Posted in category "Celebrities"
With the beatification and probable canonization of John Henry Cardinal Newman, the church is being handed an opportunity to stand behind their statements about gay people–about being loved, and welcomed, and entitled to human dignity and all that. The church states it welcomes homosexuals to be full participating members as long as they are chaste and celibate.
Cardinal Newman could be a gay saint (beautiful lips, soulful eyes) - one that followed their rules to the letter and never engaged (as far as can be surmised) in any sexual relations with men. He was a vowed virgin when it came to women. 
He lived for many years with another priest – Fr. Ambrose St. John – and when he died Newman was clear he wished to be buried in the same grave.
How many football and hunting buddies ask to be buried in the same grave? Not many – so it’s not some male bonding thing.
So, why doesn’t the church claim him as a gay Catholic? Why don’t they promote him as our role model? John Newman would be a lot more famous, glamorous, and viable role model than the sad, depressing, guilty and ashamed members of Courage.
Here’s the reason: because homosexuals need to keep it secret. The church does not welcome any *out * homosexuals, whether we are celibate or sexually active. You can be a gay Catholic–just have the grace and good taste to keep it to yourself.
Last month, the Vatican announced plans to move Newman’s remains from his small, shared gravesite to a specially built sarcophagus in the Oratory Church of Birmingham, where, officials say, they will be more accessible for veneration by the faithful.
But British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell sees ulterior motives in exhuming the Cardinal: “embarrassment” because of his relationship with Fr. St. John. 
“They were inseparable, they lived together for half a century, effectively like husband and wife,” says Tatchell. “There were repeated allegations during (Newman’s) lifetime about his circle of homosexual friends. It was uncertain whether or not their relationship involved sex. It is quite likely both men had a gay orientation but chose to abstain from sexual relations. But abstinence does not alter a person’s sexual orientation.”
Tatchell says the two men’s bond, and Newman’s abiding wish to have his final resting place next to St. John’s, make separating their remains “an act of dishonesty and betrayals by homophobes in the Vatican.”
In a 1990 address marking a century since Newman’s death, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger spoke about the profound impact Newman’s views had on young German seminarians in the wake of the Nazi regime. “For us at the time, Newman’s teaching on conscience became an important foundation for theological personalism, which was drawing us all into its sway,” Ratzinger said. “We had experienced the claim of a totalitarian party, which understood itself as the fulfillment of history and which negated the conscience of the individual.”
In her new book, Being Catholic Now, Kerry Kennedy interviewed famous Catholics from far left to far right; including Susan Saradon, Martin Sheen, Bill O’Reilly, speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi, Gabriel Byrne, Dan Aykroyd and Bill Maher. “I was struck by their raw honesty,” Kennedy said. 
She cried when Byrne told her his story about being abused by a priest as a boy, and spotting the abuser at a football game decades later. “I called him and asked if he remembered me,” said the actor. “He said,”No’– He didn’t make the connection, but I, of course, did.” Byrne blames the vows of celibacy, “which I regard as a sin against human life.”
Susan Saradon strikes a lighter note with a story of praying with rosary beads at age seven and not knowing they were glow in the dark. “I looked down and they were glowing and I thought, “Oh, my God, I’m about to have a vision! The Blessed Virgin is about to come in the door!”
Church officials have not yet seen the book, but a spokeswoman for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Sister Mary Ann Walsh, said in response to a description of the book, “A lot of Catholics are having lovers’ quarrels with the church.”
The Deacon’s Bench has a good post on this story.
Kerry Kennedy will discuss the book during a program at the Museum of the City of New York on Wednesday, October 22nd at 6:30 pm. 
Silent screen actor Ramon Novarro (1899-1968) was one of early Hollywood’s leading actors. He got his big break in the 1923 movie Scaramouche, and went on to play the title role in 1925′s Ben Hur and later appear with Greta Gardo in Mata Hari. 
Novarro was gay. Even under pressure from MGM studio head, Louis B. Mayer, Novarro refused to contract a “lavendar marriage”–something most homosexual stars did to keep their contracts and stay out of gossip columns.
He was also a devout Roman Catholic all his life, and at one time considered becoming a priest.
Ramon Novarro was murdered by two brothers, Tom and Paul Ferguson, whom he paid to come to his Laurel Canyon home for sex. Tom was 17 and Paul was 22. Novarro had slept with Paul a number of times before. On this night he brought along his brother to help him rob Novarro. The two young men believed that a large sum of money was hidden in Novarro’s house.
Paul had sex with Novarro, and then the brothers beat and tortured him looking for the money. After they left the house, he suffocated in his own blood.
To avoid Novarro’s slipping into unconsciousness, the brothers dragged him into the bathroom, slapping him awake with cold water. Novarro staggered into the bedroom. Collapsing on his knees, he sobbed: “Hail Mary full of grace.”
Tom’s defense attorney, Richard Walton, placed the blame for the murder on Novarro. “Back in the days of Valentino, this man who set female hearts aflutter, was nothing but a queer. There’s no way of calculating how many felonies this man committed over the years, for all his piety.”
Paul Ferguson blamed his Catholic background: “When he kissed me, I reacted like a Catholic, what they call homosexual panic. Some old guy in the desert says, ‘Kill homosexuals.’ It’s inbred…I was too drunk to be civilized. Whatever my most primitive moral standings were, I reacted. It had nothing to do with Novarro, nothing to do with his being homosexual. It all had to do with how I saw myself. And the fact that my brother was there. And that he could see me in that homosexual act. It all had to do with my Catholic upbringing, with my five thousand years of Moses. And that’s the only reason why this whole thing happened. Because that’s what society teaches you…I think after I hit Mr. Novarro…I turned around and sat down on the sofa. I got up and went to find (Novarro) in the bedroom. ‘This guy’s dead’…We didn’t go there to rob him.”
Novarro was interred in Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles. His killers were released from prison after a few years.
Author John Rechy describes the murder in his blog, Speaking Out. The events he describes are drawn from the book, Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro. 
“As a director, my goal is to be completely open. Just look at how I portray sex in my films. They’re considered shocking and obscene because I like to carefully examine human sexuality. It has to be realistic.”
Paul Verhoeven’s biography of Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth: A Realistic Portrait, will be published next month by J. M. Meulenhoff, an Amsterdam publishing house. It will be translated into English in 2009. 
Verhoeven, 69, is best known as the director of a number of blockbuster films, including Basic Instinct, Robo Cop, and Total Recall.
Over the years, Vehoeven, who is Catholic and holds a doctorate in mathematics and physics from the University of Leiden, was a regular attendee of the Jesus Seminar, which was co-founded by the late religious scholar Robert W. Funk. The Jesus Seminar is a group of scholars and authors that seeks to establish historical facts about Jesus, and examines miracles and statements attributed to him.
Verhoeven’s new book makes the suggestion that Jesus may have been the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her during a Jewish uprising against Roman rule in 4 B.C. The book also makes the claim that Judas Iscariot was not responsible for Jesus’ betrayal.
William Porter, a professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton, in Ohio, said the Jesus Seminar was known for making provacative claims, but “they are real scholars–you have to deal with them.”
However, he said Verhoeven’s ideas sounded “pretty out there.”
John Dominic Crossan, a Jesus Seminar founder, agreed. He said that while Verhoeven was a member in good standing, there was little evidence for the view Jesus was illegitimate.
Crossan said the claim was first reported in a polemic written in the 2nd century against the Book of Matthew, intended for a Jewish audience.
“It’s an obvious first retort to claims that Mary was a virgin,” Crossan said. “If you wanted to do a hatchet job on Jesus’ reputation, this would be the way.”
A long lost radio interview with John Lennon, in which he calls himself “one of Christ’s biggest fans” was broadcast by the BBC on July 13, 2008.
The 1969 interview, with Ken Seymour from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, was taped during a bed-in for peace in Montreal.
Lennon’s remarks about Christianity drew international headlines in a March 4, 1966 interview in the London Evening Standard when he said: “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I do not know what will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. We’re more popular than Jesus now.”
Asked to clarify his remarks, Lennon said: “It’s just an expression meaning the Beatles seem to me to have more influence over youth than Christ.”
“Now I wasn’t saying that was a good idea, because I’m one of Christ’s biggest fans,” he went on. “And if I can turn the focus of the Beatles on to Christ’s message, then that’s what we’re here to do.” 
He said: “If the Beatles get on the side of Christ, which they always were, and let people know that, then maybe the churches won’t be full, but there’ll be a lot of Christians dancing in the dance halls.”
Two years after the “we’re bigger than Christ” interview, Lennon released a song, “Imagine,” that drew the ire of churchgoers. The song contains the lyrics, “Imagine there’s no heaven; it’s easy if you try…Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.”
Now, the recovered 1969 may shed some light on Lennon’s thoughts behind the famous song.
“I haven’t got any sort of dream of a physical heaven where there’s lots of chocolate and pretty women in nightgowns, playing harps,” he said. “I believe you can make heaven within your own mind. The kingdom of God is within you, Christ said, and I believe that.”
Why wasn’t this interview released back in the ’60s or ’70s? It would have been a huge support to grassroots Christianity.
