tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27612445.post4654204158598056552..comments2024-03-23T12:05:23.537-05:00Comments on The Wild Reed: Responding to a "Pastorally Egregious Document"Michael J. Baylyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03087458490602152648noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27612445.post-3904138862119037992008-09-11T15:17:00.000-05:002008-09-11T15:17:00.000-05:00Okay, I get it - REALLY BAD self-hatred and intern...Okay, I get it - REALLY BAD self-hatred and internalized oppression. <BR/><BR/>Coupled with REALLY BAD self-deception and a lack of uncritical reception of an reflection on "received truth."<BR/><BR/>This is not a "gay" issue - its a human issue.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27612445.post-27541385255809499772008-09-11T13:16:00.000-05:002008-09-11T13:16:00.000-05:00The "problem" is lack of authenticity, or inauthen...The "problem" is lack of authenticity, or <B>inauthenticity,</B> whether (1) adopted as a strategy of denial, or (2) arises from conditioning and imprinting by bad nurturing, or (3) used defensively as an excuse of non-culpable sin -- or in some combination.<BR/><BR/>We all meet life's events and circumstances differently, but we can take various approaches that are similar in their nature to determine which allow us to be honest, genuine, authentic, respecting, and noble. This does not happen suddenly or spontaneously, but is a never-ending process of self-scrutiny, without succumbing to scrupulosity. <B>The self-reflexive value judgments are what give our lives their meaning and value,</B> and the practice of self-scrutiny is the means to doing so.<BR/><BR/><I>If X feels good, but one is told X is bad,</I> such claims need to be determined independently from authority -- especially from authority's known to be bad authorities. After we determine the validity of the claim, then we scrutinize ourselves against the true value judgments, not the bad judgments. Thus, (1) if X is quite good, notwithstanding some false teaching, then (2) we measure ourselves against the good value. This two-step process occupies an authentic person's attention, because the "feedback loop" of (1) valid claim to the good, (2) measured by our self-scrutiny to do good, ( = ) keeps us flourishing in personal excellence and authenticity. <BR/><BR/>The joy, happiness, fulfillment, enjoyment that ensues from authenticity is not only the fulcrum of life's meaning and values, it is the center of the exuberance of life -- notwithstanding hill and dale.<BR/><BR/>We have no need to question authorities we agree with, but when we are told authorities tell us "no" and we think "yes," then it is sloth not determine the truth, goodness, or rightness of the claim. An authentic person does this; the inauthentic person <I>avoids it</I> in manifest ways -- some of which I identify [supra]. He uses excuses, blame-games, denial, etc., which are all defense mechanisms of avoidance -- refusal to confront his own inauthenticity.<BR/><BR/>Some of the kinkiest queers accept the fact that they are psychosexually deviant, just as others have told them, and then set new "bars" in which to demonstrate it. What do they have to lose? They are already lost! The religious monk who tried to suppress himself, which clearly he was unable to do, spent 20 years roaming in a unnatural wilderness, not only affecting others, but dulling himself, both in life and as a charming person. But it was his charismatic personality and good looks that were being dulled by his denial, his obsessive-compulsive religious practices used to "overcome" his impulses, that finally had to be discarded entirely in order to allow him to see the true and authentic man he could again be. When he did, he found he was also loveable -- which, it turns out, is what he had allowed himself to believe from his Church than men who love men cannot be.<BR/><BR/>What kind of nonsense proclaims:<BR/><BR/>Homophilia is the <I>disposition</I> the Church now accepts as morally neutral (as if dispositions were not, as Aquinas rebuts), but <I>homoeroticism</I> is the act or acts of homophilia which the church regards as objectively immoral and gravely sinful. The more recent revisionism, which makes god the author of intrinsic disorders [the disposition], but humans culpable for acting on them [homoeroticism] is absurdly <B>untenable</B> and obscenely bad theology, and worse anthropology. Well, to act on a disposition IS who HE IS. If it is criminal, harmful, immoral, dangerous, he should suppress it, but if not, his own conscience will convict himself falsely for long. The authentic individual recognizes the conflict and resolves to remedy it, while the inauthentic individual does everything <I><B>but</B></I> -- including accepting his church, but then denouncing its teachings, and all sorts of queer confusions to no good purpose.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27612445.post-1384285328098032692008-09-11T08:56:00.000-05:002008-09-11T08:56:00.000-05:00TGS,So the problem is self-hatred and internalized...TGS,<BR/><BR/>So the problem is self-hatred and internalized oppression?<BR/><BR/>Just asking,<BR/><BR/>Mark A.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27612445.post-69588396925919372122008-09-10T18:06:00.000-05:002008-09-10T18:06:00.000-05:00Michael,We can all admire the handsome Boswell's C...Michael,<BR/><BR/>We can all admire the handsome Boswell's <I>Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality,</I> we can all grieve Boswell's premature death to AIDS, but few, very few people give John Boswell’s <I>Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe</I> (1994), any crediblity. It is a sand castle on a beach that the waves of oceanic truth cannot abide.<BR/><BR/>Anyone familiar with the monastic brotherhood knows that some communities promote sponsorship of one religious brother/sister by, for, and of another, but in no possible way were any of these same-sex (brotherhood) commitments akin to SSM/U. It offends all sensibility to stretch such absurdities to outrageous revisionism. But why did Boswell become so dishonest?<BR/><BR/>Like Queer Theory, Boswell's impending death took liberties that has no one would concede intellectually were he to have lived -- however handsome the Yale androphile may be, required <B>authenticity</B> not revised mythology.<BR/><BR/>I'm not denying monastics have had the opportunity to make it with other monastics -- heavens, a monastic seduced me at age 18 and I'm not even a Catholic -- how could I be? With someone capable of such affection and intimate expression, yet unable to look the man in the eyes whose other body parts fit quite nicely, why would anyone dare? <BR/><BR/>But sucking cock only brought the possibility to a climax he could not accept, since his Church could not. Sadly, this handsome and affectionate seducer took many men thereafter to his closet, seduced them for a time, only to repent in the morning. A Catholic guy I knew did late-afternoon confession, the Vigil Mass (in grace), and hit Dave's baths every week. In this order, lest any disorder send him to hell. The disorder was his dysfunctional histrionics which proved he could not accept himself and the faith which demanded he not be himself. He never was.<BR/><BR/>The impoverished life experience in denial or excuses for incapacity is <B>the problem,</B> not the solution for anyone. I've known men that used the Church's stance to deny themselves love (but enjoy the homoeroticism) because to love and enjoy another man was a sin he could not repent. One in particular, K. C. of Dignity, was a nice, but totally undignified, man.<BR/><BR/>These "cases" may have opened vistas for me and others, but their own homophobia, their guilt of sin and the consequences of hell, only serve to repeat offenses, by perpetuating the inability to accept "the problem." The PROBLEM is obvious to all, but those in denial, in and out of confessionals, on their way to Mass, before they finish the night in a bathhouse and in someone's arms, before all affection awake their guilt and terror. <BR/><BR/>The monk who seduced me is finally in a relationship now, but only after 20+ years of seducing guys, feeling filthy and sinful for corrupting others, hitting the confessional and doing penance, until week in and out, until something breaks. For Marc, he was and remains a genuine man, a loving man who loves his Beloved; but for every Marc, I can count hundreds of S&M-B&D unMarc's, whose self-loathing, self-hate, and self-corruption needs confirming as the horribly disordered men their church insists they are. THEY AGREE. They live disordered lives, to confirm THEY are <B>the problem,</B> that THEY are the corrupt sinner their church insists they are, that THEY are unloved of god, until they confess and do penance, that THEY are not living up to gawd's standards. They can't, and so finally they surrender -- not to their sexual authenticity -- but to the LIES they have lived for so long.<BR/><BR/>Another way to think about it: All the love he was capable of giving, but suppressed after doing a "deed" of intrinsic disorder, will never receive Vatican approval. It was not until he severed all ties with his Oppressor that his abilities to love -- as he had me -- found fulfillment. But the damages done to himself, if not to others, by hoping god would heal his healthy homoerotic love, should have suggested that the confessional box is just a closet in which to hide. Truly dark and truly hidden. The damage done to men who are truly capable of love -- receiving and giving -- that become the very antithesis with support of the institution that corrupted them originally, defends them when they corrupt others, and pretends the problem is in the link to gawd, has to be one of the most inhumane institutions on earth.<BR/><BR/>But look at all those who are corrupted in Zorastrianism -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- most beginning the first cognizances with cocks mutilated, people suspicious of male aggression, and males suspicious of their inner guilt. I'd rather die on the battlefield of Troy as honest and authentic than to die every day to the world in order to be alive to death. But, J-C-I prefer death, the deadly, the moribund, the failed -- and then blame others.<BR/><BR/>Who takes responsibility for honest feelings without becoming a capitol sin and a deadly maggot? Shall I start to name names? Or are they already legion?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27612445.post-45459076440012669322008-09-08T23:52:00.000-05:002008-09-08T23:52:00.000-05:00And just how did the Vatican respond to New Ways M...And just how did the Vatican respond to New Ways Ministries call for a correction to this document? The head of the said Congregation was elevated to Pontifex Maximus. God has got to have a sense of humor! I know I need to.kevin57https://www.blogger.com/profile/01681985465980196347noreply@blogger.com