Have You Forgiven Yourself Today?

The Catholic Catechism has a provision prohibiting leading off a blog relating to my own book by pitching, well, a different book entirely. But this would not be the first time I run afoul of official teaching, so here goes.

In Sal Sapienza’s 2006 novel, Seventy Times Seven, Vito Fortunato gets lots of guidance from God, but the messages do not come via the burning bush. For Vito, the voice of God is mediated variously by George Michael, Madonna (the one that is “like a virgin,” not actual the Ever Virgin Herself), a queeny flight attendant who loves Saint Augustine’s Confessions, Cat Stevens (a.ka. Yusif Islam), a drunken woman on the subway, Deuteronomy, and Barbara Stanwyck. From these diverse sources, the message is always consistent: Choose Life.

Easy enough for God to say. But Vito isn’t sure how to interpret the phrase. He’s a candidate for brotherhood in a Roman Catholic order known as the Divinity Brothers. He’s teaching religion to a class of thirty hormonally charged adolescents. He’s on the verge of taking his vows and professing himself as a religious brother. Although he’s got sensible reservations about some of the Church’s teaching -- Vito wears his piety lightly and doesn’t sweat the rules on account of his confidence in Christ’s message – he’s convinced he’s found a higher calling.

On the other hand, Vito finds himself torn between the satisfactions of his religious life and the joys of gay life. He’s a handsome and out (but celibate) gay man, with a gaggle of gay best buddies who bring him out to New York’s gay clubs on a regular basis. More than once, he’s come to Sunday Mass reeking of booze imbibed the night before.

“I’m really leading two lives,” he complains to his spiritual advisor. While he knows instinctively that club life, with its random hookups, is not for him (“God’s not at the Roxy,” he says), he nevertheless senses the potential for a richer gay life and he values his friendships with secular gay men dearly. But he also loves teaching, he honors the saints, and he believes in God. Maybe, he worries, “like Augustine, [I’m] placing too much value on my earthly friendships and too little on my relationship with God.”

After a rough school year that brings his dilemma almost to crisis, Vito leaves both his fellow religious and his partyboy gay life behind. He travels 3000 miles to live and work at an AIDS hospice in San Francisco. What follows are some of the most affecting passages in the book, as the very ordinariness of Vito’s caregiving—a comment here, washed dishes there, a timely wise-ass remark, building a garden for the patients to enjoy—is set in deliberate counterpoint to the free-wheeling, death-defying banter of the patients themselves.

But Vito’s choice harder becomes much more difficult when God places a herald angel (named Gabriel, of course!) in Vito’s path. The understated, unconsummated romance between Gabe and Vito personifies Vito’s otherwise vague intuition that a gay life worthy of God’s apparent admonition to “choose life” is possible. Summer’s end brings Vito to a moment of decision, when he has to choose a road less traveled that will make all the difference:

Madonna’s Like a Prayer seemed to fit the moment: “I have no choice/I hear your voice.” But was the “you” calling my name God or Gabe? They both seemed to fit and they both felt like home.

Vito’s ultimate choice is not a huge surprise, but suspense does not seem to be Sapienza’s goal. Instead, the most striking thing about his writing is Sapienza’s obvious affection for the characters he created. Gabriel is awkward as a bag of elbows, unsubtle, blunt, rough around the edges, but imbued with a haunting loneliness and generosity through which it’s easy to believe God might be speaking. As a believer, Vito’s struggle is not between faith and faithlessness, but rather with discerning what faith demands of him; yet he never loses a sense of self-deprecating humor. Indeed, for all the philosophical wrestling in which Vito engages, the book is full of funny moments: for example, when a nun asks Vito whether he’s ever been to “Spiritus” (a Catholic retreat center), Vito mentions a trip to the decidedly less holy pizza parlor/pick-up spot on Provincetown’s main drag that bears the same name.

The title’s reference to the answer Jesus gave when asked how often a man should forgive his brother who wrongs him (70 x 7 times) suggests another question: who merits such forgiveness. One of Vito’s students puts forth a possible answer. The student’s father had long since left the family for another woman, and the student declares he will never forgive his Dad. But after some intervention by Vito, student and father are reunited. To Vito, the father says wistfully, “I think he has forgiven me.” Vito asks wisely, “Have you forgiven yourself?”

I confess, Sapienza’s steady stream of Eighties pop culture allusions left me dizzy—and I grew up in the Eighties! A little less substitution of shorthand music lyrics for actual mental discourse would have made this a better novel. But in the end, the chorus of sympathetic Catholics that make up this book’s cast is both novel and affecting, and Sapienza—himself a former Marist brother—gives us a peek into a world most gay people deliberately (and with some reason) avoid. And he offers a provisional answer to a question near and dear to my heart: How can a gay man possibly remain a Catholic? Forgiveness is a good start.

UnHoly Wine of the Week: It was a remarkably uneventful week in the world of wine. Best of show was Turley Wine Cellar's 2006 Old Vine Zinfandel, a cheaper version of the more refined Turley family of Zins. It was knock-you-off-bar-stool powerful, deeply extracted, rich, but a little one-dimensional with classic Zin jammy flavors that evoked brambles and bee stings and summertime.

Wyoming Recon

Last year, a lesbian couple in Wyoming, married in Canada, and mothers of three, got a surprise in the mail. At the request of their bishop (David Ricken), their pastor informed them by letter that they were no longer welcome to take Communion.

Their sin, the pastor made clear, was not their lesbianism per se. In fact, they regularly attended Mass and their family picture had appeared in the parish directory. What brought them down was the Smudge. On Ash Wednesday, they appeared (complete with forehead ashes) in an article in which they protested an anti-gay marriage amendment then pending in the Wyoming legislature. This exposure culminated in their being refused communion.

I several times contacted the couple in hopes of speaking about the incident, but they were no publicity whores like myself. They were classy ladies. So they (understandably) never returned my call. They continued to go to Church with dignity, heads held high, unashamed, though they did not participate in Holy Communion. At least one straight couple in the parish also abstained from the sacrament in solidarity “until everyone is welcome at the table.” I assumed they faded away, but I was wrong.

In February 2008, the bishop did an about-face. A nun approached the couple and invited them back to Church on the occasion of Bishop Ricken’s upcoming pastoral visit. At Communion time, the couple presented themselves for – and received – his blessing. They hobnobbed with him afterward and told their stories. The bishop apologized for what happened to them and told them he had instigated their being invited back.

After the visit and after consultation with their pastor, the couple was again permitted to take the Eucharist beginning on Holy Thursday 2008. “It was so beautiful!” Vader wrote. The whole story is in this pdf on pages 9-10.

Brava, Vader-Huskinsons! Your dignity carried the day here. I guess my only reservation is the usual: that we not await permission to participate in sacramental life, but that we take (i.e., receive) what is by rights ours. It also bothers me that the initial refusal was widely reported, but there does not seem to be a hint of news about the reconciliation on the ‘Net. You can contact the bishop’s secretary here to tell him you support his welcoming the couple back to the fold. Her name is Dorene.

Unholy Wine of the Week: 2007 Paul Cluver Gewürztraminer. This is a South African Gewurz, of all things! A wonderfully dry expression of the varietal, crisp minerality, serious spiciness, hint of lychee, and the per bottle case price is just 12 bucks! It is not the most complex in the world, but nonetheless delivers great, full flavor and refreshment comparable to a European version of 2-3 times the price. Buy this one now!

The Show Must Go On

Saint Pio of Pietrelcina was a cutter. Like a twentieth-century Amy Winehouse or one of those hunched-shoulder hollow-eyed Goth girls sporting black eyeliner and nail polish and satanic tats that you occasionally see congregating in parking lots on suburban high school campuses, Padre Pio practiced self-mutilation. According to a document in the Vatican archive, Pio ordered four grams of carbolic acid from a pharmacist from San Giovanni Rotundo and asked her to keep the order a secret. The BBC reports that at least one historian has concluded that Pio used the acid to create the stigmata on his hands and feet for which he became famous.

Notwithstanding this evidence that Pio was, in the words of the founder of Rome’s Catholic Hospital, “an ignorant and self-mutilating psychopath who exploited people’s credulity,” the Vatican under John Paul II canonized Padre Pio partly because of his lifelong stigmata (that’s a lot of carbolic acid!).

Pio is now particularly popular. In Italy, his picture adorns rearview mirrors, dry cleaners, and police station walls (presumably not next to the “Most Wanted” posters). Here in the U.S., he is a favorite of my nemesis Cardinal Sean O’Malley, a fellow Capuchin who wears a cross-shaped pendant containing a piece of Pio.

In fact, Pio’s popularity has reached such heights that – on the fortieth anniversary of his death -- the Church has decided to set Pio up with his own Vegas show. Like Celine Dion.

Well, not that much like Celine. And not in Vegas. Instead, the church dug Pio out of the ground and propped him up in a glass case at his friary in Puglia, Italy. 700,000 people have signed up to visit and millions more are expected.

You might ask, Why can’t these pilgrims put flowers on a grave like the rest of us? Why show the body itself? Well, exhuming saints is one of those kooky Catholic traditions, like stake-burning, book-banning, and bad homilies. Frequently, the Vatican digs up the bodies of the beatified and examines them for miraculous instances of preservation. The notion here is that the incorruptibility of their souls will be reflected in the incorruptibility of their flesh.

Thus, thirty years after his death, it was discovered that Saint Anthony’s tongue, for example, was as unblemished as if he had just been preaching with it the day before. (Saint Bonaventure promptly took the tongue in his hands and kissed it, initiating the first French kiss between saints.) The entire body of Saint John Vianney, tongue and all, was also discovered to be perfectly preserved. And, like Pio, Vianney was so popular that the Church hacked his heart out of his body and put the show on the road, spinning off the heart from the body like Frasier from Cheers. The Vatican has twice dispatched the heart (sans body) on a world tour, most recently in 2006, where the heart saw the sights in Boston and Long Island and got lots of favorable reviews. I’ve wondered ever since how John’s heart enjoyed the Duck tour. Quack, quack. (For more on Vianney’s Boston visit, read my book.)

Truth is, of course, you don’t even have to be a saint for the Church to want to dig you up; the Archdiocese of Boston has been trying to dig up the body of its former leader, rogue gay William Cardinal O’Connell, who himself exhumed a few bodies, for the past few years.

In any event, Pio’s case proved a little more complicated than that of Anthony and Vianney. (I blame the cutting.) It seems that there was a little unwelcome wear and tear from his forty years in the grave. Something less than perfection.

Trying to put a good spin on the discovery, Archbishop D’Ambrosio described the newly exhumed body as being in “surprisingly good condition”:

We could clearly make out the beard. The top part of the skull is partly skeletal …. The knees, hands and [finger]nails [are] all clearly visible.

Worst of all: there were no signs of stigmata. Apparently, it’s difficult to find a drug store in the hereafter that will sell you sufficient quantities of carbolic acid.

Putting aside the lack of stigmata, the underwhelming evidence of incorruptibility simply would not do for a religious rock star of Pio’s standing. It’s one thing for Mick Jagger to look like he’s been poorly mummified in a dank cellar even as the blood flows though his veins, but another thing entirely for Pio not to look his best even forty years after meeting his God.

So, what’s the Church to do????? Well, as if you needed any further proof the clergy are generally gay, the Archbishop’s immediate response was to send Pio’s body to a mortician to clean him up and “make the face more recognizable.” Nothing a little pancake make-up and eyeliner can’t cure, Archbishop D’Ambrosio seemed to be saying. Canyon Ranch, next stop!

Doctoring the saints for the sake of the faithful might seem a little underhanded, but I sympathize. I know just what Padre Pio feels like: many’s the morning after a Saturday night over-indulging in the unholy wine that I could have used a mortician’s skills to revive myself into looking suitably presentable in time for Sunday brunch.

In any event, the showing of the new improved and prettier Pio is now open to the public. Perhaps I’ll stop by this summer on my way to Cinque Terre and see if I can get Pio to share with me some beauty tips. Carbolic acid facial scrub, anyone?

UPDATE (4/30/08): It turns out that the same firm that does wax faces for Madame Tussaud's in London has been tapped to create Padre Pio's new face (visible here and at the prior link). Also, it turns out that Pio reportedly had an eye for the ladies (in the confessional, no less), and that Pope John XXIII had his confessionals bugged to try to curb the problem!

NOTE: after last week’s post about the Papal bus, some folks have pestered me as to what happened at the Pope’s Mass in Yankee Stadium. I’m afraid you are going to have to wait a bit longer, my pretties.

Unholy Wine of the Week: Owen Roe Sharecropper Oregon Pinot Noir 2006 is one of the mid-range wines produced by Owen Roe, a winery named after the Irish patriot. It is certainly a young wine, with predominant berry flavors, but somewhat one-dimensional with little of the earthiness of some of Owen Roe’s top-of-the-line productions like “The Kilmore.” Nevertheless, concentrated but not heavy. The high-alcohol is nicely balanced (even when it warms in the glass, it never comes to center stage. The acids seemed relatively low; I’d worry this one might get flabby over time, so I’d slurp it up now. We had pork loin chops and Portobello mushrooms, which worked well.

The Back of the Papal Bus

Check out this timeline:

Feb. 1

I pay $60 bucks for the chance to participate in the lottery for tickets to the April 20 Papal Mass in Yankee Stadium.

March 17

The Archdiocese notifies me that I have won a ticket. The update includes a list of recipients that shows my name and address.

April 3

The Archdiocese notifies me that no security concerns have been identified and re-publishes a list with my name and address on it indicating where I should board the bus that will take me from Boston to Yankee Stadium.

March 25

I blog soliciting suggestions of how a gay man ought to approach this Mass, “consistent with being reasonably respectful of others’ beliefs and spiritual experience.”

April 7

Loony tunes Catholic whackjob blogger-snitch picks up on my blog. She prays for me (and apparently rats me out to the Archdiocese).

April 12-14

Archdiocese distributes tickets. I don’t get one.

April 15

I email Archdiocese seeking my “lost” ticket. Immediately I get call back from nice young lady at Archdiocese who left a voice mail requiring me to speak with Scot Landry before they would send me my Papal Mass ticket. Landry is Cabinet Secretary and Chief Development Officer of the Archdiocese. Every time I’ve ever met Cardinal O’Malley, Landry is nearby. I think he even makes a cameo in my book. Aside from the regrettable loss of a “t” from his first name due to a tragic childhood accident, Landry always seemed to me a decent human -- and not just because he is as bald as me.

Despite the fact that Landry misspells his name, I agree to a 6PM phone conference. Landry blows me off. The Archdiocese continues to hold my ticket hostage. (Do you even know the value of these things on EBay? $207.50!!!)

April 16

I petition the nice young lady at the Archdiocese a second time seeking ticket. Late in the day, Scot Landry finally calls.

[Here we pause for commentary. I know the suspense is killing you. You want to know how the conversation went down and did I score the ticket and did I have to prostitute myself, my kind, my morals, and gay people everywhere to do so…]

Now, I was nervous about this call with Landry. Not for myself. I was worried for the Archdiocese. Like a beaten dog that comes back for more, I still have a twinge of misdirected loyalty in my heart for the local hierarchy of the Catholic Church. So when it seems they’re posed to do something remarkably stupid, I cringe. I feared Landry would announce that the flat-footed, tone-deaf folk at the RCAB had made entirely the wrong decision to kick me off the Papal bus. How bad would that have looked? Gay Man Booted From Papal Bus. For media already ridiculously overhyped on Papal this and Papal that, it would have made national headlines. My inner Publicity Whore would, of course, have been thrilled. But the part of me that is radically ashamed whenever the Archdiocese – my Archdiocese –makes a bad decision quailed.

[End commentary]

In fact, the RCAB appears to be getting its money’s worth from Scot Landry. He was … sickeningly pleasant. A truly good man. He confirmed that he had been getting emails from Snitches who had read my blog.

“I need to know you want to go,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. (Want is a strong-ish word. It’s more that I feel like I ought to go. Not for the Pope. Any Mass with the friars at Saint Anthony Shrine is worth ten Papal Masses, in Yankee Stadium or elsewhere. But I believe it is an educational opportunity for me to mingle with a bunch of Catholics who, Scot said, “may not share the same religious viewpoint you do.” So yes seemed an appropriate answer.)

“Are you going to make a scene or enter into big confrontations?” Scot asked.

“Well, what do you mean by confrontation, Scot?” I certainly wasn’t going to sit there on the bus and in the stadium like a statue of the Virgin Mary. “I’m going to talk to people,” I said. “I’m going to record them, take their pictures if they let me.”

“Well,” Scot said, “look. I want you to go, I am glad you’re going. But you’ve got to give me your word – as member of the Archdiocese and part of Saint Anthony shrine – you’ll walk away if they don’t want to talk to you. I can’t have you make a scene. If on Monday morning people come back and say, ‘I had a great spiritual experience and I met a guy with a different outlook on our faith than me, and we had an interesting conversation, and we didn’t agree but it never got out of hand,’ that would be success for me.”

“Agreed!” I said enthusiastically. “Me, too.” Although it’s hard to walk away when you are on a bus. Maybe I can put the armrest down.

Scot agreed to send me the ticket. Hallelujah! I was almost ready to give up my extra “t” to him. Of course, he had not yet seen my Letter in today’s New York Blade.

The only thing that concerns me? That I felt such a puppyish sense of gratitude to Scot for (a) letting me go and (b) acknowledging me as a genuine Catholic in the Archdiocese and a parishioner at Saint Anthony Shrine. Sigh … I am still to eager to gobble up the crumbs thrown my way, instead of assuming (and inhabiting) my rightful place on the (metaphorical) Catholic Bus.

Unholy Wine of the Week (If Only They Consecrated This Stuff): 2007 Commanderie de Peyrassol Cotes de Provence Rosé. Yes, it’s time for the pink stuff, a sure signal of spring. Long one of my favorite pink wines, this stuff is pale, dry, delicate, with perfect balance, reserved fruit, more floral (think flower petals), ideal for light foods and snacks. A blend of Syrah, Grenache and Cinsault. You can feel the Provencal warmth flow through it. Perfect for al fresco dining. Imported by Neal Rosenthal. If his name is on the bottle, it’s worth buying.

Pimpin' Bishops

Pimpin’ Bishops

Don’t get me wrong. I am pleased and proud that members of the gay Catholic group Dignity staked out the roadside along the Popemobile’s route through Washington DC. For years, Dignity has been the strongest gay Catholic voice in the nation. But crowing about the Pope’s having waved to the silent Dignity contingent made me squirm. Are we really satisfied with that – a Papal wave? The news story makes the members sound like a pair of Okies vacationing in Hollywood who managed to get a glimpse of a Big Star and imagined the Big Star threw a smile their way:

The pope appeared to look directly at about a dozen members of the group as they stood behind a 10-foot long banner with the message, “Dignity Washington — Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Catholics, Our Families and Friends — A community of Faith in Action.”

“I thought it was a good chance for us to be seen and he obviously saw us and waved at us, so I think we got our message across,” said Raymond Panas, president of Dignity Washington. …

“Whether he actually saw or read our sign, we’ll never know,” said Dignity member Bob Miailovich. “It was nice to see him, and it was all very prim and proper. He waved in our direction and that was very nice.”

I confess that this tendency to let ourselves get excited by the crumbs thrown our way is one I share. I suppose it comes from making our way through the desert of spiritual experience that dealing with the Roman Catholic hierarchy has been.

For example, when I first heard earlier this week that the Pope made a clear distinction between homosexuality and pedophilia in comments en route to the U.S., and promised to root folks subject to the latter out of the priesthood, I was initially pleasantly surprised:

[T]he pontiff said: “I would not speak at this moment about homosexuality, but pedophilia, which is another thing. And we would absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry.”

“Who is guilty of pedophilia cannot be a priest,” he added.

For a professor trained in subtle theological nuance, Ratzinger has in the past been remarkably unclear as to whether he recognizes a difference between the two concepts. The new comments delighted me: all those right wing conservative Catholics will surely be disappointed because B16 so blithely undermined their argument that priestly homosexuality was the cause of the abuse scandal.

But on further review, what does B16’s distinction mean? What value does it have? For example, if pedophile priests are the issue, why bar homosexual candidates from the seminary? This initiative was one of the first major acts of the B16 Papacy back in 2005.

More important, what really shook the faithful was NOT the acts of pedophile priests, however horrific those acts were. The faithful could have attributed these terrible acts merely to a (large) handful of sick individuals without losing faith in the Church.

What scandalized the faithful was the conduct of the bishops – bishops who not only protected priests from exposure, but set them up in new parishes to prey (pun intended) on a whole new crop of young people. In other words, bishops who were panderers and pimps for their pedophile priests. In this sense, pedophiles were not the whole problem, and certainly not gay priests. The problem was pimping bishops. A truly revolutionary statement by B16 would have been this: “Who is guilty of being a bishop cannot be a priest.”

Guerilla Queer Church

As if to emphasize the fact that the laity are really beside the point in the view of the Pope Benedict XVI hierarchy, it appears that there will be no lay ministers serving at the Masses he is celebrating in Yankee Stadium and in Washington DC.

And just as an aside, who celebrates Mass in Yankee Stadium, of all places? That’s an unholy place, if there ever was one, especially for a born-and-raised boy from Boston who still remembers Bucky Dent hitting a home run that foiled the chances of the Red Sox back in the days when we could not fathom an actual World Series victory. Sigh. UPDATE: turns out that Dent homerun took place in Fenway Park. Perhaps Yankee Stadium ain’t so bad.

Anyhow …

No lay ministers????? The thought is appalling. At Saint Anthony Shrine in Boston, we live on lay ministers. Friars get old, but lay ministers are ever refreshed. They go through boot Camp before they’re deigned fit to serve, and it’s hard to imagine a Mass without them – and why would you want to, unless you were one of those people pining for a pre-VatII restoration when we can all work beads and mumble a lot and believe we had no place in God’s sanctuary? Talk about the good old days.

Anyhow, as a timely recompense for B16’s nonsense, James Alison has written a chunk of wisdom some of which I set forth below for your digestion. The test is called “Letter to a Young Catholic.” The whole thing won’t take much time, but what really caught my eye was the humility of the piece. Alison says, essentially, I may not be right in all I preach, but as long as I know it as truth, I will continue to preach it:

I don’t want to pretend that being an openly gay Catholic is something easy or obvious. It isn’t. For a start, merely the fact of your wanting to read a letter like this at all is a sign of how many obstacles you must have overcome already. You may have faced hatred and discrimination in your own country, from family members, at school, at the hands of legislators eager for cheap votes, through shrieking newspaper headlines that sear your soul, and in the glare of which you are speechless in your own defence. And you’ve probably noticed that at the very best, the Church which calls itself, and is, your Holy Mother has kept silent about the hatred and the fear. While all too often its spokesmen will have lowered themselves to the level of second-rate politicians, lending voice to hate while claiming that they are standing up for love. The very fact that, through and in the midst of, and despite, all these hateful voices, you should have heard the voice of the Shepherd calling you into being of his flock is already a miracle far greater than you know, preparing you for a work more subtle and delicate than those voices could conceive.

You will share in all the contempt which the modern world has for the Catholic Church by virtue of holding firm to the faith you have been given – you will be considered as having little of worth to offer. And by virtue of being a Catholic you will always be on the brink of being considered something of a traitor to whatever project your contemporaries seek to build. …. [Y]ou will be considered something of a traitor within the Church as well. “Not quite one of us”. And certainly not someone who can publicly represent the Church, be a visible part of the sign which leads to salvation. … [Y]ou will be considered a bad Catholic, if a Catholic at all. For, long after the evangelical groups which gave birth to “reparative therapy” and the “ex-gay” movement have moved on, and their leaders apologised for leading people astray, such ideas will find Catholic backers and supporters, since they flatter current Church teaching. But don’t be afraid of those ideas, and don’t hate their propagators. They are our brothers. The very fact that these brothers understand that if the Church’s teaching is true it must have some basis in the discoverable realm of nature means that ultimately it is the evidence of what is true in that realm which will set us free.

But what of the long “meanwhile”? For you, called by your name, … being Catholic implies a vocation to some sort of ministry, some sort of creative acting out, some sort of public imitation of the life and death of Our Lord. So I don’t want to pretend: you will find yourself developing a ministry, as I find myself developing one, without any public backing from Church authority. It will be as if you did not exist. You will have to learn to live in the silence of being neither approved of, nor even disapproved of. You will fall out of the gaze of men, and if you are anything like me, desperate for an approving glance, you will experience this as a form of dying. …

Let me give you an analogy. I don’t know whether you are old enough to remember the Cold War? … One of the spin-offs of the Cold War was a literary and cinematic genre of spy stories, tales of intrigue and underground life waged (in the worst cases) by goodies against baddies and in somewhat rarer, better, cases by morally ambiguous people on both sides of the NATO/Eastern Bloc divide.

Try to imagine yourself an agent for one or the other side … . Now imagine that long ago you received your instructions from the head of the agency which is to “run” you, and were given appointed “handlers” for your mission. So, confident that you were being backed up by them, you plunged into your work, starting to build up community, small signs of the kingdom you serve, deep in enemy territory. Then imagine that something weird happens, there is something of a coup within the agency that sent you out, a policy shift, and all the people who had “handled” you, knew you, and prepared you, are quietly retired. So you find yourself with no direct line to anyone back at the agency. You are deep underground, and you are suddenly without cover, without back up, without resources, without even recognition. So much so that the new agents sent out by the agency don’t even know of your existence, and would probably heartily disapprove since if you are who you say you are, then you are part of an older and currently discredited approach to the “enemy territory” in which you have long gone underground.

… What are you to do? …. [D]o you allow your anger and resentment at your treatment by the agency to cause you to give up working on the project for which you were originally called and trained? Or do you so love the project that you are prepared to love the agency which now hates you, confident that eventually, things will work out? Loving the agency when it loves you is easy enough, but loving it even through the time when it disowns you? Now there is the finger of God!

This is where I would urge you, as I urge myself, often with a fainting spirit, to see the privilege of what we have. Yes, … they either don’t know of our existence, or need plausible deniability for their own sakes, but meanwhile here, deep in enemy territory we can carry on building not just a wee little corner of something defensive, but the Catholic Church itself – the full thing, the whole whack. And curiously, with less interference from busybodies than would be the case if the lines of communication were up. So, do we dare to have our love stretched by building without approval, as we wait longingly for the day when some Berlin Wall comes down, and communication is restored? Can you take responsibility for that? Can you persevere?

“¡Esto va para largo…!” “This is going to be a long haul!” – that was the sage advice to me of one of my formators, one of my handlers, who in addition to being a gay man is an historian. He was telling me, as I am telling you, that the process of adjustment to truth in this sphere is going to take a long, long time. …

Who knows, my friend, whether this opportunity for communication will be repeated? … One way or another, let me tell you what I have discovered in my years underground in enemy territory: you are not alone, and His promises are true.

This is what we need to do to build the Church. We need to accept responsibility. It is not a responsibility conferred from the hierarchy on us, but one conferred by the Almighty directly on all of us, including the gay and lesbian among us.

Here in Boston, we are taking that admonition seriously. We continue to build the Church of the Gospel, the Church we love. As I write, we are gathering representatives from all the faith communities, whether parishes or otherwise, who welcome the gifts and charisms of gay people. We are sharing ideas. We will soon have a website to help those who have not yet found us, to find us. We have events planned through June, and we expect in particular to have a gay pride event. This effort represents a resurgence in Boston. We gay Catholics are re-taking our churches here.

Interestingly, there is a phenomenon in Boston (and other cities) called Boston Guerilla Queer Bar. The idea is simple: once a month, the group agrees to descend on a very straight bar on a particular night at a particular time. Result: a formerly straight venue is charmed with the benefits of gay appeal. For one night, it is the gay boys who are out on the dance floor. The music is the same, the drinks are the same, but the effect is magical. An instant queer bar where once a straight bar had been.

What would happen if we selected a particular parish church, one per month? All the gay Catholics would descend on it at, say, the 10AM Mass. We would sing, we would worship, we would be indistinguishable from our straight friends in the pews, except perhaps for the ferocity of our love, our kiss of peace, and the fact that we would leave petitions in the collection basket in lieu of dollars to avoid contributing to a corrupt hierarchy. We could invite members of Dignity to join us. We could invite womenpriests. We could bring our families, however constituted.

The genius of it is that this would not be an act of mere civil disobedience or profanation like ACT-UP’s spilling the Holy Eucharist at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. This would be a celebration, an exercise in ordinary worship with all its glorious earnestness, awkwardness, false starts, distractions, simplicity, ritual, incense, adoration, amazement, and radical transformation.

Alison invited us to build the Church. But we should also feel free to take back what is ours.

Unholy wine of the Week: Rhys Vineyards “Alesia” Green Valley Pinot Noir 2006. (Note that, according to Rhys, I shouldn’t have drunk the bottle at all! Mea culpa! Only so many bottles I can “hold’ in a 950 square foot apartment!) A brilliant new release for which I waited interminably on the waiting list. An unusually rich pinot, with the viscosity and color of a syrah, a powerfully compact delivery of flavor, dark fruits strongest (cherries, plum), balanced acidity and alcohol. Like meeting a big stud who also happens to have an amazing vocabulary. (Did you guys see the NY Times piece on the Gladiator? Nothing like a Scrabble-playing street fighter to get my panties in a bunch.) I would never pick it as typical of pinot, but it has its own brawny merits.

The Lottery

I won the lottery. Not Powerball, not Megamillions, not any kind of lottery where you retire to your own private island and hire serving minions to cool you with palm fronds and scoff at those who tormented you in your youth and so are ineligible to get a taste of your prodigious bounty. No, I won the right to rise at 3:45AM and board a bus for New York City (“New York City! Just like I pictured it! Skyscrapers . . . and everything!” – Stevie Wonder), where I will cram myself into Yankee Stadium with 60,000 of my best Catholic friends to listen to a man who has done more to hobble the civil law/civil rights advancements of my people than anyone on the planet. Yep, you guessed it – I’ve drawn a seat to the 2008 Papal Mass courtesy of the Archdioceses of Boston and New York. In other words, a lottery more akin to the famous Shirley Jackson short story.

The question is, what’s a gay Catholic to do with this sort of opportunity? I planned to bring my digital recorder and camera, of course, and to wear my “I’m Loved By a Second-Class Gay Citizen” rainbow pin that I wore during the rallies for same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. But what else ought I to do, consistent with being reasonably respectful of others beliefs and spiritual experience (or at least consistent with not getting arrested by Homeland Security operatives – apparently, all our names have been submitted to the agency for pre-screening)? Any suggestions for civil disobedience? Do I engage the masses (so to speak)? Seek dialog? Hand out business cards about Since My Last Confession? Show off wallet photos of my boyfriend and our Scotty dog? Give your regards to B16?

I am open to any and all suggestions. Email me at scott.pomfret [at] gmail [dot] com.

P.S. We don’t really have a Scotty dog, I promise. That would be TOO gay.

Unholy Wine of the Week (What You Wish They Would Consecrate): 2006 Saxon Brown Pinot Noir Parmelee Hill. An unusually dark pinot with the punch to back it up. Perhaps lacks nuance or layering, but densely packed flavors barely give the palate a rest. Acid is high and alcohol may be slightly out of balance at 14.5%, suggesting another year of cellaring might help it out. Look for dried and dark fruits, barnyard, and saddle flavors.

UPDATE 4/8/08: After much thought, I have decided that the best plan for the Papal Mass is the most simple: be a solemn witness to the faith of GLBT Catholics. Assert my presence as a gay man with some small but clear symbol, but worship as part of the greater Catholic community. Sure, on the bus ride down and back, before and after the Mass, I’ll engage those around me, ask questions, record answers, and have some fun. But it seems like the strongest statement I could make during the Mass itself is a quiet one, a dignified, unassailable witness.