The current round of scandals involving pedophile Catholic priests and the Church hierarchy that covers up their crimes, is by turns tragic, stomach-churning and disgraceful. As a gay man who has often heard the Catholic Church calling my "lifestyle" sinful, the hypocrisy of it all is clear enough. But while it would be easy to dismiss the Church outright for the many ways it contradicts some of the basic tenets of Christ's teachings, I nonetheless feel a deep sympathy and sadness right now for people of faith who genuinely find solace and hope in Church teachings and community. Their trust has been violated, though not as horrifically as the hundreds of deaf boys who were abused by Wisconsin's now infamous Father Murphy.
My somewhat forgiving attitude towards the Church is no doubt the product of my upbringing. For the most part, our family had vaguely Catholic leanings. As children we had our first communions and, later, our confirmations, and Christmas and Easter were important family holidays. But only a few members of my extended family seemed deeply involved in church life. My older brother Frank was one of them. He was only 18 months older than me and died the year I turned 40 (I am 47 today), and throughout our lives together his faith was something that I watched, learned from, and was clearly deeply affected by. He's always especially on my mind at this time of year as Holy Week - the days between Palm and Easter Sunday - was his favorite time of year.
To make a long story short, my brother, who attended Catholic high school and a Jesuit college, had a vocation to become a priest, but he never fulfilled that dream. At one point he attended the seminary, but for reasons that were never clear, he was forced to leave. Abandoning that vocation was painful for him, though it would be hard to explain how it ultimately impacted his faith.
Throughout his life, my brother was my main connection to my own sense of being Catholic. He loved Church history and could give you capsule bios of the major saints (and many of the minor one). He could tell you the names of a succession of Popes the way Doris Kearns Goodwin could rattle off the names of American Presidents. He could explain - even when he disagreed with it - why the church had a certain policy, such as not allowing priests to marry or not ordaining women. But despite our close relationship, I never bought into any of the dogmatic aspects of the Church. I didn't feel guilty that I didn't attend church every Sunday, and even before I really understood that I was gay I never thought homosexuality could possibly be a sin.
What really connected me to the Church was my brother's involvement in sacred music. It was because of my brother that I learned a great deal of it - from Anglican hymns and numerous organ works, to various Requiems (Faure's still move me to tears) and other masses (such as my very favorite, Mozart's Great Mass in C minor) and choral pieces (including Handel's Messiah, of course) that I continue to listen to with deep appreciation and great feeling. He sang in a number of choirs throughout his life, including the St. Patrick's Cathedral Choir on 5th Avenue, and going to hear him sing at Midnight Mass or on Easter Sunday was genuinely a thrilling experience. As my career in music developed, and my knowledge of the repertoire expanded, one of my great joys was introducing my brother to works of a sacred or spiritual nature that I had discovered - such as Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony or just about anything by Messiaen, the great French composer who celebrated his vibrant (Catholic!) faith in virtually every work he wrote.
There were days, though, when my brother would share with me some of the stories of what he saw behind the scenes at the church, and at the seminary: stories of priests drowning their sorrows in alcohol, or frequenting gay bars on Saturday and calling the "gay lifestyle" sinful on Sunday. Of course the sins of a minority can't define an entire institution, but the older I got, the more I discussed the church with my brother, and the more I seriously considered some of its teachings and practices - the relegation of women to second class status being just one issue - the more I realized that the church and I had irreconcilable differences.
Still, f you ask me at an unguarded moment if I'm religious, I'd probably still say that I'm a Catholic. You can take a boy out of the Bronx, but....well you know how the saying goes. Perhaps "mystical Christian" would be the better term to describe my faith, combining belief in Jesus's message of universal love, humility and forgiveness, with an inexplicable connection to the great mystery of life that people of many different faiths call God.
I never expect to experience a rapprochement with the Catholic Church, but as I listened early this Palm Sunday morning to Allegri's sublime Miserere in my apartment at sunrise before heading to San Francisco on a business trip, I realized that it has been music, and not the message coming from today's Church, that has helped keep my faith alive. In that spirit, I offer my hope that music might provide comfort to other disenchanted, disenfranchised and dismissed Catholics who are struggling to make sense of the recent, but probably not last, revelations.
Follow Albert Imperato on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ajimperato
Paul Brandeis Raushenbush: Sin, Love and Liberation in the Crucifixion of Jesus
As we both have lived with AIDS for 25 years, and each survived a previous lover lost to the pandemic, I have NOTHING but detest for the Catholic church, and their spending millions in state after state to attack LGBT families hasn't helped my anger at pope Ratzi.
My lover's beliefs are his own and don't intrude on our life together, and he allows me to have my anger at His church.
As a surivor of sexual abuse who has sat in rooms with those who were raped (let's not call it by a more politically correct term) by priests I know full well the impact including the profound challenge to their religious beliefs. The scandals now emerging in Europe are no surprise to us in the 'recovery community" ..the issue was when, not whether, these scandals would surface.
I think one can separate the elegant work of Notre Dame, or the grace of profound religious music, from the nature of the Catholic Church as a deeply damaged organiation,. Maintaining a sytem that perpetuates and conceals the rapes of children is not a healthy organization. In fact, in order to appreciate the beauty of Notre Dame, it is critical for me to separate it from the structure (and stricture) of the current church hierarchy and its self-defending and utterly obscene behavior.
I wish all devout Catholics (or casually cultural Catholics) who believe (or longlingly wish to believe) that the Pope is "right" would sit, on a quiet evening, and listen to the story of one of their colleauges who was raped by a priest. it would be an opportunity to learn.
Rather than respond to each of the comments individually, I just wanted to re-emphasize the point that my own desire to respect the beliefs - misguided or not - of others (including my own brother's) colored my own view of the Church and, without a doubt, tempered my own criticism of its worst behavior. But I feel now that I've reached a tipping point, which is what prompted me to write my original post. I can't tell believing Catholics what they should do, but I feel strongly now that the only good that can come out of the recent revelations is for rank and file Catholics to hold their leaders accountable. The hierarchy of the Church may cling to its code of silence, but people of genuine faith need to make real noise now and call out for transparency and accountability.
I associate the Vatican with despotism and authoritarianism - and with a human institution that would do anything within its power to further the illusion that it is a divinely-guided one. This is the institution that not only produced the Medici Popes, and put out a contract on Elizabeth I, but was equally happy to get into bed with Franco in Spain (citing him as Defender of the Faith)! And the same Pope who made that decision is apparently now on the fast track to Sainthood! I wonder how Franco's victims would feel about this? Perhaps Ratzinger should attempt to confer with them in eternity?
But it's comforting to know that John Paul II saw fit to apologize to Galileo 350 years later! Truthfully, the more that read or listen to histories of Western Europe since the Reformation, the more I get this sense that the Church's sins in the modern era pale in comparison to its sins in the bad old days. It apparently never met a Catholic dictator it didn't approve of, so long as that dictator permitted it to dictate and brainwash in areas involving religion and culture.
As for Frank, you should rejoice that he found love and acceptance outside the Seminary - and that he was surrounded by family in his hour of need.
cont
But I digress from your wonderfully insightful submission. I too can feel for the average Catholic lay person who's good will faith is taking a huge beating in these times, much as my evangelical sister's "faith" is confronted with the truths of our sexuality and the church's historical lies about us. So much of modern Christianity's "faith" structure has been hung up on false sexual traditions that for them to be confronted with the scandals, hypocrisies and provable lies must be causing them to reel in confusion and uncertainty. I do have compassion for them in that regard.
But I have none for the hypocrisies and willful ignorance of religious leadership, Catholic or otherwise. They deserve what is happening to them.
To the lay persons of whatever christian faith tradition I would advise them to do what I did as I went thru my agony of internal "coming out", cling to faith in Jesus and the principles he tried to teach. Even if you can't believe in his divinity, cling to the Spirit he represented. Let all the ritualistic trappings and power tripping fall away like scales from your eyes and free yourself from the traps of tradition for the sake of tradition, for "faith" in tradition is not Faith.
Then you will discover, as I did, Peace within your self.
Here's some comfort for you.
Walk away.
Your presence gives the Church power;
without you, they have nothing.
Try it. Walk away. I promise, you'll feel better.
(And you'll be doing a good thing.)
This statement is just stunning to me. I just can't understand how you can identify with it.
It's called Stockholm syndrome, isn't it? :-)
Then I began to think for myself and questioned not only the church's claim of infallibility but the very existence of god. I embraced reason. Still, through all of this, I never cared about religion's role in the world's problems. That is, until 2002, when the first of the CHILD RAPE scandals broke. The first thing that came out of THAT pope's mouth was about how the homosexuals in the church had perpetrated all of this. It was then that I had had it!
Anyone who accepts the moral authority of a bunch of 'celibate' men in dresses, many of whom are self-loathing gays with proclivities toward sex with children needs to have their heads examined. If you leave your children with these monsters, then what do you expect, knowing what you do? This willful ignorance on the part of the loyal congregation would be laughable if it didn't result in CHILD RAPE.
If the church is so completely on the wrong side of morality on THIS issue, then how can anyone trust anything that they say? Do people actually believe that condoms CAUSE the spread of AIDS? Yes, especially in Africa, where access to better information is non-existent. So not only are these people CHILD RAPISTS, they're MURDERERS, too.
I will no longer apologize for refusing to indulge people's self-delusion when it comes to this group of CHILD RAPISTS and APOLOGISTS.