queer

I have a new defense for all those self-proclaimed orthodox bloggers who might criticize Saint Anthony Shrine for being welcoming of gay and lesbian Catholics:

At least we don’t have a Buddha.

It seems that down in Australia, a bishop there has issued a warning to a “renegade” parish “where women can preach, homosexual couples can be blessed and social justice is championed.” It seems the church is “operating outside practices and policies acceptable to the Roman Catholic Church.” (God forbid the Church should champion social justice.) The bishop concluded that whatever good the parish might be doing, it is decidedly not Catholic. (The crisis was, of course, precipitated by a person not a member of the parish who came in and took surreptitious photographs – yet another Catholic snitch on a self-appointed crusade to purify the Church. If you’re worried about impurities, my friends, try Lysol.)

My new book Since My Last Confession: A Gay Catholic Memoir is now available.  Publishers Weekly described it so: “A lighthearted memoir . . . Pomfret elucidates the eventual resolution of his spiritual crises with considerable integrity and manages to present sympathetic portraits of clergy, biting satires of church practices, and a nuanced rendering of a church and congregation considering its role in a changing world. . . . Unfailingly lively.” Set primarily in Boston during the revelations of the Scandal and the battle over same-sex marriage and gay adoptions, Confession is a funny-but-faithful account of my stalking Cardinal Sean O’Malley of the Archdiocese of Boston.  As a federal prosecutor and practicing Catholic, I was attempting to use lawyerly persuasion to change the cardinal's tune.  What I found along the way was a passionately atheist boyfriend, a host of motorcycle lesbians, gay priests, flaming friars, pious prelates, would-be Opus Dei homosexual monks, three “Hale” Marys, Harry Potter’s Satanism, and ten surefire ways to detect a fellow gay Catholic.   

            60,000 people showed up in Yankee Stadium to celebrate Mass with Pope Benedict XVI.  Tickets were in short supply.  Several sold on Ebay for more than $200.  According to newspaper reports, even those with strings to pull ended up empty-handed. 

I was one of the lucky ticketholders selected by lottery by the Archdiocese of Boston.  But I spent Sunday in the mountains close to God.

According to the Boston Globe, the Vatican announced that belief in aliens from outer space is perfectly consistent with belief in God.  Extra terrestrials, the Vatican’s chief astronomer pointed out, would still be God’s creatures:

“Ruling out the existence of aliens would be to put limits on God's creative freedom.”

The remarks came in the context of a discussion of the Church’s persecution of Galileo for heresy in connection with the scientist’s theory that the earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa.  According to the chief astronomer,

“The church has somehow recognized its mistakes.  Maybe it could have done it better . . . .”

In Sal Sapienza's 2006 novel, Seventy Times Seven, Vito Fortunato gets lots of guidance from God, but the messages do not come via the burning bush. For Vito, the voice of God is mediated variously by George Michael, Madonna (the one that is "like a virgin," not actual the Ever Virgin Herself), a queeny flight attendant who loves Saint Augustine's Confessions, Cat Stevens (a.ka. Yusif Islam), a drunken woman on the subway, Deuteronomy, and Barbara Stanwyck. From these diverse sources, the message is always consistent: Choose Life.

<o:p>

As if to emphasize the fact that the laity are really beside the point in the view of the Pope Benedict XVI hierarchy, it appears that there will be no
lay ministers serving at the Masses he is celebrating in Yankee Stadium and in Washington DC.

And just as an aside, who celebrates Mass in Yankee Stadium, of all places? That’s an unholy place, if there ever was one, especially for a born-and-raised boy from Boston who still remembers Bucky Dent hitting a home run that foiled the chances of the Red Sox back in the days when we could not fathom an actual World Series victory. Sigh. [UPDATE: on further review, it turns out that Dent homerun took place in Fenway Park. Perhaps Yankee Stadium ain’t so bad.]

Anyhow …

Sermon: Third Sunday of Lent, Year A
The Community Church of Wilmette
February 24, 2008
John 4:5-42

Digging Out

There is a really deep well inside me.
And in it dwells God.
Sometimes I am there, too.
But often stones and grit block the well,
and God is buried beneath.
Then God must be dug out again. – Etty Hillesum

There is something about a well. It’s a rich symbol, practical and yet mysterious, frightening and yet life-giving. We dig them. We cover them. We send Jack and Jill up a hill to fetch a pail of water from a well. We fall into them.

There is a well on my father’s property. Actually, there are two now. The first one dried up and Daddy had to have another one, a deeper one, dug in the back yard. Out in the country where he lives there are no water mains, no civil infrastructure to provide water for everyone. People live too far apart. So, every family has their own well.