London Calling

London calling to the faraway towns
Now war is declared – and battle come down.
London calling to the underworld,
Come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls.

. . . The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in.
Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin.
Engines stop running, but I have no fear,
Cause London is burning and I,
I live by the river.

“London Calling”
The Clash (1979)

One of the scariest things I can remember watching on TV as a child was an episode of the British sci-fi series Doctor Who featuring an alien menace capable of creating and controlling plastic objects.

This alien entity’s plan for world domination included all sorts of things made of plastic, from daffodils that squirted a deadly spray, to “Autons” – sinister-looking shop window mannequins (with concealed weapons within their hands) which, when activated at the climax of the story, broke through shop windows to bring chaos and death to the streets of London.





Yeah, I know, it all looks a bit hokey now. And rest assured, the good Doctor saves the day. Still, the Autons, according to Wikipedia, “remain one of the more memorable monsters associated with Doctor Who, [and] the image of store mannequins coming to life [and] shooting people down in the street, is one of the series’ iconic moments.”

Interestingly, “[such scenes] caused public controversy about whether [Doctor Who] was too frightening for children. The story also featured in a discussion in the House of Lords, where Baroness Bacon expressed worries about it being too frightening even for older children.”

I’m sure this all seems like a storm in a teacup, especially considering what children can now observe on TV in relation to violence. Not surprisingly, the 2005 return of the Autons in the very first episode of the “new” Doctor Who, involving even more graphic destruction and carnage, didn’t cause the least bit of a stir.



I think the reason why this particular Doctor Who story made such an impression on me as a child was that it used everyday objects as embodiments of violence, fear, and evil. I could dismiss other Doctor Who monsters – Daleks, Sea Devils, Ice Warriors, Cybermen, etc. – as they were so, well, fanciful. But shop window dummies? Why, we even had those in Gunnedah!

Master filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch are renowned for their ability in using ordinary everyday objects and occurrences to mask and convey forces of chaos and evil. In Hitchcock’s classic The Birds – another film I remember well from my childhood – the attacking birds, notes one critic, “represent the eruption of chaos, of unpredictability . . . [of] everything we don’t understand and can’t control.”

And then there’s David Lynch, whose films would have to contain some of the most potent examples of the weird yet compelling blending of the ordinary and the surreal ever committed to celluloid, as the following clip from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, hauntingly demonstrates. (And, yes, that’s David Bowie playing “the long lost Phillip Jeffries,” and Lynch himself playing “Gordon.”)





Again, what makes Lynch’s visions of otherworldly entities and places all the more strange and unnerving is their inclusion of and merging with everyday objects. As film critic Greg Olson has noted about this aspect of Lynch’s Twin Peaks saga: “Roaring TV-set snow and eerily twittering telephone wires are a kind of inter-dimensional conduit. . . . In a place you can’t locate with an earthly compass, the red dwarf thrives on creamed corn and [the evil entity] Bob sports a leather ‘Levis’ patch on his jeans.”

London, however, is a place one can locate with “an earthly compass,” and the featuring of its various landmarks in stories and films of alien invasions and apocalyptic showdowns has a long tradition.

Doctor Who, of course, has maintained this tradition –ensuring that the British capital has been the focal point of one extraterrestrial incursion after another.



Yet it wasn’t just Doctor Who that alerted me to this tradition. In 1978, Jeff Wayne’s musical interpretation of H.G. Well’s classic novel, The War of the Worlds, was a huge hit in Australia. Wayne’s securing of Richard Burton as the narrator-protagonist added considerable gravitas to a “concept album” which could easily have come across as “a load of old bollocks,” as they say in Britain.



At one point in the story, the Martians, with heat-rays blasting, advance upon London in their tripodal war machines. Amidst the ensuing chaos, swelling strings and Justin Hayward’s re-worked “Forever Autumn” flood the soundtrack. Yet even more compelling is the hero’s attempts to locate his beloved and escape the panic and disarray of the capital. It’s truly epic. Burton’s rich plumy voice, of course, helps tremendously, as does the inclusion of snippets of H. G. Wells’ stirring text (and all set to a disco beat!):

As I hastened through Covent Garden, Blackfriars, and Billingsgate, more and more people joined the painful exodus: sad, weary women, their children stumbling and streaked with tears, their men bitter and angry; the rich rubbing shoulders with beggers and outcasts. Dogs snarled and whined, the horses bits were covered in foam, and here and there were wounded soldiers – as helpless as the rest.

We saw tripods wading up the Thames, cutting through bridges as though they were paper – Waterloo Bridge, Westminster Bridge. One appeared above Big Ben – “Ullah!”

Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march, it was a stampede without order and without a goal. Six million people, unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of civilization; of the massacre of mankind.

London’s seemingly perennial role in such classic tales of alien invasion, gothic horror, and apocalyptic doom was the focus of a recent article by Mark Kermode in The Observer. The recently released film, 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to Danny Boyle’s hit about zombies roaming the empty streets of London, is the starting point for Kermode’s reflection.

“There is something particularly resonant about such nightmarish phantasms when placed within uncomfortably familiar British sites,” he muses. “[It’s] a juxtaposition which has long been exploited by purveyors of the uncanny.”

Yes, just ask the producers of Doctor Who.

Following are excerpts from Kermode’s article.

____________________________________

A Capital Place for Panic Attacks
By Mark Kermode
The Observer
May 6, 2007

In the 19th century, Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker established Britain as the natural home of Gothic horror – with Frankenstein being first published (anonymously) in London in 1818, and Dracula later bringing its eponymous vampire across the waters from Transylvania to darkest Whitby.

When HG Wells wrote his classic tale of extraterrestrial invasion The War of the Worlds, he instinctively understood the eerie appeal of having monsters from another planet land on the outskirts of somewhere as ordinary as Woking. Tom Cruise might have battled valiantly against giant tripods reaping post-9/11 chaos in New York in Steven Spielberg’s recent blockbuster adaptation, but Wells’s late Victorian novel places its first otherworldly appearance squarely in the soils of Horsell Common, a location renowned for its quaint English beauty. Somehow, these outlandish ideas seemed more credible – and disturbing – when played out against the down-to-earth backdrop of Britain.

As a fan of scary movies, I’ve long been aware of the appeal of horror on the home front. One of the creepiest experiences of my childhood was watching a TV rerun of Wolf Rilla’s black-and-white chiller Village of the Damned, a typically domestic tale of alien terror based on John Wyndham’s novel The Midwich Cuckoos. Wyndham had first established himself as a master of strange English science fiction with The Day of the Triffids, famously filmed by Steve Sekely in and around a number of memorable London locations including Charing Cross and Marylebone stations, Piccadilly Circus, and Westminster Bridge.

According to Boyle, it was the opening sequence of The Day of the Triffids, in which a man wakes up in hospital to discover that a meteor shower has blinded his fellow countrymen, which first inspired Alex Garland to write 28 Days Later.

Village of the Damned is altogether less cosmopolitan, centering on a sleepy English village whose womenfolk are discreetly visited by procreating aliens and subsequently give birth to a brood of blond-haired neo-Nazis from space. In Rilla’s film, the children are handsome telepaths who can cause people to kill themselves simply by giving them the evil eye, hence the haunting tagline: “Beware the stare that will paralyse the will of the world!”


This all was worrying enough, but, as a child, the real terror for me came from the fact that the children’s stamping ground was Letchmore Heath, a rather twee little enclave which happened to be up the road from my school. This meant that I was being educated next door to the children of the damned. No wonder I turned out the way I did.

And then there was Quatermass and the Pit, the film which convinced me that taking a trip on the underground would lead you into the very bowels of hell. Originally broadcast as a six-part BBC serial in the late Fifties, Quatermass and the Pit was remade by Hammer [Studios] in 1967 with a ripping screenplay by original writer Nigel Kneale. The plot concerns a string of ominous discoveries (skulls, skeletons, spaceships) during unspecified “Central Line extension work” at “Hobbs End” station.


As demonic artifacts are uncovered, a riot of violent madness erupts, climaxing in an apparition of Old Nick himself over the London skyline. The ingenious twist is that this “devil” is actually a Martian, an intrusive extraterrestrial ancestor from whom mankind has inherited its innate propensity for violence. (“We are the Martians!” concludes our hero.)

According to Kneale, the inspiration for the story came from watching news footage of the Notting Hill race riots in the late Fifties. But it is the sense of the underground as some kind of portal to the underworld which haunts my memories of this creepy classic.

Since then, umpteen movies, including 28 Weeks Later, have capitalised upon the unsettling potential of the tube, a brooding labyrinth which has come to embody the morbid subtextual groanings of horror's repressed psyche. . .

[It’s at Tottenham Court Road station in John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London] that an unsuspecting passenger is stalked and ravaged by the eponymous beastie, providing one of the most memorable sequences in a film which trades heavily on the frighteningly funny disjunct between quaint English locations (Yorkshire pubs; West End porno cinemas; Tower Bridge; even London Zoo) and lycanthropic fantasy.

It’s significant that the long-awaited sequel An American Werewolf in Paris proved to be a total flop, mainly, I think, because once you cross the English channel, who cares whether there's a monster on the prowl? Over in Europe, anything goes; it’s only here in uptight Britain that the magic formula of horror and humbug really makes sense. . .

In recent years, there has been an encouraging resurgence of dark-hearted, British-set fantasies which have acted as a cadaverous counterbalance to the endless diet of comfortably middle-class Hugh Grant staples. An adaptation of Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s terrifically seditious graphic novel V for Vendetta ran into unexpected controversy when its explosive, tube-bound finale chimed too closely with the real-life horrors of the 7 July bombings. The film’s release was postponed (officially for “other reasons”), but scenes of the Houses of Parliament being triumphantly detonated from below by a heroic latterday Guy Fawkes remained intact, alongside images of anarchists merrily swarming across Trafalgar Square.

One of the most impressive films of last year was Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men, a gripping, dystopian nightmare adapted from a novel by PD James (via the legacy of Nigel Kneale) which posits a desolate vision of a near-future world in which human reproduction has become a dying art.


Beautifully filmed in battle-scarred, colour-drained hues by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, Cuaron's apocalyptic vision of this grey and unpleasant land charts a grim map of Britain which includes haunting footage of the once-magnificent Battersea Power Station, and climaxes in a Hadean vision of Bexhill-on-Sea which most closely resembles war-torn Bosnia.


Danny Boyle agrees that Children of Men exists within the same tradition as 28 Weeks Later, and points out that both films are significantly directed and photographed by non-British film-makers who are able to observe the strangeness of this land and its culture with the intelligent empathy of an outsider’s eye.

“In the end,” says Boyle, “I think the key thing about Britain is that it’s built on this deep, dark ocean of history. There are grassy, picturesque areas of London which you still can’t put train tunnels through because they’re actually covering plague pits. You just don’t get that in America – that dark abyss of the past. And it makes Britain, as a location, very fertile ground for horror.”

(Hmm, not sure about this last bit. America lacking in a “dark abyss of the past”? I think if Boyle took the time to acquaint himself with the genocide of the Native Americans and the carnage of the Civil War, he might think otherwise.)

To read Mark Kermode’s “A Capital Place for Panic Attacks” in its entirety, click here.

London calling, yes, I was there, too.
An’ you know what they said? Well, some of it was true!
London calling at the top of the dial.
And after all this, won’t you give me a smile?
London Calling.

I never felt so much alike, like-a, like-a. . .

First and last images: “Aliens of London” episode of Doctor Who.
Image 2: “Rose” episode of Doctor Who.
Images 3-4: Fade to Colour.
Image 5: “Thunderchild” by Michael Trim (cover artwork of Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds album).
Image 6: “Panic in the Streets” by Geoff Taylor (artwork from Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds album).
Image 7: Still from Village of the Damned.
Image 8: Still from Quatermass and the Pit.
Images 9-10: Stills from Children of Men.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Reflections on the Overlooked Children of Men
Blast from the Past: The Return of Doctor Who’s Sarah Jane Smith
What Sarah Jane Did Next

Thoughts on the Death of Jerry Falwell

Jim Johnson at the excellent Straight, Not Narrow blogsite has recently posted thoughts from around the nation on the passing of Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Falwell, as founder of the Moral Majority and a leading figure of the religious right, was one of the staunchest opponents of GLBT rights and acceptance in society. He once remarked that "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals," and, in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he expressed the belief that "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians . . . helped this happen."

In addition to Johnson's collection of responses, you may also be interested in reading Truth Wins Out founder Wayne Besen's reflection on the death of Falwell.

David Shelton has also posted a very thoughtful and honest reflection here, while David Walsh shares his thoughts here.

And finally, A. McEwen has posted an insightful commentary entitled, "Jerry Falwell's Legacy? Just Ask Paul Cameron or Peter LaBarbera."

The Quackery of Paul Cameron Exposed - Again

Jim Burroway over at the always informative Box Turtle Bulletin has recently posed an exposé of Family Research Institute founder, Paul Cameron (pictured below).


In reporting on the publishing of this exposé, David Shelton provides a concise summary of Paul Cameron:

“Cameron,” he notes, “is responsible for nearly all of the ‘statistics’ that anti-gay organizations use to demonize and marginalize homosexuals. One of the most often quoted stats is the alleged extreme shortened lifespan of gay men. [Cameron’s] ‘research’ led him to conclude that gays have an expected lifespan of a mere 43 years . . . if they DON’T have HIV or AIDS. [One of his] organization[s], NARTH (The National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuals) is a sham organization of ‘therapists’ who believe that gay people can change their sexual orientation.”

As I noted in a commentary published in October 2005 in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the quackery of NARTH lends itself to the Catholic Church’s scientifically uninformed teachings on homosexuality. Not surprisingly, some conservative elements within the Church frequently employ terminology and ‘statistics’ concocted by Paul Cameron and NARTH to bolster the institutional Church’s crude and erroneous “truth” about homosexuality.

For instance, “the Church’s official ‘support group’ for GLBT people, ‘Courage,’ often substitutes the word ‘homosexuality’ with the NARTH-coined phrase, ‘same-sex attraction disorder’ – a term unrecognized by any professional health association. Following NARTH’s lead, some members of Courage even consider their ‘disorder’ to be curable, and explain its origin using debunked theories of dominant mothers, distant fathers and abusive family relations.

“The quackery of NARTH is clearly endorsed and encouraged by some within the leadership of the Church . . .”

This is truly deplorable, for as David Shelton observes, “Anyone who uses [Paul Cameron’s] data to support their own anti-gay agenda is not only using sloppy logic, but shows that their agenda isn’t to spread the gospel, but rather to oppress.”

I think as Catholics we can do better than that, don’t you?


Image: WashingtonBlade.com

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
The Real Meaning of Courage
The Many Forms of Courage
The Dreaded “Same-Sex Attracted” View of Catholicism
Celebrating Our Sanctifying Truth
Our Catholic “Stonewall Moment”
Trusting God’s Generous Invitation
The Triumph of Love: An Easter Reflection
Truth Telling: The Greatest of Sins in a Dysfunctional Church

Tariq Ali on the Resignation of Tony Blair

Last Friday, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of Pacific Radio’s Democracy Now! program, interviewed historian and author Tariq Ali on British prime minister Tony Blair’s announcement that he will step down next month after more than a decade in power.


Following are excerpts from Democracy Now!’s interview with Tariq Ali:

Amy Goodman: It’s good to have you with us. Talk about Blair resigning.

Tariq Ali: Well, it was classic New Labour spin: well-orchestrated, designed for the global media networks, a self-serving speech, a carefully hand-picked audience so that there would be no trouble at all, and, actually, for him, a very bad speech. I mean, and I’ve always regarded Blair as a second-rate politician with a third-rate mind, but he’s had better speech writers than this, and I wondered whether he had written it himself. I mean, it’s sort of full of contradictions and half-truths. If he was going to see the so-called war against terror through, why quit?

We had no real accounting of why he’s leaving as prime minister. And the fact is he’s leaving because he’s hated. And the reason he’s hated is because he joined the neo-cons in Washington and went to war against Iraq, which now 78% of the population in [Britain] oppose. And when people are being asked what will Blair’s legacy be, a large majority is saying Iraq. And I think that’s what he will be remembered for, as a prime minister who took a reluctant and skeptical country into a war designed by Washington and its neo-conservative strategists, all of whom are in crisis. . .

Juan Gonzalez: And, Tariq, he did try in his speech to point to the continued prosperity, economic prosperity, of the British under his tenure. Your response to that?

Tariq Ali: Well, I mean, you know, it is prosperous for some people and some regions of the country. But if you look, for instance, at various regions in the north and northeast, you have a tiny proportion of the population which is relatively well-off, and you have people who are not so well-off, people who are dependent on social welfare, which is constantly under attack. You have a two-tier health system now, which you never used to, where if you have money, you can go in a hospital and get treatment any minute, but if you don’t, you have to stand in queues. You have lots of hospitals who he sold to private finance initiatives, which are now saying they can’t fund their hospitals anymore. The failures, the domestic failures, are not being talked about.

And you have large-scale corruption. I mean, recently a mega-scandal with a British arms company, which had paid massive bribes to leading Saudis, including probably members of the royal family. This came up. Blair put a stop to it. His attorney general, not unlike [U.S. Attorney General] Gonzales, said we can’t sue, because the country’s future interests are at stake, so corruption is fine. It’s a total mess.

Something is rotten in this kingdom. And a very sycophantic media rarely talks about it. It’s left to small indie media outlets or satirical magazines like Private Eye, basically, to carry on regular reporting of what is going on.

I don’t think his legacy is anything new. He tried to carry on what Margaret Thatcher did, and the results have not been too dissimilar. He’s had a bloodier reign than Thatcher. He has taken Britain into more wars and actually antagonized, as I point out in a number of recent articles, large swathes of the British establishment, who feel very ashamed that they are being led by a leader who is so totally and completely and a sort of favored attack dog in the imperial kennel.

Amy Goodman: Tariq Ali, President Bush in Washington, D.C., said he’ll miss Tony Blair. . .

Tariq Ali: Well, I think Bush is right. He will miss Blair. I mean, you can’t have a more loyal politician in Europe than Blair. . . He’s done virtually everything the United States has asked for, and not just after 9/11. Even prior to that, he was extremely pro-Washington in everything. He never raised any questions. So I think Washington will miss him. Mercifully, very few people in [Britain] will. . .

To read Democracy Now!’s interview with Tariq Ali in its entirety, click here.

Recommended Off-site Link:
“Blair’s Legacy: Militarism Abroad, Social Devastation at Home” – A Statement by the Socialist Equality Party (Britain)

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Tariq Ali Discusses Rudyard Kipling
Praying for George W. Bush

The Origins of Mother's Day

Here’s a little known fact: the very first Mother’s Day was organized by Julia Ward Howe as a day of peace and reconciliation between the North and South after the American Civil War and to renounce war as an instrument of national policy.

In her famous Mother’s Day Proclamation of 1870, Julia Ward Howe wrote:

Arise then . . . women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them
of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: “Disarm! Disarm!”

Above: With my mother in July 2005.

During the summer of 2005 my parents visited me in the U.S. from Australia. On July 27, Mum and I attended the weekly Wednesday afternoon peace vigil on the Lake St./Marshall Ave. Bridge. This bridge spans the Mississippi River and links Minneapolis and St. Paul. Earlier in the day, both my parents and I participated in the weekly vigil outside the corporate headquarters of Alliant Techsystems – Minnesota’s largest military weapons contractor, and the nation’s largest manufacturer of ammunition.

The following short film is from the Mother’s Day For Peace website. Directed by Robert Greenwald, it features a powerful recitation of Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation by Vanessa Williams, Felicity Huffmann, Fatma Saleh, Alfre Woodward, Ashraf Salimian, and Christine Lahti.



Recommended Off-site Links:
Mother’s Day For Peace
“Let’s Reclaim Mother’s Day for Peace” by Queen Noor of Jordan
AlliantAction
Women Against Military Madness (WAMM)

Voices of Parental Authority and Wisdom

Recently I reflected upon the appointment of Bishop John Nienstedt as Coadjutor Archbishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis.

Noting that the new coadjutor archbishop has expressed interest in listening and learning, I shared the hope that he might take the time to get to know local Catholic parents of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons.

These parents have much wisdom and compassion to share, as was demonstrated recently at New Ways Ministry’s Sixth National Symposium on Catholicism and Homosexuality. Held in Minneapolis, the symposium provided a unique opportunity for several parents of LGBT persons to engage in dialogue with two Catholic bishops.

Following is a report on this meeting by Casey Lopata and Florence Balog of the Rochester, NY-based organization, Fortunate Families. This report was originally published in the April 2007 issue of the Fortunate Families newsletter. It is reprinted with permission both at The Wild Reed and in the forthcoming Spring 2007 edition of CPCSM’s journal, The Rainbow Spirit.

The accompanying “Wisdom Mandala” artwork is by Barbara Clare Goodwin.

______________________________

In a Church “Always in Need of Reform,”
Parents Offer Authority and Wisdom
By Casey Lopata and Florence Balog


Modeling the dialogue of which our Church is in need,
Catholic parents of LGBT persons recently shared their
“persuasive” stories with two bishops who “came to learn.”

On the Saturday evening of New Ways Ministry’s March 16-18 symposium, over thirty parents of LGBT children met with retired Archbishop Francis Hurley (Anchorage), and retired Bishop Joseph Sullivan (Brooklyn).

The bishops came to learn. They listened to heartfelt, passionate, and powerful stories from about 15 parents, a grandmother, and a gay Catholic man.

Here is some of what they heard:


– Disappointment, pain, and anger at the Church’s teaching, resulting in estrangement from the Church, both for the LGBT daughter/son and for their families.

A mother described her son’s wonderful experience of being Catholic with support from his pastor. When the pastor left, the new one stressed Vatican teaching on homosexuality. After trying for a while, her son couldn’t take it anymore and left the Church.


– Disparity between parents’ experience of their LGBT children and the bishops’ theoretical view.

Learning his son was gay, a father called the chancery. The receptionist struggled to find someone he could talk with and finally offered the person in the chancery who dealt with people living with AIDS as the only one who might help. The father said his son is gay and that he doesn’t have AIDS. Annually, for ten years, he called and received the same response. Eventually, he was directed to Encourage. Yet for him to have stayed with this support group for parents that upholds and stresses the Church’s teaching on homosexuality, would have been a “pastoral train wreck.”


– Church teaching adds to the pain caused by society’s view of homosexuality, and to parents’ worry and pain about the safety of their children.

One father noted that the Bishops’ use of “inclination” in the latest document (Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care) is an indication that the bishops believe, contrary to scientific consensus, that same-sex attraction is not an orientation and can be changed.

A gay Catholic remarked: “I tried everything to get rid of my same-sex feelings. Finally I realized, this is who I am, as made by God. I had to ‘come out’ because I was becoming too good of a liar.”



– The pain and estrangement experienced by LGBT persons and their families is caused by bishops who teach about an “objectively disordered inclination” and “intrinsically evil acts,” and by Church teaching, uninformed by reality, that says it is impossible for an LBGT person to lead a fulfilled life of committed love with a person of the same gender.

One mother asked: “How is the Church loving gay people by driving them away?”

A father observed that, “An LGBT Catholic has three choices: 1) follow Church teaching and abstain from sexual activity (not the calling for most); 2) quit the Church (which many do); or 3) ignore the teaching like most Catholic parents ignore teaching on artificial contraception.”


– The pain caused by judging LGBT persons as unfit to parent children because, Church teaching says, LGBT parents put children in an environment that would do “violence” to them.

One mother showed pictures of her three granddaughters – two have two mommies, the other has a mommy and a daddy. She asked the bishops if they could identify which were the two being brought up in an environment of violence.


– Celibacy is a gift. Imposing celibacy on someone because of his or her sexual orientation is cruel and inhuman.

One father said that, “For an LGBT person to follow Church teaching and to forgo sexual activity when one does not have the gift of celibacy is unnatural.”


– While there is pain and struggle in being a Catholic LGBT person, so too is there joy and happiness.

One mother said, and many others nodded in agreement, that most LGBT persons she knows, including her son, are happy and at peace about being and living who they are. In addition, most parents feel fortunate to have an LGBT daughter or son.

___________________________

After one-and-a-half hours of hearing the parents’ stories, the bishops graciously responded.

They said the stories are persuasive, and encouraged parents to continue to share them. As part of the sensus fidelium (the “sense of the faithful”), their stories need to be heard as the Church is always in need of reform.

One mother asked the bishops to take “our hearts with you and share our stories with other bishops.” Both bishops said they would as they could. One admitted he came not understanding. Although he had learnt a lot, he “didn’t have a clue on what to do next.” After the session, several parents offered suggestions.

This session was a model of the dialogue the bishops call for in their recent document. We pray other bishops will follow the example of Bishops Hurley and Sullivan.




Image 1: Mom’s Spirit
Image 2: Root of Wisdom
Image 3: Jewel of Wisdom
Image 4: Faith’s Wisdom
All images by Barbara Clare Goodwin.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Coadjutor Archbishop Nienstedt’s “Learning Curve”: A Suggested Trajectory
The Bishops’ “Guidelines”: A Parent’s Response
Be Not Afraid: You Can Be Happy and Gay
Making Sure All Families Matter
Grandma Knows Best
Catholic Rainbow (Australian) Parents
Sons of the Church: The Witnessing of Gay Catholic Men - A Discussion Guide
The Many Forms of Courage
The Triumph of Love: An Easter Reflection

Recommended Off-site Links:
Catholic Rainbow Parents
Fortunate Families
Holy Families Committee of the Catholic Action Network for Social Justice

May Day 2007

Last Tuesday, May 1st, I participated in a May Day march and rally in Minneapolis that was part of a nationwide day of demonstrations to support immigration reform and worker rights.

As part of a contingent representing the Minnesota War Resisters League (Sister Rita Steinhagen Chapter), several friends and I marched in solidarity with close to two thousand immigrants and their supporters from Lake Street and Nicollet Avenue to Powderhorn Park in South Minneapolis.

One concrete immigration reform proposal many were advocating on May Day 2007 was the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (also called “The DREAM Act”), a bipartisan bill pending in the U.S. Congress that would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrant students. The DREAM Act would also repeal Section 505 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which currently puts limits on states’ ability to provide in-state tuition to illegal immigrant students.

Following are photographs of last Tuesday’s May Day march in Minneapolis, accompanied by “myths and facts” about immigrants provided by the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights.



MYTH: Immigration is a drain on the U.S. economy.

FACT: Immigration grows the U.S. economy. An estimated 17.9 million immigrants are currently working in the U.S. – accounting for 14% of the total civilian labor force. Compared to the native-born, a significantly higher percentage of immigrants are of working age ( between 28 and 54 years of age). Immigrants are just as likely to be self-employed and start new businesses as the native-born. They generate employment, and bring new innovations and creative diversity to our communities. Additionally, new immigrants often take positions that U.S. workers are less likely to fill – in manufacturing, computer technology, service work, and engineering.




MYTH: Immigrants abuse the Social Security and welfare systems.

FACT: While all immigrants are required to pay taxes – including sales, income, and property taxes – most immigrants are barred from receiving public assistance. Only refugees, asylees, and some legal immigrants are eligible to receive any public benefits, and even those who are eligible for benefits are subject to time limits. Undocumented persons are not eligible for any public benefit program, with the exception of emergency medical assistance. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1999, approximately one in five foreign-born householders received benefits such as food stamps and housing assistance. This use, however, is heavily concentrated among refugees and elderly immigrants – populations we are committed to and legally obligated to assist. Furthermore, immigrants are large contributors to – rather than recipients of – Social Security, and will pay an integral role in financing Social Security as the U.S. population ages. A study in 2005 found that undocumented immigrants pay $6-7 billion in Social Security taxes alone that they will never be able to claim.



MYTH: The United States is being overrun with illegal immigrants.

FACT: The estimated number of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. ranges from 10 to 11 million. Even the highest estimate accounts for less than 4% of the U.S. population. Many people who currently do not have legal permission to reside in the country did, in fact, enter legally. Experts estimate that between 25-40% of all undocumented immigrants came legally to this country and became undocumented by remaining here after their periods of authorized stay expired.



MYTH: Most immigrants to the United States are undocumented aliens who come only for economic reasons.

FACT: According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 946,142 immigrants were legally admitted to the U.S. in 2004, compared with a much smaller number of people who entered the U.S. without permission. This number includes both people who were adjusting their status and new arrivals. Smaller numbers of people came to the U.S. without legal permission. It is estimated that a net average of 500,000 people came annually in the last decade.

U.S. immigration policy allows immigration for three main reasons: 1) family, 2) work, and 3) freedom – in that order. Of the immigrants coming legally to the U.S. in 2004, 66% came to be reunited with immediate family members (parents, children, siblings, or spouses), 16% were sponsored by U.S. employers to fill positions for which no U.S. worker was available, and an additional 8% came as refugees or asylees, fleeing persecution and looking for safety and freedom in the U.S.

Undocumented people come for a variety of reasons. We often talk about these reasons in terms of “push” and “pull.” “Push” factors are the reasons at home that cause someone to leave – examples include poverty, lack of job opportunities, natural disasters, and political instability. “Pull” factors are the reasons elsewhere that cause someone to arrive – examples include increased freedom, job opportunities, and joining family members.

Like generations of immigrants before them, all of these immigrants come to this country looking for a better life, and their energy and ideas enrich all of our communities.




Above: The message on my t-shirt says: “Fight ignorance, not immigrants.”



The following photograph is part of my Faces of Resistance exhibit, and was taken on May Day 2001 in downtown Minneapolis. For other May Day images from Faces of Resistance, click here.



Image 1: Jeff Wheeler/Star Tribune
Images 2-10: Michael J. Bayly

See also the previous Wild Reed post:
Reflections on Babel and the “Borders Within”

Recommended Off-site Links:
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Now
Justice for Immigrants: The Catholic Campaign for Immigration Reform

Spring in Minnesota

For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

Algernon Charles Swinburne, (1837–1909)
Atalanta in Calydon (1865)

With the return of spring to Minnesota, I’ve been making the most of the warm sunny days by riding my bike through the quiet neighborhood streets around my home in St. Paul, and down to the bicycle paths that ribbon alongside the Mississippi River.

One aspect of life in the United States that I’ve always enjoyed is how the seasons are much more pronounced than in Australia.

I find spring, in particular, a wonderful and beautiful time of year: the budding leaves, the blossoming trees, the emerging shoots of soon-to-be blooming flowers - all speak of those profoundly spiritual realities of renewal, transformation, and new life.

Again it is spring
Look again it is spring
Time again for birds to sing;
Winter's gray now is past
Vibrant green is here at last.

Gentle rains usher in
Signs of life and joy within;
With each passing day we know
Gone for now are ice and snow.

Now the soil soaks in rain
Green adorns the earth so plain;
With each bud that bursts in bloom
Life springs from its winter tomb.

Birds are singing
Leaves are fluttering;
Winter's muttering
Dies away . . .

John Fagan

One of my favorite places to which I enjoy riding my bike, “Kongoni,” is a spot on the river bluffs below the University of St. Thomas. It’s a very peaceful place to sit, reflect, journal, and pray. Sometimes I simply sit in the warm sun and watch as the swallows dart back and forth across the great river. Occasionally, a barge - ladened with gravel or sand - will pass slowly by.

The sight of the nearby Lake St./Marshall Ave. Bridge and the dull and distant roar of planes from the airport, are often the only reminders that one is in the midst of a major metropolitan area. It’s quite amazing, really.

Spring Round-Up

Friends, following are links to a number of insightful articles and commentaries that perhaps, as regular visitors to The Wild Reed, you may appreciate and enjoy reading.

First, at the always informative Straight, Not Narrow, there’s an interesting commentary on a recent Canadian Justice Department study that found that parenting by same-sex families is just as good – if not slightly advantageous – for children when compared to heterosexual families.

Then there are two reviews of Pope Benedict XVI’s recently released book, Jesus of Nazareth – the first is by Jeff over at Aún Estamos Vivos , while the second is by Joseph O’Leary at Spirit Of Vatican II.

Mystical Seeker shares a great (and humorous) perspective on “The New and Improved Limbo”, as well as some insightful thoughts on “Europe and the Failure of Orthodox Christianity.”

Elsewhere, Peter Schwarz examines “Sarkozy’s Electoral Victory and the Bankruptcy of the French ‘Left’”, while Jerry Maneker looks at “The Pathology of the Gay Conservative.”

And finally, I’ve been meaning to share this insightful and, to be honest, somewhat humorous commentary by Christopher over at Bending the Rule for ages. It focuses on a number of popular phrases that gay men often find, er, “uncomfortable” – such as, “bend over, and take it.”

Here’s a brief excerpt:

Underlying [such a phrase] seems to be some assumption that all men are heterosexual, and so male-male sex must always be borne of domination and violence. I find myself even more surprised when these words roll of the lips of straight guy friends, knowing that I in fact am bound up in that description in some sense.

For one, being penetrated in and of itself doesn’t for me imply being feminized or unmasculine, dominated or inferior. In the course of intimacy, broadly speaking (not simply sex), giving and receiving, being responsive and receptive, are par for the course.

That we continue to associate active with penetrating and passive with being penetrated and homologizing this with male/female, strong/weak, superior/inferior, good/evil suggests a great deal about how we categorize sex (and often our sexual ethics) in terms of domination and submission. After all, this is the categories the Romans worked with (regardless of whether the penetrated person was male or female), and these categories are only modified by Old Testament writings in such a way that no man was to be dominated by another man sexually. Women seem to have been fair game. All of this is to say, that I think those of us who look to responding to Christ as our first locus might consider how this approach to sex and sexual ethics is deeply flawed.

Image 1: John Ireland and Montgomery Clift in Red River (1948). (For more information, and a chuckle, visit A History of Gay Cowboys).
Image 2: Montgomery Clift on the set of The Misfits (1961). (For yet another interesting read, visit Hollywood Homosexuals).

Coadjutor Archbishop Nienstedt's "Learning Curve"

A Suggested Trajectory . . .

Lesson 1: Homosexuality 101

Lesson 2: Diversity: The “True Tradition” of the Church



Last week it was announced that New Ulm Bishop John Nienstedt (pictured above at right) had been appointed by the Vatican to be the successor of St. Paul/Minneapolis Archbishop Harry Flynn (pictured above at left).

Nienstedt will serve as “coadjutor archbishop” until Flynn’s retirement, the date of which has yet to be announced. As coadjutor archbishop, Nienstedt will share with Flynn the various duties related to the governance, administration, and pastoral ministry of the archdiocese.


Much discussion

Since the announcement of the appointment, there has been much discussion among Catholics about the implications for the archdiocese of Nienstedt’s leadership style. It’s common knowledge that John Nienstedt holds views and opinions generally termed “conservative.” Archbishop Flynn, on the other hand, is viewed by many as a moderate. Under his leadership, for instance, a diversity of worship styles has been tolerated within the archdiocese – from the traditionalist practices of the Church of St. Agnes, to the “liberal” practices of parishes such as St. Joan of Arc.

How will the more liberal communities fare under the new archbishop? Will it be a time of “cracking down” and “reining in”? Some are obviously hoping so, and welcome Nienstedt as “someone who plays by the rules and doesn’t bend them to please every crowd,” someone who will give the archdiocese “a good house cleaning.” Others have responded to the news of Nienstedt’s appointment with dismay and apprehension.

“I expect disaster,” retired priest Kenneth Irrgang is quoted as saying in an article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “[Nienstedt] is a micro-manager. He has to control everything. He hews the line from the Vatican without question whatsoever. He’s not a very good people person.”

Others disagree. “Bishop Niensted is a consummate man of the Church,” says the Rev. Philip M. Schotzko of the Church of St. Peter in St. Peter, Minnesota. “He thinks with, prays with, and loves the Church with everything he’s got. He just follows very carefully the teachings and all aspects of Church theology and moral teaching. You’ll get a very committed man in that way.”


Controversy

Both Irrgang and Schotzko are quoted in David Hanners April 25 Pioneer Press article on the appointment of Nienstedt. While acknowledging that “some in New Ulm lauded [Nienstedt] as an able administrator and liturgist,” Hanners also reports that “some of his actions have rankled his own priests and parishioners in the diocese he has led since August 2001.”

“For instance,” writes Hanners, “soon after being named bishop of New Ulm, [Nienstedt] condemned some of the theological views of the man who had the post before him for 25 years, Bishop Raymond Lucker, a noted progressive clergyman who died in 2001. Denouncing his predecessor’s views was an ‘extraordinary step,’ the National Catholic Reporter noted in an article on the incident.”

Hanners goes on to note that, “As bishop in New Ulm, Nienstedt prohibited cohabitating couples from being married in Catholic churches. He barred female pastoral administrators from leading prayers at a semi-annual leadership event. He once disciplined a priest for holding joint ecumenical services with a Lutheran congregation after the Catholic church [in the priest’s town] had been destroyed by a tornado.”


A learning curve

Such controversial matters appear to be off-limits in the coverage of Nienstedt’s appointment by The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the St. Paul/Minneapolis Archdiocese. Instead, writers such as Maria Wiering simply note that “those who know Nienstedt say he is ‘patient,’ ‘honest,’ and loves to snow ski.”

In another Catholic Spirit article about Nienstedt’s appointment, Julie Carroll reports that the new coadjutor’s “first priority will be to learn what makes the archdiocese tick.”

Neinstedt himself stressed this priority when, during a news conference last week, he declared: “I see myself as a learner. I’ll come here, I’ll listen, I’ll talk to people . . . This next year will be a sharp learning curve for me.”

Well, that certainly sounds promising.

I’d like to suggest a couple of topics of study for the new coadjutor archbishop (and his supporters, as well).


Homosexuality 101

First: homosexuality. I'm sorry to say that judging from what Nienstedt has said about homosexuality in his regular column, “And Miles to Go,” in the New Ulm diocese’s newsletter, he truly has “miles to go” in grasping and articulating a credible (not to mention, pastorally sensitive) understanding of this particular aspect of human sexuality.

Neinstedt, for instance, has expressed the view that people become gay or lesbian as “a result of psychological trauma” when a child between the ages of eighteen months and three years. Furthermore, homosexuality, according to Neinstedt, “must be understood in the context of other human disorders: envy, malice, greed, etc.” He also advised parishioners to avoid the film Brokeback Mountain, which he bizarrely describes as “a story of lust gone bad.” (As if lust on its own isn’t already understood by the Church as “bad”!)

If Neinstedt really is dedicated to listening and learning, then I urge him to make a start by getting to know local Catholic parents of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons. In 2005, many of these parents formed a grassroots Catholic organization and issued a pastoral statement entitled, The Catholic Rainbow Parents Declaration. These parents would be more than happy to share with the new coadjutor archbishop the wisdom and love they’ve experienced and gained as the result of being parents of LGBT persons.



Such wisdom stands in stark contrast to Nienstedt’s ill-informed views on homosexuality noted in Hanners’ April 25 article. These views shocked, saddened, angered, and embarrassed local Catholic parents of LGBT persons (not to mention LGBT persons themselves).

Nienstedt’s views also prompted the following May 1 letter-to-the-editor by St. Paul resident Margaret Klempay:

For Catholics, the Second Vatican Council was a beacon of hope. In its decrees, church leaders embraced the challenges of an ever-changing civilization with all its demands, insights, unknowns and discoveries, confident in the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Unfortunately, this confidence seems to be lacking in the newly appointed Coadjutor Archbishop John Nienstedt, especially as he confronts the status of homosexual persons in the church. Attributing homosexual orientation to a trauma undergone by a child between 18 months and 3 years old lacks any shred of scientific credibility. Equating homosexual orientation with greed and malice seems to be more a fearful reaction to the unknown rather than a confident openness to a pastoral challenge.

Should Catholics not be concerned about the imposition of a leader who appears to be fearful of the future while he clings to the comfort of the past?

Others, of course, relish the thought of a return to pre-Vatican II formality and orthodoxy – which they see embodied in John Nienstedt. Take for example, the following comments left on the Pioneer Press website in response to David Hanners April 25 article:

Thanks be to God for our new Bishop Nienstedt. He will be a welcome change for the [arch]diocese. The 60s are dead, let’s move forward [or backwards, as the case may be].

Bless the Lord! A Bishop without a limp wrist, but more importantly without a limp spine. [Ouch! What’s this person insinuating about Archbishop Flynn? And must he/she do so in such a homophobic way? I mean, “limp wrist”!?]

The Church is the Church and with it comes its theology. For those who don’t like it there are other, more liberal denominations waiting to welcome you.

As you can see, many are gleefully anticipating that the new archbishop will crack down on Catholic parishes and organizations that are not toeing the traditionalist line. In the eyes of these so-called conservatives, such communities are not authentically Catholic.

Accordingly, the individuals who comprise such communities better shape up or get out and leave the “true believers” in peace with their rigid, calcified understanding of “the Church” – an understanding that sees the Church, supposedly by its very tradition, incapable of growth and change.

But wait! Such a reactionary and fearful perspective is not only very sad and pathetic, it’s also a terrible and tragic betrayal of our richly diverse Catholic tradition.

Diversity in the Catholic Church?!, I can well hear some exclaim, Surely, Michael, you jest?

Yet before you dismiss such an outlandish contention, let me share the findings and insights of scholar Gary Macy. And think of these insights as comprising the content of Lesson 2 of that “learning curve” to which Coadjutor Archbishop Nienstedt has committed himself.


Diversity: The true tradition of the Church

In his book, Treasures from the Storeroom: Medieval Religion and the Eucharist, Macy reveals the long-held theology within the Church that recognizes and celebrates “each generation of Christians as equally graced by God, each striving to fulfill God’s will as they understand it. Each generation failing, misunderstanding, or succeeding as much as we do [today].”

“If this theological approach is correct,” says Macy, “then the past seems not so much a simple path leading (how reassuring!) right to our doorstep, but rather many paths attempting to find their way to God. Perhaps not surprisingly, seen from this perspective, the past may well be more tolerant of diversity than some scholars have led us to believe.”

The upshot of all of this, and its connection to current events in the Archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis?

Well, according to Macy, “the discovery of such diversity suggests two theological conclusions. First . . . is the well-founded belief that our true tradition is diversity itself.”

“To be tolerant is a substantial part of our better Christian heritage,” insists Macy. Furthermore, “If there was diversity in the past, and that diversity was tolerated, then the best way to truly honor the past is to foster such diversity in the present.”

“Secondly,” continues Macy, “this understanding of the history of Christianity frees us in the present from a tremendous burden. If the past did not lead ineffably to us, then the future does not absolutely depend upon us ‘getting it right’ either (whatever that might mean to different groups). We are surely called to do and live by, to the best of our ability, what we determine to be God’s will (just as those in the past were supposed to do).”

Macy also notes, no doubt much to the chagrin of those who can’t wait for the “liberals” within the Church to pack up and move out, that “in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a truly autocratic notion of Church was propagated with great success and then read back into the rest of Christian Catholic history. [In the] twenty-first century we are still wrestling with this terrifically successful campaign of misinformation.”

Yes, and here in Minnesota this “wrestling” will undoubtedly intensify with the appointment of John Nienstedt, a man known to be very much committed to this “autocratic notion of Church.”

Yet in the midst of such doom and gloom some are finding, albeit ironic, signs of hope. Tom Murr, for instance, a lifelong Catholic and co-founder of Catholic Rainbow Parents, recently shared with me his opinion that the appointment of John Neinstedt is simply one more indication that the institutional Church has chosen to enter into “self-destruct mode.”

Of course, this makes perfect sense when we consider how it was the institutional Church (i.e., the Vatican) that created and continues to fuel that “campaign of misinformation” identified by Macy. It also makes perfect sense when we consider how stubbornly the Vatican and its supporters have denied and sectioned themselves off from the authentic Catholic tradition of diversity and tolerance. Let us also not forget their failure to adopt an attitude of trusting openness to the Holy Spirit present and active throughout all aspects of the people of God, an attitude upon which the Church’s “true tradition” of diversity depends.


A “strange form of authoritarianism”

Yet what is the theological basis for the Church’s “official” aversion to diversity? It’s certainly not the theology of our forebears, who as Macy documents, embraced a theological tradition which recognized “each generation of Christians [as being] equally graced by God, [and] striving to fulfill God’s will as they understand it.”

No, the theology that today’s so-called traditionalists embrace is far more narrow, prescriptive, and authoritarian. Macy describes it as the ‘Big Book of Doctrine’ school of theology.

“This strange form of authoritarianism,” says Macy when describing this particular school of theology, “fomented both by the ultra-montanism of the late nineteenth-century papacy and by Enlightenment anti-clericalism, understands Roman Catholicism as fundamentally an attempt to provide the definitive answers to all questions, usually in one ‘big book of doctrine,’ whether it be Thomas’s Summa, Denzinger’s Enchiridion, or lately the Roman Catechism of the Universal Church.”

So think about it: those being pushed out of the Church for being open to and tolerant of diversity are actually more attuned to the true tradition of Catholicism than the so-called traditionalists doing the pushing!

Of course, these traditionalists, these defenders of the “autocratic notion of Church,” do not see their efforts as misguided or ultimately self-destructive. I have no doubt, however, that many of them do believe that a smaller, more homogeneous Church - one dedicated to the ‘Big Book of Doctrine’ school of theology - would be better than a Church that welcomes and encourages diversity.

Accordingly, efforts to “crack down” on parishes that aren’t up to their standards – to the extent that people are compelled to leave and join other denominations – may well be part of a plan to establish a “remnant” of “true believers,” or perhaps more accurately, a “leaner/meaner” style of Church. Yet would such a Church be “Catholic”? Our history, our very tradition says no, it would not. And why not? Because it would lack diversity.


A prayer and a challenge

My prayer is that John Nienstedt will reject any misguided efforts to forge a “leaner/meaner” style of Church. May he instead be open to seeking and nurturing our living, evolving Catholic Church’s “true tradition” of diversity.

I also pray that there will be folks within the archdiocese willing to connect and share with our new coadjutor the theological and pastoral insights and the spiritual gifts they’ve gained as a result of their embodiment of this tradition of diversity. Believe me, there are many of us out there.

My sense is that it’s going to be quite some “learning [and teaching] curve” for more people than just the new coadjutor archbishop in St. Paul/Minneapolis if we want to see a Catholic Church that lives up to its true tradition - a tradition of diversity.

I’m up for the challenge.

So are, among others, the Catholic Rainbow Parents.

Is Coadjutor Archbishop Nienstedt?

Are you?


Image 1: Jeff Wheeler/Star Tribune.
Image 2: David McCaffrey.

Special thanks to my friend Eduard for bringing Gary Macy’s book to my attention.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Thoughts on Authority and Fidelity
Truth Telling: The Greatest of Sins in a Dysfunctional Church
Who Gets to be Called “Catholic” – and Why?
A Not So “New” Catholic University
A Catholic’s Prayer for His Fellow Pilgrim, Benedict XVI
Our Catholic “Stonewall Moment”