A Catholic Convert and a Gay Priest pour out their hearts

Commonweal is not a magazine I often read – I guess I’m simply a little more to the right than most of its readers and contributors – but perhaps I should read it more frequently, for these are two exceedingly good pieces that I pass on to you for thoughtful reading.

The first, is Jean Hughes Raber’s honest and provocative conversion story, The Bumpy Path to Rome wherein she shares her conversion experiences beyond the usual shiny messages of faith we all like to read. I like this piece quite a lot – it’s very smart and honest.

Scene 5: My impasse with the church over birth control has, ironically, left me in one of those spiritual crises central to the popular convert stories I find so unsatisfying. And, to fall back on the parlance of those stories, “it wasn’t just coincidence” that I begin reading St. Catherine of Siena’s Dialogue of the Soul.

Knowledge of God, says St. Catherine, starts with self-knowledge, “for we are in God and God is in us, just as a fish is in the sea and the sea is in the fish.”

“What self-knowledge have you gained in the church?” St. Catherine asks. “What have you learned about God?”

“I’ve learned I can’t follow the ‘rules’ no matter how hard I try, because some of them I just don’t believe in or understand. I promised at my Catholic confirmation to uphold church teaching. I haven’t done that. I am a failure as a Catholic, but at least I’m not a hypocrite,” I say.

“Ahem,” replies St. Catherine. “What you actually promised was to uphold those teachings ‘with God’s help.’ You’ve been working like a fish out of the sea.”

Read. You’ll enjoy!

The second piece is A Gay Priest Speaks Out and it is also an excellent and provocative bit of writing, wherein this celibate and dedicated priest anticipates a new document out of Rome and examines how it can help or hurt. He also shares his own experiences and frustrations.

If the Incarnation shows us anything, it is that God loves us in our humanity, even in our weakness, as St. Paul says-perhaps especially in our weakness. We all have a need to see ourselves as loved by God as we are, even in those parts of ourselves that embarrass or sadden us. Perhaps we think ourselves too plain, too unintelligent, too untalented, or too unsuccessful to warrant God’s love. But God’s love is always far greater than we can imagine, and embraces our entire selves. In my own life, one of the most profound experiences of God’s love came when, after many years, I finally accepted that I could not change myself into a straight man: I was gay and that was simply the way God had created me. Encountering God’s love as I am was a transforming experience, one that I have wanted to share with parishioners not as an example of any personal sexual liberation, but as a sign of God’s infinite, and always surprising, understanding. Does this basic acceptance of God’s love seem like a commonplace sentiment? For most straight men and women, yes. But for gay people, it can be a profoundly difficult proposition to come to believe.

I have long hoped to testify before my parish to this foundational experience of God’s love in my life, but I am of course forbidden to do so. And when a minister of the Word cannot publicly proclaim the freedom that the Word brings to his own life, it is a real loss for a community of faith.

I know gay, celibate priests who are hard-working, devoted and satisfied in their priesthood, and who are agonizing over all of this. Their lives lives have been made exceedingly difficult by the pedersaty scandals revealed in the past few years. I think this priest says it very well.

Thanks to my brother Thom for sending both pieces my way.