The Forked Tongue of Bishop Tobin

He is the son of one Saywell, he dwelt in Prating-row; and he is known of all that are acquainted with him, by the name of Talkative in Prating-row, and notwithstanding his fine tongue, he is but a sorry fellow. … Religion hath no place in his heart, or house, or conversation; all he hath lieth in his tongue, and his religion is to make a noise therewith.

—John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress

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CW: Sexual abuse and sacrilege.

Bishop Tobin of Providence (of whom I had not heard before) tweeted several days ago that Catholics must not attend gay Pride events, since they are incompatible with Catholicism and harmful to children. He was promptly hung, drawn, and quartered by half the internet.

He deserved it. This is the man also had the gall to say, about a year ago, that back when he was the auxiliary Bishop of Pittsburgh, he did know about cases of child abuse but didn’t do anything about them because ‘My responsibilities … did not include clergy assignments or clergy misconduct … I was not contacted by the Grand Jury, interviewed, nor mentioned in their report [well have a fucking cookie Your Excellency] … In my experience, the Diocese of Pittsburgh has been very responsible and transparent in responding to allegations of sexual abuse’—which is why, when four priests of that diocese took photos of a fifteen-year-old boy stripped naked and posed as Christ crucified, we all learned about it at the time, and not decades later when the truth was forcibly extracted by the pressure of the law and incorporated into the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report. The responsibility and transparency of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, we have these to thank for the fact that Fr Richard Zula was removed from ministry and reported to the authorities the first time a complaint was made about ‘violent sexual activity with a minor,’ as opposed to, say, letting him rake up one hundred and thirty criminal charges and two confessions of his own before informing the authorities. The snake who learned about cases just like these and decided ‘Not my area’ wants to warn us about other people’s conduct being ‘harmful to children.’

Is Bishop Tobin the most hypocritical and corrupt member of the USCCB? I doubt it. Have another cookie.

I was frankly outraged to see Bishop Strickland of Tyler speaking in Tobin’s defense, given that Strickland was one of the few American bishops for whom I had any respect left, since he seemed like he was going to practice some real, public repentance and reform. [1] That list is now down to pretty much just Bishop Persico of Erie, who actually met with the Grand Jury and has made some concrete effort to deal with his diocese’s guilt. Whether Tobin's right (which, no) is irrelevant. After the way he's behaved, he, like many, many other Catholic bishops, should be deposed and degraded yesterday.

I remain a Catholic (one with sins of my own that I cannot take back) by God’s grace. Nothing else. As Flannery O’Connor said, the one thing that makes the Church bearable is that she feeds us Jesus. Literally, and in spite of herself.

It rips me up inside to think of people who lose that because the behavior of her priests was so sick and sadistic, and that of her bishops so self-centered and cowardly, that they couldn’t bear to be near it. Those for whom a golden cross evokes memories not of the gift of the Eucharist or the tender Heart that endured the Passion, but of unwanted hands and tongues and eyes. And it disgusts me that there are still Catholics willing to go to bat for the same bishops who allowed this stuff to go on unchecked, these hirelings that care nothing for the sheep, and blame those who leave for being driven away.

I’m staying. I’m staying for the Eucharist, which is Jesus. I hope those who have been driven away come back for Jesus. But I don’t blame them for running from the wolves; nobody should. Nor do I blame them for not trusting shepherds (hell, I don’t trust shepherds), when they know shepherds chiefly as men who bring wolves into the fold and tell everybody they’re sheepdogs.

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[1] In fairness to Bishop Strickland, perhaps he didn’t know about Bishop Tobin’s atrocious remarks last August. They weren’t front-page news.

Fear and Trembling

An adherent of the Enlightenment, a very learned man, who had heard of the Rabbi of Berditchev, paid a visit to him in order to argue, as was his custom, with him, too, and to shatter his old-fashioned proofs of the truth of his faith. When he entered the Rabbi's room, he found him walking up and down with a book in his hand, rapt in thought. The Rabbi paid no attention to the new arrival. Suddenly he stopped, looked at him fleetingly, and said, 'But perhaps it is true after all.' The scholar tried in vain to collect himself -- his knees trembled, so terrible was the Rabbi to behold and so terrible his simple utterance to hear. But Rabbi Levi Yitschak now turned to face him and spoke quite calmly: 'My son, the great scholars of the Torah with whom you have argued wasted their words on you; as you departed you laughed at them. They were unable to lay God and his Kingdom on the table before you, and neither can I. But think, my son, perhaps it is true.' The exponent of the Enlightenment opposed him with all his strength; but this terrible 'perhaps' that echoed back at him time after time broke his resistance.

—Martin Buber, Werke [1]

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Trigger Warning: Suicidal Ideation

This was a tough post to write, and may be a tough post for some of you to read. However, if you’re going to read it then I beg you to read the whole thing. Each part of it is important to hold together with each other part.

You may have heard of Josh and Lolly Weed, a Mormon couple in a mixed-orientation marriage whose coming out post, ‘Club Unicorn,’ went viral about six years ago. This wasn’t a late-in-life gay identity epiphany or an ex-gay conversion therapy success story; Josh knew he was gay before he even met Lolly, he told her before they started dating, and he never claimed to be a straight man (or an ex-gay one, for that matter). A couple of weeks ago, they announced on their blog that they are getting divorced.

It’s an eloquent, heartbreaking piece. I admire the Weeds for their courage and honesty. And it left me physically shaking, and mentally shaking, too.

Some key excerpts from their (justly) lengthy post, ‘Turning a Unicorn Into a Bat.’

[Josh:] About three years ago, I finally saw how important it was to love myself, to truly love myself as a gay man. It happened when my dear friend Ben Shafer (who himself is straight) turned to me one day and said, ‘Josh, you realize your sexual orientation is beautiful, right? Not just tolerable. It’s beautiful …’ I could hardly even register what he was trying to say. … ‘But what about it being so obviously not what God or biology intended? I’ve just always believed that I was meant to be straight, and that God will fix me someday so that I fit in with the rest of His children. I’ve always believed I was a broken straight person …’ And it was as I said those last words that my therapist-brain kicked and listened to the words coming out of my mouth. And I was stunned. People who view themselves as fundamentally broken, I knew, are not healthy. What I had just said was not healthy. 

… That night I talked to Lolly and told her all Ben had said, still with a vein of skepticism. ‘Can you believe he said that?’ was the feeling behind my words. And she sat for a moment thinking, then said something that surprised us both. ‘Josh, Ben is right. You aren’t just a broken straight person. Your gayness is a part of who you are. And your sexual orientation is beautiful. You are as God intended you to be.’ Though we had never fully embraced these ideas as reality before, we felt the spirit confirm them powerfully in that moment. The truth of Lolly’s words rang in our bodies. … And we were suddenly able to see more clearly the pain that my sexual orientation brought to our marriage. It hurt us both very deeply, and we spent many long nights holding one another and weeping as we thought of the decades to come for us, neither of us experiencing real romantic love. 

… Probably the most motivating factor of all that got me to actually really consider what God had been telling us for a while was my recognition of my own internalized homophobia—the layers of disgust and self-loathing I felt for myself that I was in denial of—and the way that led to my own suicidal ideation. … Guys, my life was beautiful in every way. My children, my wife, my career, my friends. It was filled with so much joy. The things I talked about in my coming out post in 2012 weren’t false. The joy I felt was real! The love I felt was real, but something in me wanted to die. …

My suicidality was not connected to depression. That’s how my mind could hide it from me. With no context and no warning, I would occasionally be brushing my teeth or some such mundane task and then be broadsided with a gut-wrenching, vast emptiness I can’t put into words, that felt as deep as my marrow—and I would think in a panic ‘I’m only 37. I’m only 37. How can I last five more decades?’ That thought—the thought of having to live five more decades, would fill me with terror. It was inconceivable for a few moments. 

And then it would pass. 

But the other thing I hadn’t been looking at was something I read, with horror, in a text message I sent to a dear friend during my week in Jacksonville. By the time I read what I had sent, the denial had broken down. Lolly was sitting next to me, holding me as I wept, and I was reading these text messages to her, and it felt like reading the words of another person … The text I had sent one week earlier said: I have thought of putting a gun in my mouth more times than I can count. 

… Do you realize how wrong it is that I have had to face the following cost/benefit analysis: if I stay in my marriage then I won’t disrupt my daughters’ sense of continuity. But I also might take my own life. And if I did die, wouldn’t that end up being way worse for them in the long run …? Is it worth the risk? 

[Lolly:] For me, giving my whole heart to Josh while knowing that he did not love me the way a man loves a woman has always been devastating. We were best friends, but he never desired me, never adored me, never longed for me. People who read our previous post might be confused because we mention having a robust sex life. That was true. We put forth a lot of effort and were ‘mechanically’ good at sex—and it did help us to feel intimate, and for a time that did help us to feel content … Whenever he held me in his arms, it was with a love that was similar to the love of a brother to a sister. That does eventually take its toll on your self-esteem. No matter how much I knew ‘why’ he couldn’t respond to me in the ways a lover responds to a partner, it wears a person down, as if you’re not ‘good enough’ to be loved ‘in that way.’ 

… Almost everyone has said to me, with an air of protective emphasis, ‘Oh, but Lolly, you deserve to be loved in that way! You will find someone else who can love you like that. You deserve to love and be loved in that way!’ And I agree with them. … The thing that’s so interesting to me is how few people think of Josh in this way. How few people in his life have ever thought these things about him—things that are so obvious, so clear, so emphatic when talking to another straight person.

Christian, when you talk or think about sexual ethics, when you study and articulate and defend Catholic teaching on the subject, this needs to be held firmly before your eyes, too. Not only are you not speaking in a vacuum; not only are you speaking to human beings; you are speaking to loving, devout, perceptive people, who have spent time and thought and agony in trying to practice their beliefs faithfully and gained nothing from it but more anguish. It’s easy enough to rationally disapprove of the man who gets high and has unprotected sex with four complete strangers in the back room of a bar; it shouldn’t be so easy to turn that same disapproval against a man like Josh Weed. I don’t say it’s impossible to affirm Catholic doctrine in the face of this kind of testimony, but I do say that any affirmation of Catholic doctrine must acknowledge and grapple honestly with this kind of testimony, with the cost the doctrine imposes. If you refuse, you’re printing counterfeits.

Take time to think, actually think, about the effect of pious clichés. ‘Just take it one day at a time’ is among my least favorite, because what it sounds like is: ‘It doesn’t matter that you’re lonely, because after all, you can survive as long as you don’t think about the fact that it isn’t likely to change.’ ‘We all have a cross to bear’ is, please note, not a quote from St Simon of Cyrene. ‘Your sexuality doesn’t define you’: well, no, but this isn’t about what defines people; it’s about whether they can be happy, healthy celibates if they don’t seem to be called to celibacy. And I’ve seen in the lives of others that relationships and marriage aren’t everything, sure, but masturbating into a sock while crying quietly still gets old after a while.

But what I think I hate the most is when people turn us into mascots. Those of us who are able to lead chaste lives as celibates are exceptional, for exactly the same reasons that chastely celibate heterosexuals are exceptional. And mixed-orientation marriages are very exceptional indeed, again for the same reasons that straight people getting into gay relationships, while it does happen (and adorably), is exceedingly rare. [2] Saying that so-and-so can do it, and therefore so can anybody, is not only a blatant error but a terribly cruel one. No two people enjoy identical circumstances, nor identical graces. Using the transparency of one person to shame or pressure another is hideous behavior.

If our religion is true, Catholic reader, then a lot of gay people have to lead lives of intense suffering. We need you to respect that.

For me personally—like I said, this post left me shaking for hours. I’m scared for myself, I’m scared for my gay brothers and sisters, I’m scared for my Church. I don’t know how to deal with this kind of thing: and as a self-appointed quasi-apologist, I need to say that, publicly and clearly. Anything less would be spiritual fraud.

About the most sense I can make of this experience is in something Pope Benedict wrote:

Both the believer and the unbeliever share, each in his own way, doubt and belief, if they do not hide from themselves and from the truth of their being. Neither can quite escape doubt or belief; for the one, faith is present against doubt; for the other, through doubt and in the form of doubt. … Perhaps in precisely this way doubt, which saves both sides from being shut up in their own worlds, could become the avenue of communication. It prevents both from enjoying complete self-satisfaction; it opens up the believer to the doubter and the doubter to the believer; for one, it is his share in the fate of the unbeliever; for the other, the form in which belief remains nevertheless a challenge to him. [3]

Note how ‘solving the problem’ is not at all what His Holiness tries to do here. Eliminating doubt isn’t his goal. Facing the truth is.

And to those of my LGBT readers who may be moved to write me words of instruction, urging me to slough off the unhealthy beliefs my Catholic faith has imposed upon me: please don’t. I’m not in a place where I can process that kind of thing. For all her warts, I love my mother the Church very deeply, and being unsettled about her is not merely unpleasant; it’s a shock to my sense of self. I need to spend my own time with that.

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[1] Though I admit I know the passage only through Benedict XVI’s Introduction to Christianity.

[2] Some people (of various orientations and philosophical alignments) insist that a single instance of erotic interest in the same sex should always be classified as bisexuality. I personally don’t find this a very helpful use of the term; falling in love outside of one’s normal attractions once doesn’t necessarily mean that you had been repressing your other attractions, nor that you are attracted to both sexes in general, &c. But I’m not deeply invested in the terminology here: the only distinction that I would want clearly made is that between people who are attracted to both sexes in general, and those who are generally attracted only to one sex but experience an exception.

[3] Also from Introduction to Christianity.

Why Hast Thou Thus Dealt With Us?

It is the rarest thing in the world to hear a rational discussion of vivisection.1 Those who disapprove of it are commonly accused of ‘sentimentality,’ and very often their arguments justify the accusation. They paint pictures of pretty little dogs lying on dissecting tables. But the other side lie open to exactly the same charge. They also defend the practice by drawing pictures of suffering women and children whose pain can be relieved (we are assured) only by the fruits of vivisection. The one appeal, quite as clearly as the other, is addressed to emotion, to the particular emotion we call pity. And neither appeal proves anything. If the thing is right—and if right at all, it is a duty—then pity for the animal is one of the temptations we must resist in order to perform that duty. If the thing is wrong, then pity for human suffering is precisely the temptation which will most probably lure us into doing that wrong thing. But the real question—whether it is right or wrong—remains meanwhile just where it was.

—C. S. Lewis, God In the Dock, ‘Vivisection’

And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them.

—Luke 2.48-50

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Before I return to more regular content, I want to address a particular argument for Side A theology2 that, I feel, helps no one. Roughly summarized, it’s the argument from agony: how could God demand celibacy of gay people? It’s stated with great clarity and pathos by Constantino Khalaf on his blog.

The uncomfortable truth is that many gay Christians who can’t reconcile their faith and sexual orientation often slip into promiscuity. … Committing to someone of the same sex would mean committing to a life of unrepentant sin, whereas the ‘trip up’ involved in casual sex is an offense from which we can easily seek forgiveness. … Scripture and human experience reveal that celibacy is a gift reserved only for some. I implore our straight brothers and sisters to imagine being told you must permanently abstain from sex (not only until marriage, but for life), while in your hearts you don’t feel called to celibacy. Imagine spending years praying that God will either change your sexual orientation or numb your desires for intimacy. Imagine trying one therapy after another, often at severe emotional and financial costs. Imagine praying for just one thing, but the one thing you ask for is the one thing God continuously denies.

‘Well, Lord,’ you might say, ‘I’ve done everything I could to give up this need. If you won’t help me; if I’m on my own; I give up. If you’ve turned me over to illicit desires, then I’ll give in. Goodbye.’ This is tragic, and I can’t imagine it pleases God. In fact, I can’t think of a better example of a wolf in sheep’s clothing than a theology that, in its practical application, favors promiscuity over monogamy. ‘A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.’ You cannot build a healthy sexual ethic on just ‘don’t do it.’ Gay Christians have never been given a framework for God-honoring sexuality, and this is the reason why so many use sex less ethically than non-believers.3

I hope that anyone who reads this does have a pang of compassion: no matter the details of your theology, other people’s suffering is a tragic result of the Fall, and is rightly mourned. Further, it's absolutely true that a theology consisting merely in No is unlivable, and that the Church has made a fairly shabby showing thus far in terms of giving her LGBT children something more. And to dispose of one very bad counterargument, when he speaks of sex, I don’t think Mr Khalaf has the mere physical act in mind; the piece as a whole make it clear he is talking about erotic fulfillment, of which sexual intimacy is the crown; to go without that involuntarily, even if we think it’s morally necessary, is a terrible hardship. 

Nevertheless, the syllogism drawn by Mr Khalaf (and many others) from the data is gravely flawed, and there are sounder reasons to take Side A views. There are certain details which merit discussion in their own right—for instance, what the criteria of discernment are; does everyone feel called to what God in fact calls them to? or are there objective, ‘external’ touchstones upon which to make that judgment? Is the fact that God refuses something to the earnest suppliant evidence that that thing is, intrinsically, undesirable or unnecessary? or might He have other reasons for refusal? But I don’t propose to treat these other questions, because the chief argument here is the argument from agony. Would God really consign someone to a lifetime of self-denial with respect to eros? Would He allow—no, require—that kind of suffering?

I think the answer is a totally unavoidable Yes. And not just because I’m Side B: when, for a brief period some years back, I was Side A, I’d have given you the same answer. To say that God would not allow that kind of suffering makes a mockery of Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Lubyanka, Vladivostok, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Sirte. If these things do not make belief in a benevolent God untenable, unwanted and unhappy celibacy certainly won’t.

But would He impose that kind of suffering? Why? What for? Well—as hackneyed and unjustly applied as the topic usually is—we already know He does in the case of pedophiles. The two cases are extremely different: two women or two men can give meaningful consent, while a child can’t; and consent (that is, the intention of mutual self-gift, regardless of any attendant imperfections) is even more central to sex than procreation on Catholic premises, for sex that doesn’t happen to result in a baby need not be immoral, whereas rape always and necessarily is. But, as soon as we admit any case in which some person is simply not allowed to ever have the erotic relationship they most desire, full stop, the possibility of another such case emerges by the terrible force of logic.

Now, it’s perfectly possible to hold that there is in fact only one such case, or that there are multiple cases of this kind but homosexuality isn’t in fact one of them. Arguments about the meanings of Greek and Hebrew words are well and good; arguments about whether and how much ancient cultural expectations of the genders influenced sexual mores, and whether we ought to retain those expectations or modify them or reject them, are well and good; even arguments about progressive revelation are well and good. These deal in facts. But let us have none of the argument from agony, for there is no doctrine, no religion, no total view of the universe, that can eliminate the fact of agony. Only the Second Coming can do that. The Christian may espouse many things, but he cannot espouse the doctrine that obedience will never make martyrs, not when his God was martyred, in life and death. Perhaps the gay Christian need not crucify his erotic desires; but he will most assuredly have to crucify something, and it will be at least as appalling as the terrible call to unwanted celibacy. Take thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest …

If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced labor-camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.

—Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

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1Vivisection is the practice of performing surgery on living animals for purposes of research, as opposed to the medical purpose of treating some ailment. Conservatives of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were for the most part horrified by the practice—for instance, Dr Samuel Johnson (of dictionary fame) wrote a severe denunciation of vivisection, quoted by Lewis near the end of this essay—while Darwinian scientists generally defended it. C. S. Lewis, though not an activist, was an unwavering opponent of the practice.

2If you don’t read this blog regularly or don’t travel much in gay Christian circles, Side A is a sort of nickname for progressivist theology on the subject of homosexuality: i.e., the belief that God blesses homosexual unions on the same basis as heterosexual ones. Whether and to what extent marriage is involved varies somewhat among different Side A theologians, though most of those I know of consider it just as necessary for gay people as for straight.

3From ‘Pious Promiscuity’ on Dave and Tino.

Dona Eis Requiem, Part VI

He knew that they called Ferreira the Apostate Peter and himself the Apostate Paul. Sometimes the children had gathered at his door chanting the name in a loud voice.

‘Please hear my confession. If even the Apostate Paul has the power to hear confessions, please give me absolution for my sins.’

It is not man who judges. God knows our weakness more than anyone, reflected the priest.

‘Father, I betrayed you. I trampled on the picture of Christ,’ said Kichijiro with tears. ‘In this world are the strong and the weak. The strong never yield to torture, and they go to Paradise; but what about those, like myself, who are born weak, those who, when tortured and ordered to trample on the sacred image …’

I, too, stood on the sacred image. For a moment this foot was on his face. Even now that face is looking at me with pity from the plaque rubbed flat by many feet. ‘Trample!’ said those compassionate eyes. ‘Trample! Your foot suffers in pain; it must suffer like all the feet that have stepped on this plaque. But that pain alone is enough. I understand your pain and your suffering. It is for that reason that I am here.’

He had lowered his foot on to the plaque, sticky with dirt and blood. His five toes had pressed upon the face of one he loved. Yet he could not understand the tremendous onrush of joy that came over him at that moment.

—Shūsaku Endō, Silence1

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You can go here for Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V.

Apologies to my readers for the protracted radio silence here. The past month has been a strange one with some unexpected changes, not least of which has been finding out (much to my surprise) that The Vampire Diaries isn’t crap. But to return to the series.

The normal calling of LGBT people in the Catholic Church is celibacy.2 There’s no way around this, and there’s no dressing it up as anything but an incredibly hard path—no amount of righteousness, beauty, or being worthwhile can possibly make celibacy easy. I’ve written already about some of the support we need in this, including, among other things, apology from Christians for the abuse and neglect we’ve frequently suffered at their hands; as well as firm and active opposition to homophobic violence both here and abroad—not just words about how the Church cares for everyone equally, but deeds of charity, like taking in homeless LGBT teens or funding refugee programs for those whose home countries put them in serious danger.

Photograph from a protest held in Chechnya, where in the last six months more than a hundred men believed 

to be gay or bisexual have been consigned to concentration camps; an unknown number have been killed.

What I’ve said very little about thus far is what, in my experience, Christians usually think of when they picture the trials of a gay person who’s also trying to be a faithful Catholic: i.e., the challenge of refraining from gay sex. The truth is, I’m not sure I know a single gay believer for whom that’s the costliest aspect of their faith. Faith itself is far costlier; loneliness is far costlier; perseverance is far costlier. And even those things aren’t always costly for the reasons you might suppose. Permit me a lengthy quotation.

I met a guy who was smart, attractive, and well-versed in theology. Like many gay people who grow up in the church, he’d been on a rollercoaster as he came to terms with being gay. He’d gone from having accountability software on his computer, to dancing for tips in a speedo at a bar. By the time we met he was cautiously returning to the church. Compared to my other relationships, this guy barely registers—we dated long distance for all of two months. But it was a rollercoaster of its own. We were sexually active when we first started dating, and then a few weeks in, he suggested we stop—he said it didn’t feel right and that he wanted to wait until marriage. He was sweet, and then he became callous. And after our breakup he did a complete turn-around in terms of his own sexual ethics—he even got into an open relationship.

I puzzled over this for months. … The explanation stems from the notion that we are all sinners who can’t escape our weaknesses; it is only open rebellion—being unrepentant—that is unforgivable, what dooms us to hell. Combined with the doctrine that all same-sex relationships are sinful, it gets warped into a theology that says promiscuity is better than monogamy. Committing to someone of the same sex would be committing to a life of unrepentant sin, whereas the ‘trip-up’ involved in casual sex is an offense from which we can easily seek forgiveness. You can meet a stranger for sex and never see him again, have a threesome or two, and even live a season of debauchery and lust, as long as you repent. This is a familiar cycle for many gay Christians, and while forgiveness of these acts is real, so is the guilt and shame that compounds in their hearts over weeks, months, and years.

Setting aside the dangers inherent to a promiscuous lifestyle, this cycle carries an even graver consequence: It drives people away from God. Scripture and human experience reveal that celibacy is a gift reserved only for some. I implore our straight brothers and sisters to imagine being told you must permanently abstain from sex, while in your hearts you don’t feel called to celibacy. Imagine spending years praying that God will either change your sexual orientation or numb your desires for intimacy. Imagine trying one therapy after another, often at severe emotional and financial costs. Imagine praying for just one thing, but the one thing you ask for is the one thing God continually denies.

‘Well, Lord,’ you might say, ‘I’ve done everything I could to give up this need. If you won’t help me, then I’ll give in. Goodbye.’ This is tragic, and I can’t imagine it pleases God. ‘A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.’3

This is where the going really gets rough. When you look at the consequences of behavior that you’ve tried and failed to control, consequences not just for yourself but for the men you fuck, and you start asking yourself whether it wouldn’t be better to compromise rather than go on hurting people—that’s when hope and perseverance in the pursuit of chaste celibacy start to look pointless, foolish, and cruel.

I can’t plead this defense. It’s myself I want to spare: if other people suffer but I don’t know about it, I find I don’t actually care that much, but if I find out about it I’ll feel empathy for their pain, and that’s a nasty feeling that I want to stop; what’s more, I always thought of myself as a virtuous person, and if I just can’t be chaste then my ego doesn’t have to break. But there are others, both LGBT Christians and allies, for whom the fundamental problem really is one of what the morally best thing to do is in these wretched circumstances. And they deserve an answer.

I shrink from saying that the right answer is, always and for every person, to stick to your guns no matter the cost. The mysterious concession given to Naaman the Syrian seems inconsistent with that; and the Church does sometimes tolerate irregular situations, as being the best on a list of bad options—I think that’s partly what Amoris Lætitia was getting at.

Yet consider the martyrs. It’s hard to blame a man for apostatizing in under torture, especially if (as depicted in the novel and film Silence) others are being tormented to provoke his apostasy. But greater love hath no man than this, that he should lay down his life for his friends; and it is that greater love which we are challenged to practice. If the consequence of martyrdom is not too severe to change what the right thing is, what consequence possibly could be? To be sure, here I exercise myself in great matters, in things too high for me. But the interior martyrdom of a life lived in continual, acknowledged imperfection, the daily crucifixion of one’s sense of dignity and control … I’m starting to believe that that is what loving God and my neighbor might look like. It’s frightening. It’s humiliating. It’s also, somehow, exciting. I’ve said flippantly before that if the Church is the Bride of Christ, asceticism might be our BDSM; given how extreme and weird submission can get, I’m starting to think the analogy holds.

And what is this to you, gentle reader? I’ll tell you: the thing that has been most discouraging to me in my attempts at chastity has never been the shameful apathy of the hierarchy, the derision of non-Christians, nor even the malice of the homophobic. It’s been the decision made by friends of mine to surrender their beliefs, not out of intellectual analysis, but out of that pity which cannot bear to watch me or others suffer4; not because pity is a bad thing but because, when it’s separated from the commitment to truth at all costs, it isn’t a reliable thing. Such friends may well wish to support me in my convictions without sharing them—but when someone has more pity for me than loyalty to reality, it wounds my power to trust them. Because at that point, are we still pursuing the same work? And where will your pity draw the line? This is what Flannery O’Connor was talking about when she said Tenderness leads to the gas chamber.

If you want to show me love, show me the kind that helps me bear the suffering. Taking away the suffering isn’t always the answer. Any addict can tell you that.

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1The plaque here is a reference to the fumie, images of Christ or the Virgin used by the authorities in seventeenth-century Japan to test suspected Christians: those who showed reluctance to dishonor the image on the fumie outed themselves as the faithful, while those who trampled were accepted as apostate.

2Normal, because canon law discourages gay men from becoming priests (wisely or not, it does this in fact), and most lesbians and gay men aren’t likely to desire marriage to somebody of the opposite sex. There are exceptions; bisexuals are, naturally, in a partly different position regarding marriage; and trans and intersex people are in a still more difficult position no matter what validity we give or don’t give to trans identities.

3Constantino Khalaf, ‘Pious Promiscuity,’ Dave and Tino. I’ve edited it down to a manageable length, but to the best of my ability and knowledge, I’ve preserved Mr Khalaf’s meaning intact.

4I will not name names. Nor do I claim that all or most of those who adopt Side A beliefs do it for shabby reasons.

I, I, I

It is, of course, much easier to demand a prophet than a priest; and it is far, far easier to become a pseudo-prophet than a pseudo-priest. I will not say that almost anyone can be a priest; it would not be true for the priesthood is a vocation. But certainly almost anyone can imagine himself to be a prophet.

—Charles Williams, The Forgiveness of Sins

I make no attempt to excuse the feelings which awoke in me when I heard the unhuman sound addressing my friend and my friend answering it in the unhuman language. They are, in fact, inexcusable; but if you think they are improbable at such a juncture, I must tell you plainly that you have read neither human history nor your own heart to much effect. They were feelings of resentment, horror, and jealousy. It was in my mind to shout out, ‘Leave your familiar alone, you damned magician, and attend to Me.’

—C. S. Lewis, Perelandra

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It’s hard to believe it’s only been Lent for a week. Maybe I noticed Shrovetide more keenly this year, maybe it’s because I adopted a relatively easy discipline this year,1 I don’t know. My mind has certainly been elsewhere—one of my favorite things about a fixed liturgy is that, for somebody like me who has a short attention span and a ‘rich inner life,’ it’s much easier to pick up the thread of devotion if the thread is still there when I suddenly realize I haven’t been attending for the last ten minutes.

Unfortunately, the elsewhere has been me: my sinfulness, my needs, my hurt. One has to attend to those things; part of loving your neighbor as yourself is appropriate self-love, i.e. self-love rather than self-indulgence, loving yourself because you are a self made in God’s image, impartially. Save, perhaps, that as the steward of yourself, you have the liberty of sacrificing pleasures and other goods on your own behalf, whereas sacrificing other people’s goods is against ‘the courtesy of Deep Heaven.’2 But mine has not, I think, been a wholesome self-love. (I think a lot of people assume it must be because I’m nice to people, but sadly, terrestrial good manners are pretty compatible with a reserved yet raging egotism.)

My friend Joey and I seem, as a rule, to wander in similar deserts, and we had this exchange earlier via text:

J: I just want to be right with God, but now it seems like the only way to do that is going to be hurting David, and I’m not ready to do that either.

G: What do you feel/think being right with God would consist in?

J: […] I think being right with God would consist in at least attempting not to sin […] Becauuuusssse I know He still loves me but how can I possibly be a man of any integrity when I don’t even make a pretense of following my own principles?

G: Well, you have the integrity of refusing to make a pretense. That is not something; that’s everything—“without are the dogs and sorcerers and idolators and whoever loves and practices a lie.” […]

J: Maybe. I just feel so much on the Wrong Side Of Things. Sort of shut out. … I’ve always thought of myself as the kind of person who wouldn’t make this sort of compromise. So maybe what’s bothering me is that that self image is not accurate.

G: That can be a terribly painful and humbling experience.

J: Yeah. I mean that’s not a bad thing to happen of course

G: […] The schism between who you want to be and who you perceive yourself to be.

J: Hm. Yeah. When I broke up with Adam, I kind of made it about Doing The Right Thing. But it was also, or maybe even mostly, about preserving my self image.

‘You must learn,’ St Teresa of Ávila said, ‘to bear serenely for God’s sake the trial of being displeasing to yourself.’

I’m cautiously hopeful that God is using my straying to break the idol of dignity in me. Hopeful, because pride attacks us on our strong points rather than our weak ones, which is why self-righteous virtue is among the most hideous and nigh-incurable sins. Cautious, because it is so, so easy to use that line of thinking as a justification for sin.

Pride is certainly my most pervasive and characteristic vice, more even than fornication or self-pity. People don’t always notice it, because my pride is of the highly ethical sort that motivated the Pharisees. It’s pride in justice, obedience, insight, even in generosity and gentleness. Sometimes I act on those virtues for God. But often enough, I act on them for my self-image, the great golden idol in the center of my soul, which may be pleasanter to be around than some idols but is not on that account any less the craftsmanship of hell.

Ideally, I suppose, I’d be pursuing God in the midst of weakness. Acknowledging my failures and flaws, but getting up and beginning again. But I’m so tired. It isn’t so much that it’s embarrassing to go to Confession over and over (I don’t think); but it seems like a slur against my own intelligence to profess a firm purpose of amendment when I don’t, at a heart level, believe that that amendment is possible to me. In brief, I don’t know how I’m supposed to mean to do something I don’t think I’m able to do. I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see another law at work in my members—except personally I don’t even delight in the law of God in the inward man. Don’t want to. Don’t know how to.

And when I say it isn’t possible to me, I don’t mean that it isn’t possible to God. He can give me whatever grace He pleases at any moment. But He doesn’t seem to be giving me the grace of chastity, or of the desire for chastity, even. Maybe that’s my fault; or maybe it would strengthen the interior idol; I don’t know.

The most I can do is (so to speak) keep repeating the Creed. I can’t white-knuckle my way through my whole life, but I can white-knuckle my way through that. And most of the time, I don’t even have to white-knuckle it. If I stay here and wait, I don’t know what He’ll do, but He will do something.

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1I’m reading through the Gospel of Luke, according to this forty day schema. Of the four, it’s the one I know least well (John I know best, then Matthew and then Mark), so I thought it’d be wise to spend some time with it.

2A phrase borrowed from That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis, spoken by Elwin Ransom, a man who has been to what we call outer space and what he knows, by experience, to be full of the splendors of angels. ‘This is the courtesy of Deep Heaven: that when you mean well, He always takes you to have meant better than you knew. It will not be enough for always. He is very jealous. He will have you for no one but Himself in the end. But for tonight, it is enough.’