Catholic and Enjoying It!
A reader writes:
In light of all the flak you’ve been getting with all this Elton John craziness, I thought you might like to hear my experiences as someone who identified as an out-and-proud bisexual member of my college’s gay community before my conversion and am now fully docile to Church teaching on sexuality despite still struggling with feelings of SSA. Bonus for reading this whole really long thing: you’ll get to hear about how you were instrumental in the “docile to Church teaching on sexuality” part. 🙂
Like so many converts, I was first drawn to the Church because of Mary and the magisterium. I disagreed with the magisterium on several points–gay stuff included–but I was over the moon that it actually existed. In my evangelical background, it was all too common for me to hear a pastor saying something that sounded wrong to me but not having any source to fact-check him against other than the Bible. If Scripture didn’t say anything directly on the subject, or if it was an issue like all those oft-cited Levitical laws that seemed like a matter of context, it became a game of he said, she said. I didn’t like that. Even when I disagreed with the Church, I liked having something clear to disagree -with.- And I liked, too, how philosophically consistent the teaching on SSA was; I didn’t agree with it, but I could see the logic of “marriage is between a man and a woman for the following reasons, and therefore gay sex is fornication.” Too many arguments from my own background seemed to involve gays being inherently evil and sinful, which obviously didn’t appeal to me at all, or to crumble completely in the face of “God hates shrimp,” which meant that I couldn’t respect them or genuinely believe they were coming from a place of good faith. The Church was different, and I assumed that I would just spend my time as a Catholic living 99% of my time in faithful union with what she taught and the other 1% praying that some future pope would broaden that horrendously constricting view of marriage.
Because I did think, at that time, that this view of marriage was horrendously barbarous, make no mistake of that–not just because of myself, since as a bisexual I could give up dating women while praying through these issues and still happily date men, but because of my gay friends who didn’t have that option. And I did think that it would eventually change. I didn’t have much under my belt except a few college classes and, eventually, a year of RCIA, so my understanding of how Church teaching does and doesn’t change was pretty muddled. Catholics used to have married priests, right? It used to be that they couldn’t eat meat on Fridays, right? The Church used to look much less kindly on Jews, didn’t they? And, hey, the pope had never said ex cathedra that gay marriage was wrong! So YEAH, this was going to change any day now!
If anyone had tried to confront me head-on with this during my conversion process, if anyone had tried to tell me that nope, sorry, this was non-negotiable, I probably would have headed over to Episcopalianism instead. (I honestly can’t tell you why I didn’t do that in the first place. The rational reason is probably because I was head over heels for the Blessed Mother, and Episcopalians aren’t; I suspect the more accurate reason involves the Holy Spirit.) Even without the head-on confrontation, I was gun-shy. I’d seen some pretty bilious statements from Catholics directed, not only at the idea of gay marriage or even gay sex, but at those of us who had same-sex attraction, even those who didn’t act on it. I wasn’t actively pursuing relationships with women at that point, but my sexual orientation had been a source of both joy and pain for me, and I wasn’t ready to hear even anything as mild as “objectively disordered” because it seemed to put me in a whole different and more odious class of sinner than anyone else. Fortunately, the nun who ran my RCIA program was a wonderful woman. When I told her early on that I was bisexual, half expecting her to throw me out on my rear end or say something that would send me packing of my own volition, she told me that God loved me, the Church wanted to have me, and the question was what I would do with those desires. It was orthodox, it was non-judgmental, and it didn’t send me running for the hills. God send us more people like her.
I was baptized into the Church still believing that the gay stuff was negotiable and would one day change. I was willing to live in accordance with Church teaching until that day inevitably came, but by golly, it was coming! Part of me knew that I was trying to fit a round peg into a square hole–active gay lifestyle and Catholicism were not compatible and never would be–but any time I tried to approach the issue head-on, I would get angry and defensive. Rejection of gay lifestyle, so often, came along with rejection of the gay person. If I “gave up” and embraced Church teaching, I was also embracing those people who said I was a narcissist bent on destroying civilization by turning everyone around me into a homosexual, wasn’t I? Screw that! It probably would have helped me to read Eve Tushnet or someone, but because opposition to gay marriage and opposition to gay people seemed so enmeshed to me, I assumed that she just spent all her time wearing a hair shirt and self-flagellating.
I only came to orthodox views on homosexuality by approaching them obliquely, and completely unconsciously, through a deeper understanding of the sacraments. I’d never been clear on why there couldn’t be women priests–I accepted it, but didn’t get it–until you made the comparison to orange juice baptisms. The sacraments need the proper components, and that’s that. Made sense to me. I internalized that idea and used the argument myself many times. Then, about three years after my conversion, I was reading “Swear to God” by Scott Hahn, and he made some passing reference to the same concept in one sentence and mentioned marriage in the next, and that was when it hit me: every marriage in the Bible, and every mention of marriage, is heterosexual. We can’t mess with the sacraments by bringing in different components, whether it’s orange juice for water or a woman for a man–in ordination or in marriage. Therefore, just as the Church had always taught, as I’d known from the moment I started studying those teachings, marriage is between a man and a woman and therefore gay sex is fornication.
The rest all followed gradually and naturally from that first painful realization; over the following months and years, I came to understand what “objectively disordered” actually means and came to understand and appreciate arguments against gay marriage that I had rejected before. But the point is precisely that it -followed.- I didn’t start by accepting all those arguments. I didn’t start by accepting -any- arguments. I started by listening to a wonderful, Christlike woman who told me that God loved me and the Church wanted to have me. She knew I needed milk instead of solid food at that moment, and that’s what she gave me. And that’s what the pope is giving right now.
My long-winded way of saying: God bless you, Mark, for defending the idea of calling people with love. And a very belated but heartfelt thank you for your part in helping me to stop trying to force that round peg into that square hole.
In Christ,
A reader
—
“My own plans are made. While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise and Peepiceek shall be head of the talking mice in Narnia.”
~Reepicheep
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