Some headline writer was having a long day there. Anyway I thought this turned out well:<\/p>\n
\u2026What do you like about being Catholic?<\/b><\/p>\n
The central thing for me is the Eucharist, including Eucharistic adoration and processions like Corpus Christi. Also the saints and artists: St Francis, St Aelred, Dorothy Day, Oscar Wilde, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, El Greco, Dali.<\/p>\n
I like the fact that there\u2019s a saint for everything, St Lydwina the patroness of figure skating etc, and the gallows humour of the saints, St Lawrence the patron of rotisserie operators.<\/p>\n
The casual acceptance of the \u201cbad Catholic.\u201d The kneeling, the theology of suffering, The Imitation of Christ, Spanish painting of the Counter-Reformation era. The Pogues. I like incense; I like many hymns.<\/p>\n
What do you struggle with most in being Catholic?<\/b><\/p>\n
I get defensive of the Church in a way which is more about my own ego and sense of \u201cbelonging\u201d than about the well-being of the Church Herself. It becomes a sort of \u201cyay our team, boo your team\u201d thing.<\/p>\n
Usually criticism of the Church is for Her own good, whether it\u2019s intended for that purpose or not; our job as Catholics is to listen when people express their pain or anger at the Church, not only because they\u2019re usually telling us something we need to hear but because our first job is always to love those who are hurt.<\/p>\n
I also struggle of course, as everyone should, with the evidence of catastrophic sin and corruption in the Church.<\/p>\n
And the less-horrific cultural problems like the rationalism of at least US Catholic culture -not everything needs to be a natural-law theological argument! \u2013 and the legalistic jargon.<\/p>\n
\u201cVenial sin\u201d vs \u201cmortal sin\u201d is a useful distinction and one I\u2019ve relied on to understand my life and needs (e.g. *how* to get back into right relationship with God after I\u2019ve sinned), but it can also obscure the deeper spiritual truths of sin, penitence, and mercy.<\/p>\n
The tacky hymns are awful. Tacky churches too \u2013 a friend of mine referred to the church where we became catechumens as \u201cthe intergalactic ashtray\u201d. Why do we do this to ourselves? \u2026<\/p>\n
Why do you regard being gay as integral to your identity? Does being gay, in all its myriad variations, represent a certain kind of giftedness? Do you regard current Church teaching \u2013 that same-sex attraction is intrinsically disordered, for example \u2013 as toxic?<\/b><\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know that I\u2019d say being gay is \u201cintegral\u201d to my identity \u2013 it\u2019s a cultural construct, like being an American, or being a journalist or an alcoholic.<\/p>\n
It gives you some important information about where I\u2019m coming from; it\u2019s a statement about which stories have resonated with me as I\u2019ve tried to understand my experiences.<\/p>\n
Being gay has brought a lot of gifts with it: Being part of a marginalised and mistreated group has been a good correction to my own worldview as someone who grew up with a lot of privilege.<\/p>\n
I think my lesbianism has coloured my friendships and service commitments \u2013 not at all in the sense that I\u2019m attracted to the women I serve, but in the sense that I knew I needed to be of service *to women*, in solidarity with women \u2013 and those relationships have been gifts as well.<\/p>\n
The Church\u2019s teaching *in its fullness* is beautiful and rich: the history and theology of honour for same-sex devoted friendship, for example; the praise for celibacy and virginity as ways to devote oneself entirely and directly to God. We never hear about that stuff, though! We only hear the prohibitions. And a theology which is just no, no, no really is toxic. If you think God has no plan or future for you except loveless, lonely self-denial, of course you\u2019re going to despair.<\/p>\n
On the specific question of \u201cintrinsic disorder,\u201d I still struggle to understand what that even means, but more importantly, I think in contemporary culture the language of \u201cdisorder\u201d is misread.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re used to hearing it in medical and psychiatric contexts: eating disorders, attention deficit disorder. And so we immediately think of psychiatric attempts to \u201ccure\u201d homosexuality, which have done so much harm over the years. I strongly suspect there are better, more illuminating and less confusing ways to articulate Church teaching.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
more (what\u2019s \u201csoft-conservative\u201d? is that an Aussie thing?)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some headline writer was having a long day there. Anyway I thought this turned out well: \u2026What do you like about being Catholic? The central thing for me is the Eucharist, including Eucharistic adoration and processions like Corpus Christi. Also the saints and artists: St Francis, St Aelred, Dorothy Day, Oscar Wilde, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, El […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[1264,214,30,27],"class_list":["post-9104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gay-catholic-whatnot","category-mackerel-snapping","tag-gay-catholic-whatnot","tag-john-paul-ii","tag-mackerel-snapping-2","tag-vocation"],"yoast_head":"\n
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