Untouchable

Posted by Censor Librorum on Feb 3, 2009 | Categories: Arts & Letters, Lesbians & Gays

The article below was written by Ned O’Gorman, and appeared in the December 5, 2008 issue of Commonweal.  

There is a place where even the liberal Catholic press fears to tread. The relative lack of serious discussion about homosexual desire casts into spiritual darkness a tribe of believing Catholic men and women who must fend for themselves in their quest for a serene emotional life, for companionship, and for the comfort of sexual love. For “the teaching church,” the subject is untouchable.

There are few intellectuals, lay or clerical, who will take it on, for it is risky to bring into the public forum the notion that there are Catholics who practice their faith with diligence and who love those of their own sex and have known the joy of that love. I am such a Catholic. I have discovered that such a love is easy to bear, complete, and holy.

So, I will offer some thoughts I have about a homosexual’s life and its difficulties, its spirituality, its struggles with desire and the church’s punitive silence. sanctuary2.jpg

If I obey the church, there is only a life of absolute celibacy open to me. I must accept my lot, hope for the best, cross my fingers, and “offer it up.” What “the best” is, the church does not quite say, but it cannot be sexual.

Everything must be avoided that might lead to the discovery of the beloved: no flirtations, no gathering together with other homosexuals, no dating, no risk of arousal. If such constrictions were imposed on heterosexuals, there would be no marriages.

No priest will bless a union between homosexual Catholics, no matter how committed the couple is to a long fidelity, for the church forbids the homosexual an erotic life. An erotic life sets the homosexual beyond the communion of the sanctuary.

And if that is it, a Roman Catholic homosexual, devoted and faithful, believing and rigorous in the practice of his faith, after long suffering and neglect, might just say the hell with it and welcome love and live outside the sanctuary.

Could it be there is a band of men and women set apart by God who will never know the fullness of love within the life of the church? That question does not give comfort. I have known men who have married so that they might have a place in the church and in society, knowing that they were turning their back on the truth of their sexuality. They abandoned the love they had for other men and entered into marriages that failed, and devastation was soon everywhere-children, wives, families all in ruins.

What, then, does the church do?

It seems that the church has decided that there is nothing to do. So upon this tribe of men and women exile falls with a mighty thud. Perhaps the only way for them to live a life of faith and fullness is to live the life of the outlaw and the renegade, trusting in the Lord and his consolations.

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6 Responses to “Untouchable”

  1. Christine, NY Says:

    I guess this is why Catholic lesbians and gay men have set up communities of faith such as Dignity and CCL. And yet this is not enough as long as the sacramentality of a commited relationship between two men or between two women is not recognized and celebrated. Those communities are like tent-churches along the way, as we are nomads in search of the Promised Land. Nothing settled for ever, made of stone, established, recognized and respected.
    But aren’t all Christians called to live that way? The false certainty given by the feeling of belonging and doing the right thing by the Church is so often misleading.

  2. Terence Says:

    It is undeniable that the established Church puts us in a difficult position, and that too many people simply evade or avoid the issues. I was one of those who married (very unwisely) ‘to maintain a place in church and society’. The irony is that it was during those years, when I was trying to live faithfully within the bounds of Catholic teaching on sexuality with all its restrictions, that my faith life was sterile, leading to a gradual disconnection from the church, and to a 10 year flirtation with agnosticism.

    My return to the church came only after setting up a committed reltionship with another man. I then developed an active faith life, and an exploration of prayer and spirituality, far richer than anything I had ever experienced while operating within the bounds of of official teaching. Later, since developing an active participation in an explicitly LGBT Mass, and especially since I started blogging on the subject, I have been led still further, to readings in theology, church history and ministry that I would never previously have gone into.

    St Ignatius teaches us to trust the ‘movement of spirits’ as we discern them deep in our hearts, by prayerful reflection on the experiences of our own lives. My reflections on experience confirm that god ahsa acted in my life through the honesty of living the life a have, as a gay man, not the pretence of straight marriage.

    O’Gorman is too pessimistic. There is no need at all to feel ‘abandoned’ by the Church – just by the Vatican. There are increasingly many supportive priests, even including some who will indeed bless same sex unions, and many other ways of finding support in faith – not least through a an expanding network of welcoming parishes, a publishing explosion on LGBT theoplogy and spirituality, and on websites and blogs such as this one, my own, and many others.

    Take heart.

  3. Thom Says:

    Thank you for this, Karen. You speak for and to so many people, myself included. I’m navigating a call to single life, but it has nothing to do with punitive canonical legislation. I recognize a call to ordained ministry, though the Church does not. Anyway, thank you. You articulate in concrete ways ideas and feelings that I cannot.

    Pax.

  4. The Value of Experience as Spiritual Self-Defence « Queering the Church Says:

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