Thursday, September 23, 2010
A priest, a hurting community and a hurtful pope.
The always interesting and erudite blog Queering the Church -http://queering-the-church.com/blog/ - today quotes Fr. Bernard Lynch on why he protested during the pope's recent visit to Britain. I recommend you read it.
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7 comments:
"At the height of the Plague years your Holiness’s ‘Pastoral Care’ document told us as LGBT people that we are ‘disordered in our nature’ and ‘evil in our love’ and the typical violence committed against us as ‘understandable if not acceptable.’ I was shocked and scandalised. I did not understand then and now how such teachings are consonant with the unconditional love of God given to us in Jesus Christ."
I admire very much Fr. Bernard's outspoken witness, and life of service to the victims of the plague. A capacity and ability lacking in me, I regret to say, though I did what I could, when I could.
But the quote stirs memories in me of a church I left which proclaimed a similar gospel of hopelessness. How you and Fr. Bernard - even if you were not in holy orders - have been able to continue in association with such an outfit is frankly beyond my ability to understand.
I left the fundamentalist-type church I thought was the repository of all truth when I was about 22; it was either leave, or die of absolute despair. And most unexpectedly, after having done so, I found not despair but a certain lightness of being: as if an enormous boulder had been lifted off my shoulders.
The road from there to here has not been plain or smooth much of the time, but at least like a former cripple, I was healed and could walk on my own. I don't know how you have stood it all these years, buddy.
Though I do understand that for many people, Catholicism is not merely a religion but a sort of ethnicity too, as a Catholic friend of mine once explained; and that no doubt you have a large web of relations and friends whom you perhaps would feel, at some level, that you were deserting.
Well, we all have our own road to walk, as best we can, though it be uphill all the way. Blessings on you as you go.
Russ, thanks for your comments. Let me respond in a partial way. When non-Catholics (and many Catholics) refer to the Catholic Church, they mean the hierarchy of pope, bishops and priests - in other words, the formal institution. But the Church is more than that, for the pope and the 'official' Church just scratches the surface of things. All of the work that Fr. Lynch did was the Church working - with AIDS patients and others. All of the work done at St. Clare's and St. Vincent's in NYC was the Church doing the work. Whether done by the officials, or with official approval, or even with disapproval, it is still the Catholic Church that is doing the work. Whenever a Catholic goes to a soup kitchen, or signs a petition, or writes a blog, or teaches a child, it is the whole Church that is involved. A stupid bishop will not separate me from this, and a naive pope will not separate me from this. The Church is more than its hierarchs. In a Biblical phrase used by Vatican II, the Church is the people of God - assembled in worship, but also working in the trenches. The Church proclaims the good news of Jesus Christ, imperfectly. If Fr. Lynch or I were not part of it, the Good News would be proclaimed even more imperfectly. Are there abuses? Hell yes. Are there hurtful things done in the name of the Church? Obviously. Has this pope and do the bishops have a lot to be accountable for? Certainly. But separating oneself from the Church, or from an official role in the Church is not the answer.
Not the answer for you; I do hear and understand what you're saying, and why you feel that way.
For others - for me, let me put it that way - separation is a good and necessary thing. You used the metaphor of a battered wife the other day in a post; what about a battered child?
I can never forget, when my husband was hardly cold in his grave, and the oh-so-good-Christian townspeople and friends and relations practically spitting in my face - then to hear that the late JPII had just forcefully declared that the love between two men - *our love* - was and I quote, "a locus of evil in the modern world."
No. That's pretty near unforgiveable in my book. And I will never, ever set myself up to be hurt and used and abused and degraded by any such outfit ever again, be it catholic, protestant, martian, or whatever.
But of course your life, your experiences are different from mine, and I'm not censuring you personally, I hope you know; just sharing another perspective with you. If the connection works for you, great. It doesn't for me, and a great many others, I think.
But bless you for all your caring service to humanity; that rates very highly in my book.
Dear Russ, what you went through was horrible. It never should have happened. In your moment of greatest need you were abandoned and rejected. No one should go through that. I vacillate rather often between wanting to abandon my connection with the church - at least my official connection - and wanting to remain. Part of my job at the moment is to be the gadfly, I think. But more than that, at least in whatever little corner of God's acreage I inhabit, I can at least strive to make sure that no one is treated as badly as you were treated. God bless you.
Et cum spiritu tuo.
But watch out about that gadfly thing. That's why they gave Socrates the hemlock, you know.
At one of these sabbatical seminars, the discussion turned to what priests might do in a dysfunctional church system. Wisely, someone said that one voice would be ineffective and collective voices would be more likely to effect some change. The speaker then added: "and who is to say that martyrdom in our generation might not take a different form than in the past." No creaky old institution changes quickly, but at least some change is possible, I think. Slowly. It will come at a cost, but it will come.
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