A Delightful Summer's Afternoon and a Moving Tale

This past Sunday I spent a delightful afternoon with my friends Kathleen & Joey, and John & Kathy and their three sons Noah, Cole, and Aaron.

Part of our time together was spent not far from my St. Paul home, down by the Mississippi River – on the bluffs just below the University of St. Thomas (above) and in the shady ravine of the nearby creek that flows into the river.



Above: Aaron (left) and Noah clambering down to the river.



Above: Aaron and Cole. I think of all of us, Cole enjoyed climbing around on the bluffs the most. Indeed, he was as agile and sure-footed as a young goat!



Above: While at the foot of the bluffs we befriended a young boy named Darius, who offered to lead us through the ravine to the natural spring that is the source of the creek.



Above: Aaron and Kathy.



Above: At the foot of a little waterfall. From left: Noah, John, and Aaron.



Above and below: Can you believe these photos are taken in the heart of an metropolitan area of 3.5 million people? That’s the Twin Cities for you.




Above (from left): Cole, Kathy, Noah, John, and Kathleen.



Above: Aaron doing his best Tarzan impersonation (or is that a Howler Monkey?).

After our exploring expedition along the Mississippi, we all returned to my home in St. Paul where I hosted a BBQ. It was a perfect evening for grilling and socializing on the back deck. Afterward we adjourned indoors and watched Hayao Miyazaki’s animated classic, Howl’s Moving Castle.

It’s one of my all-time favorite films, and the following review does a good job in helping explain why.

______________________________________

A Moving Tale

A review of Hayao Miyazaki’s film, Howl’s Moving Castle,
by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

Synopsis: Young Sophie, who works in her family’s hat shop in a land that has just gone to war, is saved from attack by evil spirits by the handsome young wizard Howl. A jealous witch turns Sophie into a 90-year-old woman, and in an effort to lift the curse, Sophie becomes a passenger abroad Howl’s castle, which moves across the land and is powered by a talking energy flame named Calcifer. A young boy, Markl, is Howl’s assistant. Howl and Calcifer have their own curses they wish lifted, and are unable, it seems, to help themselves, let alone Sophie.

Oh, what a pleasure to experience another animated masterwork by Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese director who also was behind the 2002 Academy Award-winning animated film, Spirit Away.

Miyazaki’s films always have a spiritual perspective. In this one, based on a novel by Diane Wynne Jones, there is no simplistic division of the world into good guys and bad guys, no “us” versus “them” battles in which we cheer for the heroes and hiss when the villains appear on the screen. In Howl’s Moving Castle, humans, demons, sorcerers, and witches all demonstrate moments of goodness, selfishness, and folly. For this achievement alone, Miyazaki deserves to be commended for advancing the cause of a mystical appreciation of our connections with all others, no matter how strange or unappealing they seem at first.

No one need be cast out of our hearts. For example, in one of the most daring developments in the story, the elderly Sophie [pictured at far right] volunteers to look after the vanquished Witch of the Waste [left], the same one who put her under a spell.

A second admirable motif in this drama is that being old need not be a terrible and unappealing fate. This is almost never seen in films made in the West, where youth is worshipped and elders are treated as invisible men and women. After Sophie is transformed into an old woman, she is at first stunned by this staggering change in her appearance. But then she chooses to learn to relax into her new persona. This Sophie is an improved version of the younger, who was shy, frightened of challenges, and lacking in both energy and self-confidence. Sophie the elder embarks on an adventure that takes her into a world far beyond anything she could have imagined before.


Working as Howl’s housekeeper, she has more energy and fulfillment than ever. Sophie the elder is not afraid to adapt to all the changes in her life nor does she have any doubts about speaking her mind. Miyazki shows that this character’s face is young when she sleeps but while she is working to save Howl, hers is a face of embodied wisdom and courage. Howl’s Moving Castle is probably the first animated feature film ever to let a crone carry the day with the ardor of her love and caring spirit.

A third theme of Howl’s Moving Castle is its anti-war message and its affirmation of the heart. In one scene, the wizard Howl shows Sophie an old mill house where he spent much of his childhood. This beautiful rustic setting – replete with a glorious lake – is in stark contrast to the fast-paced city where Sophie lives. There the dark black clouds of smoke from the trains pollute the air. But the most toxic thing of all is war itself, with destructive battles going on in the air and on land. Howl is transformed into a great birdlike creature as he tries to put an end to the senseless conflict.

Both Howl and Sophie learn a lesson that has been stated well by the great Buddhist master Chögyam Trungpa: “Real fearlessness is the product of our tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your raw and beautiful heart.”

Howl’s Moving Castle is a fearless film, and one of the best of the year [2005].


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Climbing Barn Bluff
Good Times, Happy Memories

The History of Vatican Visitations

Recently I reflected upon the current Vatican investigations of U.S. communities of religious women, and noted that because of my affiliation with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet – St. Paul Province, I’d be watching this issue closely.

Well, I’m happy to say that Catholic historian Gary Macy (pictured at left) has provided an invaluable historical perspective to such an observation by publishing an insightful article in the July 10 issue of the National Catholic Reporter.

Macy, a professor of theology at Santa Clara University in California, begins his article by noting that this current Vatican investigation of U.S. women religious would have “astounded religious women of earlier centuries” as, for at least 1,200 years of Christian history, “religious women would not have looked to the Vatican for oversight of their lives.” That prerogative, says Macy, “belonged either to the abbess of a religious community or perhaps to the local bishop. Furthermore, bishops and religious were considered self-governing within their own communities or diocese. Rome may have been recognized as the sole patriarch of the Western church but this did not imply that other bishops would welcome or even tolerate Rome’s interference in their affairs.”

Hmm . . . this fact, along with the reality that in bygone days the people of a given diocese played an active role in the selection of their bishop, makes me long for some of that “good old time religion.” I wonder why the so-called traditionalists of contemporary times never call for a return of these types of traditional practices.

Anyway, following are more excerpts from Gary Macy’s National Catholic Reporter article, “Visitors in the Past.” Enjoy!

________________________________

Early abbesses were powerful and acted independently not only of the papacy, but also of the local bishop. . . . Only in the 13th century did the popes assert the right of visitation of religious orders. Chapter 12 of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 ordered that “religious and prudent persons should be appointed who, in our name, shall visit every abbey in the province, not only of monks but also of nuns.” The canon assumes, however, that the visitor will either be the local bishop or a neighboring abbot or abbess.

This laws repeated by the Council of Vienne (1311-13) and the Council of Trent (1545-63). This did not mean that women always followed papal directives. Clare of Assisi [pictured at right] rejected again and again rules imposed upon her order by the pope. Clare insisted that the nuns be allowed to visit the Franciscan brothers and to live the strict life of poverty embraced by her and Francis. She finally prevailed when Pope Innocent IV confirmed her rule just two days before Clare’s death in 1253.

Only with the promulgation of a new Code of Canon Law in 1917 is there an insistence on the pope’s more direct oversight of religious orders. According to the commentary on the code by Benedictine Fr. Charles Augustine, “All religious are subject to the Roman pontiff as their highest superior and must obey him also by virtue of the vow of obedience . . . And this obedience must be offered to any and every legally elected pope no matter what his personal qualities might be.” However, even Augustine adds, “In virtue of the vow of obedience, religious are bound to obey the pope only as far as their rule and constitution demand, and no farther.” As in the past, the code envisioned the bishop or religious superior as the ordinary visitor, but notes that “there may be extraordinary visitors and visitations for certain causes. . . . Hence surprise visitations are possible.” Here the direct oversight of the papacy of each and every religious order is made clear for the first time in Christian history.

The 1983 Code of Canon Law, while certainly not denying papal oversight assumes that the visitor of a religious order is the superior of the institute in question. A diocesan bishop has a limited responsibility in this regard and no mention is made of papal oversight. Interestingly, the commentary on the new code by Rosemary Smith notes that “one limitation on such legitimate questioning [by a visitor] would be prohibition of superiors from inducing from any member a manifestation of conscience.”

According to Smith, “Such manifestation of conscience includes disclosure of all matters of the interior life, both graced and sinful.” The distinction is important since it preserves freedom of conscience in the visitation process.

The direct supervision of the papacy of religious orders, then, first obliquely claimed in the 13th century, in fact seems a product of the late 19th century and early centuries. [Hmm . . . can we all say ultra-montanism?] Before that time, women religious not only disagreed with the papacy, but also prevailed in those disagreements. Independence and respectful disagreement would appear to be the more ancient tradition of religious women in Christian history.


For more of Gary Macy at The Wild Reed, see:
Revealing a Hidden History
Archbishop Nienstedt’s “Learning Curve”: A Suggested Trajectory
Conflicting Understandings of Church and Revelation Underlie Situation in Madison and Beyond

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Beyond Papalism
Thoughts on Authority and Fidelity

Sometimes I Wonder . . .

.

. . . if I know myself
as well as I know you.

But it’s you I know
and no one else will do.
Yes, it’s you I know,
with all you put me through.
When I was drifting down,
you pulled me up again.
And it’s you I know,
you’ll love me to the end.

“You I Know”
Jenny Morris

I often find myself listening to the lyrics of the classic Australian pop song, “You I Know,” and hearing not only the words of a love song between two people, but also a spiritual ode – a psalm, if you like – directed by any one of us to our deep sacred core, the “partner of [our] most intimate soliloquies,” in the words of Viktor Frankl.

I guess for me such a comparison isn’t that surprising. After all, gay men by nature possess, I believe, a unique aptitude for ecstatic approaches to spirituality. Thus I find it both natural and helpful to image God as a lover – a lover who gently calls me to feel his loving touch and embrace. In the language of the mystics, such an ecstatic image serves as the “Beloved of my soul” – and a potential mirror image of God, the Divine Lover.




Shocked? Well, get over it.

Anyway, it’s really not such an outlandish idea – even for Catholics (actually, especially for Catholics!). I mean, if you’re going to dismiss what I’m suggesting, then you’d better be willing to also dismiss any number of saints and their highly erotic experiences of the sacred.

Erotic experiences of God?! (Okay, if you’re still shocked, maybe this blog isn’t for you.) But seriously, I appreciate the perspective of Jean Houston, who points out that: “Eros has a mission with the soul. Without Eros, the soul cannot grow; the psyche remains infantile. Eros gives psyche its yearning, its impetus, its desire for the fullness of life.”

In her book, The Search for the Beloved, Houston also writes:

The lure of Eros may not necessarily be sexual, but it is often a lure of “muchness,” a lure into deep gestating patterns of reality where you see the great forms of things, the Patterns that Connect. This lure calls you to the places of re-creation in the soul where you are seeded, spiced, excited, stimulated, evoked into becoming. You become much, much more than you were, and you create much, much more than you could have before.

Eros connects the personal to something beyond, and brings the beyond into personal experience. . . . Without Eros in some form, creativity suffocates; the soul does not grow. . . . Creativity is grounded in the longing for the beloved, the extended archetype of the self within the soul.

It would seem that for some of the saints, the “lure of Eros” was indeed sexual. And in the case of St. John of the Cross, homosexual. Take for instance John’s beautiful poem, “On a Dark Night.” In setting this poem to music in 1994, singer/songwriter Loreena McKennitt observed that it is “an exquisite, richly metaphoric love poem between [John] and his god. It could pass as a love poem between any two at any time. . . . His approach seems more akin to early Islamic or Judaic works in its more direct route to communication to his god.”

Of course as a gay man, the thing that appeals to me most about John’s poem is that it depicts his lover as another man.

On a dark night,
Kindled in love with yearnings
– oh, happy chance! –
I went forth without being observed,

My house being now at rest.
In darkness and secure,
By the secret ladder, disguised
– oh, happy chance! –
In darkness and in concealment,
My house being now at rest.

In the happy night,
In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught,
Without light or guide,
save that which burned in my heart.

This light guided me
More surely than the light of noonday
To the place where he
(well I knew who!) was awaiting me
– A place where none appeared.

Oh, night that guided me,
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined
Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!

Upon my flowery breast,
Kept wholly for himself alone,
There he stayed sleeping,
and I caressed him,
And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

The breeze blew from the turret
As I parted his locks;
With his gentle hand
He caressed my neck
And caused all my senses to be suspended.

I remained, lost in oblivion;
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself,
Leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.

Writes Toby Johnson of John’s beautiful “On a Dark Night”:

The allegorical explanation is that this is about the stage of depression and aridity in the religious life, the so-called “dark night of the soul.” The secret ladder is living faith; the disguise, the three theological virtues, faith, hope and charity. But that is not what’s in the poem! There is nothing about depression or spiritual suffering, much less the theological virtues. It’s about sexual passion. Perhaps the lover and beloved represent the soul and Christ, but that is still a homoerotic image.

Indeed.

Of course, in any discussion of the erotic in one’s spiritual life I think it’s important to remember that the ultimate goal is union with the Divine. I may post an image of a sexy guy as representing my “Beloved,” but I know full well that if I stay focused solely on his physical appeal, there is little spirituality involved. This image of the Beloved is a focal point, an icon, if you will; and like all icons its purpose is to attract and draw one in, while at the same time direct and encourage one ever deeper into the mystery that is Divine Love. Staying forever at the surface level does not serve one well spiritually; it doesn’t facilitate that wondrous transformation of which St. John of the Cross, along with other mystics across time and cultures, speak.

I guess it’s like one’s relationship with one’s earthly beloved - one’s husband or wife or partner. For the record, I’m not in a relationship. But if I was, I would like to think that as the years go by and both my beloved and I age, our love will have deepened to the point where we would not be seeking to satisfy our physical needs with others whose looks have yet to fade. (I’m thinking that forging that deeper, spiritual dimension to a relationship must be hard work, judging from the number of people – gay and straight – who either abandon their long time partner or opt for an “open relationship.”)

In his essay, “Gay Love as Spiritual Path,” William Schindler offers similar thoughts:

At the physical level we experience the erotic through the instinctual drives that are rooted in our biological being, hunger, sexual desire, physical comfort, and through sense perception. At the subtle level the erotic gets expressed as thought, feeling, and imagination. At a subtler spiritual level the erotic connects us with the divine being in an intimate relationship. At the deepest spiritual level all forms, identities, and aspirations merge into one Being. The ecstatic aspirant does not automatically give up the lower expressions to try to experience the higher, as ascetics do, but strives to apprehend the divine erotic presence in every expression. As his experience of the divine deepens, however, the physical expressions drop away of themselves, finding their fulfillment in a more comprehensive experience. The sexual desire for a particular body type, for example, gets replaced by a generalized love for all beings that is experienced as more pleasurable, more deeply satisfying than any less-comprehensive experience. The ecstatic aspirant literally follows his bliss, never resting satisfied until he reaches the Source of bliss within and without.

Hmm . . . This all gives an added depth to Jenny Morris’ lyrics, don’t you think?

Some men have muscles,
they are muscle bound
and on display.

. . . But it’s you I know
and no one else will do.
Yes, it’s you I know,
with all you put me through.
When I was drifting down,
you pulled me up again.
And it’s you I know,
you’ll love me to the end.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Officially Homophobic, Intensely Homoerotic
• The Inherent Sensuality of Roman Catholicism
• The Archangel Michael as Gay Icon
• Gay People and the Spiritual Life
• The Gifts of Homosexuality
• The Holy Pleasure of Intimacy
• The Sexuality of Jesus
• St. Francis of Assisi and Human Sexuality
• Joan Timmerman and the “Wisdom of the Body”
• Getting It Right
• The Onward Call

For more of Jenny Morris at The Wild Reed, see:
• Saved Me
• Crackerjack Man

Previous artists featured on “Music Night” at the Wild Reed: Cass Elliot, The Church, Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield, Wall of Voodoo, Stephen “Tin Tin” Duffy, Pink Floyd, Kate Ceberano, Judith Durham, Wendy Matthews, Buffy Sainte-Marie, 1927, Mavis Staples, Maxwell, Joan Baez, Tee Set, Darren Hayes, Wet, Wet, Wet, Engelbert Humperdinck, The Cruel Sea, Shirley Bassey, Loretta Lynn & Jack White, Foo Fighters, Jenny Morris, Kate Bush, Rufus Wainwright, and Dusty Springfield.

Are Gay Friendly Churches in Decline?

My friend and fellow Progressive Catholic Voice (PCV) editorial team member, Rick, does a stellar job daily updating the PCV’s “News Links.” Today, for instance, Rick highlights a ReligiousDispatches.com article by Daniel Schultz that explores the question: Are gay friendly churches in decline?

It’s a very insightful piece, one that is reprinted in its entirety below.

_________________________________

US News & World Report’s Dan Gilgoff considers Episcopalians’ move to ordain gays and lesbians in light of the membership woes afflicting mainline denominations:

One big question these changes raise is whether they’ll affect the dramatic decline of membership in mainline churches. The U.S. churches experiencing growth right now—those in the evangelical, nondenominational, and Mormon traditions —condemn homosexuality. . . . But the churches most open to homosexuality are shrinking fastest.

That’s true only if you aggregate mainliners vs. Evangelicals and others. Within the mainline, there’s not nearly so much of a straight (erm) line correlation.

The big losers among mainline denominations are United Methodists, who shed nearly 20% of their members between 1990 and 2008, according to the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS). The Methodists do not ordain gays and lesbians. Presbyterians and Lutherans each lost about 5-6% of their members. Episcopalians went down 20% as well, but on a much lower scale than Methodists: in 1990, there were about 3 million Episcopalians in the US. In 2008, there were around 2.4 million. Not chump change, to be sure, but nothing like the staggering 3 million Methodists who disappeared in the same period.

And as Gilgoff himself points out, Catholics—hardly the most gay-friendly of traditions—have been hit hard, a trend that has been masked by Catholic immigrants from Latin America and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, my own United Church of Christ actually grew between 1990 and 2008. True, we’re still miniscule according to ARIS, but it’s a trend nonetheless. Also growing: “New Religious Movements and Other Religions,” a category that includes Unitarian Universalists among other gay-friendly groups, and those claiming no religion, which we know from other research to be the most sympathetic to gays and lesbians. NRMs and the “Nones,” as they’re called, more than double their population, outpacing every other sector of the religious economy.

A better way to put it, then, might be: some churches open to homosexuality are shrinking. Others are not. And the people who really are growing are the ones who don’t hate the gays at all.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Dispatches from the Periphery
The “Undergroud Church”
The Emerging Church
The Catholic Challenge

The Treasure and the Dross

Over at the excellent Queering the Church, Terence has posted a reflection entitled, “Magisterium and Me.” Given the lively and insightful discussion concerning authority that took place in response to this recent Wild Reed post, I appreciate Terence’s sharing of his thoughts on both the “treasure and the dross” of the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

Terence shared his perspective after a visitor to his blog suggested he leave Catholicism for Anglicism, where the type of reasoning favored by Terence, one that supposedly “evades the truth,” is readily accepted.

Interestingly, you may recall that the above-mentioned discussion on authority that took place here at The Wild Reed was one that was triggered by my sharing of William Lindsey’s response to a similar demand that he leave the Church. Like both Terence and myself, William expresses disagreement with what the Church teaches about homosexuality. That, it seems, is reason enough for some fellow Catholics to demand that we be sent packing.


Troubling and tragic

I find such hostility to those who question and/or disagree in good conscience to be very troubling. I think it’s tragic that a very narrow and authoritarian model of church is being set up as the one and only way to be Catholic. As I’ve said before on these pages, I think it’s unhelpful and unhealthy to think of the hallmark of our faith as being one of unquestioning obedience.

Yet, sadly, there has always been a strain within Catholicism that has viewed “the Church” as, in the words of Catholic columnist and author Chris McGillion, “a kind of club with an inflexible set of rules, to which all its members must subscribe. Those who don’t . . . are made to feel unwelcome; those who question the rules are asked to leave or forced to go.”

I cannot help but wonder: Does this “kind of club” understanding of church reflect the example of community modeled by Jesus?

Is it the only way to view and understand the reality of church? Is it even an appropriate way to understand church?

What are other ways present in our Catholic tradition and experience?

Are some of these more equipped than others to emulate Jesus and thus invite and encourage people to flourish, both individually and communally?


Obedience as exploration and engagement

Of course, I’m not suggesting that obedience has no place in our Catholic faith. Nevertheless, I think a way of understanding obedience that is conducive to both individual and communal flourishing is sorely needed. One such understanding has been offered by theologian Diarmuid O’Murchu, who, in his book Poverty, Celibacy, and Obedience: A Radical Option for Life, notes that:

Obedience is not about submitting our will to a higher authority (why then did God give us a will in the first place?) but about exploring and proffering ever new ways to engage responsibly, collaboratively, and creatively with the issues of power and powerlessness that we encounter in daily life. . . . At the end of the day it is not laws but values that touch the depth of our human hearts.

If anything, I think it is this “exploring and proffering ever new ways to engage responsibly, collaboratively, and creatively” that could be said to be one of the “hallmarks” of our Catholic faith. And, of course, intrinsically related to this particular hallmark, this exploration and engagement, is the way we, as Catholics, view (and celebrate) the world as being profoundly sacramental, as being permeated by the sacred.

Anyway, in light of such thoughts, I share Terence’s perspective on the Magisterium.

__________________________________

What draws me to the Catholic Church, beyond mere habit and familiarity, is precisely that it is not just “Catholic” (i.e. institutional), but also “catholic” (literally, universal). The Gospels are clearly inclusive, and so, in principle, is the Catholic Church – inclusive across geographic boundaries, across language and ethnicity, and across two millennia of history.

An important part of that is the Magisterium. 2000 years of scholarship and of spirituality must surely include within it much great wisdom, which must be respected and treasured. I am particularly grateful for those gifts from which I have personally benefited: the wisdom in Ignatian spirituality, the teaching apostolate of the Dominicans and the missionary zeal of so many. I take the value of the Magisterium very seriously indeed, as teaching authority.

. . . [G]iven the antiquity of tradition, I . . . recognise that alongside the treasures, lies a great deal of dross. It is undeniable that the Magisterium has frequently been plain wrong, and will doubtless be found so again. This is why I approach the Magisterium as I do any other teaching authority – with a critical eye. There are of course some items which we are told we must take as infallible truth: but these are remarkably few. The plain truth is that the Vatican likes to present itself as an undisputed authority, in certain circumstances where it has no right to do so at all, and to attempt to extinguish valid objection by simple diktat or censorship – also known as “creeping infallibility”. This I resist.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
The Catholic Challenge
Rosemary Haughton and the “True Catholic Enterprise”
Mary Hunt: “Catholicism is a Very Complex Reality”
Pan’s Labyrinth: Critiquing the Cult of Unquestioning Obedience
Thoughts on Authority and Fidelity
Who Gets to Be Called “Catholic” – and Why?
A Brave Hope
Staying On Board
The Call to Be Dialogical Catholics
Ascertaining the Common Good
Reflections on the Primacy of Conscience
The Question of an “Informed” Catholic Conscience
A Catholic Understanding of Faithful Dissent (Part 1)
A Catholic Understanding of Faithful Dissent (Part 2)
A Church That Can and Cannot Change
What It Means to Be Catholic
Many Voices, One Church

My Lunch with a "Medicine Bearer"

.

PART FIVE OF
THE JOURNAL OF JAMES CURTIS
BY MICHAEL J. BAYLY

(To start at the beginning of this series, click here)

Thursday

It’s been a busy week-and-a-half since last I wrote, and even though it’s late and I’m feeling tired, I’m determined to write about some of the events of the past ten days.

And so I sit curled in the armchair tucked away in a corner of my bedroom. Before me a flickering votive candle illuminates my icon of the Scared Heart, that “mystical symbol of divine love” I’m so drawn to. I’ve stilled myself, and am very conscious of being in a “sacred time and space.” That’s how Father Brandon suggested I think about my prayer time. “Be mindful,” he said, “be intentional in your creating of a sacred time and space where you can just sit and be with God.”

I should say that Fr. Brandon is the priest at St. Aelred’s, the parish I’ve been attending as often as I can for weekday Mass. He’s a Cistercian priest, and St. Aelred was suggested to me by Vince at Dignity as it’s a non-diocesan parish and therefore able to be more welcoming of gay people. And Vince was right. I feel very welcome and accepted at St. Aelred’s. There’s even some P-Flag literature in the foyer, and informational flyers from New Ways Ministries. Old Fr. Brandon is responsible for all of this, which is quite something given that he must be well into his eighties. I guess I thought he wouldn’t be quite so “out there” in his support.

Morning Mass is offered three days a week at St. Aelred’s – Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I must admit that I started going there for the more traditional liturgy and environment. They don’t have a statue of the Sacred Heart like at St. Jerome’s but they do have a large portrait of it in an alcove on the right hand side of the church. I make sure I sit in a pew across from it during Mass. It feels like sitting near a trusted friend.

After my second visit to St. Aelred’s, Fr. Brandon came up to me and introduced himself. I told him I used to attend St. Jerome’s but was now trying out the Dignity Mass on Sunday nights at Southside United Methodist. He smiled a warm and understanding smile and said that in the past he had offered Mass for the Dignity community.

After attending Mass for the third time at St. Aelred’s – which was just this past Monday morning – I realized I wanted to talk to Fr. Brandon about my journey with the Church. I felt I could trust him with my questions, my concerns, and my hopes. He happily agreed to meet for coffee when it was convenient for me. We met earlier today.

But before I go any further, I should back up, gather my thoughts, and write a little about the other meeting I recently had with a priest – a woman priest.

I’d met Cathie at the first Dignity Mass I attended about three weeks ago. Initially I was totally taken aback by her and by the whole female priest thing. But her homily touched me deeply, spoke to a part of me that hadn’t been acknowledged, let alone spoken to, by . . . well . . . a regular priest for a very long time.

Afterward, I talked to Cathie and expressed my interest in discussing with her the whole female ordination thing. About a week later she called and asked if we could meet for lunch. It was an enjoyable meeting, though a bit overwhelming as I felt I was receiving a crash course in the Roman Catholic Womenpriest movement. Then again, I only have myself to blame as my journalistic instincts kicked in almost immediately and I no doubt overwhelmed Cathie with my many questions.

I still find myself pondering her responses. I can’t deny that they challenge me – and my understanding of church. Cathie maintains, for instance, that both society and the church are in the midst of what she calls a “paradigm shift.” She said that history is full of such shifts and that we can readily discern them if we just take the time to look carefully at how humans have developed as a species and how civilizations and even religions have progressed and changed over the centuries.

“Look around you, James,” she said. “Everything is in crisis – the economy, our relationship with the planet, the church. We’re on the verge of momentous changes across the board – changes that need to happen. I don’t see this chaotic time we’re living through as destructive but rather as a rebirth; a necessary – if at times painful and disorientating – new beginning.”

She insists that the days of what she calls the church’s “celibate male clerical system” are over. “That form of priesthood, that understanding of priesthood, is dying,” she said. “Yet a new understanding is rising within and among the people to take its place. And it’s happening all around the world. It’s such an exciting time, James, don’t you think?”

She must have detected my skepticism, or perhaps my discomfort. Believe me, both were like mini tornadoes in my head, mercilessly buffeting my thoughts.

“But if it’s all new,” I ventured, “why did you insist on being ordained the same way as the men in this system you say is finished?”

“It comes down to justice, James,” Cathie declared determinedly. “Look, a new form of priesthood is coming. In many ways it’s already here. But while ever the old way remains, we as women should be able to be ordained in it. It’s a matter of justice.”

“But aren’t you all excommunicated?” I asked. “I mean, this system you want to be part of doesn’t accept you. Why be part of it?”

Cathie looked at me intently.

“James,” she said softly, “does this system accept you as a gay man? You know it doesn’t, and yet you stay; you want to be part of it. Why?

I was lost for words.

“We stay, James, you and I, because we believe we have something to give to the Church. The Church would be incomplete with out us. One of my mentors is an old Native American woman, and in her culture they have the idea of ‘medicine’ – of healing insight and be-ing that brings wholeness to individuals and the community. I believe with all my heart that our dear Church, our spiritual community, is terribly sick, profoundly unhealthy, and that it’s people like us, people whom those in positions of power dismiss and ‘excommunicate,’ who carry within them the medicine that’s needed to make the Church well, to make it whole. That’s why I stay, James. Not to be part of a sick and dysfunctional system, but because I’m a medicine bearer, as are you. And we’re called to be part of the healing, part of this wonderful movement of the Spirit that is happening all around us. But we have to be within the system to facilitate the healing.”

In relation to this “healing,” Cathie also talked about how she believes that more and more people are “embodying through courageous acts of conscience” the words of a poem by Edwin Markham – words I jotted down in my notebook:

He drew a circle that shut me out.
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in.

These words, along with Cathie’s, have given me much to think about during the past few days.

And in thinking about them I came to realize that I needed to speak to a priest – a regular male priest. I couldn’t help it! Somehow I needed to hear affirmed by at least one regular priest the types of things I’d been hearing from gay Catholics and women priests. Part of me feels embarrassed and ashamed that I need the approval of “father.” But that’s not what it’s really about. No, I have to know that the “radical” ideas I’ve been hearing that both excite and scare me, are capable of being accepted by everyone – including those who are so often cast as the “enemy” by these very same ideas. So that’s why I asked if I could meet with Father Brandon for coffee. I know, you could say that his welcoming of gay people at St. Aelred’s indicates that he’s not your “regular” priest. But it’s not the gay stuff that was challenging me but rather all the new ways of thinking about church that I’d been hearing. It was these types of things that I wanted to discuss with Fr. Brandon.

And discuss them we did – this morning.

My journaling about our meeting, however, is going to have to wait. It’s past 1:00 and I have an 8:00 o’clock meeting with my editor.

I will say this before I turn in: Dignity’s request to the chancery for a dialogue forum at next week’s Courage conference has been turned down, so a protest is being planned. Frank disagrees with me that this is newsworthy. It’s nothing but “church infighting about an issue that the rest of us have accepted or are tired of hearing about,” he said. Instead of covering the Courage protest he wants me to help with an upcoming feature article that, according to him, looks at a “much bigger picture, a much bigger story.” This article will explore why young people are abandoning organized religion. Frank could tell I was disappointed that we weren’t going to cover the Courage protest, and so suggested I focus on young gay people for this particular article. I agreed and so arranged with P-flag to make an announcement about my assignment at the end of one of their meetings. I actually obtained quite a few potential contacts – names and phone numbers of young people who might be interested in sharing their reasons for no longer attending church. Quite a few of them, it turns out, are from a Catholic background. And they’re willing to talk.


NEXT: Part 6: Father Brandon

See also the previous installments of The Journal of James Curtis:
• Part One: A “Bells and Smells” Kind of Guy
• Part Two: A Quiet Visit and an Exhausting Conversation
• Part Three: A Journey Begins
• Part Four: Carlos

Image: “Herein Lies Our Medicine” by Litina Egungun.

The Vatican and US Women Religious

As I’ve noted in a number of previous posts, I’m a consociate of the Catholic order of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, St. Paul Province. Consociates are men and women of diverse ages, ministries, spiritualities, faith traditions, and backgrounds. What we all have in common is an expressed desire to live the Sisters of St. Joseph (CSJ) mission to love God and neighbor without distinction. In short, consociates live the vision and values of the Sisters within the framework of their own lives and responsibilities.

Recently, the CSJs, along with a number of other U.S. women religious orders that comprise the Leadership Conference for Women Religious (LCWR), have been under “investigation” by the Vatican.

What I find most interesting about this whole investigation business is how people from all walks of life – Catholic and non-Catholic – are openly expressing their disdain of the Vatican’s actions and willingly standing up for the women religious. Indeed, it seems the Vatican may well have met its match!

What can account for such a groundswell of support? I think columnist Regina Brett helps answer this question when she writes:

[Are the nuns] not keeping quiet? [Are they] not keeping their place? Here’s the thing, their place is everywhere. There is no way to stop their reach. It’s way too late for that.

They’ve infiltrated America. They taught millions how to read, how to think, how to discern right from wrong, how to err on the side of loving the poor.

Sister Susan Durkin told me, “We have nothing to hide. We stand on the shoulders of women who have been there serving on the front lines.”

The front lines, that’s where Sisters Dorothy Kazel, Ita Ford, and Maura Clarke died defending the rights of the poor in El Salvador in 1980.

It’s where Sister Dorothy Stang was murdered as she fought to save Brazilian rain forests. Where Sister Helen Prejean brings the face of God to broken men on Death Row.

It’s where Sister Mary Ignatia, patron saint of A.A., sneaked alcoholics into an Akron hospital for detox so they wouldn’t die in gutters and alleys.

Brett also relates the following, which I find very hopeful and inspiring:

Sister Mary Ann Flannery, who runs the Jesuit Retreat House in Parma, told me the exciting thing about being a nun is this: “You go where the grace leads you. You let the street be your chapel. Let your love of others be your vow.”

The hardest part of being a nun isn’t the vow of chastity. You don’t hear scandals about nuns running amok and having affairs right and left.

The hardest part is letting go of all they have loved about their sisterhood as convents merge and close.

Sister Mary Jane Masterson, of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Cleveland, just sent me her memoir, “One Nun’s Story Then and Now.” It’s the story of her love affair with God.

She’s not worried about the decline in nuns and priests. She believes the Holy Spirit is driving the change. She believes in a theology of hope. She doubts religious life will survive much longer, but that doesn’t make her sad.

“Our dying is other peoples’ rising,” she writes.

How radical.

How nunlike.

To be sure, this is an issue I’ll be watching closely. And I’ll also be praying that all involved in these Vatican “visitations” may be open to God’s Spirit of wisdom and compassion.

In closing, I share the following editorial about “What the Sisters Are Up To” from today’s New York Times. It focuses on the CSJ presence in New York and shares the thoughts of a number of people on the Vatican investigations.

_______________________________________

What the Sisters Are Up To
By Francis X. Clines

New York Times July 12, 2009

Across 30 years, the modern version of the Sisters of St. Joseph has been revolutionizing the treatment of imprisoned women in New York. Thanks to the nuns’ efforts, mothers are now allowed to care for their infants on the inside and remain close to their children in creative visitors’ programs. Once they are paroled, these women and their children can find a year’s shelter in one of nine Providence House sanctuaries the nuns created in defunct city rectories and convents.

The order has never lacked courage: five members were guillotined in the French Revolution for giving shelter to the hunted. Now it is the bewildered community of American nuns that is the subject of two sweeping Vatican investigations. The question is whether the sisters are “living in fidelity” to the religious life — a question being put to nuns in no other nation.

Vatican investigations called “visitations” usually focus on serious flaws like the pedophilia scandal. So, what are nuns doing wrong? That is the question being asked by the sisters and legions of Catholic laypeople.

“Well, it’s all nonsense,” says Bob Bennett, a lawyer who led the church’s lay inquiry into the priest pedophilia scandal — which, he says, the church has still not fully addressed. He is amazed that American nuns, of all good people, are suddenly being scrutinized. “They are the jewels, the church’s class act,” he says.

The sisters won’t talk publicly about fears that the Vatican’s goal is to push them back toward a more submissive veil-and-wimple past. At the Providence House programs last week, they talked instead about the myriad problems of their ex-con mothers trying to get a grip on life. As ever, the nuns labor at the brink, begging alms to keep their mission going. “Look, none of us are marching to get women ordained,” one sister said in putting down the cliché that they seek to undermine Rome.

Tom Fox, editor of The National Catholic Reporter, suspects the inquiries are steeped in patriarchy and male chauvinism. “Next time, let’s have our women religious study the quality of life of our male clerics,” is Mr. Fox’s advice.


Recommended Off-site Links:
Why the LCWR is Being Investigated - Jack Smith (The Catholic Key Blog, April 16, 2009).
The Vatican is Going After the Nuns - Regina Brett (Cleveland.com, July 12, 2009).
US Nuns Facing Vatican Scrutiny - Laurie Goodstein (New York Times, July 1, 2009).
Many Sisters Have Prayed For and Welcome the Vatican Visitation - Ann Carey (PewSitter.com, July 9, 2009).
Vatican Men Enter the Uppity Liberal American Nun Battle - Colleen Kochivar-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, April 15, 2009).
A Catholic Sojourner and the LCWR Investigation - Colleen Kochivar-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, April 17, 2009).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Beginning the Process
Reflections on Consociate/Associate Programs by Joan Chittister
Remembering Sister Rita
The Inspiring Brigid McDonald
Elizabeth Johnson and Images of God (Part 1)
Elizabeth Johnson and Images of God (Part 2)

Image: Making My Consociate Commitment

Dreaming a Little Dream (on the Dangerous and Delightful Edge)

I’m a day late with The Wild Reed’s “Friday Night Music Spot,” but here for your enjoyment is the beautiful Cass Elliot song, “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” as featured at the end of the gay coming-of-age film, Beautiful Thing.

Notes Wikipedia:

The [film] ends with the two boys [Jamie and Ste] slow-dancing in the courtyard of their council flats to the tune of the Cass Elliot classic, “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” while a guarding Sandra [Jamie’s mum] dances defiantly at their side with [Jamie’s friend] Leah as the local residents look on; some of them shocked, some of them enjoying the moment themselves.

This particular scene from Beautiful Thing reminds me of the poem, “So Here We Are,” by Rosie Miles.

So here we are
Dancing on the edge,
The dangerous and delightful edge.

So here we’ll be
The irritant in the eye
Of the church:
The cracked lens through which it needs to see.

So here we’ll not be silent, or invisible,
But we’ll say our names
And show our colours
And others will know
Who we are.

So here we’ll laugh and love and dance
And sing and play and drink and
Whose edge is it anyway?

This edge, we say,
Is ours; and we will
Fill that edge
To overflowing:
Loving it with passion,
Embracing it with desire,
And flirting unashamedly with the centre.

This dangerous and delightful edge
Is the edge where we are dancing,
So, here we are.

Rosie Miles

(From Courage to Love: Liturgies for the Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual and Transgender Community, edited by Geoffrey Duncan)

Previous artists featured on “Music Night at the Wild Reed”:
The Church, Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield, Wall of Voodoo, Stephen “Tin Tin” Duffy, Pink Floyd, Kate Ceberano, Judith Durham, Wendy Matthews, Buffy Sainte-Marie, 1927, Mavis Staples, Maxwell, Joan Baez, Tee Set, Darren Hayes, Wet, Wet, Wet, Engelbert Humperdinck, The Cruel Sea, Shirley Bassey, Loretta Lynn & Jack White, Foo Fighters, Jenny Morris, Kate Bush, Rufus Wainwright, and Dusty Springfield.

In the Garden of Spirituality – Jesse Lava

.

“We are not on earth to guard a museum,
but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”

- Pope John XXIII

The Wild Reed’s series of reflections on religion and spirituality continues with an excerpt from Jesse Lava’s article “Our Father, Who Art a Straw Man” (The Progressive Christian, Vol. 183, Issue 4, Summer 2009).

____________________________________

If religion exists simply to elucidate whatever science can’t, it’s not worth preserving. After all, as science reveals more and more about how the universe operates, the role of religion as humanity’s Explainer in Chief necessarily shrinks.

The concept that eludes . . . [the] strident critics of religion (see Dawkins, Richard) is that faith doesn’t have to be about explaining the unexplainable. Serious religious thinkers have long railed against the notion of a “God of the gaps” to whom we can attribute any phenomenon that biologists and physicists and neuroscientists don’t (yet) understand. In 1893, Scottish evangelical Henry Drummond assailed those who “ceaselessly scan the fields of Nature and the books of Science in search of gaps – gaps which they will fill up with God. As if God lived in gaps?”

. . . [The] antediluvian idea of faith is the only one that many religious skeptics bother to confront. One can scour the pages of Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great, Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and any number of anti-religious polemics without hitting upon a substantive argument against alternative conceptions of faith. This oversight constitutes the sinking sand on which science-based critiques of religion tend to rest. As the British literary theorist Terry Eagleton wryly put it in his latest book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution, “Christianity was never meant to be an explanation of anything in the first place. It’s rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekhov.” Bingo.

But the question remains: how else might we define faith? What purpose might religion serve if not to answer questions on which science is silent?

A good place for the anti-religion crowd to begin its inquiry into such issues might be the work of the great 20th century theologian Paul Tillich. For Tillich, being faithful meant having an “ultimate concern.” It meant surrender – resolving to love something “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). One need not believe in a God of the gaps to embrace a God of the horizon that provides the metaphorical North Star to which people can set their moral and spiritual compass. Whether [humans were] created spontaneously by God or gradually by natural selection is hardly the point. The issue, rather, is how to live life to the fullest – right here, right now, in this world.

And why, a skeptic may ask, must we posit God at all? The answer depends on what is meant by “God.” Sure, many of the devout are just certain that some man floating in the sky knows all of our thoughts and decides to intervene in some circumstances but not others – a bit like Santa Claus with a longer to-do list and bouts of callousness. But what of the pantheistic God of Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einstein, a God that’s commensurate with the universe itself? Or the panentheistic God that permeates all of nature while transcending it in ways we can’t fully comprehend? Or even the post-theistic God, who serves as a symbol for human aspirations? The ways of conceiving of the divine are myriad – even if the rank-and-file faithful rarely fuss over such theological speculations, recognizing that literal explanation has never been religion’s major selling point.



See also the previous Wild Reed post:
Conversing and Arguing with the Theology of Philip Pullman

Others highlighted in The Wild Reed’s “In the Garden of Spirituality” series include:
Zainab Salbi, Daniel Helminiak, Rod Cameron, Paul Collins, Joan Chittister, Toby Johnson, Joan Timmerman, Uta Ranke-Heinemanm, Caroline Jones, Ron Rolheiser, James C. Howell, Paul Coelho, Doris Lessing, Michael Morwood, Kenneth Stokes, Dody Donnelly, Adrian Smith , Henri Nouwenand L. Patrick Carroll, S.J.

Images: Michael J. Bayly.