OK—this is the headline:
In
a dramatic shift in tone, a Vatican document said on Monday that homosexuals
had "gifts and qualities to offer" and asked if Catholicism could
accept gays and recognize positive aspects of same-sex couples.
“Dramatic?”
“Shake Up?”
Boys?
My Latin is rusty, but here’s the English version:
In a dramatic shift in tone, Pope Francis
issued an official apology for the two centuries in which the Church has
condemned homosexuality as—in the words of his predecessor, Pope Alumnus Benedict XVI—“intrinsically
disordered.” He acknowledged that the Church’s position had caused “untold
misery and suffering” for millions of Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered
people, and had led to ostracism from their families, their communities, and
their church. He deeply regretted those whom the church had rejected, and
saluted those who had spoken up and pressed for change. In addition, he
directed that the clause within so many Church contracts stating that the
signee would obey church teachings be immediately voided.
Guess
what? That took me all of ten minutes to write, though I spent three of those
kissing Lady and chatting in the kitchen.
Ten
minutes—wait, it really took a lifetime, as I realized when I mentioned
parenthetically to Sergio, whom I barely know, that I was gay.
“It’s
really good that you can come out and be honest with yourself, ‘cause I know so
many men who can’t….”
Here,
Sergio echoed Jorge, who confided once, “you know, Marc, I swear: every man on
the island is bisexual. I go out and before I reach the street corner….”
Sergio
went on to say that his gay friends were—often—more loyal than his closeted
friends, because hiding takes so much energy. It’s the archeology of fear: the
first stratum is rejection by the family (yes, it still happens, and may be
happening more, since kids are coming out earlier and earlier, and since gay
has gone from being utterly taboo to being on the front page of the New York
Times.) Digging deeper and deeper, you uncover the various strata: the fear of
losing your job, the fear of being seen at a gay parade, the fear that your
friends will reject you, and ultimately…
…the
fear of yourself.
So
let’s run back over to the Vatican and reread that statement: here are the two
components:
- homosexuals have gifts and qualities to
offer
- could Catholics recognize positive
aspects of same-sex couples?
The
first implies that though most of the—sorry—fruit is rotten, we could cut
around it and find something edible. So that takes us back about 40 years, when
every woman knew that her hairdresser—whom she just adored—was…well, that
way. Hairdressers yes, but CEO of a major corporation? I went looking for one
through the fields of Google, and only now discovered that Tim
Cook, the CEO of Apple, got outed by “accident” by CNBC last June. My
point? In every press release announcing a promotion, the last paragraph throws
in a line that runs something like this, “Tim Cook is married to Rebecca
Walters, a criminal lawyer, and has three children.” So however far we’ve come,
we’ve still got a lot of guys out there who need to go farther.
Now
then, could Catholics recognize positive aspects of same-sex marriages? Isn’t
it curious, that phrasing—is the Catholic Church polling its members? Is it
pleading? It seems a variant of the old
let’s-pity-those-homosexuals-who-are-sick-and-doomed-to-lead-lives-of
desperate-loneliness…. And what are the positive aspects? That those two boys
will bring a fabulous quiche to your brunch? That with the two Lesbians on your
softball team, you’ll knock the other team out of the ballpark?
As
Frank Bruni so ably pointed out, the Catholic Church is obsessed
with being gay, and most particularly, being openly gay and—gasp—getting
married. Because we’ve all been reading cases in the last year of Catholic
schools having no problem welcoming a gay teacher’s live-in lover of thirty
years to faculty parties, but what happens when the couple ties the knot? Well,
let’s hope that the teacher is independently wealthy, and just doing that
teaching gig for fun.
You
know, there’s a point in which parents of kids who have come out make—and I say
this sincerely—a big step by just asking how the child’s partner is. For
parents have to come out too, and who’s to know which coming out is more
difficult? At least I was in charge of my life; I could call the shots. But my
mother? Wondering if I would be another Mathew Sheppard? Would I find a good
partner? Would I die never having been loved? She may have had the worst of it:
I had the auxiliary verb “will,” she the more terrifying world of “would.”
Right—so
the baby step of acknowledging a relation is small, but it’s a step. But the
Catholic Church? Why is it that I’m so reluctant to believe that this amounts
to nothing more than a mealy-mouthed attempt to appear less homophobic than
they are?
And
my last question—why do we all need to see this new pope as a wonderful change,
a man who is breathing new air into the church, who will shake it up and
regenerate it and finally, finally let us sit at the table?
My
answer?
Richard Dawkins, if I
recall correctly, once theorized that our need for religion is linked to the
biological programming of children bonding to and obeying their parents. True?
Who knows?
But
I think that all the gay Catholics who welcome this new pope are doing what all
the gay teachers were doing when they brought their partners to the faculty
parties: they’re accepting scraps from the table. But what will happen when gay
people really demand a place at the table: as priests, as parents, as pope?
Do
you see a place setting there?
I
don’t….
