The Time is Now . . .

. . . to come together to work for the common good.

This was the theme of this year’s annual In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre’s MayDay celebration in Minneapolis.

Held last Sunday, May 7, the event – featuring a parade, Tree of Life ceremony, and festival – was, as always, an incredibly creative, colorful, and inspiring experience.

Here’s what the organizers said of this year’s theme:

Last spring, the parade asked ‘Where do we go from here?’ This year the May Day community brainstorm meetings tackled the question, ‘What do we want Minneapolis to look like in 50 years?’

The future envisioned at these meetings provides for the Common Good and cultivates the Common Wealth, where each person is an honored and responsible citizen.

We don’t need to wait until we’ve figured it all out. People devastated by Hurrican Katrina – barely able to comprehend, let alone process their loss – immediately picked up tools to salvage their houses, their neighborhoods, their lives. In multitudes, the more fortunate immediately opened their wallets, their homes, and their hearts to help.

The rebuilding, and mourning, continues. The wars, and the terror, continues. National debates on immigration policy and the privatization of natural resources and wilderness areas rage on. In the midst of all this, we say: ‘Let's get started! The time is now!’

Our trumpets purify the air!
Clearing the way for the new,
dissipating narrow, outmoded ways
of being and seeing our world!

Our trumpets summon angels and ancestors!
Awakening the slumbering dreamer,
singer and doer deep within all of us!

Our trumpets are a call to action
to open our eyes and our hearts
and begin the real work.

"United 93" - A Socialist Perspective

Joanne Laurier of the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) recently reviewed Paul Greengrass’ new film United 93 – an account of the hijacked airliner that crashed in a Pennsylvania field on September 11, 2001. I've always found WSWS's movie reviews to be very insightful as they often provide historical and social analysis absent from mainstream film reviews. This particular review is no exception.

United 93, notes Laurier, is “not a flag-waving epic.” The film “does not exploit the doomed passengers, refashioning ordinary people responding to a dire situation into heroes driven to save the White House or the Capitol building. Nor does it simply dehumanize the terrorist hijackers, guilty as they were of an atrocious, anti-human crime.”

Nevertheless, says Laurier, Greengrass has “largely evaded his artistic and intellectual responsibilities,” by failing to take a “clear and unflinching look” at his subject matter – omitting, for instance, “any reference to the process by which the tragic event came to pass.”

Notes Laurier: “A ‘clear and unflinching’ look at 9/11 would inevitably allude to Washington’s decades-long sponsorship of Islamic fundamentalism, underscoring the fact that the hijackers of Flight 93 were not even born when the US began courting and encouraging reactionary Islamicism, first to weaken left-wing and secular nationalist forces in the Middle East and later in Afghanistan to undermine the Soviet Union.”

“Even within the film’s ‘docudrama’ framework, this would have been feasible,” suggests Laurier. “Greengrass places titles at the end of the film, commenting on various facets of the 9/11 events. Why could he not have similarly begun his film with titles conveying the fact, for example, that in 1979 the US commenced giving financial and military backing to the Islamic fundamentalists engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul? Or why not a title indicating that Osama bin Laden was essentially on the CIA payroll in the early 1980s, through Pakistani intelligence? Why not a reference to the 500,000 Iraqis who died as a result of US-led sanctions or Washington’s unstinting support for the suppression of the Palestinians? Why not a title explaining that on August 6, 2001, George W. Bush’s daily intelligence briefing was entitled ‘Bin Laden determined to strike in US’? What questions such an approach would have raised in the spectator’s mind!”

Yet the director, says Laurier, “has made it a guiding principle to offer no explanation and no background – none whatsoever! – to a world-historical event that provided the justification for two neo-colonial wars and the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands. Artists of another day would have found such an approach unthinkable. Disasters of far less geopolitical consequence, like the sinking of the Titanic, were treated more seriously decades ago. Insofar as the film implies a cause or source of the violence, it lies in some inexplicable or perhaps eternal religious fanaticism, the bankrupt argument of right-wingers such as Christopher Hitchens.”

In short, Laurier laments that “Greengrass’ artistic evasiveness has produced a film that is subject to almost any interpretation, including one that claims the post-9/11 world necessitates the prosecution of a one-size-fits-all-evils ‘war on terror,’ a euphemism for the pursuit of American global domination . . . In the most neutral—and politically forgiving—of interpretations, United 93 hardly differs, in its final portions, from conventional thrillers and disaster films.”

To read the entire review, click here.

In Susu's Garden

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

The Non-Negotiables of Human Sex

– Artwork by Juliusz Lewandowski

Yesterday when writing about the Catholic hierarchy's sexual theology, I shared insights from biblical scholar and theologian Daniel Helminiak which critique and challenge the Vatican's limited understanding of human sexuality.

Earlier this year I interviewed Daniel for the Spring 2006 issue of The Rainbow Spirit, the journal publication of the Twin Cities-based Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM).

Following are excerpts from this interview.

____________________


The Non-Negotiables of Human Sex
Excerpts from "A New Way of Envisioning Wholeness:
A Conversation with Daniel Helminiak"

By Michael J. Bayly
Rainbow Spirit
Spring 2006

Michael Bayly: In Roman Catholicism, it’s not so much biblical fundamentalism that is used against gay people but doctrinal fundamentalism. The orthodox view is that the Church’s moral teaching is unchanged and unchangeable. Accordingly, homosexual relationships have always been condemned and can never be viewed as morally acceptable. Author Mark Jordan has expressed the view that “any real change in the ‘magisterial’ pronouncements [regarding issues such as homosexuality] would require not just revision of conclusions in moral theology but renunciation of the methods of authoritative teaching.” What are your thoughts on this matter?

Daniel Helminiak: It is important to remember that no Catholic ethical teaching is defined infallibly. Certain beliefs have been proclaimed infallibly, but never an ethical teaching. The Catholic mind is smart enough to know that right and wrong often depend on concrete circumstances and limited human understanding.

As circumstances and understanding change, it is fully to be expected that ethical teaching will have to change. The long-standing Christian condemnation of usury – taking interest on money – is a blatant case in point; so is the practice of slavery. What was forbidden in one case is now fully allowed, and what was allowed and defended is now condemned. A similar change can and will happen with sexual ethics.

Of course, the Catholic Church is highly invested in its sexual ethics. In some ways, its whole system – the celibate all-male priesthood and hierarchy, for example – depends on that ethics. So political forces come into play; change will not be easy. And the more the Vatican insists on its current sexual teaching, the deeper it paints itself into a corner and the harder the time it will have extricating itself. The crisis is inevitable.

Infallibly defined Catholic teaching – such as the impossibility of real conflict between the truths of faith and science – will force the question. As in the case of biblical interpretation, so will be the case of sexuality. As more and more is understood about human sexuality, a field of research barely a century old, the more surely the current Catholic teaching will have to change.

When that change occurs, Church leaders may well attempt their standard maneuver and claim that “this is what we really always meant.” But such a fiction can no longer stand. Our current knowledge of history is too sophisticated. Such pretense is impossible. Thus, it remains to be seen what will become of Church authority when in the postmodern world, so well informed by communications media, all the world will plainly know the facts of the matter and the Vatican will have to admit that its teaching on this point was wrong. It remains to be seen what that new era of Catholicism will look like. However, the Church did not collapse when banks started paying interest and the Church itself started taking advantage; nor did the Church collapse when slavery was finally outlawed or democracy approved or women given the vote or Galileo pardoned. Somehow the Church will survive. But this time, it seems, the Church will have to have learned a lesson and go on more openly, honestly, and wisely – less authoritatively, less autocratically.


Michael Bayly: “Relativism” has become somewhat of a dirty word in Catholic theology as it’s often contrasted with “biblical truth” and/or “sacred tradition.” Can you talk about this hostility to the concept of relativism? In your view, how is the term “relativism” understood (or misunderstood) by its critics?

Daniel Helminiak: What does relativism mean? The term itself is relative. If it means that there is no objective truth, that one opinion is as valid as any other, then, yes, it is, indeed, a dirty word, and relativism needs to be discredited. Such radical relativism is the challenge of the postmodern world, no doubt about it. And almost no one has a solution to the current philosophical crisis – except, I think, my mentor Bernard Lonergan, but his solution is subtle and profound, deeply dependent on honesty and good will, commodities that are in short supply in our day and its public life.

There is good reason to be concerned about relativism. However, the answer to it is not the assertion of supposedly revealed truth, whether biblical or doctrinal. By insisting on doctrinal teaching – about things of this world but not, certainly, about the things of heaven, about which no one has certain knowledge in any case – the Church makes a grave mistake. It simply buys into the very relativism it attempts to combat. Merely to insist dogmatically that something is true (“Take it on faith,” “Yield to authority”) is to insist that whatever can be insistently affirmed is somehow ipso facto true. But saying so does not make things so, even when it is the Vatican who does the saying. And more and more, we all know this fact.

Our age is so formed by critical thinking and scientific method and conflicted by an array of competing claims that assertions that lack grounding in defensible evidence cannot be taken seriously. Truth is what can be shown to be reasonable in light of the available evidence, and the only semblance of “truth” that we have is the proverbial “best available opinion of the day” – which tomorrow might be upgraded, nuanced, or refined. To conclude that this set of affairs, the human situation, implies that there is no truth to be known or that human knowing does not really know is to doom ourselves. Real relativism is dangerous.

But if relativism simply means that we all have different perspectives and no one person has the whole picture, then, yes, such relativism is acceptable; it is needed. But call it perspectivism (à la Lonergan), not relativism and avoid ambiguous terminology in this matter. Of course, what I say here depends on the supposition that we are able to know correctly and able to approach the truth and often to capture it. If you protest that this is just my opinion, then I will protest that your opinion is also just your opinion. Then, neither is valid. Discussion goes nowhere. Then the whole enterprise of growth and learning appears to be a farce.


Michael Bayly: For many GLBT Catholics the theory of natural law is something used to denounce and condemn their sexual orientation and relationships. Yet you maintain that in reality such a theory supports and affirms homosexuality. Can you talk about your recent work in linking science to natural law theory?

Daniel Helminiak: The Catholic Church has commandeered the notion of natural law and made it a synonym for the supposition that the purpose of sex is procreation. Then, some other use of sex is supposedly a “violation of natural law.”

But natural law has been around much longer than the Catholic Church. Its roots are in the deepest strata of Western civilization. Its real meaning is simply this: We are capable of understanding how things function, and ethical living is simply to follow those ways. To follow natural law is, as it were, to follow the directions that came with the item. Now, when it comes to sex, the question of the day is this: What is the nature of sex? What is the purpose and function of sex?

To be sure, procreation is an inherent aspect of sexuality. But there is more to sex than that, especially when we look at sex in human beings. Procreation is an animal function. In humans sex is taken up into a new array of purposes. Human sex involves emotional bonding and the dreams and promises of lovers. That is to say, beyond the physical, human sex also involves the psychological and the spiritual. (I see “dreams and promises,” or ideals, and beliefs and ethics – all ways of suggesting meaning and value – as spiritual matters.) So having sex (physical) seduces lovers (emotional) into dreaming dreams and making promises (spiritual). The trend of sex is toward higher things. And since the spiritual dimension of human sexual sharing is the highest and most significant, it is what determines the unique nature of human sexuality, so it is what must be preserved in every case. Not procreation, but genuine care and loving are the non-negotiables of human sex.

Contemporary social science suggests and supports the interpretation of sex that I have just sketched. Science is the method of our age for discovering the nature of things. This point is obvious in the physical sciences. Physics and chemistry have opened undreamed-of possibility for us – because we have come to understand the true nature of things. Francis Bacon pointed out that nature can only be controlled by being obeyed. The same applies to the social sciences although in their case the questions are much more difficult and finding consensus takes more effort. Even so, it is science that will tell us the nature of things, and science is not whimsical. Its conclusions do not depend on inspiration or supposed revelation. Science depends on demonstrable evidence; it is a self-correcting enterprise. Our best bet today is to rely on science to discern “the nature of things.”

Thus, I say that natural law is the best way to go when debate about sexual ethics arises. What is the “best available opinion of the day” about sex? Invoke it when you want to know how one should use sex. The ethical way is to use sex as it was made to be used, and we know how it was made to be used by studying it. All the studies, for example, support homosexuality as a widespread normal variation in God’s creation. In this sense, homosexuality is natural. It is part of the nature of things. In humans in a novel way, it expresses the essential of sex: interpersonal bonding. So engaging in it could hardly be wrong per se.

__________________________________

CPCSM's inaugural Bill Kummer Forum on April 28-29, 2006 in Minneapolis, featured renowned theologian and author Daniel Helminiak, who offered a two-part presentation entitled “Gay Body, Gay Soul: A Catholic LGBTI Perspective on Sexuality, Spirituality and Marriage.”

Pictured from left: Rev. Paul Tucker (All God’s Children Metropolitan Community Church), Daniel Helminiak, Paul Fleege (CPCSM treasurer), David McCaffrey (CPCSM co-founder), and Michael Bayly (CPCSM executive coordinator).

Full Bloom

This past Saturday (May 7) my friend Mary Lynn and I went photographing some of the flowering trees here in the Twin Cities. As you can see, they're in full bloom and look amazingly beautiful.

The trees in this photo are located near Lake Nokomis on Minnehaha Parkway in Minneapolis.

Rejecting the “Lesser Evil”

Last month the BBC reported a “senior Roman Catholic official” as saying that the Vatican was “preparing to publish a statement on the use of condoms by people who have AIDS.” The BBC noted that Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan had told La Repubblica newspaper that Pope Benedict XVI asked the Vatican's council for health care to study the issue. It was also noted that “the Vatican has long maintained that abstinence is the best way to tackle HIV/AIDS.”

Also last month, a retired archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, backed the use of condoms for married couples to prevent AIDS transmission. Martini said that in couples where one partner had HIV/AIDS, the use of condoms was “a lesser evil.”

Yet it wasn’t long before the Vatican released a statement saying that its position has not changed – and will not change soon. The European version of Time magazine reported that “[Vatican] officials flatly dismiss reports that the Vatican is about to release a document that will condone any condom use — even in cases in which one spouse has HIV.” The Time article also noted Barragán’s backtracking on the matter, quoting him as saying that his office was producing only an internal “study” of the issue. Another official was quoted as saying that “there's no sign at all that a document is set to come out.”

Before the Vatican threw its bucket of cold water on the warming prospect of common sense and compassion being reflected in its sexual theology, John Allen explored the notion of “lesser evil” in an article in the May 5 issue of the US-based National Catholic Reporter.

“If the [expected Vatican] document simply asserts that a condom is a ‘lesser evil,’” wrote Allen, “experts say it would do little more than ratify what is already a broad consensus among Catholic moral theologians. Traditionally, confessors and pastors have long been permitted to counsel a ‘lesser evil’ to prevent greater harm . . . As applied to condoms, the ‘lesser evil’ argument [says that] if there’s a danger of HIV infection, a married couple should abstain from sex altogether. If they can’t be persuaded to do so, however, it’s better that they use the condom rather than endangering life.”

Such an argument could, of course, be applied to the issue of homosexuality. For example, given the statistics on GLBT persons, substance abuse, and suicide, a gay man could legitimately argue that it’s a “lesser evil” for him to seek and build a loving, sexual relationship than be in a lonely, potentially depressed state wherein he would be prone to self harm through alcohol abuse and/or suicide.

Of course, many people view the whole “lesser evil” argument deeply flawed. After all, the Vatican’s deliberations and pontifications on many of the sexual matters to which the argument could be applied, stem from the dubious belief that “sex = procreation.” Such a contention, theologian Daniel Helminiak notes, emphasizes “the generically animal (biological), rather than the distinctively human (interpersonal)” dimension of human sexuality. In addition, the “sex = procreation” argument ignores contemporary research and personal experience with regards human sexual relationships.

Helminiak, and others, argue (the rather obvious reality) that in Church practice, procreation is not essential to sex. “Stoic philosophy,” Helminiak writes, “held that conception of offspring is the only ethically acceptable reason for having sex. Especially through St. Augustine, early Christianity incorporated this notion, and some churches invoke it to condemn homosexual acts. Yet many Christian denominations allow the use of contraceptives and marry couples who plan to remain childless, and all [including the Catholic Church] allow marriage and sex between known sterile couples or between couples beyond childbearing age. Even the Catholic Church has recently emphasized the emotional bonding and loving sharing that are central to sexual intimacy and, while forbidding use of ‘artificial contraceptives,’ does allow the use of the ‘rhythm method’ to deliberately avoid conception – which distinction is questionable. Evidently, the churches do not really believe that the essential purpose of sexual sharing is procreation. Religious insistence on procreation is disingenuous.”

And thus so too are notions of “the lesser evil” when contemplating and discussing non-procreative sex between loving couples - gay or straight.

Alliant Action

My friend Gaius snapped this photo of me last Wednesday (May 3) at the weekly peace vigil outside the corporate headquarters of Alliant TechSystems - Minnesota's largest military contractor and one of the nation's largest manufacturer of ammunition.

It's not just the issue that's making me look so glum. It's also the fact that attending the Alliant vigil means getting up at 6:00 a.m, and I'm, in the words of my late grandmother, Nanna Sparkes, “an owl, not a fowl”!

I've been participating in the weekly vigil at Alliant since February 1997. For more photographs and information about this vigil, visit my Faces of Resistance website and click on “Gallery 8: Alliant Action.”

“What’s a Conscientious Faggot to Do?”

My friend Lydia recently shared with me an article from the website Dissident Voice.

Written by Charlie Hinton and entitled “The Burka, the Castro, and the Unborn Child,” the article draws connections between the various forms of religious fundamentalism and their impact on “women and queers.”

Following is an excerpt.

I’m troubled by the evolution of sexuality since I came out in the glory days of gay liberation. Capitalism has turned what started out for me as a personal matter of sexual freedom, the casting off of the repressed puritanical sexuality of the Cold War United States, into big business and a new kind of sexual exploitation. Pornography has evolved from an underground subculture to a major industry with its own celebrities and millionaires. Advertising and popular culture flaunt sexuality and nakedness to the point that ‘sexual liberation’ has become more about the commodification of sex than about the liberation of human beings . . . I really don’t like pornography – its stereotypical bodies and mechanical sex. There are times I’d rather not be bombarded with pornographic video ads when I walk down Castro Street, and frankly, I feel solidarity with people of all faiths who’d like to raise their children in a less sex-obsessed environment.

The one force that binds together all forms of fundamentalist religion is their adherence to patriarchy, with strictly defined roles for men and women. I fear the power and potential for violence of the fundamentalist religious tide that is sweeping the world – not just Protestant Christianity and Islam, but also fundamentalist Judaism, Hinduism, Opus Dei Catholicism, and others. As women, queers, and trans people challenge patriarchal sex roles and division of labor, male supremacists respond with ever more force and violence.

The world finds itself at a particularly risky juncture, but one pregnant with revolution and change. In the Islamic world, religion is used as an organizing force to fight against imperial aggression and colonial occupation. In the Christian world, religion is used as a bulwark to defend ‘traditional family values,’ which include imperial aggression and colonial occupation. In both cases women and queers suffer. What’s a conscientious faggot to do?

Hinton goes on to outline a number of responses to this question, which is one reason why I like and recommend his article. He doesn’t just highlight the negative, but offers possible solutions and alternatives.

To read the entire article, click here.

Reflections on Associate/Consociate Programs by Joan Chittister

Yesterday I shared how I've recently began the process of consociate membership with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, St. Paul Province.

Consociate programs of religious orders, also known as associate programs, are becoming quite commonplace throughout the world. Several years ago, my mother, for instance, participated in the process of becoming an associate of the Sisters of Mercy through their congregation in Gunnedah, Australia.

Following are thoughts on the phenomenon of associate/consociate programs by Joan Chittister, OSB:

_________________________________

Associate pograms . . . embody a bold, bold theology. They demonstrate in a period of crippling clericalism and a closed esslesiology, that the charisms of Jesus which the church holds in trust, those personifications in us of the ongoing spirit of Jesus - the spirit of mercy, the spirit of contemplation, the spirit of love, the spirit of truth, the spirit of prophecy, the spirit of vision and courage and crucifixion for justice’s sake; all the gifts of which Paul speaks, are not for the keeping by a few. There are not some of us who are holy and some of us not! There are not some of us who embody the gifts of the spirit and some of us who do not. There are not some of us who are gift to the church and some of us who are not. . . .

No one and nothing encapsulates the whole life of Jesus. No one embodies all the gifts of Jesus at one time: Only Jesus is Jesus. But the gifts of the life of Jesus, we’re told in 1 Corinthians, remain, nevertheless, because the spirit gives them now to us as carriers of these religious traditions and also to [each one of us] as bearers of them anew.

As a result, some of us have one gift and some of us have another gift, and together we have a gift that is greater than either of us, and greater than both of us separately and alone. And together we make it visible in new ways. And together we make it vocal again in the new language of a new time. And therein lies the glory of the associate programs that are springing up in the church again from religious order to religious order, from coast to coast, from continent to continent, everywhere.

It is the associate programs of religious orders that are becoming tentacles of the spirit in the nucleus of the world, a veritable critical mass of new life and new hope and new expressions of Jesus alive in us. . . .

Associate programs model a whole church, a church that is wholly ministering, wholly open, wholly renewed in the very heart of a church become, over time, too male, too clerical, too distant from the people of God. . . .

Associate programs demonstrate what Da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’ – with its all-male, apostolic, privatized version of Jesus’ eucharistic theology – did not, but which Bohdan Piasecki’s new print of men, women, and children eating together at the feast makes plain: the table to which Jesus calls us is a table of men and women, of apostles and disciples, of young and old, all sharing the same meal, all called to the same cup, and all of them participants in the theological development of the early Christian community. They remind us of the circle of Jesus that takes unlike people in, but which, over the centuries, became a pious pyramid designed to keep most people down and out.



Associate programs dispel the image of exclusivity that makes spirituality the purview of a private club of cognoscenti, of special people – people specifically privileged, specifically gendered, supposedly more knowledgeable, specially recognized, specifically sexual – who define its limits and confine its rewards to themselves.

Finally, associate programs enable lay members and religious congregations to strengthen the gifts of the other and to learn from the gifts of the other at the same time. Associates bring to a congregation the gift of immersion in another whole dimension of life – with all its insights, all its understandings, all its muddy, complex complications and its cry for our awareness, our involvement, our voice. Religious bring to associates the lived experience of a long-standing spiritual tradition that has withstood the test of time over centuries of challenge, stabilized whole layers of people in the midst of grave dangers, and given direction to whole bodies of seekers at times of great darkness.

Beginning the Process

Last Monday I was welcomed as a candidate for consociate membership with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (CSJ), a Catholic religious order dedicated to living active, inclusive love – loving God and neighbor without distinction.

Consociates are women and men of diverse life-styles and faith traditions committed to living the mission of the CSJs within the context of their lives and responsibilities. After a two-year process, involving learning CSJ history and governance, participating in CSJ activities, and demonstrating how one’s life as a consociate extends the CSJ mission, candidates make a commitment vow and are welcomed as consociates. My "companions" on this journey are my dear friends Rita McDonald, CSJ, and (pictured with me below) Marguerite Corcoran, CSJ.



Following are my responses to questions that were part of the first stage of the consociate candidacy process:


Please share some of your background (e.g., education, family, work, etc.)

I was born and raised in rural Australia, where I attended Catholic grade school and high school. Before relocating to the US in 1994, I taught at a Catholic elementary school in Goulburn for six years. I’ve always had a great interest in facilitating and encouraging conversation and discussion about the experience of God in human life. I also feel called to explore the various intersections of religion and culture – in particular the realm of theology and the arts.

I originally came to the US so as to come out as a gay man and to study for a Masters in Theology at the College of St. Catherine. After graduating in 1996, I taught various religion classes in the Liberal Arts and Science department of St. Catherine’s Minneapolis campus. From 2000-2003 I worked as director of the Education for Liberation program at Spirit of the Lakes United Church of Christ in Minneapolis.

Since 2003 I’ve served as the executive coordinator of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM). In 2003 I graduated from United Theological Seminary with a second Masters – this one in Theology and the Arts. I’m a member of both Spirit of the Lakes UCC and St. Stephen's Catholic Church in South Minneapolis. My family in Australia are very supportive of all aspects of my life in the US. My parents visited the Twin Cities in July 2005 and met many of my friends – including several of my CSJ friends.


What is your history with the Sisters of St. Joseph and Consociates?

My journey with the CSJs began in 1994 when I commenced my studies at the College of St. Catherine - founded in 1905 by the CSJs. In 1997 I became involved in the Twin Cities justice and peace community – in particular, the weekly vigil at the corporate headquarters of Alliant TechSystems, the state’s largest military contractor. Through such involvement I came to forge lasting friendships with many CSJs.

I’ve also built lasting friendships with a number of CSJs through my work with CPCSM. The Sisters have, over the years, been very supportive of the ministry of CPCSM, and I value the opportunities I’ve had to facilitate various collaborations between CPCSM and the CSJs. Our dear friend and CPCSM co-founder Bill Kummer went through the consociate process in the last years of his life. I learnt a lot about the CSJs as a result of walking with Bill, and certainly appreciated the CSJs support of Bill as he prepared for his death.


What draws you to the Sisters of St. Joseph and Consociates?

The mission of the CSJs - to love God and neighbor without distinction - resonates with me, and the intentionality of the consociate process is very appealing to me. Also, the strong sense of community that the CSJs exude and their compassionate engagement with the world, draws me to seek to be a consociate member of the CSJ community.


Why do you want to be a CSJ consociate? How does it fit your personal goals?

The thought of journeying with the CSJ/consociate community, learning and growing from such shared pilgrimage, and being able to share my gifts and talents along the way, is the main reason why I want to be a CSJ consociate. A personal goal is to be always growing in awareness and compassion, and the CSJ/consociate community clearly encourages and nurtures such growth.


What do you ask of the CSJ community?

I simply ask to be welcomed as a fellow pilgrim with the CSJ community, and that the members of this community walk with me as together we seek to embody God’s transforming love in our world. The CSJs have a long history of embodying this love in powerful and often cutting-edge ways. I resonate with such ways and feel that I – and the CSJ community – can benefit from our journeying together. Given my history with the CSJs, this shared journey is already well underway, yet I look forward to it being enhanced, formalized and ritualized as a result of my going through the process of becoming a CSJ consociate.


To learn more about the CSJ consociate program, click here.

Wow!

. . . my first YouTube download!

Fittingly, I’ve decided to share the Kate Bush song “Wow”!

I’ve been a fan of Kate Bush since she first burst onto the music scene in 1978. Her music (which, as one critic has noted, has always “dared to walk the line between the sublime and the demented”) played an important part in my adolescent years. She was obviously “different,” and accordingly often dismissed and even ridiculed by some. Yet, without doubt, she was creative and successful on her own terms.



As a teenager becoming aware that I was gay and therefore also “different,” I found solace in the music of Kate Bush. It reassured me that “different” could be something positive and creative. I even discovered a pro-gay song on her second album, Lionheart. Entitled “Kashka from Baghdad,” it told the tale of a man who “lives in sin, they say, with another man.” Yet despite the secrecy and scandal of such an arrangement, Kate sings longingly of how the two men “know the way to be happy.”

“Wow” is also from Lionheart, and was Kate's fourth single release (peaking at No. 14 on the UK charts in March 1979). Its accompanying music video was somewhat controversial, owing to the gesture Kate makes when she sings about the drama queen actor who’ll never make the big time because he’s always “too busy hitting the Vaseline”!

Commenting on “Wow” in 1979, Kate noted that it’s “a song about the music business, not just rock music but show business in general, including acting and theatre.”

At another time she remarked that “the [song] is a bit of a send-up of a lot of things in showbiz.” When she acknowledged, in the same interview, the large presence of gay people in the entertainment industry, Kate was quick to stress that this was “just an observation, not a criticism.”

In the liner notes of her 1986 compilation album, The Whole Story, Kate writes of “Wow”: “I had forgotten how beautiful the strings are on this track. Andrew Powell’s arrangement is so moody.”

I couldn’t agree more! But judge for yourself as you sit back and experience the incomparable Kate Bush . . .





For more of Kate Bush’s thoughts about this and other songs she has written and performed, click here.

To view other Kate Bush videos, click here.

For the latest Kate Bush news, click here.

For a review of Kate's latest album Aerial (2005), click here.

To the Lighthouse . . .

I finally saw the film Half Light starring Demi Moore and featuring the ever-so talented (and good-looking) Scottish actor Hans Matheson. The film’s being promoted as a “supernatural thriller,” with Hans playing a rather mysterious lighthouse keeper named Angus.

The movie was filmed in Cornwall, and so the scenery and cinematography are quite spectacular. Hans does a great job (as always), but the rest of the film is just so-so. The plot line, for instance, is very predictable.

Here in the US, Half Light was a “straight to DVD” release, so I wasn’t expecting too much. If nothing else, it was good to see Hans featuring so prominently in a mainstream film - even if his character does come to a rather gruesome end.

Click here for further information – including more images – from Half Light.



I was first introduced to Hans Matheson in 2003 when I saw him play the lead role in the 2002 TV mini-series, Doctor Zhivago, based on the novel by Boris Pasternak. From what I’ve read and seen of this young actor I’d have to agree with Keira Knightly, his Doctor Zhivago co-star, when she says that Hans has “a truly poetic soul.”

In a November 16, 2002 interview with Karen Hockney of The Scotsman Online, for instance, Hans remarks, “I found [Pasternak's] book incredibly poetic and detailed - I could relate to it. I hadn’t seen [David Lean’s 1965 film version] before I auditioned, but when I read the script I saw a fantastic love story. Then I watched the film and thought it was very good. Omar Sharif was fantastic and so was Julie Christie, but it was a completely different story to the book.”

He notes that “[Lean’s] film was groundbreaking in its time but cinema has become more daring in the last ten years. I think [Lean’s] film was limited emotionally and I hope that [with this new version] we are breaking new ground in terms of the emotional barriers. Yury [Zhivago] is a man of great integrity and I feel very strongly about the love he has for Lara and his wife Tonya.”

The Scotsman article also notes that Hans “has a huge social conscience and eschews the material rewards and fame factor that his job brings, choosing to lead a simple lifestyle that he finds more enriching. He won’t be drawn on whether he has a girlfriend and says only that he lives alone in a large Victorian flat in Chislehurst, Kent. He relaxes by playing the guitar and violin, which he started learning for a film role [Canone Inverso] three years ago and has kept up ever since.

“He also chooses to travel everywhere by train rather than plane. His journey to Prague [for the filming of Doctor Zhivago] took a day and a half overland rather than a two-hour flight. ‘Given the choice, I’d always rather go by train,’ he says. ‘Aeroplanes are the death of travel. You never see where you’re travelling or the countries you’re passing through on a plane. On a train, you can read a book or think about what is going on in your life. You have absolutely free time.’”


See also the related Wild Reed posts:
Hans Matheson in The Tudors
A Devilish Turn

Recommended Off-site Link:
Hans Matheson Online

A Catholic's Prayer for his Fellow Pilgrim, Benedict XVI

Almost a year ago to the day, I had the following commentary published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

___________________________

A Catholic’s Prayer for his Fellow Pilgrim

By Michael J. Bayly

Star Tribune
May 14, 2005

The "primacy of conscience" is a core teaching of the Catholic faith. It's a teaching that the new pope, as Father Joseph Ratzinger, eloquently expressed in 1968 when, as chair of dogmatic theology at the University of Tubingen, he noted that "above the pope as an expression of the binding claim of church authority, stands one's own conscience, which has to be obeyed first of all, if need be against the demands of church authority."*

Many Catholics are hoping that as Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Ratzinger will honor the role of conscience and be open to the presence of God contained within the insights and experiences of all who have been true to their conscience. In particular, we pray that he will be open to the wisdom of gay and lesbian Catholics who have followed their conscience against the church's demand for lifelong celibacy, and built loving, committed relationships that are expressed and experienced both sexually and sacramentally.

In this time of new beginnings, we also pray that the new pope will be open to the forgiveness we offer all within the church who have promulgated misguided, fearful and hurtful words with regard to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) people, their lives and their relationships.

Such damaging words stem from the current closed-circuit nature of church teaching on human sexuality – teaching that, accordingly, is woefully deficient in light of both modern science and the experiences of GLBT individuals who have followed their conscience. Yet there is hope, as many GLBT Catholics, in a spirit of love and forgiveness, are open to helping the wider church discover and appreciate another part of the unfolding fullness of God's truth.

Being open to having church teaching shaped by new insights – be they of either science or conscience – is not succumbing to "relativism," but rather acknowledging the incarnational aspect of our faith, one that recognizes God's ongoing revelation through the conduit of human life. Accordingly, many faithful Catholics contend that the relational lives of GLBT persons who are following their conscience constitute a teaching moment for the church – one that should not be ignored or discounted, but rather welcomed and celebrated.

Unfortunately, however, many religious traditions are dominated by what theologian Marcus Borg terms, "conventional wisdom" – with its emphasis on rewards and punishments; its penchant for hierarchies, literalism and absolute answers for everything; its fear of ambiguity; and its suspicion of those who follow their conscience. Such elements of conventionality are all too easily propped up as idols, which is why Jesus, when condemning the Pharisees of his day as "whitened sepulchers," identified the way of conventional wisdom as the broad path to spiritual death.

As GLBT Catholics, our prayer is that through respectful dialogue and the sharing of our experience of God's presence in our lives, we may, like our brother Jesus, invite all to embrace an alternative, life-giving wisdom – one grounded in an experience of God as abundant, surprising, gracious and compassionate. Such qualities lead to understanding religion not as unquestioning obedience, but as trustful openness to God who is very much present throughout the vast arena of human life and relationships. It is within this arena that we are called to continue our journey together as God's pilgrim church.

In facing the enormous task of leading such a pilgrimage, Pope Benedict observed at his inauguration that, "I am not alone. I do not have to carry alone what in truth I could never carry alone." In a spirit of trustful openness, may the pope recognize that GLBT Catholics who have followed their conscience "against the demands of church authority" have something to offer that is both beautiful and holy when it comes to the daunting yet exhilarating task of being part of the living, evolving Catholic Church.

* From a commentary on Gaudium et Spes (“The Church in the Modern World”) in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Vorgrimler, Herbert (Ed.), Burns and Oats, 1969, p. 134.

Somewhere In Between

Earlier this year I was honored to be invited to deliver the homily at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church as part of their Sunday worship on Martin Luther King, Jr. Weekend. Following is both the contemporary reading I chose and the text of my homily.

Contemporary Reading
A Collection of Quotes from Coretta Scott King

“Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions.”
(Chicago Tribune, 4/1/98)

“I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and that I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' I appeal to everyone who believes in [my husband’s] dream, to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”
(Reuters, 3/31/98)

“Like Martin, I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.”
(6/23/94)

Homily
“Somewhere in Between” by Michael J. Bayly
St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church
January 15, 2006

One reason I appreciate the quotes we’ve just heard from Coretta Scott King is that they remind me of that crucial point in her husband’s life when he made a leap of insight and recognized the connections between seemingly unrelated issues. It was 1967, and he saw the connections, the relationship, between racial inequality, social inequality, and militarism. As a result of this connection-making, he soon denounced the Vietnam War. A short time later he was assassinated.

Many have concluded that it was no accident that Martin Luther King Jr. was killed soon after he started making the connections; soon after he began denouncing the Vietnam War in particular, and American militarism in general.

What interests me is the place that both Martin and Coretta came to and stood so as to make the connections they made, and speak the words of solidarity they spoke. I’d like to explore that place with you this morning, that sacred space that I’ve come to call “somewhere in between.”

Now I have to tell you that my use of this rather poetic expression is totally inspired by a song written by Kate Bush and included on her latest album, Aerial. Within the context of this song, “somewhere in between” refers to and celebrates twilight – that magical in-between time that is neither yet also both day and night.

This idea of “somewhere in between” also has theological significance for me. I once had a theology professor at the College of St. Catherine who maintained that there is a tendency for humans to gravitate to the extremes; to move, in other words, towards those often polarizing extremes of a given issue or situation. Why is this so?

It’s because at the extremes it is safe. You know exactly where you stand and in what to believe. Everything, and I mean everything, is clear-cut, black and white. One doesn’t have to be bothered by pesky questions or unsettling ambiguities.

I think of the extremes as steep and jagged mountains – majestic and triumphant, but, in reality, cold and barren; unable to support any growth or any life of depth or complexity. They are also places from which any questioning or healthy skepticism is banished. They are often, therefore, the birthplace of fanatical devotion to narrow preoccupations; the birthplace of irrational fears associated with difference and change; the birthplace of dehumanizing stereotypes and sweeping judgmental pronouncements.

I think of the institutional component of our Church and how so many of its recent pronouncements regarding gay and lesbian people have clearly been born from such places. I think of the two extreme views that the Church presents of gay men – the first being that of the promiscuous sexual outlaw, the second being that of the afflicted individual bound to lifelong celibacy.

Well, I’m sorry, but I’ve discovered that I’m not very good at being either celibate or promiscuous. I guess I’m somewhere in between.

Indeed, it’s what I long for – a searching life “somewhere in between.” Not a desperately searching life, but one filled with hope and the joy of pilgrimage, one that is respectful of honest doubts, one that is open to authentic relationships and to God in many worlds.

I hope one day to marry the man I love – and I have a dream of holding our marriage ceremony within the tidal zone of a beach, in that place “somewhere in between” the land and the sea.

Of course as you’re well aware, such a legal arrangement is currently impossible in Minnesota where neither sacramental nor civil marriages are recognized. And if our Archbishop and others in the archdiocese have their way, not only would civil marriage be banned, but all legal equivalents, such as domestic partnerships and civil unions.

I lament the recent actions taken by the archdiocese in support of the so-called “Minnesota Marriage Amendment” – an amendment that would enact such a sweeping ban on all types of same-gender unions. Such actions are a clear sign that the institutional Church has closed itself off from the Spirit of God present and active in the lives and relationships of gay and lesbian people.

The actions of the archdiocese derive from a place of extremism, and we know this because there’s no acknowledgement of the need for dialogue on this issue, let alone the attempt to engage in such dialogue.

When it comes to the issue of homosexuality, our Church hierarchy seems to be operating from that extreme position of religious imperialism: we have the answers, we have always had the answers, there can be no change, your experiences in the matter don’t count, you need to be quiet, you need to obey.

It doesn’t sound like the voice and message of Jesus, does it?

The total disregard of the findings of science is another way that we can tell that the recent actions of the archdiocese come from a place of extremism. The archdiocese justifies its active support of the “marriage amendment” by stating that same-gender marriage would be harmful for children as children do best in two-parent families in which the “complementarity of the sexes” is present. Yet to date, no relevant or credible evidence to support such a contention has been presented by the archdiocese. There are studies available that address this issue, yet none of their findings support the statements of the archdiocese.

One example: in a 2002 article in Pediatrics [Vol. 109 No. 2 February 2002, pp. 341-344], the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, it is reported that, “A growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that children who grow up with one or two gay and/or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual. Children’s optimal development seems to be influenced more by the nature of the relationships and interactions within the family unit than by the particular structural form it takes.”

Clearly, there’s a tension within our Church when it comes to talking about issues of human sexuality. And I think this is because we often have two different models of revelation in conflict whenever we engage in such talk.

Many Catholics – including those in positions of ecclesiastical leadership – see truths about human life and relationships as being handed down from on high, complete and unchangeable. Yet as Pope John XXIII reminded us, “We are not on earth to guard a museum but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”

Such a statement implies that revelation filters upwards through human life and experience, that revelation is ongoing. This is a concept – a reality – that is both wondrous and unsettling.

Yet for those who, for whatever reason, have gravitated towards and entrenched themselves within the lofty mountains of religious extremism, it’s a concept that is very threatening. Embracing the reality of ongoing revelation challenges us to come down from our isolated bastions of superiority, challenges us to come out of our comfortable ghettos of formulated answers, challenges us to enter into compassionate – and at times difficult – engagement with others in that often messy but uniquely human space in-between the extremes.

I would imagine that most of us are somewhere in between the various extremes that both our church and society often present to us. Even the president gives us the false choice of extremes when he says that we must be either with him or with the terrorists. I don’t think so.

No, I, and many of you, are somewhere in between. And I think that’s okay. In fact, I think it’s more than okay. I believe we’re called to stand and live in the often messy middle between polarizing extremes. Such an “in-between” place is like a valley – green and fertile – that lies between those mountains of extremism. It’s not a place of indecision or lukewarm commitments. It’s not a place where “anything goes.” Rather it’s a place where we allow our convictions and beliefs the opportunity to be informed and shaped by new insights born of our experiences and the experiences of others; a place where we get to discover the light of God in unexpected places and faces.

In other words, that space between the extremes is the realm of authentic human experience, and therefore authentic religious experience. In that space we are all on the same level and can look into one another’s eyes as we share the reality and truth of our experiences. In that space we can walk and journey with each other, we can be in relationship. And in that space between the extremes we can collectively live and embody that fullness of life and truth that Jesus spoke about and that our church claims to possess. It is in the messy middle that we discern and embody God’s ongoing revelation and where accordingly, our church can be most catholic.

Our brother Jesus lived and died upon that middle ground, the ground of authentic human experience. And so did the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. In the heady days of the sixties, Dr. King must have been tempted to move towards the extremes. He could have stayed silent and obediently supported the status quo. He could have gone the other way and scaled the peaks of judgment and denouncement of white America, calling for a race war and for no dialogue and no compromise.

Instead, Martin reached out to others, worked with others, listened to others, forged relationships and alliances, and made the connections between various issues. His widow, Coretta, clearly continues his work.

May we continue such work also, and strive to always stay and live lives of consciousness and compassion in that sacred “in-between” space.

Amen.


NOTE: Two weeks after I delivered this homily, Coretta Scott King passed away. She will always be remembered with love and gratitude by the GLBT community.



Open and closing images: Michael J. Bayly.

The Oak and the Reed

The oak said to the reed:
"Nature did you wrong.
To you a tiny wren is a burden.
A mild puff of wind forces your head low.
I, a huge Caucasian peak, defy the sun's rays and the raging storms.
A gale for you is a breeze for me.
If you let me shelter you, you would suffer less.
I would defend you.
But you were born on the edges of the kingdom of storms.
Nature was unfair to you."

"Your pity," answered the reed, "is kind, but unnecessary.
I fear not the wind.
I bend without breaking.
You have borne its gusts without flexing your spine.
But wait and see."

And as he spoke, from the distant horizon
came the worst storm the North has ever known.

The oak remained rigid, the reed bent.

Harder, the wind uprooted him whose head touched the sky
and whose feet, the empire of the dead.

NOTE: This version of Jean de La Fontaine interpretation of the Aesop fable, "The Oak and the Reed," is taken from André Téchiné's film Wild Reeds.