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.

Self Loathing and the Culturally-correct Gay-elite

Bret Easton Ellis said it first.

And I agree.  Gay has become culturally homogenized.  Now with gay marriage on the books, it's Ozzie and Harriet-ized.  I've said similar things for years - remember, I've been blogging for seven, so I can say that.  When you say that stuff, or level charges of immorality against anything gay - you are automatically labeled 'self-loathing'.  Why?  because gay is so damned good and you better like it. 

Catholic 'gay-elites' spin it a bit differently - but they still spin it. 

So what did Bret Easton Ellis really say?

Novelist and prolix Twitterer Bret Easton Ellis is raising hackles once again by labeling such organizations as GLAAD as "the gatekeepers of politically correct gayness" in a long editorial in Out Magazine. Ellis invited further response to his argument by announcing an AMA ("ask me anything") on Reddit, to be held at noon Pacific time today.

The Out rant, titled "In the Reign of the Gay Magical Elves," was prompted in part by the media response to the recent coming out of basketball player Jason Collins, whom Ellis writes is being treated "as some kind of baby panda who needs to be honored and consoled and -- yes -- infantilized."

Ellis goes on to criticize "gay self-patronization in the media," which in his opinion celebrates "the Gay Man as Magical Elf, who whenever he comes out appears before us as some kind of saintly E.T. whose sole purpose is to be put in the position of reminding us only about Tolerance."

At fault, according to Ellis, are organizations that marginalize the gay man "who doesn't want to represent, doesn't want to teach" and who "makes crude jokes about other gays in the media (as straight dudes do of each other constantly)." This, Ellis writes, amounts to "corporate PC fascism." - LATimes
 

Ellis writes a critique and he's called self-loathing.  I simply loath the condition - not the person.

Ellis directs his critique against secular homosexual culture, nevertheless, there really is an emerging PC way of talking about all things gay-ssa amongst 'gay' Catholics - and there really are 'gatekeepers', if you will.  I'm not talking Courage or NARTH people here either.  To be sure, Ellis probably wouldn't agree with any of them, and for sure, he'd never agree with my POV.

What's my point?  Going forward, I want to publish some information a friend sent me regarding science and sexual orientation.  For now, I just want to add a quote from the same resource:

Homosexuality, as a genetic inevitability, has probably been gay activism’s most effective PR initiative in the campaign for equal rights and special protections. Although it is no longer politically correct or fashionable in many circles to say that homosexuals can change, it is scientifically accurate to say so. We are not speaking only of behavioural changes but changes in attraction.

 

The fact is that nothing makes us do anything—neither our genes nor our environment. - Source

 

"Although it is no longer politically correct or fashionable in many circles to say that homosexuals can change, it is scientifically accurate to say so."  I'm convinced it can be spiritually accurate to say so too.

Editor's note:  This comes off sort of 'out of the blue', I'm sure.  How do I make these connections?  Arrive at my conclusions?  I hope I can explain going forward.

In the meantime, my apologies for dwelling on the homosexual issue, I'm more or less responding to the recent developments regarding gay marriage in Minnesota and the initial consequence of cultural approval for homosexual sexual relations and behaviour.

These are the consequences BTW.

With gay marriage approved, homosexual sexual behavior is approved.  Gay Catholics are already talking about living within that reality - in other words, on another level, accepting it, and developing a gay spirituality.  That's huge ladies and gentlemen.  That's huge, moms and dads and teachers and pastors. 

It's huge.