Queering the Church towards a reality based theology

I have always overshadowed Jonas with my mercy, and cruelty I know not at all.   Have you caught sight of me Jonas, my child? Mercy within mercy within mercy.

-Thomas Merton

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Let me introduce myself: my name is Jonah.  Well, I call myself Jonah! (Kind of like Phoebe at the end of “All About Eve.”) After entering into a dialogue with Terence and a few others on a recent thought-provoking post in the insightful and searingly honest blog by JohnQ: A Gay Priest’ s Spiritual Journals, I was graciously asked to consider becoming a contributor to “Queering the Church”.  I am a gay man and I am a Roman Catholic priest in a religious community.  I am in my mid-forties and was ordained just a little over 17 years ago. My life has always been marked by contradiction.  As a child I was sexually abused.  Until that point I always felt an attraction to the church and the priesthood.  After that I felt worthless and like damaged goods.  Yet God kept pursuing me.  I was furious at God.  I remember screaming one day at the Lord himself “If you want me to be a priest why did you allow to happen to me what happened to me?  No!  You blew it!  I cannot be a priest I am utterly worthless.”  Well, like the surly prophet himself, I resisted but at last I was able to reach a point when I felt I could no longer say “no.”   It wasn’t so much as “yes” as it was the loss of the ability to say “no.”  So I went to the seminary feeling at the deepest reaches of myself as utterly unworthy.  How could God want me?  Where was he when I needed him? (I can’t listen to the Erasure song “Where Were You” even today without being reduced to tears!)  But there I was caught in the belly of the whale!

After a few years in seminary I discovered that I am a gay man.  ”Oh that’s just great Jesus… what more?”  Actually it was one of the most liberating moments of my life.  I was seeing a campus psychologist as part of my formation work and discovered why I had such intense passion for a number of men in my past and in my present.  But like the enraged teenager who couldn’t fathom why God would keep calling a messed up case like me this was another doozy: “What God? You want me to be a priest and a gay man now too?” And in so many ways that has been the question at the heart of my vocation and the only answer I’ve ever been given by God is “Yes!”  No instructions, no how to… God just said “Be both!”  I could have fought off my same-sex desires, but God said “No, that’s not how it’s done!”  I could have abandoned my vocation but God said “No, that’s not how its done!”  ”Be both… completely!” Well, I will go into more details of the journey in the course of my contributions here on QTC, but suffice it to say I’ve come to discover that most of my life has been lived in the belly of the whale, as a sign of contradiction and the journey of my life is not to resolve the conflict but be transformed by it instead.  It ain’t easy!  Anyone reading this who has been there knows it ain’t easy… but there is grace there.  A strange and sometimes overpowering grace that I do not understand and I cannot comprehend and the good news is: I don’t have to!

That’s why I call myself Jonah because somehow I’ve caught sight of the meaning behind Thomas Merton’s brilliant words that I quoted above (from the amazing Epilogue from “The Sign of Jonas” entitled “Fire watch, July 4, 1952) I was once convinced that God was “cruel” but he isn’t.  It is just that his “Mercy” can seem cruel because s/he is relentless with it.  I think that is why Merton describes it as “mercy within mercy within mercy.”  It is endless.  It is relentless.  And it cauterizes the deepest wounds in us and that honestly hurts like hell.  But God is not “cruel.”  I’ve been cruel to myself, and yes, sad to say the institutional church has been cruel as well… but God is NOT cruel.  As Merton states in the voice of God: What was vile has become precious.  What is now precious was never vile.  I have always known the vile as precious: for what is vile I know not at all… I touched what was without substance, and within what was not, I am.  I was convinced that I was vile.  God sees me as precious.  I was convinced that I was “without substance” but it was within what I thought “was not” that God taught me to say “I am.”  Don’t get me wrong, it hasn’t been an easy journey and the healing goes on and on.  I still can hurt myself worse than anyone else because such shame runs deep it just doesn’t run my life any more.

So what are my intentions with these contributions “From the Belly of the Whale”?  I don’t have answers and I don’t pretend to. But I have reached a place in my life where I want to share who I am and what God is doing for me as a gay man who is a Catholic priest.  I want to have conversations and dialogue about how we can continue to support, encourage, love, and pray for each other and this church of ours… love it, pray it, and perhaps even push it into the transformation it so badly needs to undergo.  None of this is easy and I do not have any desire to go it alone… none of us should have to go it alone… not anymore.  So I want to share my story from the belly of the whale… my life of on-going contradictions that constantly throw me back into the arms of God.  Sometimes filled with rage, sometimes still the hurt little boy who felt betrayed, and sometimes a man who knows beyond any common sense that God is in this… in all of this and he isn’t cruel.  I want to learn with all of you who might read this, and learn from all of you who might read this, how to become what James Alison has called “the forgiving victim.” (a prospect that still scares the hell out of me!).  So, my name is Jonah and I am reaching out from the belly of the whale and I hope we can find each other spat up on shore!

(Terence adds:

A hearty welcome to Jonah. This frank, and honest self-declaration holds great promise for future posts. I would also like to remind all my readers that any one of you who would also be interested in contributing posts, would be welcome to make an approach. Write to terence @ queerchurch.com)

Books:

Arpin, Robert L:  Wonderfully, Fearfully Made: Letters on Living With Hope, Teaching Understanding, And Ministering With Love, from a Gay Catholic Priest With AIDS

McGinley, Dugan: Acts of Faith, Acts of Love: Gay Catholic Autobiographies as Sacred Texts 

Murray, Paul: Life in Paradox: The Story of a Gay Catholic Priest 

Stuart, Elisabeth: Chosen: Gay Catholic Priests Tell Their Stories

 Wagner, Richard: Secrecy, Sophistry and Gay Sex In The Catholic Church: The Systematic Destruction of an Oblate Priest

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