Posted in category "Arts & Letters"
This Thursday the Suffolk Times completed a four-issue series about gays and lesbians on the North Fork. When Lori and I got to the house last night, I saw that Anne MacKay of Orient was interviewed about the growth of the North Fork Community.
“It was a wonderful place, not as expensive as the South Fork, and lesbians began coming out and buying property in the 1960s,” MacKay said. As a fourth-generation summer person, “I’m not really a local,” she added wryly.
A retired theater professor, MacKay moved into her home in Brown’s Hills in 1959, and summered there until she retired “in about 1990″ when she moved to Orient full-time.
In the article MacKay described the beginning of the North Fork women’s community. Early on, the women would have gatherings in one another’s homes. “At first, we’d all just fit into a living room,” but over the years the group expanded. The North Fork Women for Women Fund now has a mailing list of about 500 names.
Lori and I met Anne MacKay at a NFWFWF event earlier this year. Engaging and energetic, she carried the perspective–but not the weight–of her 80 years. Her eyes are lively and intelligent. She is still a charmer.
Shortly after the event I made a point to go get copies of her books of poetry, Salt Water Days and Sailing the Edge. The Orient General Store carries them, in an old fashion wood and glass case. Women, nature, water, myth, and memory run and blend together in the poems, which is just perfect for me. 
Fr. Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) was the author of The Wounded Healer and dozens of other books. He is famous for his religious meditations and his guides to spiritual development. 
BBC producer Michael Ford met Nouwen while interviewing him for a TV program. He later took at leave of absence to write the book, The Wounded Prophet - A Portrait of Henri J.M. Nouwen.
Ford said it is impossible to “understand the complexity and anguish of the man” without considering his homosexual orientation, something he was aware of from the time he was a boy, but started to come to grips with only in the final years of his life.
He wrestled with his homosexual leanings, which he regarded as a disability, a cross to bear. While he taught at Harvard in the 1980s, he was hard on gay students, telling them homosexuality was an evil state of being.
In time, Nouwen became friends with some gay people, and was under pressure to go public. Other friends, however, counseled him to keep his secret, saying he would lose all credibility as a famous and widely admired Catholic if people knew he was gay.
Nouwen never publicly came out during his lifetime. He did acknowledge he was gay in private conversations and in his diaries.
Nouwen was deeply troubled by the possibility that people would reject him if they knew about his sexual orientation. “This took an enormous emotional, spiritual and physical toll on his life and may have contributed to his early death,” Ford said.
His homosexual feelings may also have contributed to a midlife nervous breakdown. When his close friend Nathan Ball pulled back from their platonic relationship, Nouwen went into a tailspin and had to seek treatment for an emotional breakdown.
Ford believes this brokenness within Nouwen was the key to his ability to reach out to those in need, those who are suffering and wounded. Ford writes, “He discovered that it was from the wounded places in himself that he could reach the wounded places in others.”
Henri saw the 1987 film, Maurice, based on E. M. Forster’s novel of classism and homophobia in England. After the movie, Henri collapsed. His companion’s description of what happened is recounted by Ford:
“…he had to stop on the highway because he was sobbing uncontrollably. He was so caught up with the story and the dilema the two main characters were living, because it was his. All I could do was hold him and let him cry. He was really in pieces.” 
“Today the small rejections of my life are too much for me,” Nouwen writes. “A sarcastic smile, a flippant remark, a brisk denial, a bitter silence, a failure to be noticed, a coldness from a colleague, an indifference from someone I love, a nagging tiredness, the lack of a soulmate, a loneliness I can’t explain. I feel empty, alone, afraid, restless, unsure of myself, and I look around for invitations, letters, phone calls, gifts, for someone to catch my eye in sympathy, for some warm gesture that can heal my emptiness..And right now I don’t particularly want God, faith, church or even a big and gracious heart. I want simply to be held, embraced, loved by someone special, made to feel unique, kissed by a soulmate. I’m empty, a half-person. I need someone to make me whole.”
Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, the retired auxiliary bishop of Sydney, Australia, and former head of a panel investigating sexual abuse in that country, wrote a book in which he explores what he sees as the roots of abuse in the Church. Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church was published in the fall of 2007.
The book’s genesis, according to Robinson, came from his work as a member and then chairman of the Australian bishops’ commitee charged with addressing the sexual abuse crisis.
“For nine years it completely dominated my life,” he said of his committee work from 1994 to 2003. “It was an experience that changed me in so many ways that even if I wanted to, I could not now go back to being the person I was before.” 
Meeting and speaking with abuse survivors and their families convinced him that the roots of clergy sexual abuse lay in fundamental church attitudes toward power and sex, and that the only solution was first to examine and then to change those attitudes.
“Sexual abuse is all about power and sex, so to counter abuse, we must be free to ask serious questions about power and sex in the institution of the church,” he said. “Without this freedom, we would be attempting to respond to abuse while handcuffed and blindfolded.”
On a personal note, Robinson said his work with abuse survivors created an inner conflict between his loyalty to the pope and his “loyalty to that portion of God’s people that the Australian bishops had assigned to me, the victims of abuse.”
“It was the conflict between being a pope’s man and a victims’ man,” he said with emotion. “At all times, I would have loved to be both.”
“The conflict eventually became a genuine crisis for me when the pope of those years (Pope John Paul II) gave no real leadership in relation to abuse,” he said. 
In a May 8 statement, the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference listed its concerns with the book. The bishops said that “after correspondence and conversation” with Bishop Robinson, “it is clear that doctrinal difficulties remain.” Chief among them, they said, is Bishop Robinson’s “questioning of the authority of the Catholic Church to teach the truth definitively.”
In a brief statement dated May 15, Robinson responded, “In their statement, the bishops appear to be saying that in seeking to respond to abuse, we may investigate all other factors contributing to abuse, but we may not ask questions concerning ways in which teachings, laws, and attitudes concerning power and sex within the church may have contributed. This imposes impossible restrictions on any serious and objective study, and it is where I have broken from the bishops’ conference,” he said.
Before he left Australia for a book tour, Bishop Robinson sent a letter notifying several U.S. bishops of his speaking engagements in their dioceses. His May 16-June 12 tour included stops in Pennsylania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut, Ohio, Massachusetts, Washington State and California.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, and 10 U.S. bishops asked him to cancel his speaking tour. Bishop Tod D. Brown of Orange, CA and Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles refused him persmission to speak in their dioceses.
Bishop Robinson said the call in his book for confrontation is a “confrontation of issues, not of people,” adding that “confronting bishops will not achieve change.”
“The major changes we seek cannot at present come from any source other than the pope, and we must be aware of the relative powerlessness of the bishops before the power of the papacy and the Vatican systems that support it,” he said.
“I suggest that we must, therefore, learn to work with the bishops rather than against them,” he said. “It will be a lengthy process in which we engage them in conversation, gradually show them there are problems in the culture they have been living in and that the new culture we would like to introduce to them has a real beauty and freedom in it.”
His book, he contended, was not an attack on the church, “but the beginning of a debate which will eventually lead to a better church.”
“This is a truly naughty book, but it is also a strangely moral one.” Talk
That was the description of Joe Eszterhas’ book, American Rhapsody, with its globs of dirty gossip about Hollywood celebrities and the Clinton presidency, including the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
But the point isn’t about the book, its about the writer. It seems to me, that many times the person who leads an envied sex life, has all kinds of colorful exploits, drinks, smokes, ingests, lives life like a wild man or woman, ends up with religion. Look at St. Augustine. Or, a person who makes a living writing about these people. Look at Anne Rice.
Joe Eszterhas has written screenplays for 16 films that have made more than a billion dollars at the box office. Among them are Basic Instinct, Flashdance and Showgirls.
A former editor at Rolling Stone, he is the author of six books, including American Rhapsody, Hollywood Animal and Charlie Simpson’s Apocalypse, which was nominated for the National Book Award.
Joe Eszterhas looks like his reputation. Thick, grizzled mane of hair, biker brawler face, ex-boozer–my father would have called him, “a man’s man.” 
Eszterhas left Hollywood and returned to the home of his youth–Ohio. He lives with his second wife, Naomi, and their four sons just east of Cleveland.
He has just finished a book about himself and his relationship with Jesus, called Crossbearer. The title refers to himself, not Jesus; Eszterhas carries the cross at Mass at his church.
He came close to dying from his additions to drinking and smoking. The contracted cancer, struggled with a tracheotomy. He had an epiphany. It is this transformation that he describes in his new book, along with differing on what he sees as the church’s “wimpification” of Jesus.
“I didn’t even really know how to pray…Part of it was that I felt myself to be presuming God’s favor in our new relationship. I thought to myself: Yeah, right, I reject Him so long ago, and then, after forty years of not just ignoring Him but trashing Him in my writings, I’m suddenly back and talking to Hi as though nothing had interrupted our relationship, syaing “How ya doing, God? Haven’t seen you in a while..what up? Everything cool?…”
“And now here I was trying to speak to God whom I had marginalized and mocked and lampooned. How do you approach someone to whom you’ve done that? I didn’t know what to say, so one of the first things I said was ‘I’m sorry. I’ve acted like a colossal A-hole. I’m really, really sorry. I don’t deserve to be forgiven, but please try to forgive me.”
It seems that one day, in a private conversation with a visiting archbishop in his office in the Vatican, the Pope shared his own great sadness that so many people of good will all over the world had come to believe that the Church rejected and condemned them.
It’s easy to understand the Pope’s emotion here. Indeed, sometimes the Church does seem to hold certain people at a greater distance than others. It does seem to open its doors only partly, leaving outside the gates certain ones who do not measure up.
Then the Pope turned to the crucifix which stood on the little table in his office as said with deep emotion: “But I must be like Christ. I open wide my arms to embrace them. I love them and I am their father. I am always ready to welcome them.” Then turning to his visitor, the Pope said: “Monsignor, all that the gospel requires of us has not yet been understood.”
(As related by Bill Huebsch . The story is from the book The Transitional Pope by Ernesto Balducci, McGraw-Hill, NY, 1964.)
Two best-selling authors have accused the Vatican of blacklisting them in Italy after they discovered secret documents that suggest a 17th century pope had funded the Protestant hero William III (William of Orange).
Rita Monaldi and her husband, Francesco Sorti, have sold more than a million copies of their historical novel Imprimatur. The novel tells the story of Atto Melani, an Italian castrato, probable lover of nobleman Mattias de’Medici, and spy at the court of King Louis XIV of France.
Imprimatur was dropped by its Italian publisher, Mondadori, despite reaching No. 4 on the bestseller list on its release in 2002. Mondadori decided not to reprint the book because of pressure from the Vatican, Sorti said.
Mondadori, which is owned by media magnate and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, refused to comment.
The authors said they found documents from a papal envoy discussing the “large sums” that William III owed Pope Innocent XI. Documents from Innocent’s family records show the Holy See sent 150,000 scudi (about $7.5 million today) to William via an intermediary.
“When we found the documents we had already started to write the book, but we decided to include the discovery as part of the storyline,” Monaldi said.
The documents appear to indicate that Pope Innocent XI bankrolled William of Orange in order to help him defeat the French under Louis XIV, whom he hated. Innocent stood by as Catholic king, James II of England as overthrown. He did nothing to aid him because of James’ support of Louis XIV in matters of collecting revenues from church properties.
With James II gone, England was firmly established as a protestant nation; and the Catholics in Ireland were dispossessed and eventually descimated by protestant overlords.
The revelation by the book that Innocent XI supported a heretic and enemy of the church to carry out a personal vendetta–and to collect the debt of his family’s money–embarassed the Vatican and derailed his case for canonization once again.
Pope Benedict sent a message of freedom to participants at the 97th “Deutscher Katholikentag.” This event, organized by German laity, gathered some 500,000 people in Osnabruck, Germany this past week.
Commenting on the theme chosen for the meeting - “He brought me out into a broad place,” a line from Psalm 18 - Benedict wrote that “no small number of people today…are afraid the faith may limit their lives, that they may be constrained in the web of the Church’s commitments and teachings, and that they will no longer be free to move in the ‘broad space’ of modern life and thought.” He went on to add: “…only when our lives have reached the heart of God will they have found that ‘broad space’ for which we were created. A life without God does not become freer and broader. Human beings are destined for the infinite.”
There is an echo of his words in Dorothy Day’s spiritual autobiography, The Long Loneliness. We get an immediate impression of the peace and happiness that preceded her conversion to Catholicism:
“I have been passing through some years of fret and strife, beauty and ugliness, days and even weeks of sadness and despair, but seldom has there been the quiet beauty and happiness I have now. I thought all those years I had freedom, but now I feel that I had neither real freedom nor even a sense of freedom.”
I think Benedict and Day are both right: we will find true freedom in scripture, within the sacraments and in God. But how do you find a way to freedom–that is, discerning the will of God for you and living it every day? What “broad place” are we being welcomed into?
Thomas Merton’s prayer - “Don’t Know Where I’m Going” comforts and strengthens me in that discernment:
“My Lord, God, I have no idea where I am going
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think that I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But, I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always,
though I may seem to be lost in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
My pastor said something very wise and comforting about God’s will in one of his sermons. He said: if God wants us to do something other than what we’re doing, He’ll let us know, like He did to St. Paul.
John O’Donohue was an Irish poet, author and Catholic scholar who lived in the solitude of a cottage in the west of Ireland and spoke Gaelic as his daily language. His acclaimed writings reveal an original thinker rooted in a blend of Irish heritage, German philosophy, western theology, and an intimate relationship with the ancient, luminous landscape of his home.
He spoke of mystery, wildness, our human yearning for “home,” and our sense of exile from the denuded, soulless, and empty landscapes of our time. He often returned to the scouring experience of loss, which he believed paradoxically opened us to growth.
For 19 years he served as a parish priest in the west of Ireland, but always felt the urge to write, as well as a mounting tension between Irish Catholicism’s traditional stance and his own liberal position. In a radio interview long after leaving the priesthood, he spoke of ministering to people in the parish: “I was trying to refine their fingers…so that they could undo so much of the false netting crippling their own spirits.”
With degrees in philosophy and English literature, and a Ph.D. in philosophical theology from the University of Tubingen in Germany, O’Donohue was one of the most articulate voices of living Celtic Christianity and wisdom, and the beauty of Christian mysticism.
He is the author of two collections of poetry, Echoes of Memory and Conamara Blues; and several books, including the international bestsellers Anam Cara (Soul Friend) and Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Yearning to Belong.
“This hunger to belong is the echo and reverberation of your invisible and eternal heritage. You are from somewhere else, where you were known, embraced and sheltered. This is also the secret root from which all longing grows. Something in you knows, perhaps remembers, that eternal belonging liberates longing into its surest and most potent creativity.”
“I have a theory that all addiction is, at bottom, a search for God. Think about it: the blackout–a crude form of mystical union; the willingness to sacrifice reputation, family, money, health, one’s very life–a twisted martyrdom. Sometimes I think anyone as drawn as I am to suffering would have to become a Catholic,” King writes.
“Maybe God uses even our illnesses, our compulsions, the defects we can’t fix no matter how hard we try, for the greater good. As for the wounds other people inflict upon us–maybe he uses those most of all.”
King reminds us that “when Christ appeared to his disciples after the Resurrection, he still bore the wounds. One of the things this seems to say is that our suffering counts.”
King articulated the spiritual dimenson of addiction perfectly.
I am still in a quantry if Catholics are drawn to suffering or if we are just accustomed to it; thanks to ever-present crucifixes, tales of saints meeting grusome ends with praise, not screams; and scary stories of the eternal torment and pain of Hell or Purgatory if saving grace slips through our fingers.
Suffering can make us compassionate, but it can also make us cruel and manipulative. Some sufferers use their suffering to lash out at the world and cause pain to other people, especially those close to them.
I am intrigued by her statement that Christ’s wounds survived the Resurrection. Perhaps our wounds help define who we are, both in this world and the next. What comes in through them, as well as what goes out of us.
The Most Rev. Geoffrey James Robinson, former Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney, Australia, will be making a stop near my home during his upcoming book tour. I want to go meet him, buy the book, shake his hand and thank him. I also want to be in the presence of someone whose faith is so important–so pure and strong–that they will face anything to proclaim it. To me, that will be the closest I’ll probably ever get to someone who is like the old-time saints.
Bishop Robinson headed the Australian bishops’ committee that developed guidelines and procedures for dealing with clergy sex abuse. He retired in 2004 when, he said, the burden of his “profound reservations” about the church he loved became too strong to be ignored. Actually, what he found, and the response of the church to the sex abuse crisis, made him sick.
In November 2007 he emerged from retirement to promote his new book, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus Christ,” and to demand a better church.
Robinson says the church–especially the hierarchy in Rome–must tackle the twin problems of sex abuse and power.
In the book, he writes that the church has not confronted the sex abuse crisis; it’s simply managing it. He blames the late John Paul II, in particular, for failing to exercise the leadership demanded by the sex abuse crisis, allowing it instead to ravage the church.
He criticizes the church’s teaching on sex and sexuality, which are based on offences against God, as outmoded and inadequate. He suggests a sexuality morality based on human relationships.
Bishop Robinson told the National Catholic Reporter that he sees a fractured church with a major division between the “proclaimers of certainties and the seekers after truth,” with the proclaimers of certainties seeming to be in the favored position.
“This has left many people feeling a sense of alienation, of being marginalized, of no longer quite belonging to the church that had given them much of their sense of belonging, meaning and direction throughout their lives.”
“In writing the book I became aware that I was writing a book for these people, that I was trying to tell them that there is a church for them and that it is fully in accord with the mind of Jesus. I was telling them that there are basic certainties, but there is also abundant room for search, for taking personal responsibility and growing through that process to become all we are capable of being, all God wants us to be.”
“I became aware that it was important for many that there should be a bishop saying these things. At moments I felt that the needs of these many people were so great that it is perhaps true that I have never been more of a shepherd. I have never been more justified in carrying around a pastoral staff than I have in this.”
