Which Gospel records the most parables?

Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Eve Tushnet

Home
Catholic
Religious Music & Entertainment

Last updated on: July 29, 2009 at 2:34 am by Eve Tushnet

2009-07-29T02:34:00-04:00 Eve Tushnet

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

SONG FOR A FUTURE GENERATION: OK, my thoughts on many different issues raised in response to my “Romoeroticism” piece.

“Beauty is an encroachment upon autonomy.” (C. Paglia): It’s been instructive to me that 90% of the comments I’ve received on the piece have been about this idea of vowed same-sex friendship, since, to be perfectly honest, that was a last-minute addition! And perhaps an ill-timed one, see below. I do have a lot to say about vowed friendship.

But maybe the other elements of my “Romoeroticism” piece are more fruitful, even though I have less to say about them. I think there’s an immense amount of work yet to be done on how Catholicism’s insistence on sexual difference may make the Church more attractive to gay people; I think Miss Ogilvy is right to suggest that talking about “gay as a genre” would illuminate in some way the difficulties of our current cultural moment and the possibilities for transcending them. And yet I have nothing left to say about that! HELP ME OUT, PEOPLE. Yes?

You can go your own way…: And, although in what follows I will be primarily talking about vowed friendships, I’d also challenge us to consider how we can foster friendships and extended forms of kinship outside of the formal vow. Can we make it culturally normal to take a leave from work because your friend needs you? Can we honor and respect godsiblinghood in the public sphere, giving that relationship the kind of weight and acknowledgment we give to blood kinship?

In Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, And Good for America, Jonathan Rauch lists off a bunch of cultural markers of the importance of marriage: When you’re married, people ask after your spouse, and you’re expected to know how your spouse is doing. Your family treats your spouse as part of their family: holiday photos, concerned questions, understanding that your obligations to the spouse and her family may conflict with your obligations to your family of origin. Your boss and your coworkers understand that the pictures on your desk represent ties of love and obligation, as deep as any human ties we know. Breaking up with your spouse is a tragedy, a publicly-acknowledged heartbreak. You’re not expected to mourn that loss alone, just as you’re not expected to bear the burdens of caring for and serving your spouse with no social support.

The thing is… these markers of kinship were not always restricted to marriage. (And, as I said before, in some communities in America today they are still not all restricted to marriage.) If marriage is the only form of kinship we recognize, all other loves will be treated as lesser, as purely private. When only marriage counts, should we be surprised that marriage is overburdened? Should we be surprised that Americans report far fewer close relationships than in the past? You get more of what you honor; we’ve withdrawn from any form of public honor for nonmarital chosen kinship.

Forget the vow thing for a moment and ask yourself whether there are things you can change in your own life–in your role as boss or coworker, in the questions you ask your children, in the invitations you extend for family gatherings, in the degree to which you are willing to sacrifice pride or time or money for another person–which would support and strengthen your own friendships and those of the people you love. If you can think of any way to make devoted friendship more normal… maybe do that thing, you know? Even if you disagree with me on everything else.

“Steady, Eddie…”: But now, vows, since I do actually want to talk about them!

I think I messed up, in writing about this concept first for a piece about Gay Catholic Whatnot. In my own personal head, this was never an exclusively gay concept, though I think it should be obvious why it would be especially interesting to gay Catholics. But I thought at least as much about the many elderly women who make their homes, in their widowhood, with their best friends. A lot of families have these friendship pairs; a lot of families continue to care for the woman who is unrelated by blood, even after her blood-relation best friend dies. These are the “Aunties” who aren’t really Grandma’s sister. A formal vow might not matter to most of them; to some, however, it might seem as beautiful an acknowledgment of lifelong loyalty as it does to me.

Then there are veterans; then there are “straight” men who have virtually no way of articulating love for another man. I know that straight guys aren’t allowed to talk about beauty and gay stuff like that!–but maybe that’s also something we can change in our culture. It certainly isn’t a good feature of contemporary American life.

One thing I really like about the possibility of renewing this tradition is precisely that it would offer so much solidarity, so much common recognition, between disparate groups. I won’t denigrate my own concerns: Even if vowed friendship comes to be a “chaste gay thing,” it will still be shockingly beautiful and entirely worthy of honor. But I hope these vows actually offer an expansion of our vocabulary of love and kinship for everyone.

If I am astonishingly lucky, and this form of kinship is in fact renewed, I strongly suspect it will take several different forms. I would argue that the basics should still involve the Eucharist, a pledge of mutual loyalty and loving care, a promise to care for one another’s families, and a promise that the longest-surviving friend will arrange for Masses to be said for the souls of both friends. (Friendship always exists in the shadow of death, because it does not produce children. That’s one reason the art of friendship is death-haunted from Augustine to the Weakerthans. And it’s one reason that some form of fruitfulness and union beyond death should be a part of vowed friendship.) But other features of traditional friendship vows, such as living together, will vary. I wouldn’t necessarily be surprised if men’s friendships end up with somewhat different norms than women’s, though I couldn’t predict how, and I’d also be relatively unsurprised if they end up looking basically the same.

I know I keep saying this, but again I want to emphasize that this is lab research in theology: As with any tradition, you can’t control it; you can only attempt, with rhetoric and the example of your life, to guide the river. I don’t know how friendship will look in a hundred years, or even how it should look. I can rule things out, but I can’t set up an ideal model. All I can do is suggest things we might try.

Thorns of the Mystical Rose: I do want to address one strain of argumentation I’ve noticed, which is basically to point out ways in which intense, devoted friendships (whether vowed or not) can be dangerous if you are attracted to your friend but cannot marry her. Because yeah: That’s a danger. There are many friendships in which the best response is greater distance, a cooling-off.

But I absolutely do not believe that is true of all such relationships. Here are three angles of approach to that question (and I know I’m not disposing of every possible argument here, but I hope I’m at least giving food for thought):

1) All manner of pious practices can be misused, can become covers for sin. And yet at the Easter Mass I still got a plenary indulgence, you know? Cat’licks are always arguing that danger is not an argument against beautiful devotion–that the misuse doesn’t crowd out the use.

2) I am quite sure that a friendship vowed and sealed publicly in the Eucharist, in front of family and friends who know that these two friends have pledged fidelity not only to one another but to the Gospel and to Jesus Christ, is more likely to be chaste than a friendship which is purely private, often treated by others as trivial, and granted no religious significance.

3) If unintended–and explicitly disclaimed!–consequences can argue against a pious practice, may I please deploy that reasoning against the pious practice of stating that the Catholic Church offers no way of honoring same-sex love? Because the unintended consequence of that act is atheism, when it isn’t self-destruction.

So maybe we should accept that what we do and say can be misused and misunderstood, but it might still be worth doing and saying. She said, with a hint of acid.

No humility without humiliation: If you do want to make vows of same-sex friendship, I suspect you are in for a much harder time than Robin Darling Young had–especially if you’re gay (whether or not your friend is gay also, and whether or not you’re even attracted to her!). You will need to explain yourself, at tedious length I’d guess, to priests upon priests. You will need to figure out some way of introducing your friend which makes it clear both that she is part of your heart’s landscape and that the two of you are not sexually active. I can say from experience that the whole “I’m gay but chaste because of my religion” conversation is humiliating and awkward and you feel like an ass.

All of this is good for your own spiritual life, and also necessary to prevent scandal. But you should be prepared. Public love has public consequences.

And we have not yet developed a beautiful public language. You can be a pioneer!

Call it what you want, you’ve got a home here: So why is it worth it? Why would anyone bother with the dilemmas, both old (spouse vs. friend is a theme the old ballads knew well) and new (“I dance around in a gay, gay way, but I’m not gay!”)? Why bother with the humiliation? And in my case, why bother with the argument?

Well… for me it’s easy. I mean, first of all, on the lower level, the conversation around gay stuff in the Church can get so stifling and polarized! I desperately want to let in some oxygen, give people some sense that our contemporary battles and jargon are not the sum total of Catholic faith, good God. But there’s also something more.

For years and years I’ve seen the beauty of friendship. I’ve seen this unacknowledged, barely-supported love turn the water of our culture into wine. And then, not only did I find a way of honoring that love–so much more than that! I found a way of exalting it. To draw the strong wine of friendship into the Body and Blood of the Eucharist… it’s breathtaking. You know, you can all but hear Alan Bray catching his breath when he first sees the tomb of two devoted men friends… and years later, reading his book, I reacted the same way. There’s a feeling when your heart finds its home, and that home is so much more than you ever dreamed.

How could I not want to shout this from the rooftops?

Uncategorized

Previous Post

July 29, 2009

Next Post

July 29, 2009

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Art Best-Of Gay Catholic Whatnot Mackerel-Snapping self-obsessed Too much is never enough Uncategorized

Select a Month November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 August 2022 July 2022 May 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 February 2002 January 2002

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Gospel records the most parables?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Luke Mark Matthew John