Gay Marriage

[JRosemary]

[rusmeister]

[Stanley Anderson]

[rusmeister]

[rusmeister]

[JRosemary]

[JRosemary]

[rusmeister]

[JRosemary]

[Cet]

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[JRosemary]

[JRosemary]

P.S. Cet, this is an old story for those who've been on the 'Drobe a while--and it's a long one, I'm afraid--but I figured I'd best reiterate it to show that I certainly do realise that the Church has doctrine. The Church's doctrine, in fact, is the reason why I'm not a Catholic.

For a host of complicated reasons, my Mom decided not to have me christened Catholic. She figured I could join the Church myself when I was older if I chose. And I grew up assuming that I would do just that. Apart from the Jews and Protestants on my father's side, my family was overwhelmingly Catholic, after all.

I majored in Religion and Classics in college. One of my professors was a Jewish scholar deeply involved in interfaith dialogue. He believes in giving his students the lived-experience of different faiths. So he'd happily bring us into the city (Manhattan) to go to different services.

Two places stood out for me: St. Mary the Virgin--an insanely 'high' Episcopal church in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. That church has so much incense that people call the place Smoky Mary's. (And people used to pass out from incense poisoning on an alarmingly regular basis. I think they've cut it down just a trifle since then.)

The other place is B'nai Jeshurum--affectionately known as B.J's--a formerly Conservative, but now independent synagogue on the Upper West Side. BJ's has wonderful Friday night sevices. People pour their hearts into the singing and then get up and dance down the aisles. I loved the music and the whole spirit of the place--so much so that I didn't mind that the service was all in Hebrew. I just learned to follow the transliterations and translations.

I couldn't take the incense of Smoky Mary's all the time--but I did make BJ's a fairly regular place of worship. Even though I still intended to become Catholic.

But when I actually sat down for the RCIA classes--well, I realized that my own views have very little in common with the Church's teaching on anything! I couldn't even say the creed. I could only get as far as saying, "We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty..." before I'd let my voice trail off.

If I'd been a cradle Catholic, I wouldn't have cared. I'd have said everything I needed to say by the time I was 12 at my Confirmation--and if, later on, my beliefs didn't line up with the Church's I don't know that it would have troubled me much. But it was an entirely different matter to tell a priest I accept the creed as an adult when I had one argument after another.

(If it'd just been a question of me thinking that the Church should ordain women and marry gays--well, in that case, I would have gone on with my plan to become Catholic. The Church can stand such opinions, after all. And I could discuss those issues with even conservative priests without horrifying them. But it's different to question fundamental things like the Trinity.)

This was a real crisis for me, because I always assumed that I was meant to be a Catholic and Catholicism seemed deeply embedded in the culture I grew up in. It didn't occur to me to look elsewhere--even though I was attending synagogues in Manhattan and more locally on a regular basis!

I'd known for a long time that I was very Jewish in outlook--and that even my pecularities in theology (I'm a monist) wouldn't raise an eyebrow in Judaism. But I still didn't think to convert, because Judaism is decidedly not a creedal religion. It's one thing to say you agree with many of the teachings of Judaism--but it's another thing entirely to say that, for better or for worse, you want to be part of the people Israel.

And when you do say it--well, for me, I only said it because I didn't think I had any choice, lol. I had gradually come to feel that, figuratively, at least (and maybe literally) I had stood at Sinai and accepted the Covenant. (In fact, after my conversion, my rabbi said that even though he was welcoming me into Judaism, there was something awfully familiar about me--we had met at Sinai )

So this is a long-winded way of explaining that I do take the Church's doctrine seriously--so seriously that it kept me out of the Church! (Which turned out to be a very good thing, despite what I thought at the time.)

[Ben2747]

Although I can't say I care too much about the main discussion thread on gay marriage, since we have a "crazy Jewish Lesbian" (I assume that means JRosemary's from Lesbos) and a grumpy ex-Baptist living in self-imposed exile arguing about Catholicism, I thought I would mediate with typical Thomistic evasiveness - "in a sense yes, in a sense no."

Rus, yes, it's true that Catholicism articulates a clear and unequivocal moral teaching, and expects its members to assent to this teaching, in light of its Apostolic charism. It is not a democratic institution - and I would remind you, in light of your little "aside" about adapting too much to the world, that it is the Orthodox, not the Catholics, who seem to be waffling on the subject of artificial contraception. Teaching on faith and morals is clear, constant, and universal. It's not a democratic process.

At the same time, and I think this is what JRosemary is getting at, you have to think about the roots of the Catholic Church and the cultures that contribute to its life and development. I am sure, given your love of Chesterton, you also have read Belloc - and I am sure that you are aware of, let us say, a certain contempt for the "mentality of the hive" in the East. This shows up in Lewis and Tolkien, as well. You have to remember that we ended up with the barbarians - you took the "civilized" countries. We are used to fraction, division, even somewhat comfortable with the concept of anarchy. It's just part of the development of the West. Heck, it's one of the reasons we had such a hard time with the Crusades - how can you mount an organized military operation when you have as much, if not more, internal conflict than that with the enemy, and any of the members can simply walk off the field whenever they wish? My point is, we have strong and individualistic cultural identities, and never really have had a culture of strong centralized authority. By the time of Constantine and Byzantium, this central authority was already breaking down. In a way, we identify more with the tribes than the Empire. So you have to imagine a central authority with pastoral responsibility for a lunatic collection of diverse cultures running with abandon through the woods, slaughtering one another more often than not, and each bearing the image of God, still visible through all of the blood and forest-floor muck. The episcopal lesson is one of patience. I would disagree with JRosemary's Dominican nun - this isn't about a particular Pope, but the eternal voice of the Church. But at the same time, it's sort of preposterous to think, given our background, culture, and fanatical individualism, that we can just expect everyone to "get in line."

Each person is still a child of the Church, and she continues to love them and draw them closer to Christ, no matter how hard they might kick and scream. A mother cannot stop being a mother, even if the child doesn't want to be a child. The rebellion and doctrinal anarchy are part of the cultural subtext of Catholicism and the West - what JRosemary calls "the life" of Catholicism. The doctrine is still there, and the Church still expects assent to its articles - but She knows it's hard for people to get there all in a single leap. For all of my frustration with doctrinal heterodoxy, in the theological ranks and in our parishes, I know that the Holy Spirit will protect the integrity of the faith, and will guide our Holy Father, the Curia, and our bishops to guide us, in turn, in a way that recognizes our frailty and smallness. They drive me crazy, but I am still proud to be part of the nuthouse, instead of a bee in the hive. I think, after all these centuries, our pastors know better than to strike the pose of an Emperor, Czar, Persian or Turk. It's just oil and water, Rus. The Imperial approach would destroy us all. It's not as if the Inquisition was a tremendous success. It may have been perceived as necessary to protect Christendom from Muslim infiltration, but it ended up inflaming (sorry for the pun) just as many Catholics as heretics.

[Cet]