THE NAME OF THE MIRACLE OF THE ROSE: I was kind of startled that the "Why do you identify as 'gay'?" question didn't come up in Denver. Possibly that's just because I talked way too long, so the q&a was cut short. Anyway my impression is that lots of people, both straight and not-so-much, really want to know about this question. I don't know if I understand the question too well since it isn't one which has ever exercised me--but here's where my thinking is right now, on what some people may be hearing when I say I'm gay and what I'm actually saying. (A previous post on this subject, written in a sort of galumphing-drunken-elephant style, is here.)

First, I think for some people taking on a gay identity is seen as setting up a competing community to the Church, which commands our loyalties in the way only Christ should. It's seen as surrender to something other than Christ. I'm sympathetic to this since I do think our surrender to Christ must be total and unique, and it's obvious that other communities and identity groups can compete with that surrender. The most obvious example for me is nationality: It's clear that one's self-concept as an American can compromise one's identity as a Christian.

And yet when somebody says he's Greek, the response of the non-Greek Christians around him isn't immediately to respond, "In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek!" and to assume compromised faith on his part. There's an understanding that national identity both must and can be taken lightly, considered as a part of one's situation rather than a warped lens through which the Gospel is distorted. (The majority of people to whom I describe myself as "gay" view that identity the same way. They don't actually perceive any contradiction--they might see an added and maybe weird difficulty, but not an internal contradiction--in saying that I'm gay and celibate.)

Second, "gay" describes a community (or really, a big, contradictory, feisty tussle of communities) and a relationship to that community, and if you don't have any notable or positive relationship to that community then that is a fact about you which presumably would lead you to identify differently. My sense is that people who have had very little experience with gay communities, or whose experiences have been largely negative, are a lot more likely to identify as "same-sex attracted" and resist identifying as gay. My own relationship to queer communities has been important to me, largely positive, and characterized by belonging, and that's what I mean when I say I'm gay.

But there really are no terms which don't in some way mark out a community. "Same-sex attracted" is identity-jargon too, delineating a specific way of understanding one's eros: a new way, a way which would be as difficult to explain to St. Aelred (for example) as "gay."

I've written before (from a somewhat different perspective than the one I have now) about my coming-out process: that click of recognition, the key turning in the lock. I thought at the time that my alienation was explained by my sexual orientation. "Oh, so that's all it was!" That turns out to be only partly true--my alienation stems really from the Fall, not from being queer, but queerness is one way I've experienced a heightened or stylized version of that universal alienation. That experience was really important to me--and, ultimately, important to my conversion to Catholicism. Explaining it without "self-identifying" as queer would feel really artificial and strained.

Similarly, look, I was a pretty self-centered kid. I don't know how much progress I've made there, but I know that gay and queer communities were among the places where I learned to try to listen to other people, admit my own faults and blind spots, and generally be more giving and less awful. I've said before that I was a better girlfriend to girls than to guys and I expect that's related to my self-identification as well: "Gay" names a place where I became a somewhat better person. I want to honor the people who put up with me.

My sense is that if you're Christian and you've had experiences like these, you're more likely to self-identify as gay, and if you haven't, you're more likely to self-identify as same-sex attracted. (Although for a contrasting perspective, see here.)

Also, notice the real but limited role played by sexual desire in this description. "Because I'm gay" I've been sexually drawn to women; but also, "because I'm gay" I've felt intense difference from those around me, felt recognition and a sort of exhilaration when I found writers and musicians and artists who described queer experience, felt a need to be of service to women, and been a part of various communities which shaped me. Collapsing all of these elements of my "gay experience" into wanting to have gay sex seems to me to be a misunderstanding of eros--and a willful erasure of every possible element of gay experience which might form part of a positive path toward Christ and conversion. It seems like a demand that the path from the gay community to Christ must be a path of rejection rather than reunderstanding.

Christianity has always confronted specific communities which were held together by elements which seemed inimical to the Gospel. One major response has been to identify the "unknown gods" in those communities, the places where their own self-understandings indicated a longing for Christ. The community could then be baptized rather than rejected or destroyed. One reason I really loved Frederick W. Roden's Same-Sex Desire in Victorian Religious Culture is that he talks about the ways in which the cultures and communities which eventually transformed into "gay culture" had intrinsic affinities for Catholic faith. It's obvious to me how my eros could be baptized, and I've written about that stuff a lot here.

Third, I persist in thinking that the tangle of experiences we've decided to call "being gay" is interesting. I've said, cattily, that I oppose gay marriage because I think homosexuality is interesting rather than banal. A lot of the "don't identify as gay" stuff seems to me to be an attempt to gloss over real differences in experience, to pretend that homosexuality makes no important difference in one's life path as a Christian in contemporary society. That seems to me to be an effort to understand gay difference and gay experience as banal. ("I'm not married, so I have to be chaste too! Our situations are just the same. So why are you acting like you're different and special?" No. Our situations may have important lessons for one another. Your situation may be harder than mine in various ways, e.g. I don't sit up nights wondering why I haven't found a nice girl to marry me. But solidarity requires acknowledgment of difference, not suppression of it.)

And finally, "gay" is a blunt term, a quick tabloid kind of term, garish and in-your-face. I like that in a girl!

"DAN SAVAGE WAS RIGHT": My friend Joshua Gonnerman in First Things.

THIS IS THE DENVER POST STORY ON MY TALK. Very nice! And I love that their blog is called "Hark!"

A SUMMARY OF MY TALK IN DENVER is up at the Spiritual Friendship blog.

I'LL BE IN DENVER! On Monday, May 14, at Theology on Tap, doing my thing. Here's a rundown from the Denver Catholic Register. I hope to meet some of you there!

FACES: A PET PEEVE. See also the comment of a friend of mine, after seeing the cover of a new book on Gay Catholic Whatnot, "Oh no--not the bandaged heart!"

O TELL ME THE TRUTH ABOUT LOVE: I find that a lot of people, both gay and not, ask me questions which boil down to, "How should I understand gay relationships which are obviously loving?" This can be phrased as, "How do you feel, as a Catholic, about my relationship with my boyfriend?" (although I don't know why my personal feelings should really matter!) or "How should I view my brother's partner?" or, something I addressed in that Commonweal piece, "How should I understand the love which was a part of the gay relationships I had before becoming Catholic?"

The first thing I think of with this question is the quotation I posted last week, in which Jesus, looking at the rich young man, loved him. If we approach our own gay (meaning, here, sexually-active) relationships or those of others with this look of love, a love which is both personal and challenging, what do we find?

What we find will be different for different relationships. But here are some thoughts from my Commonweal piece:

Loving one another can be an echo of the love we receive from God; it can be the child of that love; it can be preparation for our own awestruck love of God. (I would argue that my erotic and romantic love of women has been all three of those things, at different times.)

I went on to say, "But our human experience, including our erotic experience, cannot be a replacement for the divine revelation preserved by the church. We must be careful not to let it become a counternarrative or a counter-Scripture." A chaste love relationship founded on love of Christ, perhaps even adorned with promises like the ones described here and here, is even more beautiful and sublime than the best sexually-active gay relationship. Perhaps you're being called to this other person because he or she is a part of your life's vocation, in which case chastity will exalt your relationship, not diminish it. Perhaps not--perhaps you're being called to hospitality, service, searing devotion to God, a radical vulnerability and availability made possible precisely by your lack of obligations to partner or children. Note that neither of these alternatives is easy! "Exalted" doesn't exactly imply "easier," and sublimity is almost the opposite of satisfaction--accepting one of these alternatives will probably increase most people's sense of difficulty, their sense of struggle or need for surrender to God. But we don't get to choose how God calls us; we only choose how we respond to that call.

A SWEET KID stands in a snowfall and talks about same-sex attraction and sacrifice for Christ. I like especially the shy little sidelong glances he sneaks toward the crucifix, taking encouragement from the sight of it. Via Mark Shea.

WHAT IF WE ARE IN DISSENT?

A reader writes in response to Thursday’s post, “Why Are They Here?”:

I feel that I am a faithful Catholic- attend Mass, pray regularly, try to follow the Church in all things. But I fall short on this with one issue- I do disagree about the Church’s stance on homosexuality and gay marriage. My beloved sister is a lesbian, is married (in her state and in the Episcopalian church) to her partner of 15 years. They have 2 beautiful children. I have prayed over this issue, talked to my priest, talked to my husband, read extensively. I know intellectually that what I feel goes against Church teaching. But I cannot/ do not look at what my sister is doing as wrong. I’m happy she found someone she loves to spend her life with. I love her children, and I’m so happy that they exist. My sister and her partner are raising them wonderfully.

[snip]

So, in a way, I could understand where some of those posters on Jezebel are coming from. Sometimes conservative Catholic bloggers will talk about how they struggled with a Church teaching, but the post always ends with how they changed, and saw the light, and saw the truth and beauty in the Church’s teachings. But what are you supposed to do when that doesn’t happen?

more; comments are a mixed bag but there's some stuff I think my readers would appreciate there too

THE FINE MISMATING OF A HIM AND HER...: Something I've been thinking about without much coherence or resolution. I have a couple footnotes which I may post later, but for now I figured I'd let my readers whack at this pinata for a while!

As you know, Bob, I got a lot out of Christopher C. Roberts's Creation and Covenant. Nestled among its more central claims and arguments, it makes a very strong theological case for something I’ve already thought about, w/o much resolution, when considering the "theology of the body": Women and men are made for one another, and yet celibacy is in some way a witness to that fact just as much as marriage is. So how does that actually work?

It’s an especially weird or fraught question for me because so much of my conscious development of a spirituality which supports my celibacy has been devoted to finding chaste, Catholic ways to honor and express my love of women. So I'm very aware of ways in which my prayer life, my volunteer work, my friendships, and my writing are ways in which I can serve and love women. And I stand by that as a necessary and fruitful lens through which to focus my spiritual life. But I'm a lot more vague on how I relate, in my spirituality, to men or Man or Adam (?) or whatever I should be picturing here!

However, when I was thinking about this question, I realized that the one prayer I return to most insistently (I don't count the rosary as one prayer) is the Anima Christi. And this is such an enfleshed, almost lurid prayer, very visceral--you become inebriated by Christ’s blood and hide in His wounds. I wonder if perhaps this prayer is so powerful for me, or calls to me so much when I'm in need, in part because it does offer such a strong spiritual connection to Christ-as-Man?

I am really not able to express myself very well on this subject or form any interesting conclusions, so I suppose I'll just throw this out there and ask whether people have any reactions. And for a) the celibate, especially those celibate by vocation rather than circumstance, and b) the gay/same-sex-attracted/your-term-here among us, do you all perceive, in your own lives, a need for some kind of spiritual practice which "brings together the two halves of humanity"? Have you found ways of living as woman for man, or man for woman, outside of marriage?

PUBLIC FEARS IN PRIVATE PLACES: After that New York Times piece on me was published, the best and cattiest response I saw was the comments-box punchline, "She should join a silent order." Perhaps the characters in Next Fall should also take that advice!

Next Fall--playing at the Round House Theater in Bethesda until 2/26--is a play in which the subtlety of what goes unspoken is almost drowned out by the shallow, stereotype-laden dialogue. It's about a gay couple, generic atheistic Adam and blithely evangelical Luke; when Luke is involved in a serious car accident and falls into a coma, Adam has to deal with his parents, who never knew that their son was gay. (Luke at one point said that he would tell them "next fall," when his younger brother was out of the house and in college, so the title of the play itself alludes to something unspoken, unaccomplished, something left unresolved due to fear.)

There are a lot of problems with the play, especially in the more cartoonish first act. I saw it with two friends, both of whom liked it more than I did; at the intermission I wondered out loud whether it would just be two hours of self-centered people feeling their emotions. They're just all so American in the worst way!--they know that they're right, and they're proud of their opinions. I mean, look: This is the second play I've seen in a row in which not knowing the meaning of the word "tchotchke" marks a character out as gauche, clueless, and generally Not Our Kind, Dear.

Meanwhile the religious arguments seem to start and stop almost at random. The content will be familiar to anyone who has ever made the mistake of reading the comments: What about really nice people who aren't Christian, do they go to hell? What about Jeffrey Dahmer, if he accepts Jesus will he be allowed into the pearly-gated community with respectable homos like Luke? Don't we all have our own beliefs, what about the Jews, and--most poignantly, and least fleshed-out--isn't it a sin for Luke to sleep with a man? The disputes themselves are so brief that they feel chintzy. Adam comes across like he's constantly trying to pick a fight but never willing to finish one. Luke comes across like he thinks Jesus is magic, and if you just say you believe you can do whatever you want; but if you call him on any of the many ways he takes the easy way out, he gets upset (understandably, given how blatantly Adam is baiting him most of the time, but still!).

The key moment in their arguments might come when neither of them can sleep one night. Earlier, Luke had compared accepting Christ to taking a pill which could cure one's cancer, and said that some people are so angry to have cancer in the first place that they're not willing to just take the cure. So then later they're sleepless and dejected, and Adam says that he's going to take a sleeping pill. "Make it two," Luke says. He reminds Adam of their earlier conversation and takes the pill, looking up hopefully at Adam--who looks back at him with total exhaustion and says, "If it were that easy, everyone would swallow it." Adam walks back into the bedroom with the pill still in his hand.

More interesting than the spoken arguments, though, are the character notes which go unmarked. For example, there's Brandon, a repressed Christian. (He only wears tightly buttoned-up clothing, because why even have a costumer if you don't want obvious metaphors?) He doesn't say much, and in his one big scene, a lot of what he does say is just exasperatedly agreeing with the words Adam puts in his mouth. But he's there. He's a constant presence in the hospital waiting room, steadfast, quiet, immovable. There's a solidity to him, a doggedness which is manifested both in his blunt, unimaginative dogmatism and in his silent loyalty. (He's played by the really excellent Alexander Strain, whom I saw as Spinoza in this play. He'll be reprising that role this season!)

All the play's religious questions are framed in terms of the afterlife: Is there a Heaven? Will I get there, will you? I've already written about why this is not a good way to understand Christian life! But it does draw out the deep undercurrents of fear which run through the play. Luke is creepily cheerful, and professes not to fear death at all; Adam longs for that fearlessness. In day to day life Luke is terrified that his parents will find out about his relationship with Adam, and at night he's sometimes haunted enough that he will pray after they have sex, but he still manages to project a sense of sunny confidence which the neurotic, hypochondriac Adam picks up on. Their relationship makes Adam a bit more free and less fearful, even as it causes Luke anxiety.

I like a lot of things about this setup. I like that faith doesn't actually free Luke from fear or distress--it changes his questions and challenges, so it changes when he feels fear and why. I like the framing of Christian faith as hospital and cure, something you can only receive if you're willing to admit that you're sick, and I like that Adam the hypochondriac is deeply resistant to admitting any spiritual neediness or infirmity. (Luke's evangelical parents are recovering addicts; his mother Arlene, thoroughly inhabited by the terrific Kathryn Kelley, was the only character I genuinely liked. Even if she doesn't know what a tchotchke is!) I like the suggestion that Christ the rock can give inherently weak and silly people some depth, solidity, and insight.

I just wish any of that had been pushed to its limits! I want to see Luke's faith get really tested, not just harried. I want any backstory whatsoever for Adam, whose background is basically a cardboard cutout labeled, "White gay man who came of age in the '80s." Overall it felt like this play pulled all its punches because the playwright didn't know how to portray more intense religious conflict or more uniquely-articulated faith. So all the characters' religious beliefs seemed to deflate to the level of their self-comforting American emotions, rather than their emotions rising to the level of the exalting or devastating Christian faith.

A FOUR-LETTER WORD: [edited to correct spelling!] I just got back from "Oriented to Love," a pretty intense retreat dedicated to exploring issues in gay Christian life. It was organized by Kristyn Komarnicki of PRISM magazine, and it found what I thought was an unexpectedly necessary balance of emotional, intellectual, and spiritual work. So here's a series of one-liners, the punchlines I took away from our time together. Misreadings are mine, as always. In chronological order. Your thoughts always more than welcome! Filling may be hot.

* Sexual wholeness is more a property of communities or churches than it is of individuals.

* This is third-hand, so bear with me, but one reading of the parable of the Good Samaritan is that when the story is finished and Jesus asks, "Who was his neighbor?" and the Pharisee says, "The one who showed him mercy"... the Pharisee is placed in the role of the wounded man. The one who thought of himself in the powerful role, the role of the man extending his hand in charity, instead sees himself as the wounded man in need of mercy. And Jesus not only acknowledges his wounds and dirtiness and pledges to cleanse, heal, and forgive him, but also gives him the task of going and doing likewise--now from a position of gratitude and humility, rather than a never-sullied position of privilege and power.

* We were asked to think of three concrete ways God has shown us mercy. I had a few in mind, but after hearing from several of the other participants I realized that I had only identified places where I have been lucky. Privilege, basic health, good work, and financial security are things I'm immensely grateful for, but God's mercy is a fiercer thing.

* We were supposed to read slips of paper and react in some way to the words or sentences on the slips. One woman read out, "I don't believe people are born gay because the Bible says homosexuality is a sin." And she got this blunt matter-of-fact look on her face and said, basically, that this was clearly illogical because she was born with the inclinations to envy, to covet, and to many other sins.

There are at least two readings of this response, and I think it speaks so much to the good will of the retreats' participants (and organizer!) that I don't think any of us took the uncharitable one. But it wouldn't be hard, in a less open, vulnerable, and trusting group, to assume that she was cordoning herself off into the logical sphere where actual gay people's actual experiences are kind of irrelevant, in the same way that you don't ask about love or emotions when you're trying to solve a math problem.

Instead, it was obvious that her head and her heart were pulling in tandem. And what I at least was able to take away from her explanation was that we very often support what might even be accurate conclusions with premises and forms of argument which undermine our own spiritual practice. In attempting to explain an opposition to gay sex, which I share, we might unwittingly deny our own reverse heliotropism, our own longing for sin, in a way which can warp our self-understanding and ability to discern our own vocations.

* One guy noted, with terrific insight, that our culture defines maturity by the possession and exercise of power. This gets at what I was trying to say to the Yale Political Union; it's pretty obviously un-Christian.

* One of those words on the slips was "lifestyle." And this made me think about why "style" is a compliment, "way of life" is a neutral term, "vocation" is a Christian term... and yet "lifestyle" is a shallow consumer-culture term, a product demographic. So then I imagined someone confiding in a friend, "Man, that guy really lives out his vocation with such panache! He really has a lifestyle."

* As at the Fordham conference, I think this conversation was hobbled by a crisis of authority. All of us need a source of authority outside the self, both so that we can communicate with one another and so that we can become bigger than our preexisting selves. But when we radically disagree not only on the specific identity of that authority but on how She might be found, of course philosophical dialogue will necessarily falter.

Your thoughts? Comments, wild fancies, howls of fury?

STRONGER AT THE BROKEN PLACES: I've been thinking a bit about the use of language of "brokenness" in discussions of Christianity and homosexuality, and why I rebel against both that language and other people's reaction against it. I'll try to just briefly make some tentative points; tomorrow I'll have an even more tentative post soliciting alternative ways of discussing or describing the Church's prohibition on gay sex (rather than the alternative vocations open to gay people, where I feel much more certain of what I want to say--I am much more confident in what I want to say about the "yes" than what I'd say about the "no," but the picture is incomplete without both, I think).

The good thing about the language of brokenness should be obvious: It's humbling.

There's a contemporary American tendency to insist that we're good people, or that through bourgeois productivity and respectability we purchase indulgences and can therefore create our own Christian doctrine. (I can't remember where I read the tart aphorism, "Europeans don't believe in God, so they do whatever they want. Americans do whatever they want and call that Christianity.") At the very least we demand to be recognized as just as good as you. To say that we're broken is considered morbid or even offensive; to say that we might actually be unusually or distinctively broken is considered repulsive.

I am basically in favor of almost anything which prompts an admission of weakness, vulnerability, or similarly un-American expressions of spiritual poverty. To the extent that actual existing gay Christians use language of brokenness to express our need for unconditional surrender to God, I find it beautiful and spiritually-fruitful; I didn't share some readers' negative reaction to this language in Wesley Hill's Washed and Waiting, for example. (And I thought he either avoided or explicitly countered most of the negative aspects of brokenness language which I'll discuss in a moment.)

That said, here are some reasons I don't use that language myself.

First, I still do suspect that straight Christians often use "We're all broken!"/"The ground is level at the foot of the Cross"-type language, when discussing homosexuality, as a kind of rhetorical toll to be paid before you can get to the thing you're actually interested in talking about, which is Other People's Problems. If there's a danger of pharisaism for gay Christians who insist they're not broken, not like those messed-up addicts or crazy people (We Are Respectable Homos!), there's also a danger of pharisaism for straight Christians who want to use the language of brokenness when discussing situations they've never been in.

Second, and relatedly, using language of brokenness in the context of an already-stigmatized group has the obvious potential to provoke shame rather than humility, despair rather than surrender to God. I don't know that I need to go into detail here really, do I? Gay pride is wrong, but it's the wrong response to gay shame.

Thirdly, what do you do with a broken thing? I mean, you either throw it out or fix it, right? The imagery does not conduce to viewing homosexuality as a potential source of insight for the Christian. It's not a metaphor which suggests vocation. It's a metaphor in which one's orientation is a problem to be solved or at best endured. Even imagery of woundedness is more complex, insofar as wounds, in Christian thought, are not solely healed but sometimes glorified.

And finally, the language has been handled so much in this context that it's a cliche, a coin with its face worn off. When you say "brokenness" and "gay" in the same sentence I think a lot of people can only hear the five thousand previous times someone has used the metaphor, no matter what you personally intend to say with it.

But there's enough good in it that I wonder if it can be rescued, revived. After all, there are ways of describing a broken place as a place of insight--that's where the light gets in.

So I'm posting this more as a provocation than anything else: Talk to me more about brokenness. It isn't a metaphor which comes naturally to me and it's easier for me to see the limitations than the insights or beauty it can provide. But I think there's some poetry to be found here if we're willing to look for it: Are you broken like a wave, coming home on sharp rocks? Are you broken like a voice deepening into manhood? Are you broken like the Eucharist?

TWO ANONYREADER COMMENTS ON FORDHAM-RELATED THINGS: Anonyreader #1:

I just listened to the panel you were on at Fordham, and I wanted to note something regarding one of the questions you were asked -- namely, the one concerning "celibacy as a sanction."

The traditional teaching of the Catholic Church is actually that celibacy is the highest way of life. See Session 24, Canon X of the Council of Trent. (That link goes to http://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct24.html, in case the link doesn't work.)

This has been lost in modern times with the dominance first of the notion of the nuclear family, and then of sexual politics, and the Church's responses to both of these things. However... there it is.

Also, semi-tangentially, I found this article when I was looking up a website to cite the above canon (that's http://www.ts.mu.edu/content/51/51.3/51.3.4.pdf). Food for thought.

and anonyreader #2:

If you want to get rid of priestly awe, trying having a kid brother who is a priest. My brother [Redacted] was ordained a couple of years ago, and he is still just as goofy as he was as a kid, and a little too firmly Republican for my taste. But he's still a good priest. This also probably pertains to folks who form close friendships with priests. It's inevitable that one sees one's friends as complete humans, otherwise you are not really their friend.

I think a lot of people avoid friendship with priests because of some of the issues you were talking about. They distance themselves from them out of a reverential awe. While I think it's a good idea to maintain a certain distance from your confessor, or perhaps even your pastor, it would be beneficial for most lay people if they had a decently close friendship with a priest. (If priests only have priest friends, they become an insulated echo chamber, just like any other credential based group.)

I had a small problem with this line from your post. "These are reasons that a layperson-to-priest attitude of empathy at best, wry distance at worst, will serve both parties much better than a surfeit of awe." This may be true, as I said, when dealing with your own confessor, but with priests generally? Doesn't this instrumentalize priests, rather than treat them as full and complete human beings? If the awe of the laity makes it too easy for priests to cover up sins, I think it's a good idea for there to be people who are ready and willing to tell a priest he's wrong.

I value my friends the most who will tell me when I'm being a jerk. I certainly don't hesitate to tell [Redacted] when I think he's wrong, and I decline to call him Father or show him any more respect than I ever have, and I think that will ultimately be to his benefit.

Just some thoughts.

Thank you!

VIDEO OF MY PANEL AT THE FORDHAM "MORE THAN A MONOLOGUE: SEXUAL DIVERSITY AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH" CONFERENCE. I'm sorry for how scatty I am here. This turned out to be the unofficial test-run of a newer and better version of my standard Gay Catholic Whatnot talk, and I kept adding and subtracting things almost right up to the moment I got up to speak, which did not serve the overall organization or coherence well. That said, I did say some things which I think were worthwhile, and the next iteration of this talk was much sharper.

IN WHICH I PERSIST THROUGH TIME AND SPACE, despite everything! Some of you appear to think that an announcement of a speech or presentation might include trivialities like "location" and "time." We call these people THE WEAK.

...No, actually, sorry--I was being a fluffbrain. My Fordham U presentation will be at noon this Friday at the Lincoln Center campus, in the Pope Auditorium, and my Princeton talk will be at 4.30 next Tuesday afternoon at a place TBA (but probably in New Jersey, is my guess). Both will be about Gay Catholic Whatnot; the Fordham thing will definitely focus on possibilities for faithful gay vocations, and I'm still not 100% sure about the Pton one. I'd be especially interested in hearing from undergrads or recent grads about what they really wish someone had said on their campus! I'll post a location for the Princeton talk as soon as I can.

TELL ME WHAT TO SAY: I'm speaking this Friday at the Fordham U. conference, "Learning to Listen: Voices of Sexual Diversity in the Catholic Church," and then again at Princeton University on Tuesday, 9/20, on some gay Catholic thing TBA. What do you guys think I should talk about? Where do you think I've made good points, and where do you really want to push me and make me clarify my thinking?

Also, of course, I would love to meet any readers who are around in NYC or New Jersey. Come say hello! And if you're not in either of those areas, but want me to talk at your school or church or yard sale or hobbit village, keep in mind that I do sometimes talk for (not much) money. Like Weevil Navarro, I am both audio and visual.

IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN, BABY: Some scattered notes on that Christopher Roberts talk (I've ordered his book, as well).

* CR argues that Augustine speaks, against several other early Christian theologians, for the body and for sex difference as a feature of our life in Eden, not a precursor or foreshadowing of the Fall. For him, to have a sexed body is to have a vocation.

* CR: Progressive theology of marriage separates creation and redemption--for progressive, pro-gay-marriage theologians, sex difference is about creation/procreation and is private, while redemption (linked to marriage?) is ecclesial but unisex.

* Some good if glancing cultural criticism, calling for a switch from a dating model of young adulthood to a discernment model.

* One questioner deploys transgender people as wedges to get gay marriage for cis people. I disapprove of that as a rhetorical strategy [eta: because it uses other people to get what you want, rather than attempting to serve or understand them]. It also tends to obscure the actual theological questions involved in transgender experience. (More.)

* CR gives really interesting pushback on JPII's “genius of women” stuff and whether there are inherent characteristics of gender i.e. boys don't cry, girls are nurturing.

* From my perspective, his least-satisfying answer to audience questions is the one about gay adoption, where he chooses trivializing language, so just be aware of that going in.

SICUT CERVUS:

Author’s note: This was originally delivered as a talk at Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL on April 1, 2011, as part of a series of chapel service talks titled “Sexuality and Wholeness.” The theme for this third talk in the series was “Homosexuality.”

I’d like to frame what I have to say today with a story from the Gospel of Mark (10:23-31). In this story, Jesus’ disciples are afraid of being left on the outside of the circle of God’s saving grace. Having just seen a rich man depart with Jesus’ pronouncement, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!,” the disciples wonder about their own fate. If the rich—those who were supposed to be a sure bet as candidates for salvation—may miss the kingdom, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

In an effort to shore up his own chances, Peter blurts out to Jesus, “See, we have left everything and followed you.” He seems to be hoping for Jesus’ affirmation here: Yes, Peter, I can see that. You’re safe! Since you made such a great sacrifice on my behalf, I’ll guarantee you a spot at the heavenly banquet.

Interestingly, that’s not the response Jesus gives. Rather than buttress Peter’s confidence in his own heroic efforts, Jesus undercuts that sort of self-reliance. He says, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

Notice, Jesus doesn’t condemn Peter’s choice to leave behind his fishing nets and follow Jesus. After all, Jesus is the one who had commanded him to do so (Mark 1:16-17)! Instead, Jesus shifts Peter’s perspective on that act of self-denial. Rather than view it as a badge of honor, or a kind of qualification ensuring him a place on heaven’s roster, Peter should understand his forsaking the life he’d always known as a venture in receiving from Jesus a life so staggeringly full of grace and glory that any sacrifice made to obtain it pales by comparison. If Peter has left behind his family, Jesus says, he receives a new family in his discipleship. If Peter has given up property, he inherits a choicer piece of real estate. If he forsakes a fine house, he gains a mansion. If he gives up his life, then—in Jesus’ favorite paradox—he gains it. Following me, Jesus seems to say, isn’t simply about relinquishing things. It is about receiving the abundance of eternal life. ...

In the years since I have begun to tell the story of my sexuality to my fellow Christians in the churches I have been a part of, I have found Jesus’ words to be true. Jesus has given me brothers and sisters and mothers and children. Knowing my celibate lifestyle, the Christians I’ve befriended have committed themselves, through the unity secured by the Holy Spirit rather than through biological ties, to being my family, whether or not I ever experience marriage myself. They have invited me into their homes, taken me on vacation with them, and encouraged me to consider myself an older sibling to their children.

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I AM BOTH AUDIO AND VISUAL. I'm speaking in Pittsburgh this Saturday on Gay Catholic Whatnot. 6.30 pm, Doherty Hall at Carnegie-Mellon University, Room 1212. There will be food and drink! Sponsored by the CMU Newman Club; for more info contact frjoshua@pittsburghoratory.org .

Bring friends! Bring foes! Tell me what to do in Pittsburgh!