One more for the road.

Eve Tushnet posts a sort of summation of day two of the Gay in Christ colloquium...

I'm told there were about 75 people in attendance - which may explain the lack of coverage.  I seriously thought there would be a bigger crowd.  One friend told me he believed a key element in the conference might be summed up in this phrase,  "rehabilitating the Church's concept of 'eros'".  Eve Tushnet would probably disagree - she concluded her post on day 2 saying:

Overall: I initially walked away thinking we’d advanced the ball a lot on pastoral care, but very little on theology. Having mulled and discussed things a little, I’m less negative about our attempts to trace an orthodox Catholic theology which isn’t anti-gay. And anyway the more creatively, personally, and humbly we approach pastoral care, the more likely we are to understand the theology, since we understand the faith by living it. - Eve Tushnet

I think I had to be there in order to comment on the speakers.

It's a strange life they've chosen.

Gay-celibacy as a vocation?  I see it as a state in life.  Celibacy - not gay.  Gay is a condition.

That said, imagine getting up every day, and going to bed at night saying to yourself, "I'm gay", or "I'm lonely", or "I'm misunderstood"?  I think the focus is 'off'.

I found it interesting that the only religious speaker there brought up L'Arche - a community for disabled persons founded by Jean Vanier.  I love Jean Vanier very much - his spirituality is pure Gospel, deeply Catholic.  It is very much like today's Gospel, where the servants go out into the hedgerows and byways to collect the blind and the crippled to come into the Church.  It is also a very Franciscan concept - as in Pope Francis.  I get that.  That's what the Christian life is.  It's like Madeleine Delbrel, who would be a very good prototype for any effort in evangelization of gay people, BTW.

I still don't get the Spiritual Friendship - Gay in Christ stuff.  Unless it really is about disability... Nah!  They definitely don't think so.

Good patrons for these folks would be Madeleine Delbrel, Dorothy Day, and Jean Vanier - as well as Therese of Lisieux.  I like this thought from the life of Therese:

"To help me accept a humiliation, she once confided to me: 'If I had not been accepted in Carmel, I would have entered a Refuge (for fallen women) and lived out my days there, unknown and despised among the poor penitents. I would have been happy to be taken as one of them, and would have become an apostle among them, telling them what I thought of God's mercy.'" - Therese By Those Who Knew Her

That I get.

A Hybrid Spirituality

Morning on Magdalen Tower - Holman Hunt

Random thoughts ...

I was doing a lot of thinking about the Spiritual Friendship gay-Catholics this past weekend - because they met for a conference at Notre Dame.  I did a couple of posts on the colloquium, but no one read them - which is fine, because I didn't have much to say.  Although I was seriously trying to make sense of the movement as a new gay spirituality.  Gay celibates - I'm not sure how new that is.

I don't want to go through the long history of gay, lgbtq, gay liberation, gay, gay, gay history - but suffice it to say I connect the dots to New Ways Ministry, Dignity, Catholic U .... everything that has gone before leading to now.  Gay as an identity.  It's part of coming out, it's part of being immersed in lgbtq.  So everyone knows that.  The Catholic Church responded offering a very pastoral ministry known as Courage.  Courage has been maligned as being too much like a recovery, 12 Step program - and has even been accused of promoting ex-gay therapy.  That's a misunderstanding which, repeated often enough, is believed, and is even claimed today by some of the Spiritual Friends.

That's not true however.  Courage isn't a gay movement - it is a support group for men and women who wish to sanctify their lives in accord with Catholic teaching.  It is not a hybrid spirituality, such as a 'new' movement, sect or religious community/association may develop into.  Courage is an apostolate within the Catholic Church.  Go to the Courage site here to understand better.

In contrast, the Spiritual Friendship 'movement' strikes me as a bit more exclusive however - as if it is a step above.  Ever since my first acquaintance with the group, it has seemed to me to be a sort of hybrid spirituality, a gay spirituality.  Similar to various movements in history, especially the romantic movement, or as I wrote in a previous post, the Uranians - except the Spiritual Friendship movement is Catholic.  Gay celibate Catholics, aka 'New Homophiles' - in that sense, they seem more like Shakers.

I'm still trying to understand, but I'm not sure it's all that important for me that I do.  I think it's a sort of trend, a movement to something else perhaps, and that's my point.

[Metaphor alert!]

Movements have a short term flowering within an era.

Like Shakers, homosexuals - celibate or not - can't reproduce.  A homophile movement may flower, but it bears no fruit.

Usually movements are transitory, creating a sort of safe haven, or respite from mediocrity.  They offer a periodic sense of belonging and identity, and though non-binary if you will, they inevitably close in upon themselves, forming another species within an existing subculture.

One may witness the effect in various movements within religious groups throughout history - which is why I consider the Spiritual Friendship group somewhat analogous with Shakers.  Off the top of my head, I can only think of a couple of other movements, albeit completely different in purpose from Spiritual Friends; the Spiritualist Franciscans, the Holiness movement, Quietists, Oxford movement, various Protestant sects and revival efforts, even some Catholic religious groups.  Most are more or less experiential, and in many cases unstable and transitory.  That is not to say they do not effect change - they do.

[Metaphor alert!]

I may be wrong, but I actually see some of the late 19th early 20th century religious habits of women religious as a sort of metaphor for the rise and fall, the progress and demise, of hybrid movements.  Case in point, the crazy habit of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary.

The foundress, M. St. Jean

Mid-20th century exaggeration.

The two examples shown above may help to make my point.  The religious women were organized into a community to serve a particular need in the Church at a particular time.  The habit was based upon folk dress of the time - albeit religious.  Perhaps somewhat exaggerated, it nevertheless was common to the time, fabrication natural and functional, and so on.  On the other hand, the 20th century hybrid denied the humanity of the person, confined and restricted vision and movement, and became an obstacle to the performance of duties, as well as restricting authentic freedom of spirit.  Components of the habit were rigid and artificial.  Religious life stagnated and withered.  The RSHM's remain extant, but it seems many religious congregations like them are fading away.  Although that's another post.

"All things are passing away: God never changes." - Teresa of Jesus

(Told you this was random.)

(Oh!  I may be wrong too.)

"...if it comes from God, you will not be able to stop it; 

you may even find yourselves fighting against God.” - Acts 5: 39

Song for this post here....


Yup.  That will do for now.

Just a thought before the start of the Gay in Christ Conference at Notre Dame ...

"...if it comes from God, you will not be able to destroy them stop it; 

you may even find yourselves fighting against God.” - Acts 5: 39

The Conference schedule is here.

I'm not sure all that many Catholics are aware of the importance of this conference, which will most likely affect the way gay people are treated within the Catholic Church, at least throughout the United States.  Hence it is important to pray for the Conference, its speakers/presenters, as well as the participants/audience.  I may have fun with the event - but I respect those who will be attending.

I think Today's First Reading from Philippians is more than providential for the opening day of the Conference, as well as a good prayer to ponder:

I give thanks to my God at every remembrance of you,
praying always with joy in my every prayer for all of you,
because of your partnership for the Gospel
from the first day until now.
I am confident of this,
that the one who began a good work in you
will continue to complete it
until the day of Christ Jesus.
It is right that I should think this way about all of you,
because I hold you in my heart,
you who are all partners with me in grace,
both in my imprisonment
and in the defense and confirmation of the Gospel.
For God is my witness,
how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

And this is my prayer:
that your love may increase ever more and more
in knowledge and every kind of perception,
to discern what is of value, 

so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,
filled with the fruit of righteousness
that comes through Jesus Christ
for the glory and praise of God. - Philippians 1: 1-11

I could be wrong of course.