gay

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.)

Sex and The Sacred: Gay Identity and Spiritual Growth, by Daniel A. Helminiak (Binghamton: Harrington Park Press, 2006), 235pp. (Review by Scott D. Pomfret, www.sincemylastconfession.com.)

Daniel Helminiak’s project in his 2006 collection of previously published essays, Sex and the Sacred: Gay Identity and Spiritual Growth, is a naked act of reclamation. Helminiak, a Catholic priest, professor of psychology and longtime member of the gay Catholic group Dignity, sets his sights on terms like “spirituality”, “Christianity”, and “natural law,” and wrests them from those who would use them to oppress gay people. He provides a cogent re-description of these and related terms in an effort to draw gays and lesbians back to the Eucharistic table. Helminiak’s manner is gentle and affirming: he knows that he is preaching to a GLBT audience of the wounded, who regard religious concepts with wariness at best and an understandable outright hostility in many cases. Heroically, he barely acknowledge Sisyphusian nature of his project; he says one thing that brings GLBT spiritual beings close; religious authorities say something new and hurtful that drives them away all over again.

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>

Last year, a lesbian couple in Wyoming, married in Canada, and mothers of three, got a surprise in the mail. At the request of their bishop (David Ricken), their pastor informed them by letter that they were no longer welcome to take Communion.

Their sin, the pastor made clear, was not their lesbianism per se. In fact, they regularly attended Mass and their family picture had appeared in the parish directory. What brought them down was the Smudge. On Ash Wednesday, they appeared (complete with forehead ashes) in an article in which they protested an anti-gay marriage amendment then pending in the Wyoming legislature. This exposure culminated in their being refused communion.

Don’t get me wrong. I am pleased and proud that members of the gay Catholic group Dignity staked out the roadside along the Popemobile’s route through Washington DC. For years, Dignity has been the strongest gay Catholic voice in the nation. But crowing about the Pope’s having waved to the silent Dignity contingent made me squirm. Are we really satisfied with that – a Papal wave? The news story makes the members sound like a pair of Okies vacationing in Hollywood who managed to get a glimpse of a Big Star and imagined the Big Star threw a smile their way:

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 …