Un-orthodox Love

There is a wonderful blog, titled Ad Dominum, which I often visit. Recently blogger Thom Curnutte posted an impassioned and wonderfully articulate note that a Catholic friend of his had posted on Facebook in response to the anti-gay pronouncements of an acquaintance. There were several comments to this post, one of which came from Jacob, who claimed to be “a small voice of orthodoxy tarnished minimally by vice and personal agenda, guided by a spirit of love.”

As my comments on Thom’s post are rather long, I have decided to post them here rather than take up space on Ad Dominum.


I loved what Laura wrote. I believe that she speaks honestly and passionately the words that are in the hearts of most, if not all, gay Catholics. As Thom has pointed out, she has made “many fantastic points.”

And as a gay man who has left his parish in protest over the institutional homophobia he perceives in the Church in general and in particular in his own archdiocese, I both admire and envy her active involvement in her own parish.

Jacob’s response to Laura brings two issues to mind. The first is that I do not think a straight white male can in any way understand what it is like to be gay (I use the term gay here to refer to all LGBT people), let alone to be gay and Catholic. Jacob simply cannot imagine how it feels to read a homophobic article like that which was recently published in the Boston Pilot or to read the outrageously misleading “information” about homosexuality in the literature of the Courage apostolate. How could he even begin to comprehend the feelings of gay parents who are told their children may not attend Catholic school because of their relationship? So speak as he might about “female anthropology” and “the sacramental union between one man and one woman,” Jacob’s words are empty semantics to those who know that God created them gay and that the Church denies them their full humanity. There is a distinct disconnect between this profound self-knowledge—which can come from no other source than from God—and the doctrine-based arguments against gay marriage (and therefore against the sacredness of gay relationships based on love and mutual commitment) made by a straight person.

Laura has made the courageous decision to be an active Catholic in spite of the very difficult and ongoing dilemma this presents for her. The choices she has made—both to return to the Church and to be an active parishioner—can only have come after a great deal of thought and with a profound and no doubt pained awareness of the teachings of the Church on homosexuality. So I find that there is a kind of arrogance in a person who would presume to lecture, however gently and lovingly, on the “correctness” of his point of view to someone like Laura.

The second issue is this: In his response to Laura, Jacob says the following: “It’s taken a long time for me to find the humility to submit myself to the Authority of Christ and his Church and its Magisterial teaching…. I have always found that the Church has well-thought detailed reasons for everything it teaches, despite that those reasons are not readily apparent, and may be contingent upon the acceptance of something that I haven’t yet learned.” Orthodox Catholics work on the assumption that the Church was established by Christ and that it cannot therefore be in error. Only those who disagree with its teachings are wrong. This is an assumption that is supported neither by scholarship nor by reason. Even if Christ did found his Church upon the rock of Peter—and there is research that shows this in fact did not happen as it is reported in Matthew—it is simply childish to assume that either Peter, a man of weak character and little faith, or any number of his successors could be trusted to carry the pure message of Jesus to the children of God without at some point allowing it to be contaminated by the stench of greed, lust, and pride or losing it altogether in rigid institutionalism. One only has to look at the shameful mess the medieval popes made of the Church to see that what we know as the Catholic Church of those times—and of today—has little to do with the life and the message of Christ.

Christ was about love, not authority and Magisterial teaching.” In fact, his whole preaching life demonstrated his disdain for the attempts of the “authority” of his time to trump love with the Law. Why can the modern Church not see this? Why must faithful Catholics like Laura struggle daily to have their love accepted as legitimate by their Church?

I honour Jacob’s sincerity, but I have boundless appreciation and empathy for Laura’s courageous struggle and only great good wishes for her journey.

Thank you, Thom, for posting her story.

A Nice Jewish Wedding

My dear friend Richard has started taking courses in theology this fall; one that he has just finished is the first half of a course in critical approaches to the Hebrew Bible. A gentleman that Richard and I both used to work with is Jewish; he was in fact a cantor at his synagogue for many years. Our friend Arthur is a Reformed Jew and is a member of a liberal synagogue here in Vancouver. I am also very interested in Judaism, so Richard and I decided to invite Arthur for coffee and just see what we might learn.

The three of us met yesterday at a local restaurant and chatted for two hours about faith in general and Judaism in particular. For me, it was a most fascinating conversation as I learned much about the Jewish religion and about the local Jewish worship community. I hunger for more, so I will again pick up Thomas Cahill's The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels and reread some parts of Karen Armstrong's The Bible: A Biography. Arthur invited Richard and I to attend a service at his synagogue, so we will likely do that in the early part of January.

During the course of the conversation the name of a person came up that both Richard and Arthur happened to know. Arthur told us that this person and his partner had been married in Arthur's synagogue. Richard wondered about Arthur's use of the word "partner" and Arthur informed us that the mutual friend is gay and that he and his male partner were married in the synagogue by the assistant rabbi, who is also gay. I was completely taken aback by this. Arthur had told us that he was a liberal Jew and that his synagogue was liberal, but I had no idea that same-sex marriages were performed by rabbis in any synagogue. When I asked if this was true, the reply was, "Yes, but both parties have to be Jewish."

During our conversation I learned that, just as in the Catholic faith, there is in Judaism a wide range of faith orientation, from ultra-orthodox to liberal. Arthur told us that there are certain Jewish religious groups in this city who will not cross the threshold of his synagogue because doing so would be tantamount to recognizing the community. Yet no community, no synagogue is forced by a higher, centralized authority to conduct services in a particular way or to censure those who do not follow a particular set of teachings or who disagree publicly with those teachings. Arthur is a man who is probably approaching 80 years of age; he has been a practicing Jew for most of his adult life. Yet here is a man who is obviously not only comfortable with gay people, but one who supports gay marriages performed in his own synagogue!

Why could I not have been born Jewish?