Richard Gaillardetz on the State of American Catholicism: My Response--"I Was a Stranger and You . . ."

In the discussion thread following my posting about Andrew Sullivan's latest comments re: the abuse crisis in the Catholic church this past weekend, a sharp reader, Brian Gallagher, drew a connection between Sullivan's analysis and questions that Catholic theologian Richard Gaillardetz raises in a recent lecture he gave on the state of American Catholicism today.  Gaillardetz's lecture is online now at the National Catholic Reporter website. 

Gaillardetz gave the lecture recently at University of Toledo as part of the Murray/Bacik lecture series.  It's entitled “The State of the Church, 2011: Reflections on the State of American Catholicism Today.” 

For anyone concerned about the current state and future of American Catholicism, the Gaillardetz lecture is  well worth reading.  For a snapshot of the reflections of various Catholic thinkers of the center, including theologians, about the Gaillardetz lecture, see the response to Peter Steinfels's recent posting re: the lecture at the Commonweal blog site.

My intent here is not to summarize this lecture, or even to discuss it in toto--though I highly recommend it to readers and hope that those concerned to understand where American Catholicism may be headed today will read it carefully.  What I'd like to zero in on here is  what Gaillardetz has to say about the 2009 pastoral letter of the U.S. Catholic bishops entitled, "Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan."  (For my own reflections on that pastoral letter at the time it was issued, see these two postings from October and November 2009.)

Gaillardetz makes his comments about the 2009 bishops' document on marriage in the context of his broader argument that, even if American Catholicism shows some signs of flourishing today, nonetheless "something is amiss" and the church in the U.S. finds itself in "a state of unrest."  And to know how to understand and address this situation, we need to know how we have arrived at "this troubling, enigmatic moment in American Catholicism," and we have to think about where we intend to go from here.

Gaillardetz does an historical sounding to show how we've gotten to where we are today.  He surveys the birth and death of a pre-Vatican subcultural Catholicism rooted in ethnic enclaves that had not been fully enculturated in mainstream American culture, and to which there was often resistance on the part of the mainstream. He then examines how post-Vatican II American Catholicism seemed to enter into a period of flourishing as American Catholics entered the social mainstream and were encouraged by Vatican II to engage in fruitful dialogue with mainstream culture.  

And then came the backlash  in the period from 1990 to the present, in which a new model of leadership was imposed by John Paul II and his successor Benedict, with a strong emphasis on "reforming the reform" of Vatican II and on a restorationist model of the church that once again pits the church against the social mainstream and accents its role of countercultural resistance.  In this resistance, a new generation of bishop-leaders have been encouraged sharply to delineate the difference between authentic Catholicism and the values and ideas of secular society.

And I must note that while the preceding summary faithfully replicates Gaillardetz's framework of analysis and--I hope--his primary points within that framework, it also makes free use of my own categories of analysis to understand the trajectory he's sketching here.  Free use of my own categories for which I don't want Gaillardetz blamed . . . .

And the end result of that shift to a new model of episcopal and Vatican leadership with John Paul II and Benedict--the end result of the restorationist "reform of the reform"--is that we now find ourselves at this point:  as Gaillardetz notes, Pew Forum data in the spring of 2008, which I've cited repeatedly on this blog, showed that by 2008, one in three American adults raised Catholic has left the Catholic church, and one in ten American adults is a former Catholic.  If all former Catholics in the U.S. were grouped into a single denomination, that denomination would form the second largest church in the country.  

And here's the lesson Gaillardetz draws from that study: 

The future of American Catholicism will depend in no small measure on our willingness to take seriously this mass exodus from the Church. We need to ask ourselves, what is going on here? 

In Gaillardetz's view, data gathered by the Pew report indicate that many of those now  leaving the Catholic church in the U.S. in this mass exodus are walking "because the quality of church life is poor and church leadership appears inattentive to their real pastoral concerns."  And it's in this context that Gaillardetz examines the 2009 pastoral letter on marriage--as an example of the poor quality of church life and inattentive leadership that are precipitating the mass exodus.  He writes:

Let me offer a simple example. In 2009 the American bishops released a pastoral letter on marriage titled, "Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan." When I first heard of the forthcoming letter, I was encouraged. I believe that in our current "upgrade" culture, two people remaining committed to one another for life is one of the most demanding things anyone could undertake. Pastoral assistance and support from church leaders was certainly welcome. The document that appeared includes very helpful and even inspiring passages, but its emphasis, regrettably, is on the intrinsic evils of artificial birth control and same-sex marriage. Now I recognize that these are official Catholic teachings and this is not the forum to debate them, but here is the problem. When my wife and I are going through a difficult patch in our marriage, it is not like at the end of some marital spat we look at one another and say, "boy, I wish those gay people weren't trying to get married, it would make our marriage a lot easier!" I understand the need on occasion to clarify official church teaching, but when a preoccupation with doctrinal orthodoxy, focused on a few select and controversial teachings, trumps expending the necessary energy to listen to the felt concerns of ordinary married people, well, you get our current situation. 

I'd like to draw attention to the preceding passage for two reasons.  The first is this: it makes a very compelling case for Gaillardetz's thesis that people are walking away from the Catholic church in the U.S. rapidly due to a poor quality of church life and to poor and inattentive leadership.

But, second, the prescriptive analysis embedded in Gaillardetz's discussion of the problem--his implied solution to the  problem--only underscores the problem, in my view.  It does not adequately address the problem and does not suggest a solution that will effectively address the problem at its base.  

Here's what I hear Gaillardetz saying: My wife and I were "encouraged" when we first heard that the bishops were going to issue this pastoral document about marriage in 2009.  We welcome teaching about marriage that helps us live our commitment as a married couple more faithfully.  We live in an "upgrade" culture in which the coinage of marriage as a lifelong commitment is being debased.  And my wife and I welcome the guidance of our church's pastoral leaders as we struggle to live our marital commitment within that cultural context. 

But the bishops' preoccupation with "the intrinsic evils of artificial birth control and same-sex marriage" hasn't proven helpful to us or other married heterosexual Catholic couples.  It seems absurd to us to imagine that, when we struggle to live faithfully as a married couple, same-sex couples impede us or threaten the sanctity of our marriage.

Good analysis, at one level.  The bishops' strange preoccupation with artificial contraception and same-sex marriage in a document whose ostensible purpose is to explain and defend the core values of marriage in a culture in which those values seem at risk makes little sense to many married Catholics like Gaillardetz.

I can understand this point. I welcome it.  I'm glad Gaillardetz is making it.

But there's this: for many of us, the announcement of the bishops in 2009 that they were going to issue a pastoral document about marriage was anything but welcome.  Because we don't belong to the church in the same way that Gaillardetz and his wife belong.  We are not welcomed in the church in the same way that Gaillardetz and his wife are welcomed.  We do not have the entree that they have.

And rather than strengthening and affirming our marriages, the document would--we knew beyond a shadow of doubt when we heard it was in the hopper--attack.  Undermine.  Exclude.  Condemn.

And so we who are not welcome, included, affirmed are far less apt than Gaillardetz and his wife are to yield to the magisterium the automatic right and privilege of declaring "official Catholic teaching:" about marriage --not while those doing the defining and declaring overlook our graced experience and ignore our contribution to the Catholic community as faithful disciples of Jesus.  We are far less inclined than are Gaillardetz and his wife to welcome a "pastoral" document whose intent is, for us and our brothers and sisters, anything but pastoral.  And we're far less inclined than are Gaillardetz and his wife to relinquish to the bishops the task of defining official Catholic teaching about marriage in this unilateral and exclusive  and non-dialogical way that ignores our lived experience of grace and our lives of gay discipleship within the Christian community.

The problem on which I want to zero in here is the dialogic problem.  It's a central problem of American Catholicism.  It is part and parcel of a much larger problem that underlies the current mass exodus from the church.  This dialogic problem has everything to do with the fundamental reasons that people are rapidly leaving the American Catholic church. As Gaillardetz himself says, there is, at base, a profound lack of hospitality, of welcome, in American Catholicism--and people are walking away as a result:

For every former Catholic who has left the church over a doctrinal question, I suspect there are many more who have left because of their concrete experience of local parish life. Insipid preaching, poorly planned liturgies, a basic lack of Christian hospitality—these are the realities that are driving people away. 

And here's the point I want to make, precisely, in response to Gaillardetz's analysis of the 2009 marriage letter of the U.S. Catholic bishops: there is nowhere in American Catholicism today any official dialogic space in which lay Catholics can sit down and talk together about the various experiences of glaring unwelcome that are quickly driving one person after another out of the church.  There are, almost nowhere in American Catholic parishes, universities, dioceses, organizations any welcoming dialogic spaces in which gay and lesbian Catholics can speak about our experiences as followers of Jesus, as faithful Catholics struggling to live lives faithful to the gospel within a church whose pastoral leaders have declared war on us.

Gaillardetz's lecture notes our obligation (and our need) to "wrestle" with the tradition.  And this is a valuable recommendation.  But wrestling with the tradition, in the Catholic context, requires communal wrestling.  It requires wrestling within the community, wrestling in dialogue with the tradition, with the pastoral leaders of the church, and with one's brothers and sisters in Christ.  It requires welcoming dialogic spaces in which Catholics with various life experiences and viewpoints can come together to talk.  And to share our lives.

There is no space at all, there is no dialogic space at all, within the American Catholic church today in which gay and lesbian Catholics are invited to wrestle with the tradition in dialogue with their brothers and sisters who happen to be heterosexual.  There is no wrestling space at all within American Catholicism in which the kind of dialogue on which I reported yesterday, where Steve and I met with an African-American church and shared our experience as a gay couple with them, takes place.

And Gaillardetz's own analysis of the shortcomings of the 2009 pastoral letter on marriage only deepens the problem--even as it rightly points to the tremendous pastoral shortcomings of the bishops' current stance on issues of marriage and sexuality.  Gaillardetz's analysis implies that the pastoral problem created by this stance primarily affects heterosexual married Catholics like himself and his wife--heterosexual married Catholics who would otherwise welcome and be "encouraged" by the bishops' "official" declarations re: marriage. 

For many of us who share Gaillardetz's analysis of the poor theology and anti-pastoral intent of the 2009 marriage document, the fundamental problem (and therefore the solution to the problem) appears quite different.  It's a problem of being unable to welcome or be encouraged by any statement issued by a group of pastoral leaders whose fundamental message to us has been, for some time now, that we ourselves are unwelcome. 

And that problem--which is to say, the deep, well-nigh intractable problem of unwelcome and lack of hospitality which is driving one person after another out of the church--is only compounded by our  heterosexual and married brother and sister Catholics, insofar as they continue to seem unable to grasp the dimensions of this problem.  Or what the experience of their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters within the church has been and continues to be.

Or what deep damage the male-dominated heterosexism of our leaders, our community, and our institutions continues to do to all of us.

The graphic for this posting is artist Andrea Bowers' "Quilt of Radical Hospitality" from Susanne Vielmetter's Los Angeles Projects gallery.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols on Need to Keep Conversation of Sexual Ethics Open: Critical Reflections

Jim McCrea has emailed me (and other folks) information from an interesting article in the latest issue of the British journal The Tablet. I'd link to the article, but it's behind a firewall for subscribers, and I can't direct readers to the article itself. If you'll bear with me, though, as I cite an article that you can't read in its entirety, I'd like to make some comments about this worthwhile essay.

The article's by Clifford Longley, and is entitled "The Archbishop Said Nothing to Contradict the Magisterium, But He Does Face a Dilemma." Longley is reporting on comments Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster made in a pre-Christmas radio interview, in which he stated,

When it comes to understanding what human sexuality is for, there is a lot that we have to explore. Because I think what is at one level in the broad perspective clear, is that there is an intrinsic link between procreation and human sexuality. Now how do we start from that principle, not lose it, and have an open, ongoing conversation with those who say, well, that’s not my experience? How do we bring together some principles that if you like are written into the broad book of nature, and individual experiences? That’s the area that we have to be sensitive and open to, and genuinely wanting to explore.

As Longley notes, these sane observations are brave ones to make, in the church's current political climate, and they're observations for which, Longley thinks, many British Catholics will be grateful. Longley thinks, however, that making even these sane observations, which in no way contradict the teaching of the magisterium, confronts Archbishop Nichols with a dilemma.

For instance, how is it possible to be "sensitive and open to" the genuine experiences of gay and lesbian believers when one is committed to an official teaching that precludes any real openness at all, but requires only unilateral condemnation of precisely the experience to which one is claiming to be open? And in what precise way does the "broad book of nature" inform us that there is an intrinsic link between procreation and human sexuality"? As Longley observes (rightly), official Catholic discussion of how the law of nature ought to be read remains curiously truncated, paying no attention--for instance--to data provided to us by evolutionary biology re: the development of human sexuality.

In my view, Longley's observations here are absolutely correct. Though I'm encouraged to read these sane observations from a leading Catholic prelate (Archbishop Nichols is president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales), I find the insistence of the Catholic magisterium "that there is an intrinsic link between procreation and human sexuality" increasingly unconvincing, as I think about issues of sexual ethics. I find this insistence unconvincing not as a description of the obvious--namely, that a male and female are biologically necessary to beget a child--but as a precondition, a ground rule, for thinking about sexual ethics that precludes any careful discussion of the value of and gifts provided to the human community and to communities of faith by those who do not procreate.

This is a point I have tried to get at in repeated posts in recent months--as, for instance, when I noted in November my serious reservations about American Catholic journalist Peter Steinfels' praise of Pope Benedict's comments about condom use, which Steinfels prefaces with the observation that Benedict's position is praiseworthy, since it sees "a drastic separation of sexuality from procreation" as morally inadmissible.

What's to be gained by these framing provisos, I wonder: "there is an intrinsic link between procreation and human sexuality"; and we look askance at "a drastic separation of sexuality from procreation"? I'm choosing the term "framing proviso" very deliberately here. Any discussion of sexual ethics from the Catholic standpoint that wants to avoid giving the appearance of conflicting with magisterial teaching nowadays must always begin with these framing provisos: the purpose of human sexuality is procreation, and the procreative norm is and must be foundational for all of our ethical consideration of any aspect of human sexuality.

What's to be gained by framing our outlook on matters sexual in this way, I want to ask: what's to be gained by framing the discussion this way from the outset? The first point I'd like to note is this: this framing device distorts the discussion from its very beginning by imposing on it an empirical description of fact--namely, as a human race, we beget new members by biological procreation--as a moral imperative that turns what is into what ought to be. And yet, there is no sound or clearly explained reason for framing the discussion this way.

This strong, always present, framing proviso of Catholic ethical thinking about human sexuality might make sense, for instance, if anyone were seriously (and persuasively) claiming that procreation is inadvisable, is a bad thing, and ought to be prohibited or discouraged. To my knowledge, no one who talks about sexual ethical issues is pressing that point at all, however. There is, of course, much talk about responsible procreation and about stewardship in the area of sexual life, talk that encourages us to think about the responsibility we assume when we procreate, and about our need to be good stewards of our sexual lives as we should be good stewards of all other areas of our lives.

Normally, when I hear the preceding framing provisos, what I am actually hearing is something quite different than these insights about stewardship, however: what I'm hearing is the echo of some kind of insistence that, if one grants non-procreative sexual expression and non-procreative sexual behavior any kind of normativity--if one permits such expression and behavior a legitimacy that makes it co-equal with heterosexual procreation--one endangers procreativity, and thus one endangers the human race itself. There is an implication that the biological facticity of procreation is a given--you need a male and a female to make a new human being, and continuing the human race is an obvious good--and non-procreative sexual expression and behavior therefore flies in the face of the obvious, of the factually given, and therefore subverts nature itself.

These echoes, which run strongly through all critiques of homosexuality in Christian faith communities of the religious and political right (and through faith communities of some non-Christian traditions), would be convincing if there were any scrap of evidence at all that legitimating homosexual activity and homosexual lives in any way endangers procreativity or procreative relationships. These echoes might be convincing if, in the increasing number of social groups throughout the developed world that have, in fact, legitimated gay lives and gay relationships, procreation is under attack, or is declining, or is in danger of being prohibited.

I am not aware, however, of a single place in the world in which same-sex marriage has been legalized, and people have simultaneously begun to cease procreation, or are considering the cessation of procreation, or feel that their option to be biologically procreative is endangered by the existence of legally sanctioned same-sex unions. I am not aware that heterosexual married couples who intend to have children or who are already having children find themselves any more endangered, as procreative units, in places that permit same-sex unions than they feel endangered in places (and these are legion) that permit non-procreative people of the opposite sex to marry.

And so where do we end up with our framing proviso that appears to be intent on reminding us that the biological facticity of procreation--a male and a female are required to beget a new human being--ought to be a framing moral imperative that norms any and all discussion of sexual ethical issues? In my view, we end up in a position of fundamental dishonesty that vitiates Catholic conversations of these issues from the outset. I choose the word "vitiate," whose root meaning is "to introduce vice into," intentionally.

There is an insupportable viciousness about the official Catholic approach to sexual morality at present, which 1) grants unmerited power and privilege to all human beings who are heterosexual, and 2) demeans all human beings who are not heterosexual. And because our Catholic discussions of matters of sexuality fail to acknowledge the injustice built into these discussions by our framing principle--which does not meet threshold tests of rationality and of logic--they begin and end with some fundamental dishonesties about our sexual lives. They go nowhere productive.

As I've noted in numerous previous postings, it is less than honest, and it is seriously unjust, for married heterosexual Catholics to proclaim, on the one hand, that the procreative ethic ought to be primary in all discussions of sexual ethics, while proposing, on the other hand, that married couples should have the right to choose when and how and if they wish to discard that ethic in their married lives. There is something less than honest and something seriously unjust at work when married couples suggest that it should be permissible for heterosexual, legitimately married couples to thwart the procreative goal of sexual life, while those same couples simultaneously proclaim that procreation is the end-all and be-all of sexual life--and, therefore, all homosexual relationships must always be considered as functioning at a level beneath that of all heterosexual relationships.

Even when many--the vast majority, in fact--heterosexual married Catholics are practicing birth control. And when the magisterium turns a blind eye to this fact even as it hammers away at gay and lesbian human beings through its insistence on the procreative norm of sexuality as a basis for opposing civil rights for gay human beings. And as it continues to speak as if anything but a procreative framing of the discussion about sexual ethics is unthinkable.

There's a level of fundamental dishonesty built into our discussion of sexual morality within Catholic circles, and the dishonesty begins with the selective and unjust way in which our first principle is applied to all our considerations of sexual morality. Our fundamental, vitiating dishonesty begins with our refusal to admit that we are framing the conversation as we are framing it precisely to grant unmerited privilege to those who are heterosexual and precisely to place those who are not heterosexual in a subordinate status, from the outset of our discussions.

And from this fundamental dishonesty proceed all kinds of other dishonesties, when we Catholics talk about matters sexual: the refusal to admit that, even as we attack those who are gay and lesbian for thwarting the procreative purpose of human sexuality, we ourselves are, to a great extent, doing precisely the same thing in our own heterosexual relationships; or the refusal to admit that the grounding principle of all of our discussions of sexual issues grants unwarranted power and privilege to those who are heterosexual, and excludes those who are not heterosexual from power and privilege within our faith community and its various institutions.

In the past week, I've read a number of powerful Catholic statements about the need for the Catholic community to develop the virtue of welcoming others. For instance, Jerry Filteau reports in a recent National Catholic Reporter article that, at a Woodstock forum in Philadelphia in early December, Fr. Tom Reese challenged American Catholics to cultivate a "a welcoming attitude" and to develop "concrete welcoming practices" that are, in Reese's view, conspicuously lacking in most Catholic parishes. Reese asked Woodstock attendees, "When was the last time you entered a Catholic church and actually were welcomed?"

And in the same issue of NCR, I find that in his homily for the Feast of Epiphany, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton recently asked,

How well do we welcome . . . people of different sexual orientation? They are made to feel unwelcome. It was only very recently that the bishops of the United States could write a pastoral letter in which they say to people of different sexual orientation: “You are our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters. We welcome you.” But that hasn’t been carried out fully in all of our parish families.

I applaud these statements just as I applaud Archbishop Nichols' observations above. But I also feel it's important to note that a church which frames all of its discussions of sexual issues with the framing proviso, "there is an intrinsic link between procreation and human sexuality," cannot be a welcoming community for those who are gay and lesbian. It cannot be a welcoming community for those who are gay and lesbian because, to all practical extents and purposes, this framing proviso means only one thing in the Catholic milieu of 2011: it does not mean that married Catholics practicing artificial contraception are unwelcome and should consider themselves second-class citizens; and it does not mean that heterosexual couples that cannot procreate ought to be excluded from marriage and should consider their unions abnormal and disordered.

It does mean, however, that simply by being gay or lesbian, we who happen to be made gay or lesbian by God present a serious dilemma for a community that professes to be all about welcome, but cannot develop the tools to welcome us. Or to recognize the injustice that it continues to practice by upholding a sexual ethic that is really about heteronormativity (and about male entitlement) far more than it is about procreativity, despite what it professes itself to be.

Welcoming the Other: The Classic Sign of Acceptance of God's Mystery

A thought for today, to complement what I have just posted: this is from Kathleen Norris, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993): 

True hospitality is marked by an open response to the dignity of each person.  . . .  For the monk, even repentance is seen in terms of hospitality.  . . .  It means recognizing that we have not always seen grace where it exists in the world, and agreeing "to turn away from a stubborn and obdurate position that cannot accept what is new and different and therefore cannot entertain God’s mysterious ways." The word "entertain" is used advisedly here, as the monk goes on to speak of hospitality: "The classic sign of [our] acceptance of God’s mystery is welcoming and making room’ for the stranger, the other, the surprising, the unlooked-for and unwanted" (pp. 198-9).

Another Christmas Meditation: The Incarnation Calls Us to Be the Truth We Proclaim

Another journal entry to follow the one I posted yesterday as a Christmas meditation.  This, too, is Christmas-themed, and I wrote it on the same day (24 December 2010) that I wrote the one I posted yesterday.

It seems to me that many Christians today, who emphasize the church's role as a guardian of the truth and the obligation of church leaders to teach the truth, fail to recognize the significant connection between the incarnation and how people hear and receive--and above all, proclaim--the truth.  The incarnation introduces into the community of those who believe in Jesus an incarnational logic which requires us first and foremost to enflesh the truth we believe we're called to proclaim to the world.

We're called by the incarnation to live the truth we proclaim, before we formulate and proclaim that truth.  Incarnating the truth we want to proclaim to the world is a precondition to the verbal proclamation itself, so that the two must always occur in tandem, with the lived witness as a sacramental sign to the spoken truth.

And this incarnational logic therefore locks the leaders of Christian faith communities into what might be seen as a terrible logic of incarnational, sacramental witness to the truth they seek to proclaim to their own communities.  When the lived witness of the pastoral leaders of Christian communities is at stark variance from their proclamation of the truth that flows from the gospels--and this stark variance is increasingly apparent in the case of the Catholic church, as many of us look at how our pastoral leaders are dealing with the abuse situation--then profound cognitive dissonance occurs.

It is impossible for many believers to hear or appropriate the truth proclaimed by pastoral leaders whose lived witness belies what they proclaim.  The following journal entry reflects on one of the most basic proclamations of all: the proclamation that all who walk in the footsteps of the Word Made Flesh are called to welcome the stranger and open our arms to those in need, to those who are outcasts.  As this journal entry suggests, churches that profess to be concerned with welcoming those who are homeless undercut their profession of being all about welcome, when they simultaneously refuse to welcome their brothers and sisters who are gay and lesbian:

Our first stop when we exit the Piccadilly Circus tube station: St. James church, a Christopher Wren church.  We hope its little flea market is open, but it's not, on Christmas eve.

We go into the church.  I'm impressed by a welcome sign in the narthex: "A warm welcome from the church community of St. James, Piccadilly.  St. James is part of the Anglican Communion within the world-wide Christian Church.  We understand ourselves to be called: to gather as a body which welcomes and celebrates human diversity--including spirituality, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation . . . ."

And so I feel welcome as I walk into this church.  As I don't in almost any Catholic church today.  Because my church almost never posts such a welcome statement in its entrance ways.  And its notion of universality and inclusivity and diversity is now, effectively, to give solace and harbor to homophobes.  While telling me and mine, effectively, that we're unwelcome.

And then we go inside and walk down the north nave of the church, and I see a man bent over in a posture of profound prayer.  I hope I haven't disturbed him.

And then I see one man after another in the pews of that side of the church, lying down, huddled over, sitting.  And I realize they're homeless, and are gathered in that part of the church because its heaters are located there.

And what a novel thing, to find a welcoming Christian church celebrating Christmas by providing homeless people a place to warm themselves and rest on a very cold London Christmas eve.

Benedict on Condoms: Confronting the Real (and Deep) Apologetic Challenges of the Catholic Church Today

I haven't yet commented on the recent discussion of a remark of Pope Benedict in a forthcoming book that permitting the use of condoms by a male prostitute might represent a first step on the path to moralization of the prostitute's activity.  I haven't commented for a variety of reasons.

First and foremost, I find it laughable that so many influential Catholics of the center are applauding this timid (and back-handed) baby step towards honest moral reflection about the use of condoms (and about homosexuality) as a huge step forward.  I certainly recognize that this papal statement is important, as the smallest, most grudging recognition possible that all moral questions about condom use (and homosexuality) aren't solved by a single black and white rubric, particularly a black and white rubric of universal condemnation.

But, still: this is the best the Catholic church has to offer its adherents and the world right now?  And we're expected to laud this grudging tiny step and to tell the Holy Father how grateful we are for his condescension in deigning to make observations that have long been perfectly obvious to anyone with a head on her shoulders and a working conscience?  I don't get it.

I have also refrained from saying anything up to now because the blowback against the papal statement, and the attempt to contain it--minuscule as this breakthrough is--is already fierce.  And I'm, frankly, worn to a frazzle by all this to-ing and fro-ing in Catholic intellectual circles about issues like condom use and homosexuality.  There's a much bigger world beyond the boundaries of the Catholic church, and in that world, moral insights abound and challenging moral conversations about issues like this have moved leaps and bounds beyond the timid parochial conversations inside the Catholic church.  Even paying attention to some of the intra-ecclesial conversations reinforces the parochialism--and siphons energy for really meaningful moral analysis and discussion.  And leaves some of us who happen to be gay just as bloodied and beaten up as we already were when we entered the fray.

And so I'm inclined, in any commentary I might make about the papal statement, to focus not so much on what Benedict will say in his forthcoming book, but on the Catholic reaction to it.  If I were still teaching theology, I might, for instance, ask students to read, say, John Allen's commentary on Benedict's statement at National Catholic Reporter and Andrew Sullivan's at his Daily Dish blog, and then do a comparison-contrast analysis of these two very different takes on the same papal statement. 

What do these two statements say about the core values and perspectives of these two Catholic commentators, I'd ask students?  And in what precise ways does the fact that John Allen is heterosexual and married influence his understanding of issues like this, and how does the fact that Andrew Sullivan is openly gay affect his reading of the papal statements?  And what do they say about the state of moral analysis within the institution to which these two commentators belong?

And here's what else I'm noticing about the papal statement: already, it has opened a door through which many Catholics are always eager to step--a door to hostile rhetoric about their brothers and sisters who happen to be gay.  Whether this is what Benedict intended by choosing the eccentric (but obviously carefully selected) case of a male prostitute presumably servicing male clients to make the point that condom use can be "moralized," from certain clearly defensible moral standpoints, I don't know.

If this case was chosen with care--and I am assuming it was--it was chosen because 1) it strictly confines the possibility that condom use can be more moral than the refusal to use a condom to male homosexual sexual activity, and in the context of prostitution, at that, and 2) it has the ability to backfire and actually fuel the always latent homophobia everywhere in the Catholic church, and so the case takes away with one hand what it gives with the other.  It provides a well-selected prophylactic shield against any analysis that might move a step further and apply the principles implied in this case to heterosexual sex and, in particular, to cases in which a husband is HIV+ and using a condom protects his wife (and any child they might conceive) from HIV infection.

As I say, the homophobic blowback has already begun.  At one discussion site, I've seen a thread quickly develop which reminds us that Benedict and the Catholic hierarchy are tone-deaf and even inimical to the concerns of women, and which suggests that the case of a male prostitute was chosen because gay hierarchical officials are, well, drawn like flies to honey to such cases.  This discussion uses the obvious and deplorable misogyny of the hierarchy to attack gay Catholics, especially gay male ones.  It fails to recognize that heterosexual women enjoy, at least, a degree of protection from discrimination in Catholic institutions that these institutions refuse to afford their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.  And it fails to see that the homophobia that supports such discrimination against those who are gay is rooted in the same misogyny that demeans women, and so women and gays and lesbians have every reason in the world to make common cause in the battle against that misogyny and the homophobia that rides on its skirt-tails.

At some of the blog sites of the powerful intellectual elite that forms the center of American Catholicism,  another trope of homophobic slams is equally predictable.  They run like this: dirty homosexuals engage in dirty homosexual sex which already merits eternal damnation.  So what's the big news in permitting dirty homosexuals engaging in dirty homosexual sex to use dirty condoms?  The principle sketched by the Holy Father doesn't apply to us upright heterosexual Catholics for whom sexual activity doesn't equate, after all, to prostitution.  As it does for all dirty homosexuals.  Who all engage in dirty homosexual sexual activities meriting eternal damnation.

What's even more interesting about the fact that faithful Catholics are logging in to make such remarks at these centrist sites is the fact that they are not challenged or censored by the site owners--not one bit.  Not in the way in which some of these same sites have, in recent weeks, censored the comments of bloggers (including me) who call these homophobic brothers and sisters to accountability.  And yet those running these sites claim to have a pastoral concern for their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters . . .!

In the real world in which many of us who don't inhabit the rarefied elysian intellectual circles of the Catholic hierarchy and its centrist apologists live, what Benedict says about condoms and male prostitutes does not represent such a stunning breakthrough.  Our problem is to understand the excitement of the reaction itself.  Our problem is to understand why anyone still imagines it possible even to think about human sexuality in this way, and to call such thinking not only moral, but the standard by which all other moral reflection should be judged.

How is it possible, we wonder, that some of our Catholic brothers and sisters still believe that this apodictic, non-experiential, top-down way of thinking about human sexuality imposed by a presumably celibate all-male clerical elite is not merely moral, but the moral ideal?  Or that the best way to approach discussions of the morality of human sexual behavior is by cold reasoning, in which there is a principle to cover every case and an answer for every dilemma--a rational answer?

Many of us who do not live in the oh-so-smug and oh-so-certain Catholic parochial ghetto have long since concluded, with Cardinal Newman, that "no ideas are more wild than those which are relentlessly reasoned out by the hard heart and the sober judgement."  We have concluded that, if the "there" to which we want to go as the people of God is a humane place, and humane for everyone, relentless reason divorced from supple and tender hearts is not the best way to get us there.  

And so we've decided long since that encouraging husbands who are HIV+ to use condoms to protect their wives and unborn children from infection is a no-brainer--it's the humane, moral thing to do, and only a head reasoning relentlessly in conjunction with a lifeless heart could propose otherwise.  Or could defend the pope when he states that condom use accelerates the problem of HIV infection in Africa.

We've decided, since we long since broke with the model of relentless reason premised on hardness of heart, that the entire way that the Catholic magisterium asks us to think today about issues of sexual morality--to be precise, the way in which it supposes that reason which prescinds from the heart is a reliable guide to moral thinking about sexuality--is nonsensical.  It's inhumane.  It leads to inhumane conclusions.

And any institution that keeps promoting this way of thinking about the morality of human sexual life is inhumane.  It undercuts its claim to humanity by its inhumane way of talking about human beings, in the realm of sexuality.

And its defenders, no matter how many nice essays or blog postings they write about the struggles of their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters and the need for pastoral outreach to them, undercut their claims to have any authentic pastoral concern for those who are gay and lesbian.  By their defense of this hard-hearted "rational" nonsense.  By their defense of an anti-human way or thinking and talking about sexuality (and, therefore, about human beings, who are sexual beings) that completely undermines their pretense to be interested in pastoral outreach to those who are gay and lesbian.

Finally, judged against the backdrop of where the church really is right now, as opposed to the elysian ideal implied by the relentless reason of its sexual ethics, this furor over a statement about condoms and male prostitutes makes little sense at all.  The problem many people now confront, when they think about the Catholic church and their connection to it, is a problem of finding God anywhere at all in the world.

Not a problem of thinking through the morality of condom use by male prostitutes.

It is a problem of coming to believe that God can exist and can care about us, when the institutionalized barbarism and cruelty of the Catholic church vis-a-vis many groups of people--but notably towards those who are gay and lesbian today--is not merely defended but applauded by centrist Catholics who claim to be intently concerned about those on the margins.

The problem in which the church finds itself right now is much more serious than any spin doctoring and image management--like the election of Timothy Dolan as head of the U.S. bishops, or the spinning of a papal statement about male prostitutes and condoms--is going to resolve.  The problem the Catholic church would be confronting now, if it cared at all about its real mission and real credibility, is this: how can an institution that has earned a well-deserved reputation for hard-heartedness possibly continue to claim the affiliation of people who are seeking something else from religious affiliation: a welcoming, affirming home; brothers and sisters whose hearts are supple and who journey together towards spiritual ideals that aren't exclusively owned by any of us, etc.?

Many of us look at Catholic institutions right now, and see only cruelty.  And those acting as papal cheerleaders and cheerleaders for Bishop Dolan aren't helping the matter at all, even--or especially--when they simultaneously claim that they care about their gay brothers and sisters.

We know that where folks' treasures are, their hearts are likely to be.  And wreathing the injustice and cruelty in smiles is not going to disguise the rotten values beneath the smiles.

The Limits of Centrism and the Conversation about Catholic Attrition

What I'm really saying in my endless posts about the Catholic center--or a facet of what I am saying--is this, as simply as I know how to say it:

It's inconsistent--it's not helpful at all--to open conversation about why so many folks are walking from the church today, and then to censor the insights of the very folks you claim to want to hear.  These are the insights of those of us who are walking away . . . . 

The center wants to have its conversation and eat it, too.  It wants to have conversation about this extraordinarily difficult and painful phenomenon of attrition that does not threaten or expose the systemic problems that are producing the attrition.

But we can't have it both ways.  If we really want to know why people are walking, we're going to have to let them talk.  And if we let them talk, we're going to have to be prepared to hear what we don't want to hear--what will cause the walls of the secure parochiality in which dwindling numbers of Catholics find themselves comfortable fall down.

We can either maintain the comfortable little club and let its walls close in on us, day by day, until it's a mere shell of any church that has the right to call itself catholic.  Or we can permit the kind of open, free discourse that is the only medicine for the attrition, knowing as we do so that we're going to be taking bitter medicine.

But the only medicine that can staunch the wounds in the church.

San Antonio Archdiocese: No More Gays at Weekly Mass

Right in the middle of intense concern about the exodus of Catholics from the church in the U.S.--one in three adults raised Catholic leaving the church, one in ten American adults now former Catholics--this story breaks: "San Antonio Archdiocese Says No More Gays at Weekly Mass."

After more than 15 years in which a Catholic parish in San Antonio offered a weekly liturgy hospitable to members of the gay community, pastoral officials of the archdiocese are shutting this Mass down.  And showing their gay brothers and sisters the door.

And those brothers and sisters hear the message loud and clear.  Fred Antonio Garza, president of the local Dignity chapter, says that members of the gay community who have been attending this weekly Mass will look for "a more welcoming environment" elsewhere.

As I've reported on this blog in the past (e.g., here and here), the purge of openly gay and lesbian folks from Catholic parishes in the U.S. began with the current pope's 1986 "Halloween letter" issued when, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he headed the Vatican office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  This "pastoral" letter took the fateful step of defining gay and lesbian people as disordered, something the Catholic tradition had not done prior to Ratzinger's Halloween letter.

The letter sparked a purge in which Dignity chapters, which had been meeting on Catholic premises across the U.S., were informed that they were no longer welcome in any Catholic setting.  As I've also noted, in my own city, the entire Dignity chapter responded to its expulsion from Catholic premises by converting to Episcopalianism, since our local Episcopal church is far more welcoming of openly gay folks than the Catholic church is.

From the 1986 Halloween letter forward, the message of the Catholic hierarchy to gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in Christ has been unambiguous: you are not welcome.  Not as you are.  Return to the closet if you expect us to welcome you.

And to Catholic priests and nuns seeking to build pastoral bridges to their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, the message has also been clear: stop what you are doing.  You will be punished if you engage in this pastoral outreach.

The result has been a massive silent exodus of gay and lesbian persons and of those who love and stand in solidarity with gay and lesbian persons from Catholic churches since 1986, an exodus that research now indicates (as sources I've cited in recent postings demonstrate) is now extending to younger Catholics in general.  The primary reason younger folks are now walking away from churches in general is that they cannot any longer accept the cruel message of unwelcome the churches are giving to those who are gay and lesbian.

One in three American adults raised Catholic has now left.  One in ten American adults is a former Catholic.

And one of the last Masses in the U.S. welcoming openly gay Catholics affiliated with Dignity has now been shut down, as the San Antonio archdiocese informs Catholics attending that Mass that they are no longer welcome in the Catholic church. 

While we talk, throughout the American Catholic church, about how to deal with the shocking attrition.

Does not make sense, does it?

Kate Childs Graham on Making American Catholicism a Welcoming and Safe Space for Gay Persons

I blogged yesterday about a recent article of Peter Steinfels at Commonweal discussing the alarming attrition rate in American Catholicism (and here): a Pew Forum study in February 2008 found that one in three American adults raised Catholic have left the Catholic church, and one in ten American adults is a former Catholic.  As this happens, the pastoral leaders of the American Catholic church, its bishops, have been totally silent about the problem, its causes, or a solution to the problem.  Though the gospels are insistent that one who walks in the footsteps of Jesus as a good shepherd seeks each and every sheep that has strayed from the flock . . . .

My postings yesterday focused on the facet of the attrition that grabs my existential attention: the signal of pronounced unwelcome given to gay and lesbian Catholics by the church's magisterium, its pastoral leaders, and by lay Catholics who defend the magisterium and support the behavior of the pastoral leaders in this regard.  Though some of our brothers and sisters defensively insist that we who are gay and lesbian are imagining the message of unwelcome we are being given, that message is loud and clear--to anyone with ears to heart it.

I keep citing Michael O'Loughlin's recent enumeration at America's "In All Things" blog of the message of unwelcome the church gives to gay and lesbian Catholics, beginning with the statement, "Something is wrong with you," and ending with the statement, "You are a threat to human existence."  Is it possible, I wonder, to give any group of human beings a more unwelcoming message than the message for which these two statements constitute the alpha and omega?  You are made wrong, and you are a threat to my existence and that of everyone else in the world.

O'Loughlin builds on a posting of Fr. James Martin at America about a year ago,  in which he asks what a gay Catholic who remains with the church is to do, given the "welcome" messages the church offers to us who are gay.  As Fr. Martin notes, the church tells us that we who are gay cannot )1 enjoy romantic love, 2) marry, 3) adopt a child, 4) enter a seminary, or 5) work for the church and disclose our gay identity.

Is it any wonder that, given this message by a community that portrays itself as all about welcoming all of God's children at its table, as offering love and salvation to everyone, many gay and lesbian Catholics simply remove themselves from the source of such dehumanizing messages and of the inner turmoil that ensues when one is told simultaneously that one is loved and welcomed, and that one is disordered and a threat to human existence?  When the church's message to gay and lesbian persons is framed by the affirmation that every gay or lesbian person ever born is disordered--"Something is wrong with you"--and when that message moves to the conclusion that every gay and lesbian person in the world is a threat to human existence, is it any wonder that many gay and lesbian persons simply choose to walk away from the Catholic church?

And when our brothers and sisters of the center, the intellectual class that shapes the opinion of tchurch leaders, either remain silent about this problem or tacitly (and even overtly) defend those giving their gay brothers and sisters this message . . . ?  When there is, as a result, no dialogue about these issues in the publications of the powerful centrist opinion-making sector of the church, even if the topic on the table is the question of why attrition is occurring and what to do about it?

Given my preoccupation with these issues and my attempt--at the risk of appearing obsessive--to foster dialogue about these issues in American Catholicism in the past several years, I'm delighted to see that National Catholic Reporter published a first-hand statement by one courageous lesbian Catholic writer yesterday, shortly after I posted my two postings about the problem of unwelcome of gay and lesbian Catholicsin the U.S. (and the problem of eliciting honest conversation that takes seriously the testimony of gay and lesbian Catholics).  

NCR's essay is by Kate Childs Graham, a graduate of Catholic University of America (CUA). The essay is powerful, honest, valuable testimony about Childs Graham's experiences in the church, particularly at CUA, where she was told, when she entered, that CUA provides a welcoming space for gay and lesbian students, but found out immediately that the reality is quite different: she was called a fag in class, hounded by the ministry staff of the school, barred from participation in campus ministry activities, and forced to resign as leader of a women's prayer group.

As I wrote yesterday, "the Catholic church is one of the least welcoming social spaces in American society right now for those of us who are gay and lesbian."  And Childs Graham provides corroboration of that claim, though, as she rightly points out, there is a large and increasingly vocal group of American Catholics who push back against the attempt to demonize and exclude their gay brothers and sisters, and this pushback points the direction of hope.

Out of her experience of being made unwelcome at one of the flagship universities of American Catholicism (an experience that, based on my own experiences with the Catholic academy in the U.S., is likely to be very common for students in American Catholic universities), Childs Graham appeals to the leaders of the church to craft a welcoming church, to make the Catholic church and its institutions safe spaces for gay and lesbian people (and especially gay and lesbian youth) today.  And to speak out against bullying of gay youth.

She also addresses bloggers and those commenting on gay issues at Catholic blog sites, and asks that Catholic bloggers refrain from online bullying, from spreading messages of hate and condemnation of their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters at Catholic blog sites.  Check any thread at any Catholic blog site today, from the center to the far right, and notice the poison that Catholics feel free to inject into these discussions--free in the name of God to inject into the veins of their gay brothers and sisters--and you'll quickly conclude that Childs Graham is on target to issue this appeal.

To Catholic youth, Childs Graham says, "It does get better."  And,  there are safe and welcoming spaces in the American Catholic church: seek them out.  To Catholics in general, Childs Graham's message is simple and clear: "Standing together, we can create a church that is truly welcoming of all people."

This is a very important piece of testimony, and I'm delighted that NCR chose to publish it.  If nothing else, the appearance of this testimony in one of the major publications of the American Catholic center represents a new level of willingness on the part of the center to make room for openly gay voices, and to hear the first-hand testimony of  those voices.

This is an indispensable first step, if we really do care about why so many Catholics are walking away today, and if we want to do something about that problem.  Certainly, the reasons for the exodus go far beyond the question of how gay and lesbian Catholics are received by the Catholic community.  But this is also not an insignificant question to discuss, when the topic on the table is who is leaving and why they are leaving.

As I've noted in previous postings, when the 1986 Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith letter of the current Pope Benedict, then Cardinal Ratzinger, on the pastoral care of gay and lesbian persons, was issued, that pastoral letter began a purge of gay and lesbian Catholics from the church that has  never stopped.  The letter broke new ground by defining gay and lesbian persons as objectively disordered--a statement that had never been made by the magisterium in the past, and which is never applied to heterosexual Catholics even when they engage in "disordered" sexual behavior such as use of artificial contraceptives or masturbation.

The assault on the human dignity of gay and lesbian persons represented by the teaching on disorder, which has now been enshrined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, was followed by an immediate, savage purge in which the Vatican urged bishops to bar groups engaged in pastoral outreach to gay and lesbian persons from Catholic facilities.  The message of this purge was clear: you are not wanted.  You are not welcome, with your disordered lives.

As I've noted a number of times on this blog, in my hometown of Little Rock, when this purge took place--when the local chapter of Dignity was barred from meeting on Catholic premises--the entire chapter chose, en masse, to join the Episcopal church.  In our area, the Episcopal church has been conspicuously welcoming to those who are gay and lesbian.  The Catholic church has not.

Much hard work remains to be done, if the courageous appeal of Childs Graham to the Catholic community in the U.S. to create safe and welcoming spaces for gay and lesbian persons is to have any real effect.  Despite the claims of apologists that the church does not practice discrimination, openly gay and lesbian persons are unwelcome--almost across the board--as employees in Catholic institutions throughout the U.S.

In late August, the U.S. Catholic Bishops' Conference sent a letter to Congress demanding, in fact, that Congress continue to uphold the "right" of religious groups to discriminate in hiring and firing practices.  This letter seeks protection for Catholic institutions, quite precisely, to continue longstanding practices of barring openly gay persons from employment, and from legal liability if they choose to fire a gay employee simply because he/she is gay.

And, though Anne Hendershott challenges my report that openly gay or lesbian leaders on faculties of Catholic universities in the U.S. are almost nowhere to be found (and here),  I have seen no credible evidence to support the contention that most American Catholic universities are welcoming spaces for openly gay or lesbian faculty members, or to discredit the conclusion of scholar W. King Mott that "[t]here is no way the current hierarchy will allow a gay person to hold a position of authority [in a Catholic university] unless they are closeted and self-loathing."

As I am writing this posting, the Catholic bishops of North Carolina are lobbying to prevent legislation that would crack down on school bullying, as these bishops maintain that such legislation would be a Trojan horse to bring a "gay agenda" into schools.  And the Catholic bishops of Minnesota have accepted a sizable donation from a hidden donor to send a video attacking gay marriage to every Catholic household in the state, on the eve of an election in which only the Republican gubernatorial candidate is campaigning against same-sex marriage.

When the Catholic diocese of Portland, Maine, worked actively against the right of gay citizens of that state to have civil marriages, Catholic bishops from across the country sent money to Maine to assist in this battle.  That money was taken from donations given by Catholic parishioners in the expectation that the donations would be used to keep churches and schools open, to feed the hungry, tend to the sick, etc.--not to fight political battles in a state in which these Catholic donors did not even live.  Those donating these funds diverted to political use were not asked about the political diversion of their donations, or told that the funds were being used for this political purpose.

In the archdiocese of Denver last year, a Catholic school informed a same-sex couple who are practicing Catholics that their children are not welcome in Catholic schools.  When Catholic charitable organizations like Catholic Charities have been challenged to place children for adoption in households headed by same-sex parents, bishops have threatened to close those organizations and stop all their charitable work rather than to comply with requirements to place children in such households.

There is much work to do.  And the work goes right to the top, to the pastoral leaders of the Catholic church, who, over and over again, belie their claims to be interested in welcoming and loving all sons and daughters of God through their mean-spirited, unjust, harmful attacks on gay and lesbian persons--and, now, their refusal to speak out against bullying of gay youths.

I share Childs Graham's hope that the Catholic laity can make a real difference in this situation.  If they do so, it's clear to me that the path to real change lies in fiscal pressure by the laity, whose money funds these mean-spirited attacks, on the pastoral leaders of the church.  And the path to real change lies in the willingness of the powerful opinion makers of the center of the American Catholic church to admit, finally, that the church has a real problem on its hands, with its treatment of its gay and lesbian sons and daughters, and that no solution to the problem of attrition in American Catholicism that ignores this problem will be productive.

The Conversation the Catholic Center Continues to Refuse: Gays Not Welcome

And as a supplement to what I just posted: note the number of times in my conversation with Kathy at the Commonweal thread to which I draw readers' attention, when I asked Kathy what she thinks of Michael O'Loughlin's enumeration of the messages the church is giving its gay members today (and here).


And notice how she never once replied to that question, even as she maintained that the Catholic church is conspicuously welcoming to gay folks today, with the implication that I'm simply making up the message of unwelcome I hear as a gay person.  Or that I'm defective or malicious.

Imagine a welcome sign for every Catholic church in the land, in which O'Loughlin's list follows the word "welcome."

And then imagine a discussion of the church's relationship to gay and lesbian people which simply ignores this list--as if it is not there.  As if it is imaginary.  As if the gay and lesbian people who report being made unwelcome don't exist.  Or are defective or malicious, and therefore not to be heard.

And imagine, too, a discussion of Catholics leaving the church in droves that simply overlooks this large, conspicuous segment of brothers and sisters who report we are no longer in the pews, because we are not welcome.

And imagine such a discussion seeking to claim credibility as a meaningful discussion of the problem of attrition in American Catholicism today.  Or as an adequately Catholic discussion.

Imagine all of this, and you'll begin to imagine where we really are today, in American Catholicism's analysis of its serious problem of attrition.