"Harbour City" Sights

Here’s a few more pictures from my time in Sydney last week, accompanied by an excerpt from Damien Murphy’s appreciation of Sydney Harbour, one that is aptly entitled, “A Sparkling Jewel.”

Sydney exists because the harbour offered sanctuary [to the First Fleet on January 25, 1788] . . . Australia was created by a maritime nation far away. It’s unsurprising, then, that all the capital cities were established on rivers that offered both safe anchor and water supply. The other cities are in essence river towns. Remove the rivers from Hobart, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth today and the cities would remain the same. Take away the harbour and Sydney fades, not to the sameness of the other capitals but to oblivion, unrecognizable, its essence forever gone.

Over the years, Sydney Harbour has served as a sort of main street, a cesspool, and a speculator’s tool but it gave her people work, play, and a sense of self. Sydneysiders identify with the harbour in a way that is peculiar to the city. They know it’s their birthright and nothing can take it away.

. . . [A]s well as the beauty and lightness there is a sense of tragedy and loss about the harbour: Aborigines dying in her waters in an attempt to cool the effects of disease that came with the First Fleet, convicts banished to Pinchgut to roast in the sun, sinkings of coastal shipping and ferries, the Japanese submarine attack, and the early-morning joyriders catastrophe of this year are constant reminders of the other side of paradise.

Maybe it has to do with the harsh and remorseless dominance of time and tide, where sea and land come together so majestically, turning generations of human endeavour into something palpably fragile and stoic.

Many of those who first tried to define an Australian identity wrote and painted of the bush, yet curiously most chose to live around Sydney Harbour. And as their pastoral age faded into history, the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House secured Sydney Harbour as the personification of the past and future Australia, both to the rest of the nation and the world at large.

Above: The circular tower at the centre of this photograph was Australia’s first skyscraper. From 1967-1976 it was the tallest building in Sydney. It’s officially known as the Tower Building and is the main feature of a retail and business complex known as Australia Square.

I took this particular photo, along with the previous ones of Sydney Harbour, on Thursday, December 18, 2008.



Above and below: Coogee Beach - Sunday, December 14, 2008.




Above: Sydney skyline - Tuesday, December 16, 2008.



Above: Briody, Simon, Tess, and Victor. I was Tess and Briody’s fifth grade teacher in Goulburn in 1992! We’ve stayed in touch over the years and met for dinner in Newtown on Thursday, December 18, 2008. (You were missed, James!)



Above: A poster for the Sydney Dance Company that caught my eye at the Macdonaldtown train station.


Images: Michael J. Bayly

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Newtown
Port Macquarie

. . . and the 2006 posts:
Travelin' South
Last Days in Australia

A Story of Searching and Discovery

The following reflection by Jim Boyd, CSJ Associate, is excerpted from Winter’s Wisdom: Advent 2008 (Congregation of St, Joseph, La Grange Park, IL, 2008):

The Christmas event in Bethlehem, as described by Luke, is a story of searching and discovery. Joseph looking for a place to stay, the magi discovering a star, Mary looking deep into her heart, shepherds discovering what was announced and promised to them.

A very wise woman once told me that Christmas is different every year. Or put another way, each Christmas we celebrate will never be quite the same again. This notion seems at odds with the age-old story and rich tradition that surrounds this holy day. But something new and different does, and will, emerge every passing year that re-defines the Incarnation in our lives. We need to stay awake and be ready to welcome what is being birthed in us this year.

Peace and Happy Christmas!

Image: “The Holy Family” by Janet McKenzie. Oil on canvas, 42 x 54 inches. Collection of Loyola School, New York, NY. (To read an insightful commentary on this work of art, click here.)

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Clarity and Hope: A Christmas Reflection
What We Can Learn from the Story of the Magi
A Christmas Reflection by James Carroll

And a Merry Christmas to You Too, Papa

Various news agencies are reporting that in his “holiday address” to the Roman Curia, Pope Benedict XVI implied that saving humanity from homosexual behavior was just as important as saving the environment from destruction.

Following is how Phil Stewart of Reuters reports on the incident:

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict said on Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behavior was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

“(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed,” the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican's central administration.

“The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less.”

The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. It opposes gay marriage and, in October, a leading Vatican official called homosexuality “a deviation, an irregularity, a wound.”

The pope said humanity needed to “listen to the language of creation” to understand the intended roles of man and woman. He compared behavior beyond traditional heterosexual relations as “a destruction of God's work.”

He also defended the Church's right to “speak of human nature as man and woman, and ask that this order of creation be respected.”

Hmm . . . I’m sorry, but the equating of homosexuality with the destruction of the earth’s rainforests is one of those increasingly all too frequent Vatican moments when the classic words of comedienne Catherine Tate’s character Nan Taylor automatically come to mind: “What a load of old shit!”

And you know what? My sense is that most Catholics would concur. Indeed, the Vatican has absolutely zero credibility when it comes to pontificating about issues relating to either gender or sexuality. And given its embarrassing level of understanding of both of these issues, and its sordid history of sexual abuse, secrecy, and cover-ups, this is totally understandable and probably just as well.

I don’t intend spending too much time and energy on this latest homophobic statement from the halls of the Vatican (for one thing, I don’t want to spoil my Christmas by dwelling on such ignorance!), but I will share a few initial thoughts.


Narrow understanding

First, I can appreciate the pope’s desire to ensure that people live lives of fulfillment, and his belief that the journey to and experience of such human flourishing deserves to be safe guarded. But why such a narrow understanding of these journeys and experiences?

The vast majority of people – gay or straight – do not flourish living lives of celibacy (which is what the Roman Catholic Church insist that gay people do). Rather, they flourish when they engage in and build relational lives that are experienced and expressed sexually. Actual sex acts (the “homosexual behaviour” that the pope is fixated on) are just one aspect of such relational lives. It’s the quality of these relationships that the pope should be concerned about, not so much who puts what body part where and with whom. This latter type of fixation is typical of the psycho-sexually stunted. Surely those charged with leading the Church should be open to developing and articulating a healthier, more holistic, sexual theology. Oh, and I’m all for “listening to the language of creation” so as to help develop such a theology. Doing so, we’ll discover just how “natural” homosexuality and its expression is.


Where’s the evidence?

Second, where is the evidence for the pope’s contention that homosexual activity (which, as noted previously, he limits to homosexual genital acts; breathing, after all, is also for a homosexual, a “homosexual act”!) is as destructive as environmental degradation? If you’re going to drop a clanger like this, than you’d better have the hard evidence to back it up. Not surprisingly, none is forthcoming from the pontiff - as there is none! It’s all just the rhetoric of a discriminatory ideology.

And finally, what a pity that that part of the Roman Catholic Church that gets the most media attention is also the part that is the most regressive and ignorant when it comes to issues of gender and sexuality. I worry about the impact that media coverage of such papal ignorance has on young gay people and to youth questioning their sexual orientation. Imagine being one such youth and hearing that the expression of the sexuality of which you’re becoming aware is on the same level of destructiveness as global warming! For most adults, such a comparison is just plain loopy . . . “a load of old shit.” But sadly for questioning youth or for anyone struggling to live a life of integrity and integration as a gay or transgender person, there’s an added layer to the pope’s words - one that makes them, and the ignorance behind them, both dangerous and reprehensible.

In short, I think it’s the pope’s ignorant words that are destructive, that need to be confronted and transformed; not the loving expression of sexuality - gay or straight - engaged in by consenting adults. That’s my Christmas message to Benedict XVI. And my prayer is that he finds within his heart the courage to open himself to God’s transforming spirit, to be liberated from all ways of thinking that blinker and obstruct seeing the Light of Christ present and active in the lives and relationships of all. Amen.



Recommended Off-site Link:
The Vatican, Homosexuality, Yada, Yada - Iosephus (Salus Animarum Suprema Lex, December 28, 2008).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
A Catholic’s Prayer for His Fellow Pilgrim, Benedict XVI
The Many Manifestations of God’s Loving Embrace
Making Love, Giving Life
Listen Up, Papa!
What the Vatican Can Learn from the X-Men
The Triumph of Love: An Easter Reflection
Trusting God’s Generous Invitation
John McNeill’s Message to the US Bishops: “Enough!”
Relationship: The Crucial Factor in Sexual Morality
The Non-Negotiables of Human Sex
Joan Timmerman on the “Wisdom of the Body”
What is a “Lifestyle”?
The Many Forms of Courage
Beyond Courage
What Is It That Ails You?
Compassion, Christian Community, and Homosexuality
A Catholic Bibliography on Gay Issues

Newtown

I’ve spent the last week-and-a-half visiting friends in Sydney and the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.

My travels began on Saturday, December 13, when I made the seven-hour train trip from Wauchope, twelve kilometers inland from Port Macquarie, to Sydney. It’s a very picturesque journey, especially as one gets closer to Sydney and travel through the beautiful Hawkesbury River area.

Once at Sydney’s Central Station, I caught a city train to nearby Macdonaldtown, part of the inner city suburb (or neighborhood as they’d say in the U.S.) of Newtown.

My good friend Garth and his wife Jenya live in this vibrant, colourful (and very gay-friendly!) area, and it was with them that I stayed during my time in Sydney.

On that first night in Sydney, Garth, Jenya, and I attended our mutual friend Kristy’s birthday party at Rowda Ya-Habibi Lebanese Restaurant in Newtown. Garth and Kristy’s fiancée, Jeremiah, are two very good friends from my teaching days in Goulburn, a rural city south of Sydney. Jeremiah’s dad, Mike McGowan, was the principal of the primary school I taught at in Goulburn for six years before I relocated to the U.S. in 1994.

Above: Jeremiah and Garth - Saturday, December 13, 2008.

Jeremiah and Kristy had traveled from Townsville in Queensland to celebrate Kristy’s birthday with friends in Sydney, and to spend Christmas with Jeremiah’s family in the New South Wales town of Wagga Wagga.

Several members of the McGowan family also attended Kristy’s party. So, all in all, it was not only a great birthday celebration, but for many of those present, a happy reunion of friends and family.






Along with the great experience of reconnecting with friends from my past life in Australia, I also enjoyed soaking up the atmosphere of Newtown during my time in Sydney.

The most visible feature of this very cosmopolitan and, in many ways, alternative area of the city is King Street – a bustling thoroughfare, lined with an array of interesting shops and restaurants - that winds like a colourful ribbon through the inner west of Sydney.




Newton has the distinction of being the only place in Australia where a McDonald’s fast food outlet failed and closed up shop! That tells you something about the “alternative” character of the place. Of course, with its numerous shops - including expensive clothing boutiques - and its overall emphasis on consumerism, Newtown is very much mainstream.

Above: This photo gives a sense of Newtown’s proximity to
Sydney’s central business district (CDB), or “downtown” as they’d
say in the U.S. That’s the CBD’s Sydney Tower in the background.

In that part of Newtown in which I stayed, a maze of residential streets, dominated by rows of terrace houses, run off and parallel to King Street. One of a number of beautiful and distinguishing features of these houses, most of which are over a hundred years old, is the intricate iron-wrought railings of their second floor balconies.






I got to know one street in particular as at least twice a day I walked from Garth and Jenya’s house to King Street. “It’s a great little street, my street,” Garth said at one point. And I certainly couldn’t disagree. The houses, the gardens with their abundance of ferns, palms, and all kinds of fragrant flowering trees, and the great eucalyptuses that line the street – all were delightful to my senses, as was the diversity of people and places on King Street.









One night Garth remarked: “If you had been a Sydney boy, I’m sure Newtown is where you would be living.” I smiled at this – at just the thought of it, and of the many different turns my life would have had to have taken, the many different choices I would have had to have made, so as to be now living in Newtown, Australia and not St. Paul, U.S.A.

It was fun to entertain an alternative history and life for myself but, in the end, even the idea of a new start in Newtown seemed totally unrealistic. For one thing, how on earth would I earn the kind of money needed to live in such a trendy, cosmopolitan place? And also, even though I found the colour and bustle of the place energizing for the duration of my stay, I think that in the long term I would find it draining.

So, while I’m uncomfortable with being thought of as fatalistic, I nevertheless believe I both chose and was called in some way to be in that part of the U.S. where I am now and to be doing the kind of work that I’m doing - at least for now!

Above: With Garth and Jeremiah. (No doubt remembering
Garth’s Big Day in 2006!)

Above (from left): Garth, Jenya, Kristy, and Jeremiah
- December 15, 2008.

NOTE: Around this time last year, Garth visited me in Minnesota. For images of his visit, see the previous Wild Reed post, A Snowy December - with an Aussie Connection.

See also the 2006 Wild Reed posts:
Travelin’ North
Alva Beach
Last Day in Townsville
Travelin’ South (Part 1)
Travelin’ South (Part 2)
Travelin’ South (Part 3)
Garth’s Big Day
Goulburn Revisited
Goulburn Landmarks
Remnants of a Past Life (Part 1)
Remnants of a Past Life (Part 2)
Goulburn Reunion
Return to Wagga

Perspectives on Natural Law

Part 3: Daniel Helminiak

Following is a third perspective on the concept of natural law from the compilation of perspectives that the leadership of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM) recently sent to Archbishop John Nienstedt and the priests of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. (For why we shared these perspectives, click here.)

This particular perspective is from theologian and author Daniel Helminiak and is excerpted from an interview I conducted with Daniel for the Spring 2006 issue of CPCSM’s journal publication, the Rainbow Spirit.

__________________________

The [Roman] 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.

- Excerpted from “A New Way of Envisioning Wholeness: A Conversation with Daniel Helminiak” by Michael J. Bayly, Rainbow Spirit, Spring 2006.


NEXT: Part 4: Garry Wills

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Perspectives on Natural Law: Part 1 - Herbert McCabe, OP
• Perspectives on Natural Law: Part 2 - Judith Web Kay

John McNeill's Message to the US Bishops: "Enough!"

In his recent open letter to the Roman Catholic Bishops of the U.S., author, theologian, psychotherapist, and former priest John J. McNeill contends that as a result of their unwillingness to dialogue with gay and lesbian Catholics, nothing less than the bishops’ moral authority is at stake.

Writes McNeill: “The [bishops’] ignorance and distortion of homosexuality, the use of stereotypes and falsehoods in official Church documents, forces us who are gay Catholics to issue the institutional Church a serious warning. Your ignorance of homosexuality can no longer be excused as inculpable; it has become of necessity a deliberate and malicious ignorance. In the name of Catholic gays and lesbians everywhere, we cry out 'Enough!’”

McNeill also poses a fundamental question that I know many Catholics, regardless of sexual orientation, wrestle with: “What kind of faith and trust can I place in a teaching authority that clearly acts in an unloving, hateful and destructive way toward . . . gay [people] and is more interested in defending its institutional interest than it is in truth and justice?”

Following is the full text of John McNeill’s letter (with thanks to Joseph O’Leary who first posted it on his blogsite, Joseph S. O’Leary: Essays on Literary and Theological Themes.

__________________________________

An Open Letter to the American Bishops
on the Issue of Homosexuality

In 1974, the delegates of Dignity’s first national convention requested in a letter, that a dialogue be opened between the American bishops and the members of the Catholic gay and lesbian community. With very few exceptions that letter was ignored.

Now, nearly thirty years later, once again I call upon the American bishops to open that dialogue.

For over thirty years, I have ministered as priest and psychotherapist to lesbians and gays. I helped found Dignity New York to provide a safe and loving community within the Catholic Church for gay people. This June will mark the twenty-fifth year I have given retreats for lesbians and gays, at Kirkridge, an ecumenical retreat center.

I have written three books on gay spirituality: The Church and the Homosexual, Taking a Chance on God, and Freedom, Glorious Freedom. I also published an autobiography on my own spiritual journey as a gay priest. As a result of my experience, I have come to the conclusion that what is at stake at this point in time is not only the spiritual and psychological health of many gay and lesbian Catholics and other lesbian and gay Christians. What is at stake is your moral authority to teach on this issue.

In the past, when you undertook a listening process to hear what the Holy Spirit was saying through the People of God, you won our respect. We respected you when you made your statements on the economy, on nuclear warfare and, especially, your aborted effort to draw up a letter on the role of women in the Church. You listened carefully to what women had to say and, and drew up your statements responding to what you heard from women. These actions gave us gay and lesbians reason to hope that the Holy Spirit would lead you into a spirit of willingness to listen to us gay and lesbian Catholics.

What is at stake now is your own moral authority! Unless we gay and lesbian Catholics receive the message that you take us seriously and are willing to listen carefully to what the Holy Spirit is saying to you through our lives and our experience, your judgments on homosexuality will be, for the most part, ignored and you will lose what authority you have left to deserve to be listened to with respect on this issue.

I have never heard the same level of courage from the American Bishops in dealing with the Vatican as that shown by the Major Superiors of Religious Men in response to the egregious document issued by the Congregation for the Defense of the Faith, entitled, “Some Considerations Concerning Homosexual Persons.” [NOTE: It’s actually not clear to which document McNeill is referring. It could be either the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2003 document, Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, or its 2005 document, Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with Regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in View of Their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders. Then again, McNeill may be referring to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops statement, Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination:
Guidelines for Pastoral Care.]

[The Major Superiors of Religious Men write:] “We view (this document) as a hindrance to the Church leaders of the United States in this most difficult and sensitive area of human living. . . . We are shocked that the statement calls for discrimination against gay men and lesbian women. We find the reasoning for supporting such discrimination to be strained, unconvincing and counterproductive to our statements and actions to support the pastoral needs and personal dignity of such persons. Far from a help to the Bishops and other religious leaders in the United States Catholic Church, the statement complicates our already complex ministry to all people.

“Moreover we find the arguments used to justify discrimination based on stereotypes and falsehoods that are out of touch with modern psychological and sociological understandings of human sexuality. We regret such actions by the CDF and we reaffirm our support for the human rights of all our brothers and sisters.”

As a gay Catholic theologian and psychotherapist, I am fully aware of the enormous destruction recent Vatican documents have caused in the psychic life of young Catholic gays, and of the violence they will provoke against all gay people. I find myself in a dilemma: what kind of faith and trust can I place in a teaching authority that I see clearly acts in an unloving, hateful and destructive way toward my gay family and is more interested in defending its institutional interest than it is in truth and justice?

In the name of the thousands of gay and lesbian Catholics and other Christians to whom it has been my God-given privilege to minister, I make this statement:

At this point, the ignorance and distortion of homosexuality, the use of stereotypes and falsehoods in official Church documents, forces us who are gay Catholics to issue the institutional Church a serious warning. Your ignorance of homosexuality can no longer be excused as inculpable; it has become of necessity a deliberate and malicious ignorance. In the name of Catholic gays and lesbians everywhere, we cry out “Enough!”

Enough! Enough of your distortions of Scripture. You continue to claim that a loving homosexual act in a committed relationship is condemned in Scripture, when competent scholars are nearly unanimous in acknowledging that nowhere in Scripture is the problem of sexual acts between two gay men or lesbian women who love each other, ever dealt with, never mind condemned. You must listen to biblical scholars to find out what Scripture truly has to say about homosexual relationships.

Enough! Enough of your efforts to reduce all homosexual acts to expressions of lust, and your refusal to see them as possible expressions of a deep and genuine human love. The second group you must listen to are competent professional psychiatrists and psychotherapists from whom you can learn about the healthy and positive nature of mature gay and lesbian relationships. They will assure you that homosexual orientation is both unchosen and unchangeable and that any ministry promising to change that orientation is a fraud.

Enough! Enough of your efforts through groups like Courage and other exgay ministries to lead young gays to internalize self-hatred with the result that they are able to relate to God only as a God of fear, shame and guilt and lose all hope in a God of mercy and love. What is bad psychology has to be bad theology!

Enough! Enough again, of your efforts to foster hatred, violence, discrimination and rejection of us in the human community. We gay and lesbian Catholics pray daily that the Holy Spirit will lead you into a spirit of repentance. You must publicly accept your share of the blame for gay murders and bashing and so many suicides of young gays and ask forgiveness from God and from the gay community.

Enough, also, of driving us from the home of our mother, the Church, and attempting to deny us the fullness of human intimacy and sexual love. You frequently base that denial by an appeal to the dead letter of the “natural law.” Another group to whom you must listen are the moral theologians who, as a majority, argue that natural law is no longer an adequate basis for dealing with sexual questions. They must be dealt with within the context of interpersonal human relationships.

Above all else, you must enter into dialogue with the gay and lesbian members of the Catholic community. We are the ones living out the human experience of a gay orientation, so we alone can discern directly in our experience what God’s spirit is saying to us.

And for the first time in history you have gay and lesbian Catholic communities of worship and prayer who are seeking individually and collectively to hear what the Spirit is saying to them in their gay experience - what experiences lead to the peace and joy of oneness with the Spirit of God and what experiences lead away from that peace and joy!

God gave you the commission of discerning the truth. But there is no mandate from Jesus Christ to “create” the truth. We pray daily that the Holy Spirit will lead you to search humbly for the truth concerning homosexuality through dialogue with your lesbian sisters and gay brothers.

The only consolation I can offer gay and lesbian Catholics in the meantime is the profound hope that the very absurdity and hateful spirit of recent Vatican documents will lead gay Catholics to refuse them and recognize the contradiction of their message and that of Jesus who never once spoke a negative word concerning homosexuals.

I work, hope and pray that lesbian and gay Catholics and other gay Christians will exercise their legitimate freedom of conscience, discerning what God is saying to them directly through their gay experience. I hope, too, that they will be able to de-fang the poisons of pathologically homophobic religion, accepting the good news that God loves them and accepts them as gays and lesbians and refusing to be caught in the vortex of self-hatred vis-à-vis a God of fear.

I believe that we are at the moment of a special “kairos” in this matter. The Holy Spirit is “doing something new.” I was recently the guest at a gay ecumenical community that established homes for adult retarded people in the city of Basel in Switzerland. The extraordinary spirit of love and compassion that permeated that community was a foretaste of what lies in the future. I believe there is a vast reservoir of human and divine love that has remained until now untapped because of prejudice and homophobia. The Spirit is calling on you to help release that vast potential of human and divine love through your action sat this national conference.

Please be assured that the actions of Soulforce and Dignity at your national conference are based in profound respect and love. We pray and hope that the same Holy Spirit who has graciously liberated us who are gay to self-respect and self-love will liberate in you, our Catholic leaders, a profound love for your gay brothers and lesbian sisters and melt away all prejudice and judgmentalism in your hearts. May you make us welcome as full members in your family in Christ.

May God bless your efforts!

Sincerely in Christ
John J. McNeill


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
From Rome to Minneapolis, Dialogue is What’s Needed
No Place for Dialogue in Archdiocesan Newspaper
A Catholic Presence at Gay Pride
To Whom the Future of the Catholic Church Belongs
Our Catholic “Stonewall Moment”
Truth Telling: The Greatest of Sins in a Dysfuctional Church
What Is It That Ails You?
When “Guidelines” Lack Guidance
Be Not Afraid, You Can Be Happy and Gay
The Bishops’ “Guidelines”: A Parent’s Response
Homosexuality and the Priesthood
Beyond Courage

Interiors III

Images: Michael J. Bayly.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Interiors I
Interiors II
Rainy October Afternoon

Perspectives on Natural Law

Part 2: Judith Web Kay

Following is a second perspective on the concept of natural law from the compilation of perspectives that CPCSM leadership recently sent to Archbishop John Nienstedt and the priests of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. (For why we shared these perspectives, click here.)

This particular perspective is from feminist theologian Judith Web Kay and was first published in the Dictionary of Feminist Theologies (1997).

__________________________

As a method of ethics, natural law can be used metaethically to provide a base for moral discernment or normatively to prescribe duties. As a political theory it can be used either to challenge or to justify oppression. These variable functions of natural law depend on operative discourses about human nature and law.

Thomas Aquinas understood humans to be inherently social, embodied, dynamic, intelligent, and attracted to their true good. Law referred to dynamic movement toward an end. In his hands natural law provided metaethical judgments about the goods necessary for human flourishing. It could be used to condemn social arrangements that failed to promote human well-being. In contrast, physicalist versions of natural law equate nature with biology and understand law as obligation. It then proscribes actions deemed unnatural and legitimizes the status quo.

Feminist theologians (and others) have sought to redefine nature in ways that do not dichotomize biology and reason from history and that avoid reifying historical particularities into ontological truths. . . . While engaged in struggles to free themselves and others from external and internal bondage, they have generated hypotheses about what harms humans and what is necessary for their well-being. These working hypotheses are tested in praxis by how well they explain the oppressed’s collusion with and resistance to oppression, avoid regarding people as inherent victims or oppressors, help people distinguish internalized oppression from more human ways of being, expose false universalizing and denial of difference, and promote universal solidarity. By using these hypotheses to inform their praxis, many are discovering if in fact they provide an adequate account of what is good for humans.

- Judith Web Kay (excerpted from Letty M. Russell and J. Shannon Clarkson (eds.), Dictionary of Feminist Theologies, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 1996, p. 192.)


NEXT: Part 3: Daniel Helminiak

See also the previous Wild Reed post:
• Perspectives on Natural Law: Part 1 - Herbert McCabe, OP

Port Macquarie

Back in Minnesota, my friend Paula recently inquired about Port Macquarie, the coastal town in Australia where I’m currently staying with my parents who relocated here from the inland farming community of Gunnedah in 2002. My younger brother and his family also live in the Port Macquarie area.






The opening two images of Port Macquarie are from the Internet but the following photographs are ones that I took earlier this week. They’re accompanied by some facts about the town that readers of The Wild Reed may find of interest.

First, some basics: Port Macquarie (pop. 60,000) is located approximately 390 km north of Sydney, and 570km south of Brisbane. The town is located at the mouth of the Hastings River, with the nearest railway town being Wauchope, about 19 kilometres to the west.



Above: Horton Street, part of the commercial centre of Port Macquarie.

The site of Port Macquarie was first visited by Europeans in 1818 when John Oxley reached the Pacific Ocean from the interior, after his journey to explore inland New South Wales. He named the location after the Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie.

Oxley noted that “the port abounds with fish, the sharks were larger and more numerous than I have ever before observed. The forest hills and rising grounds abounded with large kangaroos and the marshes afford shelter and support to innumerable wild fowl. Independent of the Hastings River, the area is generally well watered, there is a fine spring at the very entrance to the Port.”



Above: The Port Macquarie Cultural Centre. Still under construction, the centre has been nicknamed "the glass house" by locals.



Above: One of the oldest buildings in Port Macquarie, the former Court House built in 1869.

In 1821 Port Macquarie was founded as a penal settlement for convicts sentenced for crimes committed in New South Wales. Two years later the first sugar cane to be cultivated in Australia was planted at the settlement. The region was opened to free settlers in 1830 after it was decided to abandon Port Macquarie as a penal settlement. Because of its good pastoral land, timber resources and fisheries, the area was quickly settled. During the 1840s the “Wool Road” from the Northern Tablelands was constructed to enable wool and other produce to be shipped from the port.

Port Macquarie was declared a municipality in 1887, but the town never progressed as an actual port due to presence of a notorious coastal bar across the mouth of the river.



Above: A statue of Sir Edmund Barton (1849-1920), Australia's first prime minister and a founding justice of the High Court of Australia.

Port Macquarie's historic Royal Hotel is pictured in the background.



Above: Another view of Horton Street.



Above: St Thomas’ Anglican Church, a Georgian building designed by Lieutenant T. Owen and built by convicts under military supervision during 1824-1828.

The church is among the oldest in Australia and one of the few remaining convict built churches. Inside are red cedar box pews, distinct to that period in church architecture. The church’s Walker Pipe Organ is the only one of its type in the southern hemisphere, and I’ve been told that the views of the coastline, town and river from the church’s tower are spectacular. I hope to soon check these views out for myself!

St. Thomas’ is classified by the National Trust of Australia and is also registered on the National Estate.



Above: St. Agnes Catholic Church. Standing at the front of the church, one gets a sweeping view of the commercial centre of town (see below).




Above: The Alma Doepel, permanently docked at Lady Nelson Wharf on the Hastings River in Port Macquarie.

The Alma Doepel is the only surviving Australian built commercial square rigged sailing vessel, and is the most significant historic sailing ship still in service. For more information about the Alma Doepel, click here.



See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Out and About - November 2008
Advent: Renewing Our Connection to the Sacred (for some photos of the beaches of Port Macquarie)
The Empty Beach

For images of the beautiful terrain of and around Port Macquarie taken during my 2006 visit, see the previous Wild Reed posts:
A Solitary Ramble
Coastal Views
Bago Bluff
Rocky Beach
Pacific Skies
Afternoon
Boorgana
Flynns Beach
A Summer Afternoon
Ellenborough Falls
Billabong Koala Park
Last Days in Australia

Recommended Off-site Link:
Port Macquarie Visitor Centre