Of Wedding Cakes, The Traditional Latin Mass, and LGBT Catholics

While out of State to give some lectures, I happened to notice the following letter in a local newspaper. 

Regarding "Religious views deserve respect" (Your Views, April 26):

The letter writer says that Christians who do not wish to participate in a gay wedding by providing services are making a personal decision and not a religious one.

Where exactly in the law of Moses does it say that men cannot shake hands with women? Should we conclude that it is a personal decision versus a religious one to shake hands? The writer clearly is ignorant of the basic tenets of Christianity. I could quote scriptures too numerous for this letter to support Christ's abhorrence of homosexual acts, but I won't. They are easily found.

Christians follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, and he could not have been more clear as to the importance of the role of man and wife and their commitment to each other within a family unit. Everyone's religious beliefs deserve respect, whether the writer believes it or not.

Christians across America are waiting for clarification from the courts so that we can use the protection our Constitution gives us to practice our religion.

Now I must admit that at first I thought the newspaper was being spoofed and that the letter was not serious, but some phone calls to people I know in the editorial business assured me that no, the writer was indeed serious in her claims.

I could quote scriptures too numerous for this letter to support Christ's abhorrence of homosexual acts, but I won't. They are easily found.

Well, no these quotes to support Christ’s abhorrence of homosexual acts aren’t easily found.  They don’t exist.  Nowhere in the Gospels does Christ ever mention anything to do with homosexuality.  That is not to say that he did not subscribe to the condemnation of same-sex acts that are found in the Law of Moses, but it is to say that one cannot attribute any opinion—pro or con—on the matter to Jesus (or to the Evangelists).  It is somewhat strange, I imagine that the subject never came up—or at least was left unrecorded.  Mark, Luke, and John at least lived and preached in culture where there was considerable sexual license for those of any and all preferences; if Jesus had spoken of same-sex relationships, one might expect his words to find their ways into one or another gospel.  Of course the society in which Jesus himself lived—as well as Matthew—the rather strictly regulated world of first-century Palestinian Judaism was far more rigorously policed for moral aberrance than the Graeco-Roman societies, but still, same-sex attraction exists universally throughout the human family, even where divergent behavior must remain underground for fear of censure.  On the other hand, we must consider that Jesus didn’t spend a lot of time talking about sex.  There was the woman caught in the “very act of adultery” whom he dismissed with an admonition to “sin no more;” there was the woman of bad repute in the house of Simon the Pharisee who would be “much forgiven for much has she loved.”  And, of course, there was a positive endorsement of hetero-sexual marriage “for which reason a man leaves his mother and father and clings to his wife and the two become one flesh.”  Overall, Jesus seems much more concerned about those who “bind up heavy burdens and lay them on others’ shoulders” than he does about failures of the flesh.  The people who really piss Jesus off are the Pharisees, the “I’m holier than thou” people who are not peculiar to Judaism but found among the ranks of the most devout of any and all religions. 

All of which is to say I just don’t get how baking a cake or doing a photo-shoot is a religious issue.  I’m not saying that a professional person should not be able to refuse his or her services for a particular occasion; just don’t get on your high horse about how this is because you are a “Christian” and can’t lower your standards to accommodate someone whom you judge to be of lesser moral quality.  “I give you thanks, o Lord, that I am not like the rest of men: greedy, grasping, adulterous—or even like that publican over there.”  We all know the line and it is nothing less than disgusting.  Bias is bad enough, but when gilded with religiosity it would be enough to make Jesus come right down off that cross and smack you up the side of your ****filled head.

That being said, I noticed recently that Rorate Caeli, a website that is dedicated to making the Extraordinary Form Ordinary is requesting data from Traditional Mass sites as to the demographics of their congregation.  When I first started perusing the web, Rorate Caeli was a pretty legitimate site.  Yes, it had a neo-traditional agenda but much like New Liturgical Movement it more often than not had sound research, sound thinking, and sound writing.  That has changed over the last three or four years and it now can be considered among the Katholic Krazies.  It likes to sound the occasional tocsin to alert readers of all sorts of alleged aberrations from matters liturgical to matters papal.  It also has become increasingly solicitous of funds, not a good sign in a non-commercial website.  Be that as it may, the current interest in demographics seems to aim at establishing that the Extraordinary Form is attracting an audience both younger and more male.  It wants to know how many men –proportionate to the larger congregation—are attending, as well as younger families.  I think the data will be interesting, but I think for an honest assessment they need to look at how many men are there who are not “attached” to one or another of those younger “traditional” families.  My own experience with the Usus Antiquior is somewhat limited as I find it extremely discouraging to attend Mass in pre-conciliar rites but I have noticed from my various forays of curiosity and data gathering—principally at Saint Mary Mother of God in DC and at the Church of the Holy Innocents in Manhattan—that there seems to be a somewhat disproportionate number of same-sex “duos” (to avoid the connotations of the word “couples”) as well as young men attending alone.  (Again, to avoid prejudicing the issue with stereotypes, I will forgo saying “particularly stylishly dressed young men attending alone.”)  Now, as I buy into the Pope Francis “Who am I to judge” philosophy, I am not disparaging efforts of any parish to draw and welcome members of the LGBT community.  My understanding of the word “Catholic,” in line with James Joyce (certainly not one of Holy Mother’s most reverent of sons) is “here comes everybody,” or to put it in American idiom “y’all come, now.”  But many of those ardent devotees of the TLM take a less encouraging view of our LGBT brothers and sisters in Christ.  So, Rorate Caeli, do some thorough research and let us know if the “Mass of All Ages” is particularly attractive to Gay Catholics as well as to young families.  Who knows, the Traditional Latin Mass might be a vital but as yet underused tool of the New Evangelization.

Pope Francis and the Sarah Palin Playbook? Really?

Really?  Pope Francis is no better
than Sarah Palin?  Really? 

What do Pope Francis and Sarah Palin have in common?  One would think very little.  Francis is intelligent, well-informed, articulate, has proved himself over the years of his various posts to be a man of compassion, insight, and leadership.  Sarah Palin, well, to give a pig the lipstick due her, Sarah can disembowel a moose and that probably isn’t in Francis’ skill-set though he does seem to be a quick learner.

I had my annual physical the other day and my physician, a devout Catholic who would by no means be a raving liberal but who, nonetheless, is intelligent and a critical thinker, told me of an article he had read comparing the Pope who overturned the gloomy papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI to the loose canon who torpedoed the John McCain candidacy. I couldn’t possibly figure out what the grounds for such a comparison could be, and the good Doctor couldn’t remember exactly where he had read it, so I googled “Pope Francis Sarah Palin” and found, among other things, an article in The Guardian by Kristina Keneally in which the author set up the requite strawman to produce her article, writing: “Think Sarah Palin, or Kevin Rudd: people who confuse popularity with leadership, or celebrity with substance.”  I am not familiar enough with Australian politics to get the Kevin Rudd analogy (and I am too lazy at this point to do some research), but is that all we can say about Francis’ papacy: that he confuses popularity for leadership or celebrity with substance?

Ms. Keneally writes on: “But has Francis really changed the church? If the pope moves on in two or three years, what will he have left behind? A church more welcoming of the talents of all its members, more accepting of all those who love God and live faithful lives, and a safer place for children, or a just a string of Instagram pictures, warm memories and the latent fizz of lost celebrity? I pray it is the former. I pray the Holy Spirit is moving.”

I think Ms. Keneally has fallen into that journalistic pit of allowing her feelings to set the criterion for her judgment.  We are all fearful of what will come after Francis.  As I have written elsewhere in this blog, it is unlikely that the Cardinal-electors will choose a pope who is as “out in front” as is Francis.  I don’t think the Burke model will prevail, but it is almost inevitable that the next pontiff will represent some retreat from Francis’ progressive agenda.  And that is the problem with government by absolute monarchy rather than government by bureaucratic institution—be that institution a democratic republic or a politburo or whatever.  The papacy, as we know it, finds its direction in the character of the reigning pope and while a pope may need time to shift his curia to follow his philosophy, when the pope changes, the genius of the papacy changes. 

It has taken Francis time to steer the barque of Peter towards the rising sun of the gospel rather than the cold moon of self-protecting institutionalism that was guiding the Church through the long dark night of post-Conciliar reactionism.  And Francis is trying to do it in ways that will outlast his inevitably short time at the helm.  Francis could simply arbitrarily declare that the divorced and remarried are welcome at the Eucharist, that he is happy to have transgendered people taking part in Vatican ceremonies, and that he has no intention of judging gays or anyone else for that matter.  But when Francis moves into his retirement suite at Mater Ecclesiae or is gathered to his predecessors in the crypt of the Vatican Basilica, it can all change.  If, however, he takes the time and patience to steer his agenda through the sort of minimal-level representative machinery that has so far developed in the Catholic Church, it will be far harder to reverse.  It is a gamble.  There is no guarantee the Synod Bishops this fall will go with Francis’ agenda.  In fact, there is a lot of opposition to the Francis program from our own America bishops.  And the krazies are using their Gideon agenda, banging pots and blowing horns in an attempt to convince the Bishops that the vast majority of the faithful are solidly behind those who want no change in current Church discipline.  It is easy for us to become discouraged and think the Francis agenda will fail unless the Pope just steps in and decrees the changes unilaterally, but if this new tone of an evangelical Catholicism is to take root and grow, quickness needs to be sacrificed for thoroughness, product for process. 

So let’s take a look from another perspective.  Ms. Kineally does give the Holy Father due credit for what he has already accomplished.  She admits she has been a bit harsh and she admits that

Francis has taken a meat cleaver to the Vatican Bank, delivered a scathing assessment of the Curia, shut down a witch-hunt inquiry into the US Catholic nuns’ leadership group, and got the world to pay attention to issues like boat people and financial inequality. Later this year he will publish an encyclical on climate change. Because of these actions, the American conservative Catholics are not happy with him.

This is not a bad list of accomplishments for two years.  But a new pope can come along and reopen the witch-hunt on Joan Chittester, Elizabeth Johnson, and other women who disprove the old Neo-Scholastic theory that women have souls but not intellect; can turn our attention away from immigrants, climate change, and income inequality to focus on the glories of Gregorian chant; and re-instate Cardinal Burke as the omniscient justiciar of all matters pontifical, ecclesiastical, and canonical.  (That last one actually sounds like a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta character—I can just see His Eminence doing his little jig as he goes through his patter song.)  What will last from this pontificate is that which the Pope gets done “through the proper channels” to leave his mark.  John XXIII’s legacy is not in his charm, his wit, or even his cordiality to those of no and other faiths; his legacy is in his Council.  Francis has only a short time, but he has to do his agenda right.  As for Sarah—perhaps she and Burke could enjoy a nice lunch together one day reminiscing about their 15 minutes of fame. 

Of Rainbow Shamrocks and Protestant Parades

Great parade yesterday up Fifth Avenue and past Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.  Cardinal Dolan was the Grand Marshal.  Previous Grand Marshals include Governor Al Smith, (first Catholic to run for President of the United States)1925; Mayor Jimmy Walker (1932); Mayor Robert Wagner (1954); Governor Hugh Carey (1976); Cardinal John J. O’Connor (1996); Maureen O’Hara (1999); and Cardinal Edward Egan (2002).   There was some controversy because for the first time in parade history a LGBT group, Out@NBCUniversal marched under their own banner.   (It would be naïve—at the least—to think this was the first time gays marched in the parade.)   While openly gay participation in the past has been blocked, Grand Marshal Cardinal Dolan made a point of saying that he thought it a wise decision to make the parade more “inclusive” and that he welcomed everyone.  The Krazies, of course, are furious but then anger is their mother’s milk. 

I only watched the first half hour or so of the parade, but one curious factoid I heard implied it (wasn’t actually said) that this parade has always been a Catholic celebration.  The panel of NBC commentators were remarking on the history of the parade which originally was in lower Manhattan.  (In the eighteenth century today’s midtown site of the parade was nothing more than open fields and “truck gardens” that supplied the city with food.)  One of the commentators, admittedly I don’t remember who, remarked that this was because the Old Saint Patrick’s Cathedral was in Greenwich Village.  Two problems.  The Old Saint Pat’s is not in the Village but on Mulberry Street in what would become Little Italy and is now Chinatown.  But the more egregious mistake is that while the parade dates back to 1762, the Cathedral was built only in 1809-1815.  You see, despite the implication—and the common historical misperception—the parade was not originally a Catholic sponsored event.  To the contrary: those who marched in the first parade of 1762 were all Protestants.  And such would have been the case for the first twenty or more years—it was a Protestant event.  In fact it was at least predominately a Protestant event well into the 19^th century.

The first Saint Patrick’s Day parade in New York was comprised of Irish soldiers in the British Army.  Until 1778 Catholics were prohibited from joining the army (and their commissioning as officers was even later).  In fact, while all other churches and religions, even Judaism, were legally tolerated, it was illegal to be a Catholic in New York until the 1777 State Constitution that marked independence from Great Britain. 

The 1737 Boston Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, generally considered the first in the colonies—and thus the oldest American Parade to honor Ireland’s national saint, was also comprised of Irish Protestants who had immigrated to Massachusetts.  Irish nationalism in the 18^th century—and the Saint Patrick Day Parades were celebrations of Irish Identity and Nationalism within the British Empire—was not a Catholic phenomenon but a Protestant one.  The Catholics had been so beaten down by the Penal Laws, and especially so in Ireland after the 1688 victory of William of Orange over the Catholic James II, in the British Empire that they were a political non-entity.  The principal advocates of Irish Nationalism from William Molyneaux to Jonathan Swift to Henry Grattan to Samuel Nielson to Wolfe Tone to Robert Emmet were all Protestants as would later be Charles Stewart Parnell, and literary figures W.B Yeats, Lady Gregory, and Seán O’Casey.  And the artist and indomitable Irish revolutionary, Baroness Markievicz, who advised her female admirers to: “Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver,” was Protestant until she was in her 50’s when she was received into the Catholic Church. 

 Two of the first four Presidents of Ireland, Douglas Hyde and Erskine Childers were Protestants.  By no means has Irish Nationalism been a exclusively—or even predominately—Catholic phenomenon.

In those pre-Revolutionary (and Protestant) days in America, Saint Patrick’s Day was marked by the Irish in the larger colonial cities such as New York by dinners in the more elegant taverns such as Bolton and Sigel’s, now known as Fraunces Tavern.  For a day such as St. Patrick’s Day they would feast on oysters, lobster, turtle soup, cod, duck, goose, venison, and smoked hams.  Meats would be eaten roasted, or potted, or cooked in pasties—pies and hot-pockets.  Winter vegetables would include turnip, parsnips, carrots, squashes and winter cabbage.   Apples and pears conserved from the previous autumn would be pricey but available and a wide variety of summer fruits would have been put up into jams that might be served as is or used as fillings for pies.  Hard cider was the most common drink, but ales and beers would be common enough as well as rum imported from Jamaica and home-distilled whiskies.  Alcoholic beverages were drunk with no thought of moderation, especially for celebrations like today’s feast.  Desserts would include a variety of pies, sweetmeats (candied fruits), nuts, and boiled puddings such as whitepot, figgy pudding, or plum duff.  There were also such puddings as flummery, syllabub, and blancmange.  Celebrants would sit down to dinner midafternoon and the feast would last into the night or as long as the alcohol held out. 

It was only in the 1820’s that Catholic Irish began to migrate to New York in significant numbers and the floodgates opened with the Great Famine after 1846.  The second half of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth were the high-water mark of Catholic Irish immigration.  The “established Irish,” Protestant and Catholic, did not particularly welcome the immigrants who were of much lower social and educational status.  The Catholics were embarrassed by their immigrant co-religionists and the Protestants disowned them completely thinking them to be superstitious savages. But the immigrants were quick to organize themselves in an effort to better themselves by mutual help.  Among their first acts was to organize a separate Saint Patrick’s Day Parade which they had done by 1858.  Immigrant Irish participation in the Northern cause of the American Civil War not only united the Irish among themselves but gave them a certain political clout in New York and other Northern cities.  By the end of the Civil War the New York Parade was firmly under the control of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, an immigrant association formed to fight the prejudices against (Irish) immigrants that had been strong in the decade immediately before the Civil War. From that time on the New York Saint Patrick’s Day Parade has been firmly in the hands of Irish Catholics, yet it has always been a civic parade and not a religious procession.  Never in its history has it been a religious procession and while there was an active policy of excluding groups identified with the LGBT movement these forty years and more since the gay liberation movement has appeared, the exclusion of LGBT marchers or groups certainly can’t be argued on religious grounds.  

The Synod, Gays, A Life Lost, And A Need For Change

Morgan Kristopher Powell 

Sad story in the New York Times this morning. 

Morgan Powell lived for Bronx history. He spoke about everything from the borough’s parks, rivers and early settlers — the kind of people for whom streets and neighborhoods are named — to the waves of African-American and Latino immigrants who remade the area during the 20th century.

He paid the bills — as best as he could — working as a landscaper and gardener. But he sustained his spirit with his love of Bronx history and his advocacy for the natural environment. He did his research on his own, sharing his knowledge and passion on blogs and free tours….

Now Ms. Martell and her friends are struggling to find the most basic of connections to Mr. Powell — his next of kin. His body was discovered floating in the Erie Basin, off Red Hook, Brooklyn, on Sept. 29. The New York City medical examiner’s office is investigating the cause of his death. People are devastated and confused: How could a man devoted to uncovering the hidden history of the Bronx have concealed his own past? Worse, would he now be fated to a pauper’s unmarked grave?

“When it came to his family life, there were all these questions I never asked,” Ms. Martell said. “Now I wonder, was I a good friend? I didn’t even know his family. I’ve talked to people who knew him longer, but nobody knew his family.”

Mr. Powell, 40, lived on Allerton Avenue, not far from the tree-shaded paths along Bronx Park East and the Bronx River. He had grown up in the area, attended Christopher Columbus High School (where he was known by his given name, Kristopher) and eventually became interested in horticulture through a program at the nearby New York Botanical Garden. Ms. Martell said his interest in history was piqued by a plaque he had spotted at the garden that referred to Joseph Rodman Drake, a poet and a member of a prominent early Bronx family.

Mr. Powell threw himself into the study of local history, combining it with his love of nature. In time, he developed walking tours that explored both the environment and the borough’s African-American past, which he detailed on his Bronx River Sankofa blog.

“He was an independent scholar who did this on his own, without any grants,” said Mark Naison, a history professor at Fordham University . . . “He did incredible research and published work. I have never seen anything quite like it.”

Last year, Mr. Powell stunned Mr. Naison by donating his archives to Fordham.

“It was like this phase of his life was coming to an end,” the professor recalled. “He said something about maybe moving south and wanting to make sure this material was preserved. It was a pretty heavy thing to do.”

Mr. Powell had told some friends that his mother immigrated to New York from Jamaica and raised him along with two sisters who now lived in either Maryland or the Carolinas. Last year he told an acquaintance that he had had little contact with any family members after he came out as a gay man.

 “They rejected him and disinherited him,” Ben Stock, a gay rights advocate, said. “Parental rejections are extraordinarily painful. Your sense of home is gone. What more can they take away?”

To his friends, Mr. Powell was intelligent, confident and unashamed of being gay. Active on social media, he lamented last month on Facebook about the lack of a support group for closeted black men in the Bronx. It was one cause, he told friends, on which he would not take the lead. Near the end of September, he told a colleague at the garden center where he worked that he had to “go away on family business” and that if he did not return by Oct. 2, he would never be back.

“When we found out he was dead, we all kept going back to that Facebook post, wondering if there was something there,” said Ed Garcia Conde, a blogger who had published Mr. Powell’s writing on environmental and historical topics. “It was so out of character for him.”

Scores of people who knew Mr. Powell have been contacted. Still, no relatives have surfaced yet. Ms. Martell insisted that if no one emerged to claim his body, she and her friends would…

“Potter’s field cannot happen,” Ms. Martell said, her voice breaking. “He spoke a lot about potter’s field and not having access. How people would be forgotten. That would be a slap in the face if that happened to him. This guy who did so much, to be buried where nobody can see him? If no family comes, we will bury him.”

There are a lot of people who say: “See, this is what being gay leads to.”  And they miss the point.  Maybe the story grabs me because of Powell’s love for history but here is a man with a High School education whose intelligence and sense of purpose made him a serious scholar who could make an exceptional contribution to his community’s knowledge and self-understanding, not as an academic in an ivory tower but as a person who did manual work to support himself while he did serious research and publication.  Maybe his story grabs me because of my own career in teaching, but here is a man who loved books and knowledge and learning for its own sake and for the ability to open the eyes of his neighbors to learn things about themselves that they had never yet known.  And here, finally, is a man whose gifts have been lost, indeed whose life has been lost, because he was left isolated and rejected and without the support of those nearest to him.  I don’t know if Mr. Powell was Catholic or not, and I am not saying that we as a Church failed him.  But we do fail the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters when we fail to be the sort of family of God to which and in which all are welcomed without condition.  Morgan Powell’s story is what happens in a society that leaves people isolated because of their sexual orientation or gender identification and we as a Church cannot be part of that isolation.  To be part of system that perpetuates the sort of prejudice that left Morgan Powell bereft of the love and support of his family, or as feeling alien and alone within one’s social network, is as seriously wrong, if not more so, than any sin of sexual behavior of which we humans can be found guilty.  We as a Church profess to decry any discrimination against people because of sexual orientation, but when “the rubber hits the road” we too often find ourselves part of the problem and not of the solution.  

The Extraordinary Synod of Bishops had proposed the following statement about the Church’s relationship with men and women who have same-sex attraction. 

Paragraph 55: “Some families live the experience of having persons with a homosexual orientation. In that regard it was asked what pastoral attention is appropriate facing this situation, referring to what the church teaches: ‘There does not exist any basis for assimilating or making analogies, however remote, between homosexual unions and the design of God for marriage and the family.’ Nonetheless, men and women with homosexual tendencies must be welcomed with respect and delicacy. ‘In their regard, every trace of unjust discrimination is to be avoided.’ (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, ‘Considerations regarding Projects of Legal Recognition of Unions among Homosexual Persons,’ 4).”

The proposed paragraph was not a particularly challenging statement.  In fact it passed with a majority of 118 votes with 62 votes against.  That means that while a majority of bishops favored it, it was not included in the final statement because it did not obtain the ⅔ majority needed for consensus.   Moreover, several of the negative votes were from bishops who considered the statement to have been too watered down in asserting a welcome place in the Church for gays and lesbians.  Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, was one of those who saw the proposed statement as a moral failure because it did not go far enough.  The Cardinal expressed his disappointment that the proposed document had not used much stronger language about the need to “respect, welcome and value” people in same-sex relationships.

The interesting thing will be to see where the agenda goes from here.  Pope Francis said in his closing homily Christ wanted his Church to be a “house with doors always open to welcome everyone.”  This was an obvious echo of the proposed statement “men and women with homosexual tendencies must be welcomed with respect and delicacy.”  Francis seems, from his homily, not to be willing to let drop either the statement on people with same-sex attraction or the need to find a way to let the divorced and remarried take a place at the Table of the Lord for the Sunday Eucharist.  Over the course of the next eleven months, expect the Holy Father to return to these themes in subtle but unmistakable ways. I think we can expect to see him relying less and less on Cardinal Kasper and others to get the message out and to see him take a more direct (though implicit) role in shaping the discourse.  The Wednesday Audience remarks, his daily homilies, and his Sunday Angelus messages will probably be the medium, though he may also use his homilies for several key feasts—such as the Sunday of the Holy Family between Christmas and New Year’s—to make observations and express hopes for the upcoming Ordinary Synod in 2015.  I think we will also see some reshuffling of the deck before the next synod.  Cardinal Burke has already confirmed that he is on his way out of a Curial position that would guarantee him a seat at the Synod, although the Pope could, in theory, appoint him to the Synod.  It will be interesting to see what happens.  And pray for Pope Francis himself, not only that God will guide him through this process, but that God will protect him and give him the health to see it through.  There is a lot riding on that papal horse.