Monthly Archives: November 2012

Catholic Church

Blessed Bernardo de Hoyos: “The Spouse of Christ”

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In Catholic spiritual tradition, there is an important and honoured place for the idea of “The Bride of Christ”. At one level, we are taught to think of the Church as a whole as such a bride of Christ, and the wedding at Cana as a metaphor for the marriage of Christ to his bride, the Church. At another level, religious women think of themselves as forgoing human marriage, to become brides of Christ. The image is a powerful and valuable one, in developing that personal relationship with the Lord that we seek – but where does it leave men, who may find it difficult to imagine themselves as brides?

 Surprisingly perhaps, Catholic tradition provides an equivalent route for men – at least, for gay men, and others who are not threatened by thoughts of homoerotic attraction. Gerald Loughlin has described a medieval German tradition in which the wedding at Cana was seen as celebrating the wedding of Christ and his “beloved disciple” (assumed to be John the Evangelist). St John of the Cross used extensive homoerotic imagery in his mystical writing. Blessed Bernardo de Hoyos combined both of these ideas, taking them to their logical conclusion. As Kittredge Cherry noted at Jesus in Love blog, in a valuable post for his feast day (yesterday, November 29th), Blessed Bernardo saw himself, in a mystical vision, as marrying Christ – as a man, becoming not a bride, but a “Groom of Christ”.

Always holding my right hand, the Lord had me occupy the empty throne; then He fitted on my finger a gold ring…. “May this ring be an earnest of our love. You are Mine, and I am yours. You may call yourself and sign Bernardo de Jesus, thus, as I said to my spouse, Santa Teresa, you are Bernardo de Jesus and I am Jesus de Bernardo. My honor is yours; your honor is Mine. Consider My glory that of your Spouse; I will consider yours, that of My spouse. All Mine is yours, and all yours is Mine. What I am by nature you share by grace. You and I are one!”

(quoted at Jesus in Love from “The Visions of Bernard Francis De Hoyos, S.J.[Image]” by Henri Bechard, S.J.)

Kittredge observes, quite correctly,

While the Catholic church refuses to bless same-sex marriages, the lives and visions of its own saints tell a far different story — in which Christ the Bridegroom gladly joins himself in marriage with a man.

Michael Bayley at the Wild Reed, who drew my attention to Kittredge’s post, thinks that we should declare Bernardo the patron saint of Catholic for Marriage Equality, MN. Why not the patron saint of marriage equality – period?

For more on the details of Bernardo’s story, cross to Jesus in Love. What I want to do instead, is share a personal experience, and to reflect briefly on the lessons for modern gay Catholics, and other Christians.

This resonates with me, as I have had a similar experience myself. I was on a six-day silent, directed retreat in 2002, when, quite early on, my reflection turned to the familiar idea of “the bride of Christ”. I asked myself to picture instead “the groom of Christ”, and was led, for the rest of the retreat, into the most extraordinarily intense spiritual experience of my life. It was as if I was on honeymoon with my new husband. By day, every moment was spent deeply focussed on his presence, whether out of doors, in my room, or in the chapel, where I sat for hours at a time gazing at the tabernacle. By night, I was alone in bed with my lover, and new husband.

Remarkably, the day after I began this journey, I was browsing through some spiritual journals in the lounge of the retreat centre, and came across an article with exactly the same idea: that men could profit from adopting the same image for themselves, as the groom of Christ (but imagining Christ as female).  Given the ubiquity of the visual representations of Christ the man that we meet from childhood and throughout our lives, in art and in explicitly religious pictures, statues, books and films, picturing Christ as female may be difficult. As gay men, we have no need to do so: we may retain our traditional view of Christ as male (fully male, with a fully male body) and adapt instead the traditional image of ourselves as the brides of Christ, to the grooms.

Try it. After all, just like John the Evangelist, we are all Beloved Disciples.

 

Recognized Saints

Let Us Remember, for Nov 30th:

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Blessed Bernardo de Hoyos: “The Spouse of Christ”

from Queer Saints and Martyrs:

In Catholic spiritual tradition, there is an important and honoured place for the idea of “The Bride of Christ”. At one level, we are taught to think of the Church as a whole as such a bride of Christ, and the wedding at Cana as a metaphor for the marriage of Christ to his bride, the Church. At another level, religious women think of themselves as forgoing human marriage, to become brides of Christ. The image is a powerful and valuable one, in developing that personal relationship with the Lord that we seek – but where does it leave men, who may find it difficult to imagine themselves as brides?

 Read more:

 

and also, from Jesus in Love Blog

St Bernardo de Hoyos: Mystical Same-Sex Marriage with Christ

“The Mystical Marriage of Blessed Fr. Bernardo de Hoyos y Sena, SJ”
By William Hart McNichols © www.fatherbill.org

Blessed Bernardo Francisco de Hoyos y Sena is an 18th-century Spanish priest who wrote vividly of his mystical gay marriage to Jesus. He was beatified in 2010 and his feast day is today (Nov. 29).

Bernardo (1711-1735) was 18 when he had a vision of marrying Jesus in a ceremony much like a human wedding. He described it this way:

Always holding my right hand, the Lord had me occupy the empty throne; then He fitted on my finger a gold ring…. “May this ring be an earnest of our love. You are Mine, and I am yours. You may call yourself and sign Bernardo de Jesus, thus, as I said to my spouse, Santa Teresa, you are Bernardo de Jesus and I am Jesus de Bernardo. My honor is yours; your honor is Mine. Consider My glory that of your Spouse; I will consider yours, that of My spouse. All Mine is yours, and all yours is Mine. What I am by nature you share by grace. You and I are one!”

(quoted from “The Visions of Bernard Francis De Hoyos, S.J.” by Henri Bechard, S.J.)

 

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Other (not saints), Protestants

Percy Jocelyn (1764 – 1843), Irish Anglican Bishop

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b. November 29, 1764
d. September 3, 1843

 Anglican Bishop of Clogher in the Church of Ireland from 1820 to 1822, who was forced from his position after two scandals involving sexual indiscretions with men.

In the first, two years after his appointment as bishop of Ferns, he was accused by his brother’s coachman,James Byrne, of‘taking indecent familiarities’ with him (possibly buggery) and of ‘using indecent or obscene conversations with him’. The bishop survived this accusation, instead suing the coachman for libel. On conviction, Byrne was sentenced to two years in jail and also to public flogging. Recanting his allegations at the prompting of the bishop’s agent, the floggings were stopped.

The second occasion was more serious and ended his career, when in 1822 he was caught in a compromising position with a Grenadier Guardsman, John Moverley, in the back room of a London public house.

Jocelyn was the most senior British churchman to be involved in a public homosexual scandal in the 19th century. It became a subject of satire and popular ribaldry, resulting in more than a dozen illustrated satirical cartoons, pamphlets, and limericks, such as:

The Devil to prove the Church was a farce
Went out to fish for a Bugger.
He baited his hook with a Soldier’s arse
And pulled up the Bishop of Clogher.

 For 178 years afterwards the Church of Ireland refused to let historians see their papers on the affair. In the 1920s Archbishop D’Arcy of Armagh actually ordered that they be burnt. This command was not obeyed, and the files were finally released for Matthew Parris’s research for his book The Great Unfrocked.

 

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Medieval

The Medieval Flowering of Homoerotic Christianity

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In the modern popular imagination, the middle ages have generally had a bad press, compared unfavourably with the classical civilizations which preceded it, the Renaissance flowering which followed it – or even the Islamic and Byzantine centres of scholarship and learning alongside medieval Europe. However, the thousand or so years between the fall of Rome and the high Renaissance cover a wide range of conditions. In the midst of this period, at the start of the second millenium, lies a period which deserves greater attention from anyone interested in the history of the church, or of homosexuality, or (most particularly) of the intersection of the two. This was a period of the most visible, most public “gay” sub-culture in Europe before the late twentieth century. It was also a great age of church reform – and despite strong pressure from vocal opponents, the church reformers generally ignored it.

This coinciding of Church reform and homosexual tolerance is important: Classical writers observed that in Greece, those cities where male love was most common, were also those with “good laws”. (A superficial look at the modern countries and US states which have approved gay marriage or civil unions certainly matches my perception of those with “good”, i.e. democratic, laws. Does the same principle apply to the Christian church?) Because it is important, let me spell out the evidence.The abuses of the papacy and bishops before the Reformation are well known. However, there are specific periods that stand in stark contrast to these. The period I am looking at here, the opening of the second millenium, is described by Eamonn Duffy in his history of the papacy, as the great “age of reform”, featuring among many notable reformers, the reign of Gregory the Great.

Now note also, that this same period is seen, from the prism of modern teaching, as a key point in the development of anti-gay theology. In “The Invention of Sodomy” Mark D Jordan shows how Saint Peter Damian’s hostility to homoerotic relationships is central to modern homophobic theology. Now, here’s the fascinating thing: the clear homophobia expressed by Peter Damian, central to modern approved thinking, is the one part of Damian’s proposals that was REJECTED by the popes and other churchmen of his time. Although the official line at the time was that same sex relationships were sinful, this was not taken very seriously. Instead, the evidence from actual practice, was that such relationships were at worst tolerated, at best celebrated. Let’s look at some “for instances”.

From literature, we have the example of bishops and other clergy writing verse with frankly homoerotic themes: Marbod of Rennes, Baudri of Bourgueil,and Hildebert of Lavardin wrote poems which, while superficially orthodox, also treat frankly homoerotic themes with remarkable frankness and authenticity. All three of these later were consecrated bishops. (Much earlier, two other bishops had written homoerotic verse, which may be read today in the Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse. St Paulinus of Nola wrote erotic love poems to his male lover, while St Vergilius Fortunatus wrote verse with a clearly homoerotic flavour.) Alcuin of Tours also wrote gay love letters, such as one to Arno the bishop at Salzburg:

Love has penetrated my heart with its flame,

And is ever rekindled with new warmth.

Neither sea nor land, hills nor forest, nor even the Alps

Can stand in its way or hinder it

From always licking at your inmost parts, good father…

(Read the full letter, and also one by Marbod of Rennes, at Gay Love Letters through the centuries: Medieval clerics)

Another notoriously (and promiscuously) gay bishop was John of Orleans, whose lovers included two archbishops of Tours, and the French king. Yet when widespread opposition to his consecration was presented to the Pope, it was not on the basis of his orientation or promiscuity, but on the grounds of his youth. Even so, the objections were ignored, and the consecration of an openly and promiscuously gay bishop went ahead.

At much the same time, the Archbishop of Canterbury, St Anselm, was presented with a decree by the council of London calling for harsher penalties against “sodomites”. But he refused to publish the decree, noting that the practice was widespread, and that ordinary people did not even know it was wrong. St Anselm himself was notable for the intensity of his (chaste) relationships with this predecessor at Canterbury, and a succession of his pupils. (Read some of his letters to a pupil at “Gay Love Letters through the centuries: Anselm“). He also undid centuries of earlier monastic practice, by recommending, not prohibiting, close friendships among men in monasteries. Across the channel in France, another famous Monastic saint was in a similar position. St Aelred of Rievaulx was another celibate, chaste priest who nevertheless penned letters containing extraordinarily clear, frankly homoerotic sentiments to his pupils.

Sadly this medieval flowering of a gay sub-culture, described as the most open and visible in Europe until the 1970’s, was all too brief. Not long after attitudes changed, and saw active persecution by the church and state which was horrifying in its severity. That too is a period in gay church history which deserves to be remembered, for exactly opposite reasons. For now, though, let us simply reflect on the thought that at one important time in church history, church reform and “good laws” did indeed co-incide with homosexual tolerance.


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Catholic Church, Modern

Guido Gezelle (1830-1899): Flemish priest, teacher, and poet

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b. 1st May 1830
d. 27th November 1899

Belgian priest and poet, born in Brugge as Guido Pieter Theodorus Josephus Gezelle. He is considered by the Belgians as one of their greatest poets.

 

 

About Gazelle’s sexuality, not much is certain. Typically for a priest, there is no clear evidence that he ever gave physical expression to his sexual yearnings, whatever they may have been, About the nature of those feelings, and what we today would call his “orientation”, there are some strong clues:

Forget Maurice Maeterlinck, Herman de Coninck, Hugo Claus. The Belgian poet you want to read is Guido Gezelle (1830-1899). Writing in the popular idiom of the West Flemish region, this poet-priest caused a revolution in the rhythm, sound, and soul of Belgian poetry, and can be counted among the world’s greatest poets.

In Gezelle’s work, God and Nature are the key words. Admiring the beauty of God’s creation, the poet is reminded of the grandeur of the Creator Himself. To express these feelings into writing, Gezelle refuses to imprison them into the straight-jacket of age-old conventional forms, but allows them to play freely in a refreshing, new use of rhyme patterns, original images, free verse, and prose poetry.

(He) also voiced strong feelings for some of his pupils. Gezelle expressed the “spiritual twofoldness” between master and student in some of his best poems.

Gezelle’s homoerotic feelings may have been platonic. Certainly, some of his admirers resist any suggestion that his feelings for his pupils were sexual.Nevertheless, his relationship with Eugène van Oye, whom he admired for his “angelic innocence” and whom he tried to comfort in his loneliness in the seminary, was deep indeed. It struck him as a tragedy when van Oye left the seminary in Roeselare in 1859. In his lamentation “To an Absent Friend,” published in 1862, he called his loss greater than that of a mother missing her child.

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Executed, Saints by Acclamation

Let Us Remember, for Nov 27th:

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Harvey Milk and others who have been martyred for their labours towards LGBT equality:

From Jesus in Love Blog

Harvey Milk: LGBT rights pioneer assassinated (1978)

 Harvey Milk of San Francisco
By Brother Robert Lentz, OFM. Copyright 1987
Courtesy of www.trinitystores.com (800.699.4482)

Pioneering gay rights activist Harvey Milk (1930-1978) was assassinated on Nov. 27, 1978 (32 years ago today). Milk is the first and most famous openly gay male elected official in California, and perhaps the world. He became the public face of the LGBT rights movement, and his reputation has continued to grow since his death. He has been called a martyr for GLBT rights.

“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door in the country,” Milk said. Two bullets did enter his brain, and his vision of GLBT people living openly is also coming true.

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Bible

Was Jesus Gay? (Elton John)

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According to Sir Elton John, the answer is clearly yes.

Sir Elton John is facing a backlash from conservative Christian groups after stating in an interview that Jesus was a gay man.

The 62-year-old musician also opened up to US magazine Parade about the “life-threatening downside” of fame and his relationship with partner David Furnish.

But it’s the Rocket Man’s views on Jesus’s sexuality which have sparked headlines across the world.

In the interview, to be published in America on Saturday, Sir Elton said: “I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems.

“On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don’t know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East – you’re as good as dead.”

I don’t suppose Sir Elton has notable thological credentials for making this claim, but his fame alone will ensure that his remarks command wide attention.

This is welcome, because the subjeect deserves more consideration than the easy assumptions that usually underlie thinking and speking about Jesus the man. Simply by raising the issue, Sir Elton has ensured that there will be many voices raised in opposition and in support. Let us hope that some of these voices will offer some plain sense.

My own position here is simple.  I do not for a minute believe that Jesus was “gay”, certainly not in any sense of the word that is recognisable in the moedern world.  But I do believe he was undoubtedly “queer”, in that he emphatically did not conform to any usual expectations of sexual or gender conformity.

Let us begin with the obvious basics.  We know and accept as basic to theology, that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine.  The divinity does not concern us here, but the “human” part surely does.  As fully human, and specifically male, we know that he had a fully male physical body, and all that that entails. We must also accept that he had human emotions, human feelings – and those would certainly have included sexual feelings.

What he did about those, we do not know.  Did he act on them? Did he sublimate them? Some argue on scanty evidence for a sexual relationship with John the Evangelist, or with Mary Magdalene, or with Lazarus. All this is speculation.  We have no way of knowing for sure, although in thee absence of hard evidence, any of these are possible – as is complete celibacy.

So instead of complete celibacy, let us look at some basic facts, as we know them from Scripture and from history, starting with the latter.  The Pontifical Bible Commission recommends that the interpretation of Scripture includes some consideration of the historical context.  In first century Hebrew society, that would have included an overwhelming social expectation that all should marry and raise families, in a strictly hierarchical social structure. That society assumed an inferior position for women, who were not expected to join in religious discussion or leadership, assumed the place of slavery in human conduct, with extensive rights of slave owners over their “property”, and followed a complex set of purity regulations and taboos.

In his life and in his teaching, Jesus ignored all of these, and actively taught against some.  He never married (as far as we know), and exhorted his disciples to leave their own families to follow him. His closest friends outside the twelve were the household of Mary, Martha and Lazarus – also all unmarried, living in a household that would surely have shocked many Jewish social conformists. On several occasions, he actively engaged with women in religious discussions.  And in his dealings with social outcasts of all kinds, including prostitutes, lepers, slaves or menstruating women, he ignored the purity taboos.  Doing so undoubtedly contributed to his getting up the noses of the religious leaders of the day, just as gay men, lesbians and transsexuals today continue to upset self-righteous and self-appointed religious leaders.

Jesus Christ – possibly not “gay” – but undoubtedly queer.

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Executed, Transgender

Let Us Remember, for Nov 20th:

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All those murdered for their honesty in choosing to live in conformity with their innate gender.

From Jesus in Love Blog

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Transgender Day of Remembrance by Mikhaela Reid http://www.mikhaela.net/

Today, on Transgender Day of Remembrance, we commemorate those who were killed due to anti-transgender hate or prejudice. The event was founded in 1999 to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on Nov. 28, 1998 sparked the “Remembering Our Dead” web project. Since then it has grown into an international phenomenon observed around the world. It serves the dual purpose of honoring the dead and raising public awareness of hate crimes against transgenders — that is, transsexuals, crossdressers, and other gender-variant people. Mikhaela Reid pictures some of the more prominent victims of anti-transgender violence in the cartoon above: Rita Hester, Brandon Teena (subject of the movie “Boys Don’t Cry”), Gwen Arujo, Chanelle Picket, Nakia Ladelle Baker, Debra Forte, and Tyra Hunter.

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Christian martyrs, Early Church, Pre-Reformation, Recognized Saints

Polyeuctus and Nearchus, Martyrs 09/01

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John Boswell (“Same Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe“) names Polyeuctus and Nearchus as one of the three primary pairs of same sex lovers in the early church. (The others are Sergius & Bacchus and Felicity and Perpetua). Other sources are less certain that they were lovers: the useful “God is Wonderful in His Saints” Orthodox Resources website describes them simply as “friends”. Before dismissing Boswell’s claim though, we should remember that “friends” has sometimes served as a euphemism for “lovers”, just as to “sleep with” someone in modern English usually means more than to share a snooze.

“Polyeuctus and Nearchus were fellow-officers and close friends, serving in the Roman army at Miletene in Armenia. Nearchus was a Christian. Polyeuctus, though abundant in virtues, was still imprisoned in idol- worship. When the Emperor Decius’ persecution broke out (239-251), an edict was issued requiring all soldiers to show their loyalty by making public sacrifice to the gods. Nearchus sadly told Polyeuctus that because of the decree they would soon be parted. But Polyeuctus, who had learned about the Christian faith from his friend, answered that Christ had appeared to him in a vision, exchanging his military uniform for a shining garment and giving him a winged horse. Polyeuctus took the vision as a sign that he was to embrace the Faith, and that he, with Nearchus, would soon be lifted up to heaven. Almost immediately, he first tore down the Emperor’s edict in front of a startled crowd, then smashed the idols being carried in a pagan procession. He was quickly arrested and subjected to beating and scourging for sacrilege, but he only proclaimed more forcefully that he was a Christian. When the persecutors saw that Polyeuctus’ patient endurance was bringing other idolaters to the faith, they condemned him to death.”

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Boswell, John, Same Sex Unions, 141-44
 



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Modern Heroes, Protestants

Jimmy Creech, Methodist Pioneer for LGBT Equality

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On November 17, 1999 Methodist minister Jimmy Creech was stripped of his clerical status for presiding over a same-sex holy union.

In April of 1999, Creech celebrated the holy union of two men in Chapel Hill. Charges were brought against him and a church trial was held in Grand Island, Nebraska, on November 17, 1999. In August of 1998, the Judicial Council of The United Methodist Church ruled that the statement prohibiting “homosexual unions” was church law in spite of its location in the Social Principles. Consequently, the jury in this second trial declared Creech guilty of “disobedience to the Order and Discipline of The United Methodist Church” and withdrew his credentials of ordination.
Since the summer of 1998, Creech has been travelling around the country to preach in churches and to speak on college and university campuses, as well as to various community and national Gay Rights organizations. Currently, he is writing a book about his experiences of the Church’s struggle to welcome and accept lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons. He is the Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Soulforce, Inc., an interreligious movement using the principles of nonviolent resistance, taught and practiced by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., to confront the spiritual violence perpetrated against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons by religious institutions.
(Read the full bio at LGBT Religious Archives)

 

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