Category Archives: Spirituality

The Pope Chooses War, I Choose Self Defense

by D Gregory Smith

Yesterday Pope Benedict XVI spoke to a group of bishops on their ad limina visit- and with all the topics available to him (hunger, poverty, abuse of women, social injustice, racial inequalities, nuclear threat, stewardship of resources, etc), he chose to speak to them about the necessity of battling the “powerful political and cultural currents seeking to alter the legal definition of marriage….The church’s conscientious effort to resist this pressure calls for a reasoned defense of marriage as a natural institution,” which is “rooted in the complementarity of the sexes and oriented to procreation,” he said.

“Sexual differences cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to the definition of marriage,” the pope said.

Defending traditional marriage is not simply a matter of church teaching, he said; it is a matter of “justice, since it entails safeguarding the good of the entire human community and the rights of parents and children alike.”

Whenever I hear a leader speak the word “Safeguard”, I pay attention. It is a word used by institutions and governments to promote the protection and defense of something fundamental to it. It is not a passive word. It says to me that the Pope is ready to fight for his narrow theological/historical position on sexuality and marriage. Something he believes is fundamental to Christian faith- even though marriage is curiously absent from the Nicene Creed (325-381 ad)- which most Christian churches profess as containing the essential, fundamental elements of Christian belief today.

He did not choose dialog or express interest in hearing about the experiences of thousands (millions?) of LGBTQ catholics and their families. He did not choose to understand, he chose to condemn.

In other words, he openly advocated war.

It’s a culture war, it’s a war of ideologies. It is, in fact, if you count all the open and affirming Christian churches that  welcome LGBT persons and their partners and children into their congregations, a war of christian theology. But it’s a war nonetheless.

I believe it to be totally unnecessary- and I also believe it conflicts with the very theology the catholic church espouses.

“War” is defined thusly: “a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state”. “Armed conflict” is an important term to notice here. I think it can also mean non-physical weapons- weapons of ideology or theology, for example. But I would be naive not to think that some of the faithful out there may hear in these words a clarion call to harm LGBT persons and their families. I would also submit that the Pope’s words have already harmed them by creating ‘enemies of the church” out of persons and families who have nothing more important in mind than following their hearts and minds- and souls. And, if you recall your history, enemies of the church have not fared so well.

And in that case, the Pope needs to take a closer look at his own catechism.

If someone attacks me and threatens my life or my way of life, according to the Catechism of The Catholic Church, I have the right to defend myself.

 2264 Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one’s own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow:
If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful…. Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s.[65]

2265 Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another’s life. Preserving the common good requires rendering the unjust aggressor unable to inflict harm. To this end, those holding legitimate authority have the right to repel by armed force aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their charge.[66]

And with the rhetoric being used by the Pope to the bishops in his address yesterday, I have every reason to believe that these are not words of someone struggling to understand the reality of LGBT persons, these are the orders of attack given by a supreme commander to his highest officials. And I’m confused because- try as I might- I can’t imagine Jesus saying them.

I also have every reason to fear for my safety and the safety of all LGBTQ persons. And before you accuse me of being overly dramatic, remember that the pro-life message has spurred numerous acts of violence- in the name of life, I might add. People in Uganda, the Middle East and elsewhere are being butchered and abused because they are known or perceived to be gay.

So do you think these words will be like soothing balm on the righteous indignation of the zealot?: …”threats to freedom of conscience, religion and worship which need to be addressed urgently so that all men and women of faith, and the institutions they inspire, can act in accordance with their deepest moral convictions.”

I’m an idiot if I don’t believe that someone out there is going to see this as a reason for violence- physical or psychological. And remember how powerful psychological threats are- those are the very things killing our kids.

I want to be clear- I am not advocating violence in any form. I’m advocating self-defense. And I’m advocating a careful, calculated, firm and reasonable response to this madness. I want the argument to be two-sided. I want the voice of the Pope and the bishops to be countered by the voices of people who see the Christian message in a different way.

If the Pope chooses war, I choose to oppose that war. I challenge it on its very principle.

So, if I may be so brazen, I would like to be one of those counter voices. Feel free to add your own voice in the comments.

To my LGBTIQ family,

Love toward yourself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is important and necessary to insist on respect for your own right to life. I believe you have been created to fill a very important place in this world- a place often dramatically misunderstood and opposed by people out of ignorance and fear.

It is crucial that you understand that you are not alone- there are millions of people who want to understand you and accept you and who will love you. You have the right to be understood- and you have the right to love and be loved in the ways you feel are most faithful to your created nature.

You have the right to live free from fear of attack and violence. You have the right to defend yourself against ignorant attacks on your dignity, happiness and self-respect. You have the right to fulfill your potential and to follow your heart and mind and soul and dreams to the best of your ability. Despite ignorance, despite persecution, despite fear and power and hate.

I believe that we are all beloved by the God of our understanding. I believe that we are valuable in being beloved. And that value is not diminished, even in the face of anger, fear and ignorance. Even in the face of religious belief which would deny us that value.

We are a courageous, wonderful people, with visions of love and acceptance and equality and happiness that I believe are deeply important to the future of the world.

I beg you, don’t let go of these visions- no matter how strongly others try to pull them away from you. They are your birthright.

They are the key hope to a world filled with peace.

Amen.

Related articles

The Catholic Hierarchy: “Suffer The Little Children.”

by D Gregory Smith

Illinois Catholic bishops are taking their ball and going home in the face of federal non-discrimination requirements for foster care and adoption. The New York Times:

Children of the United Kingdom's Children's Mi...

Image via Wikipedia

Roman Catholic bishops in Illinois have shuttered most of the Catholic Charities affiliates in the state rather than comply with a new requirement that says they must consider same-sex couples as potential foster-care and adoptive parents if they want to receive state money. The charities have served for more than 40 years as a major link in the state’s social service network for poor and neglected children.

The bishops have followed colleagues in Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts who had jettisoned their adoption services rather than comply with nondiscrimination laws.

The vilification of LGBT persons by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church is quickly becoming hysterical paranoia. What I find interesting is that it flies in the face of most of the opinions of people in the pews as well as the experience of many of the clergy and bishops themselves. They know gay people, they minister to gay people, and- I know this from personal experience- many of them are gay people.

Yet, this real-life, personal experience has no credibility in the face of freakishly ideological edicts from Rome. It’s absolutely backward. The experience of the people is supposed to form the church, form the hierarchy.

Not to mention the disregard for social and biological science. This is a church that would rather let the little children suffer. It saddens me.

Where’s the love, people?

Read the full story here

Related articles

God Says “It Getteth Better”

by D Gregory Smith

It’s turning out to be YouTube Friday… Maybe in light of the remarkable silence by some Christian denominations to participate in the “It Gets Better Campaign”, God makes a (perhaps cynical, certain-to-be-offensive-to-some) point: It Getteth Better.

A Commentary on the “Reform of the Reform” of The Catholic Church

by D Gregory Smith

I like Vatican II- The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, which occurred in Rome between 1962 and 1965. It brought in “fresh air” and strived to create a sense of unity- and the beginning of the effort of understanding between the church and the modern world. Relevancy being no small thing back then.

It seems to be a small thing now. Especially for those in charge of the Roman Catholic Church.

The wagons are circling. And the Pope is the one drawing them in- followed closely by the fanatics who use communion as a weapon, have no (and want no) understanding of the sciences of psychology or sociology or biology and simply want to hold on to the illusory power that disappeared with the Borgias….

Over at Enlightened Catholicism is discussed Eugene Cullen Kennedy’s piece at The National Catholic Reporter:

 

The Reform of the Reform may be better understood not as an exaggerated exercise in nostalgia as much as the debilitating side-effect on being unable to adjust to the Space/Information Age that has ended the division between the earth and the heavens that was the theoretical basis for hierarchical structures. By healing the centuries old presumed rift between earth and the heavens the Space/Information Age also healed the separation of the human person into antagonistic elements of body and soul, flesh and spirit. It is difficult for hierarchs to adjust to the Space/Information Age because they cannot get their bearings easily unless they sit atop an hierarchical array; they fear going into free fall in the universe in which there is no center, no up and no down, and so they want to reconstruct the times and places, the Time and Again of an age before Vatican II in which they feel that they will be comfortable again.

There is something poignant about these would-be time travelers who pull back from the future that is already enveloping them. They remind one of the travelers in the desert described by Freud in explaining the difficulty many people have in letting go of the past. When the sun goes down and the air turns bitter cold, such pilgrims long to return to the remembered warmth of campfires they had left behind them. They cannot return to them because they have cooled to ashes and the winds have mixed them with the billowing waves of sand. The Reform of the Reform is built on just such understandable but misplaced longing, is bound to disappoint those who invest their hearts in its success, may generate centrifugal pressures in the heart of the Church, and one day, long after it has failed, be judged not as an inviting oasis worth a long journey but a cruel and seductive illusion of the unforgiving sands of time.

But the blogger at EC speaks for me when she says:

 It’s very very sad to me, that at a time when the collective consciousness of this planet is finally choosing to see that we are all inner connected and no culture can pretend to live in a hermetically sealed vacuum, the Vatican is attempting to recreate Catholicism’s own hermetically sealed vacuum.  As Kennedy says, this is a cruel and seductive illusion of the long ago shifted sands of time.  It really is destined to fail.

The last gasps of social relevancy seem to be coming long and hard right now….

Taxing The (Willing) Rich

by D Gregory Smith

I was brought up with a sense of social justice that still shapes my life. It’s a complicated sense, shaped by Catholicism, rural sensibility and an awareness of the world from the perspective of a kid who was bullied. My social justice sense says, in part, “depriving one for the excesses of another is unjust.”

It seems some “Enlightened Rich” agree. The New York Times:

Some of the world’s wealthiest people are calling for higher taxes on the rich. They seem to recognize that the burden of the economic downturn cannot be borne entirely by the poor and middle class.

After the American billionaire investor Warren Buffett urged Congress last month to raise taxes on millionaires, the call echoed across Europe. Sixteen of France’s wealthiest individualsurged the government to raise their taxes. The Italian Formula One magnate Luca di Montezemolo publicly backed Mr. Buffett’s idea “for reasons of fairness and solidarity.” About 50 of Germany’s richest people have been campaigning for a higher top tax rate since 2009.

The suggestion is motivated, no doubt, by a sense of justice — that the very rich, who have survived the financial crisis very well, should contribute more to shrinking public coffers to reduce the spending cuts that would hurt the most vulnerable.

And yet, there are those who are resisting, no doubt motivated by fear- and quite possibly prejudice. But the results could be disastrous:

Americans have been historically less inclined than Europeans to explosions of social rage, despite suffering more poverty than most other wealthy democracies. But with unemployment above 9 percent, rising poverty rates and declining family incomes, the no-taxes, all-cuts agenda that has gripped Congressional Republicans will fray our social fabric and squander human capital here as well.

My sense of social justice also says, “If I make more money than others, I have a greater responsibility to maintain the fabric of my society”. But it’s obviously not what everyone believes.

Full story here.

Dear Moms and Dads,

by D Gregory Smith

Parents of LGBT kids don’t have an easy time of it. Parenting a child is difficult at the best of times, but adding the complexities of sexual diversity to the mix can make parenting downright terrifying.

It’s worse if those parents are practicing Christians.

Kathy Baldock writes clearly and firmly to Christian parents of LGBT kids in her latest post at CanyonWalker Connections. She’s not advocating marching in parades and becoming a fierce advocate and PFLAG zealot, she’s advocating simple acceptance.
Excerpt:

Kathy and friends

If God has given you a gay child and you are trying to make that child heterosexual, that is not “the way of him”. If you try to impose change on your child or reject who he is (yes, that is really what you are doing when you tell them to “not be gay”), there are some general , predictable consequences.

If you reject your glbt youth they:

  • Are EIGHT times more apt to attempt suicide than those who are accepted
  • May suffer depression SIX times more often than those who are accepted
  • Are THREE times more likely to get involved in drug abuse than those glbt that are accepted
  • May contract HIV and STD’s THREE times more than accepted glbt youth

Are you catching the key words here? “than those who are accepted”   The unhealthy, risky behavior is a result of rejection.  Mom and Dad, you are completely in control of that dynamic.  If you withhold love, acceptance or security from you glbt youth because of their sexual orientation, you will, in all likelihood, be damning them to these statistics. I cannot imagine any parent knowing this and choosing to ignore it.

If you’re the parent of a gay kid and don’t know what to do, contanct me. I’m available.

If you’re an LGBT kid who’s been rejected and kicked out of the house- or is about to be, contact me. We’ll find a safe place for you to be. Promise.

My email: Dgsma@hotmail.com.

Please read Kathy’s full post here.
And then share it with your friends and Christian parents.

What To Feel Upon The Murder Of A Murderer?

by D Gregory Smith

Like so many of you, I watched in horrified fascination as the Twin Towers were maimed and finally toppled, killing and injuring thousands of people and terrifying a nation. I also watched our president, almost ten years later, report that the man responsible for that action had been shot and killed in a raid on a compound outside of Islamabad, Pakistan. The President’s demeanor was appropriately somber and yet had hints of the triumphant. So many cliche`s come to mind:

Serves ‘im right.

An eye for an eye….
You reap what you sow.
Justice is done.
Mission accomplished.
He got what he deserved.
Hooray, Hooray it’s the First of May…etc.

I’m conflicted. As I watched the people gathering in front of the White House last night, I understood the relief they exhibited. I realized I didn’t want to understand the celebration.

On the one hand, the man was a terrorist, a murderer and a complete wacko. On the other hand, he was a human being- with all the dignity and flaws imbued thereof, and completely worth saving. Did he love? Did he show any kindness to another person? Probably.

Could he have repented for his actions? Would he?
We’ll never know.

This is not to impugn the sense of justice felt here- this man was directly responsible for the murder of thousands of fellow human beings. But if I rejoice in his death, if I celebrate it, am I giving up on the goodness of humanity I so profoundly believe in? Am I substituting revenge for justice? Is patriotism predicated on the murder of enemies? Is this the easy way out? Have I become the terrorist who has lost sight of the humanity of the people I kill?

Probably unpopular things to ask, but still, these questions haunt me.

Do they haunt anyone else?

The Gay Imam

by D Gregory Smith

I get a lot of emails from friends who know that I love to read all sorts of things, but don’t have a lot of time to search for it myself. One of my friends looks at websites from The Netherlands and sends me items. From Radio Netherlands Worldwide came a little gem entitled “Gay Imam Says Homosexuality Not Sinful“.

“Huh? Really?”

I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Christian circles, where being gay is feared, celebrated, derided and, in some cases, simply no big deal. I’m used to it. Christian tradition seems built for such a struggle. But Islam?

I was eager to learn more. It seems South African Imam Muhsin Hendricks is a gay man who runs a foundation called The Inner Circle which helps Muslims struggling with their sexuality and their religion. He has openly proclaimed “It is okay to be Muslim and gay!”  From the article:

It’s a message not everyone agrees with and the reason why Mr Hendricks is no longer officially a cleric.
Muhsin Hendricks looks a little tired. He is in the Netherlands at the invitation of the Amsterdam branch of gay rights organisation COC and he’s on a punishing schedule. There is enormous public interest in the “pink imam”, as he’s been dubbed.
But every trace of fatigue vanishes as Mushin Hendricks talks about his faith and his sexuality.
“Being Muslim and being gay are both strong identities. And I think that they are both innate identities for me. So somewhere along the line I had to reconcile the two.”
This was far from easy for Muhsin Hendricks. He was born into an orthodox Muslim family in South Africa. His grandfather was a cleric in one of Cape Town’s most prominent mosques. Mushin discovered at an early age that he was different. He played with dolls rather than cars. He was seen as being feminine and was teased as a result. All this was long before he even knew there was such a thing as homosexuality.
Mushin Hendricks took comfort in his faith, in spite of the fact that many Muslims believe it offers no place to homosexual feelings. Sexual love between two men or two women is prohibited. It is seen as one of the worst possible sins, punishable in some Islamic countries by death.

It’s a story familiar to anyone with conflicts around faith and identity. It’s also an opportunity to learn more about the experience of our Muslim brothers and sisters- and maybe another reason to celebrate the shared humanity of the struggle for dignity and integrity.

Read the full story here.

Addendum:
Reader Michael writes:

Thought you might like to add an addendum to your article to inform readers that the gay Iman is featured in the documentary about gays and Islam called “A Jihad for Love” co-produced by Sandi Dubowski who made the doc about gay Jews I trust you’re familiar with: “Trembling Before G-d.” Those interested should be able to rent the DVD from any decent rental outlet. Website: http://www.ajihadforlove.com/home.html

While often fascinating–particularly the part revealing the Islamic countries that are liberal enough to tolerate gays and lesbians fleeing from other Islamic countries–and a kind of quasi-underground railroad to relocate them in Western countries–overall I found it as depressing as “Trembling” but without providing the Hope through Heart experienced through the personality of Dubowski who’s not in the later film. But it’s certainly informative.

Focus On The Family Targets LGBT Youth

by D Gregory Smith

The Day of Dialogue for hate group Focus on the Family just released their Facebook page last week. From Canyonwalker Connections:

“Day of Dialogue” from Focus on the Family is not What Jesus Would Do. This is a call to action for Christian youth to target GLBT youth with a “God has a better plan for you” message. I’m all for a God loves you conversation, but not a conversation that directly targets the most vulnerable of the vulnerable in our society–the GLBT youth.

…and Kathy’s not amused.
Read her excellent take (backed up with scripture quotes!) here.

blessing

by D Gregory Smith

To balance the madness of the world of late, I offer you a poem by one of the great spiritual writers and thinkers of our time.
Because we need it.

Beannacht
(“Blessing”)

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

~ John O’Donohue ~