The Pope Moves Tepidly...

OK—this is the headline:

And here’s the lead:

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:

1. homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer
2. 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….