[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] Some Dignity
Feb. 7th, 2005 02:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldTwo Saturdays, I went on a date with V. to church, specifically to a mass organized by Dignity Toronto Dignité, an organization of GLBT people in the Roman Catholic Church that (unlike Courage) is critical of the official position of the Church.
This may count as a sort of ethnography. So, first, some backgrounders.
My father is nominally Roman Catholic; my mother, affiliated with the United Church of Canada. I was raised in the second church as a child, apparently because of the laxity of the Catholic priest who married my parents and let them choose their children's faith without coercion, likely because of the hostility demonstrated by too much of my father's family towards the young man's marriage outside his faith.
Growing up, I had little contact with Roman Catholicism, attending Mass with my father only once or twice. Despite the historically contingent nature of my faith, I do think that I was as sincere a believer as a child could be, participating to the fullest extent in Sunday school, singing the hymns where others mouthed the words, wishing I could stay and listen to the sermons.
By the time that I was 15, though, we stopped going to church altogether. I'm not sure why this happened. In my particular case, knowledge of the difficulties of the church with free inquiry might have been the critical factor; certainly, by this time we children both knew about the circumstances surrounding our parents' marriage. Sometimes, we went to Christmas mass at St. Dunstan's Basilica, though the choice of church was made more for aesthetic reasons than anything else.
This segued directly into my nascent anticlericalism, which, as Jonathan can testify, lasted quite a long time. My first web-published alternate history was Communauté globale, describing a world where the revolutionaries of France achieved rather massive and one-sided success. This moderated itself as time progressed and I learned more about the positive achievements of organized religion.
And now? Certainly I respect religious believers, and organized religion, and I recognize that belief can be comforting. I simply don't find myself convinced of the transcendant truth of any particular religion, including Christianity; the cost to me even if I was convinced encourages me to be skeptical. And I've seen organized religion be used, too often, as an excuse by power-hungry leaders to try to secure recognition for some right to dominate their followers--to, as I noted in two specific instances at the Head Heeb, exclude the racially impure from membership in the community and to legitimize the misogynistic treatment of women. Religion I respect; its totalitarian tendencies, I distrust.
The service, administered by a genial priest (who later told us that he was being transferred to a distant parish, in retaliation for his support of Dignity), was held in a fairly busy parish hall in downtown Toronto. I sat next to the boyfriend, along with a dozen other people. Most were older than me, in their 30s at least.
I was a bit surprised at how similar the service was to the ones I remembered at Trinity United Church. There were readings of Bible verses (Isaiah 9:1-4, 1 Corinthians 1, and Matthew 4:12-23), interspersed with songs, followed by a sermon, followed by a discussion period. Since this Calgary's Bishop Henry and Toronto's Archbishop Ambrozic condemning the recent move towards same-sex marriage, the discussion period was fairly anguished, as parishoners debated (with each other, with the priest) how they could remain Catholics in the face of this latest assault.
The service concluded, quietly enough. I joined my boyfriend for an after-mass dinner at a Church Street restaurant afterwards. More snow had fallen then, and we left footprints as we walked.
The Dignity website goes into greater detail as to how the movement tries to reconcile non-heterosexual orientations and relationships with Catholicism, in the face of the Church's pronouncements. I'm not a believer; I'm affected by the rhetoric to a certain extent, but I'm not convinced.
As I blogged last October, minority populations--especially religious minority populations--should never insist on purity as a qualification for membership. We live in an impure world, a fallen world if you will; and, in Anthropology 101, I remember how strongly my instructor Dr. Marty Zelenietz impressed on his class the fact that cultures have ideal states, cultures have actual realities, and there are gaps between the two.
Sexual orientation, as a concept, didn't even exist until the late 19th century; as a state of being rather than a series of sinful behaviours, it only entered the popular consciousness almost a century later. People, raised in good faith in the Catholic Church, find that the Church's doctrines conflict strongly with their own personal experiences of non-heterosexual sexual orientations being normal. One response--a personally damaging response, I believe--is to accept the doctrine whole; another response, one allowing for greater personal freedom but a permanent distancing from the religion of one's birth, is to break entirely.
It's not unsurprising that some people would try for a third option, of trying to arrange for a synthesis. If nothing else we live in a fallen world, where there must be far greater sins around; and surely, we are God's creations all of us, deserving of some kind of relationship with the church. As the father observed, this approach seems to be working, since the idea of outreach to GLBT parishoners is accepted now where once it was rejected entirely. It's small progress, but it's progress nonetheless. If one believes, it's just barely enough for now.
This may count as a sort of ethnography. So, first, some backgrounders.
My father is nominally Roman Catholic; my mother, affiliated with the United Church of Canada. I was raised in the second church as a child, apparently because of the laxity of the Catholic priest who married my parents and let them choose their children's faith without coercion, likely because of the hostility demonstrated by too much of my father's family towards the young man's marriage outside his faith.
Growing up, I had little contact with Roman Catholicism, attending Mass with my father only once or twice. Despite the historically contingent nature of my faith, I do think that I was as sincere a believer as a child could be, participating to the fullest extent in Sunday school, singing the hymns where others mouthed the words, wishing I could stay and listen to the sermons.
By the time that I was 15, though, we stopped going to church altogether. I'm not sure why this happened. In my particular case, knowledge of the difficulties of the church with free inquiry might have been the critical factor; certainly, by this time we children both knew about the circumstances surrounding our parents' marriage. Sometimes, we went to Christmas mass at St. Dunstan's Basilica, though the choice of church was made more for aesthetic reasons than anything else.
This segued directly into my nascent anticlericalism, which, as Jonathan can testify, lasted quite a long time. My first web-published alternate history was Communauté globale, describing a world where the revolutionaries of France achieved rather massive and one-sided success. This moderated itself as time progressed and I learned more about the positive achievements of organized religion.
And now? Certainly I respect religious believers, and organized religion, and I recognize that belief can be comforting. I simply don't find myself convinced of the transcendant truth of any particular religion, including Christianity; the cost to me even if I was convinced encourages me to be skeptical. And I've seen organized religion be used, too often, as an excuse by power-hungry leaders to try to secure recognition for some right to dominate their followers--to, as I noted in two specific instances at the Head Heeb, exclude the racially impure from membership in the community and to legitimize the misogynistic treatment of women. Religion I respect; its totalitarian tendencies, I distrust.
The service, administered by a genial priest (who later told us that he was being transferred to a distant parish, in retaliation for his support of Dignity), was held in a fairly busy parish hall in downtown Toronto. I sat next to the boyfriend, along with a dozen other people. Most were older than me, in their 30s at least.
I was a bit surprised at how similar the service was to the ones I remembered at Trinity United Church. There were readings of Bible verses (Isaiah 9:1-4, 1 Corinthians 1, and Matthew 4:12-23), interspersed with songs, followed by a sermon, followed by a discussion period. Since this Calgary's Bishop Henry and Toronto's Archbishop Ambrozic condemning the recent move towards same-sex marriage, the discussion period was fairly anguished, as parishoners debated (with each other, with the priest) how they could remain Catholics in the face of this latest assault.
The service concluded, quietly enough. I joined my boyfriend for an after-mass dinner at a Church Street restaurant afterwards. More snow had fallen then, and we left footprints as we walked.
The Dignity website goes into greater detail as to how the movement tries to reconcile non-heterosexual orientations and relationships with Catholicism, in the face of the Church's pronouncements. I'm not a believer; I'm affected by the rhetoric to a certain extent, but I'm not convinced.
As I blogged last October, minority populations--especially religious minority populations--should never insist on purity as a qualification for membership. We live in an impure world, a fallen world if you will; and, in Anthropology 101, I remember how strongly my instructor Dr. Marty Zelenietz impressed on his class the fact that cultures have ideal states, cultures have actual realities, and there are gaps between the two.
Sexual orientation, as a concept, didn't even exist until the late 19th century; as a state of being rather than a series of sinful behaviours, it only entered the popular consciousness almost a century later. People, raised in good faith in the Catholic Church, find that the Church's doctrines conflict strongly with their own personal experiences of non-heterosexual sexual orientations being normal. One response--a personally damaging response, I believe--is to accept the doctrine whole; another response, one allowing for greater personal freedom but a permanent distancing from the religion of one's birth, is to break entirely.
It's not unsurprising that some people would try for a third option, of trying to arrange for a synthesis. If nothing else we live in a fallen world, where there must be far greater sins around; and surely, we are God's creations all of us, deserving of some kind of relationship with the church. As the father observed, this approach seems to be working, since the idea of outreach to GLBT parishoners is accepted now where once it was rejected entirely. It's small progress, but it's progress nonetheless. If one believes, it's just barely enough for now.
