiness to his account in ways I can\u2019t necessarily articulate. Anyway it was a solid paper endearingly presented.<\/p>\n I will say that when Kyle described Mark Yarhouse\u2019s research he used a phrase which I think was \u201cMinimal Movement Along a Continuum Is Possible for Some,\u201d which in my mind is a short film by James O. Incandenza<\/a>.<\/p>\n