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.

Gay and Catholic, Postscript: When the Going Gets Tough, Well, Fuck

‘They’ll shoot you, father,’ the woman’s voice said.

‘Yes.’

‘Are you afraid?’

‘Yes. Of course.’

A new voice spoke […] The voice said with contempt, ‘You believers are all the same. Christianity makes you cowards.’

‘Yes. Perhaps you are right. You see I am a bad priest and a bad man. To die in a state of mortal sin’—he gave an uneasy chuckle—‘it makes you think.’

‘There. It’s as I say. Believing in God makes cowards.’ The voice was triumphant, as if it had proved something.

‘So then?’ the priest said.

‘Better not to believe—and be a brave man.’

‘I see—yes. And of course, if one believed the Governor did not exist or the jefe, if we could pretend this prison was not a prison at all but a garden, how brave we could be then.’ […]

The woman said suddenly, ‘Think. We have a martyr here …’

The priest giggled: he couldn’t stop himself. He said, ‘I don’t think martyrs are like this.’ He became suddenly serious, remembering Maria’s words—it wouldn’t be a good thing to bring mockery on the Church. He said, ‘Martyrs are holy men. It is wrong to think that just because one dies … no. I tell you I am in a state of mortal sin. […] You have a name for me. Oh, I’ve heard you use it before now. I am a whiskey priest. I am here now because they found a bottle of brandy in my pocket.’ […]

The woman’s voice said, ‘A little drink, father … it’s not so important.’ He wondered why she was here—probably for having a holy picture in her house. She had the tiresome intense note of a pious woman. […] He had always been worried by the fate of pious women. As much as politicians, they fed on illusion. He was frightened for them: they came to death so often in a state of invincible complacency, full of uncharity. It was one’s duty, if one could, to rob them of their sentimental notions of what was good …

—Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory1

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Side B, then: traditional in premises and outlook, delicately balanced with respect to queer experience; a perfect blend of orthodoxy, innovation, and mysticism to serve as the sexual and philosophical avant-garde of the opening of this third millennium. Great. What about the times when it doesn’t bloody work?

To dispose of one less biting reason why it may not, I would like to point out that Side B isn’t and was never meant to be a universal panacæa. Admittedly I think that Side A is doctrinally wrong, and ex-gay efforts positively harmful. But there’s no reason why a given person couldn’t take the approach I’ve called Side Y, the sort taken by groups like Courage, and get a great deal out of it. I think the difference between a person for whom Side B, with its acceptance of much of gay culture and language, makes the most sense, and a Side Y person is going to be largely a matter of personal needs and tastes—not a matter of one method or the other being wrong. (Either might be used in a wrong way, of course, especially if it’s being used to bash others over the head; but that’s a different problem, and one characteristic of nearly every approach to every part of life.)

But that’s an accidental reason for not working. What about the times when the thing itself doesn’t work—you believe, you’re praying, you’re trying, you have the support of family and friends, you have a creative outlet … and somehow, it just isn’t enough?

I don’t think that Christians in this country take this possibility seriously enough. Catholics especially. Oh, we don’t believe in a health-and-wealth, Prayer-of-Jabez, power-of-positive-thinking Gospel According to St Joel Osteen. But we’re all too ready to take a view of both morality and vocation that I consider false and disastrous: because God grants us the graces to pursue these things, therefore sins, imperfections, and even sorrow and suffering are signs of some fundamental wrongness. But the truth is, happiness, sincere faith, and virtue don’t map to one another at all neatly on earth, especially since they can be hard to ascertain even in their own right. Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.

Screencap from 2015's adaptation of Silence.

Yet there have been Catholics who understood this very clearly. Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Walker Percy, Shusaku Endo, and Flannery O’Connor made a habit of writing characters whose life is polluted with passionate, raging sins, and whose receptivity to grace is hidden—even, like O’Connor’s Francis Tarwater and Hazel Motes, hidden quite thoroughly from themselves, till the end. Something similar happened to Waugh’s Sebastian Flyte, the decadent and unhappy Catholic youth of Brideshead Revisited. Late in the novel, his sister Cordelia, who has seen him, mentally and physically ruined by alcohol, asking to be made a missionary by some monks in northern Africa (and naturally being refused), says:

‘There are usually a few odd hangers-on in a religious house, you know; people who can’t quite fit in either the world or the monastic rule. […] I’ve seen others like him, and I believe they are very near and dear to God. He’ll live on, half in, half out of, the community, a familiar figure pottering round with his broom and his bunch of keys. He’ll be a great favorite with the old fathers, and something of a joke to the novices. Everyone will know about his drinking; he’ll disappear for two or three days every month or so, and they’ll all nod and smile and say in their various accents, “Old Sebastian’s on the spree again,” and then he’ll come back dishevelled and shamefaced and be more devout for a day or two in the chapel. […] Then one morning, after one of his drinking bouts, he’ll be picked up at the gate dying, and show by a mere flicker of the eyelid that he is conscious when they give him the last sacraments. It’s not such a bad way of getting through one’s life.’

I thought of the youth with the teddy bear beneath the flowering chestnuts. ‘It’s not what one would have foretold,’ I said. ‘I suppose he doesn’t suffer?’

‘Oh, yes, I think he does. One can have no idea what the suffering may be, to be maimed as he is—no dignity, no power of will. No one is ever holy without suffering.’

‘Holy?’

‘Oh, yes, that’s what you’ve got to understand about Sebastian.’2

Is this what I’m foretelling of Side B people in general—or even simply of myself? No. I do, often, think it likely enough of myself (the bit about the messy life and, hopefully, the grace of a happy death—I am the last person who should have an opinion about my own holiness). But there’s no way of knowing the future, except by divine revelation, which is rarely addressed to our curiosity; or even, it seems, to our fears.

I bring it up, not as a prophecy or a prescription, but to make this point: for those who do stumble through life this way, God is just as madly in love with them as anybody else. Maybe more. That seems totally backwards to us—but then, the parables of the lost sheep and the prodigal say nothing else. Bad Christians are a sign that Christianity is doing its job, not that it’s failing through laxity.3 There should also be saints, and there shall always be saints. But it must be noted that saints come in very unlikely forms in the present, not just as a dramatic backdrop for a moving tale of conversion. St Mark Ji Tianxiang,4 who was barred from receiving Communion for thirty years due to a ruinous addiction to opium, rose miraculously to the occasion during China’s virulently anti-Western Boxer Rebellion, choosing to be martyred rather than renounce his faith and his Church.

Matthias Grunewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, 1516

After all, Christ did not come to make us disciplined, virtuous, kindly people. He came to draw us into His heart, to make us His bride, to give us His love and receive ours. This is why I’ve always disliked the pious Catholic commonplace that the purpose of life is to become a saint. The purpose of life is to be in union with God through love. Theologically, sure, those mean the same thing; but I’ll eat my hat if most people are prompted to think of union with God through love when they hear ‘Be a saint.’ What they’re far likelier to hear is ‘Do the familiar religious things the saints did: be chaste, go to Mass, pray the Rosary, give alms, &c.’ None of them bad things. But they’re all only instruments by which to love God: to the exact degree that they do not draw us closer to Him, every one of them is a stench in His face and a spike through His hand.

But even if all that’s true, about virtue being secondary and people with messy lives being just as likely to be saints as the righteous and so forth—is it really safe to say it? Is it really wise to assume that you can say this without people taking it the wrong way and using it as a license to do whatever they want? Well, it certainly isn’t safe; but neither is virtue. Impenitent virtue can create one of the loveliest, most complete, most durable armor-platings against the grace of God in existence. Satan fell through pride: we are not informed that any other flaw was found in him.

In any case, such worries seem to me to have gotten the order of the necessities exactly wrong. Virtue is not needed as a preliminary to love. Love is needed as a preliminary to virtue—and, more important, as both the means and the fact of unity with God the Father in Jesus Christ. If people do pursue His love, or are pursued by it, the rest will take care of itself; if not, then virtue really doesn’t matter.

And that, is that enough? Is that enough to sustain a person through the seasons of dryness and dark, the times when we wonder whether it might not be better to chuck the whole thing so as not to embarrass the Church, or because we so stingingly don’t deserve His love, or simply because we’re worn to exhaustion? I have no idea. Very probably not. What it does do, for me at least, is reassure me that it doesn’t have to be enough. This is in His hands, not mine. I’m not strong enough to ruin it. If nothing is enough, if I break, that’s actually okay. He can fix me, in His own time and manner. I’m His.

1Pp. 125-127. I first read this novel last year, and can hardly recommend it strongly enough.

2This is from Brideshead Revisited, but like a fool I’ve given my copy away, so I have no idea what pages. It’s reproduced pretty well in the BBC miniseries (and in fact, this is one of the rare instances where the filmed version is superior to the novel; certain parts of the book just aren’t the same without Diana Quick chewing the scenery).

3There is such a thing as laxity, of course. But the sort of person who complains about the laxity of others is not, as a rule, guilty of Christian perfection himself. And it is notable that of all the heresies the Church has had to contend with over the centuries, most have been excessively harsh, not over-soft.

4Pronounced, very roughly, Zhee Tyahn-shahng.