The Sheepcat

A Changed Heart, Part 3

In Part 2, I recalled my former opposition to any attempt to change someone's homosexual orientation, and then my own emerging heterosexual desires, leading up to the pub night with Theresa, the only woman I've ever dated.

Seeking advice and support once she and I had had The Conversation, I turned to several male friends of mine from the Zacchaeus Fellowship who had left a gay lifestyle and gotten married.

You are familiar with some of the ground on which I'm treading, haltingly, sometimes anxiously and sometimes with that sense of being truly at ease in the company of a special someone. I feel a lot like an awkward teenager.

A Changed Heart, Part 2

Part 1 spans from my hesitant coming out to my best friend in high school, to a decade and a half of "out and proud" gay living, to meeting a woman named Theresa through a Catholic blog on same-sex attraction.

In March 2007 I had a spare ticket to Tafelmusik's performance of the St John Passion and offered it to the members of an informal Catholic reading group, first-come-first-served. It took me a moment to make the connection when Theresa, who I hadn't previously realized belonged to the group, phoned to claim the ticket.

She recalls that as we sat together in the balcony at Trinity-St Paul's she was seized by a wish that I would put my arm around her--though that would be crazy, because we'd only just met in person a few weeks earlier. Meanwhile, I myself had an impulse to put my arm around her--but how forward would that have been! So I didn't.

A Changed Heart, Part 1

"Al, you're not gay. Go to sleep." And with that rebuff, not unkind in its tone, my best friend dismissed my greatest worry in the world.

Earlier that evening as we had watched a Bond movie at the student centre, my mind kept jumping back to Topic H. I was on spring break from my final year of high school back in 1981 and visiting my friend, a freshman at one of the universities I was checking out for the fall. When we returned to his residence, I wanted desperately to talk but couldn't bring myself to raise the subject without the aid of lots of rum and Coke. At last I confessed that I thought I was ... might be ... gay--only to be told I wasn't, and that was that!

In the morning, both of us now sobered up, he assured me, "Just wait, and some little lady will come along and sweep you off your feet." I didn't believe him.

I continued to struggle with my sexuality, eventually deciding during the first work term of my co-op program at university that, like or not, I did have these feelings I would have to deal with. I had little sense of any other options, so I came to deal with the feelings by taking on a gay identity.

I came out to my friends and family. The column on gay and lesbian issues I wrote in the mid-80s was one of the first of its kind in a student newspaper in Canada. I represented the Waterloo student group on Toronto's Gay Community Dance Committee, which organized fundraising dances at the (Lord, have mercy!) Masonic Temple. I joined in countless marches and demonstrations for gay rights. You've heard of disco bunnies, who spent all their time on the dance floor; my lover's roommate aptly pegged me as a "Movement bunny."

Over the years, I would take a certain wry satisfaction in the ongoing failure of the well-meaning but naive prophecy by my friend from high school. If I was, as he'd said, "just going through a phase," this was one helluva long phase.

Well, the lady has arrived.

Mixed Anniversaries

One good friend of mine was born on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Someone else I know has her birthday today--at least her friends never forget her birthday anymore. My grandfather died on Valentine's Day; my grandmother died on my birthday. As long as we are in this world, we cannot escape the ongoing juxtaposition of joy and sorrow, delight and solemn remembrance.

And so it is that today, when I join the world in remembering the atrocities of 2001, I find myself marking the day also with thanksgiving for a blessed event four years later: my reception, by the grace of God, into full communion with the one holy catholic and apostolic Church. September 11 was not always a day of horror; in our lifetimes it will, Lord willing, not cease to be commemorated with respect for the suffering of its victims and for the heroism and compassion of so many who responded to that day's events, and yet we can remember too that life has gone on, will go on--until Our Lord comes in glory to judge the living and the dead.

Christian hope allows us to take the long view. While practical considerations were what suggested the date to me three years ago, I was not averse to letting it stand as a sign of trust, even in the face of the evil in our present era, that God has the ultimate victory.

My Parents' Prayers

I phoned my mother this evening to thank her. I am so grateful to her and my father for their prayers.

I recalled to her a terrible time twenty years ago, of which today is the anniversary. She didn't remember the date, but I've never forgotten that Victoria Day, 1988, was when our big fight began, an argument that threatened to completely tear me away from them when we most needed each other.

I found out they were praying for my deliverance from homosexuality.

Had been praying, for the three years since I'd come out to them. Three years. Three #%$&!@ years during which they hadn't said a thing to me about this. Not a thing. Three %&*$^ years.

At first I was too stunned to say anything. I didn't let on there was a problem and just let the full awfulness of the situation unfold as my mother explained what had been going on.

She and I had been talking on the Monday morning of the long weekend, talking about homosexuality, which was unusual for us. Normally she studiously avoided the topic, despite my many attempts to draw her into discussion. My father, a United Church minister, had heard me out on several occasions as I challenged the traditional church teaching on the subject. I thought he was reasonably sympathetic to my point of view. Mom, I knew, was not very comfortable about the whole business. But give her time, I thought, hopefully she'll come around.

Well! What a rude shock awaited me. She mentioned something about schoolteachers and role models. I stopped her. "Mom," I explained, "there are some terms that set off my alarm bells, and 'role model' is one of them, so you'd better tell me exactly what you mean."

At this point she buckled, revealing for the first time how distressed she and my father were about the "lifestyle" I was leading. My father too! ... okay, go on.

They'd met with a touring evangelist, Peter Marshall, Jr, when he visited Montreal. Marshall had prayed together with them that I be delivered from homosexuality, which he considered demonically inspired.

What a relief that I already had plans to go out for lunch with several good friends of mine, to whom I poured out my shock and hurt and anger about my parents. "Humour them," one friend advised me. I couldn't imagine how I could do that. This cut way too deep.

And what a time, too, for this all to be happening, when my father was seriously ill.

It got worse.

In the afternoon, once Dad came home, he revealed that he could find meaning in his illness and the possibility of his own death if somehow good might come of these for me and my brothers. In my case he was telling me he was prepared to die for the sake of taking away my sexuality. How could he say such a thing! Being gay wasn't just something I did, it was who I was. It was at the centre of my identity. And he was trying to take that away from me.

I might as well not exist. If somehow their prayers actually succeeded--I couldn't imagine how--it wouldn't be me anymore.

This was spiritual rape. Their prayers were an attack on my essence.

I controlled my fury, just playing along until I could get safely back to Toronto. Late in the afternoon, we hugged goodbye at the Dorval train station as if everything were perfectly normal between us.

For five hours I seethed, rehearsing in my mind everything I was going to say to them. By the time the train pulled into Union Station, I was ready to kill something.

I made my way home and called Montreal. With perfect restraint I told my parents I didn't want to talk further right then but I had to let them know I was absolutely furious with both of them.

Then I went for a walk. That night I marched clear across the city, practically, from College and Ossington to Main Street, roughly ten kilometres. I cursed my father, cursed especially my mother for turning him against me, cursed this Peter Marshall for poisoning their minds, cursed everybody and everything that stood in the way of my just being allowed to live my life in peace.

Ah yes, peace. "[T]he fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law" (Galatians 5:22-23). Whereas "the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like" (5:19-21). But in those days, though I attended Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto almost every Sunday, such passages of scripture were unfamiliar to me, and few doubts about the justice of my cause troubled me as fresh gusts continually whipped up my monologue into exquisite peaks of rage.

At last, exhausted, I boarded a streetcar to take me back to the west end. Around 3 in the morning, I plodded up to the house and upstairs, and tumbled into bed.

To be continued.

And There Were Added That Day About Three Thousand Souls

Marvellous news via Rorate Coeli: three thousand members of the Assyrian Catholic Apostolic Diocese (ACAD) in California under the leadership of Bishop Mar Bawai Soro were received into the Chaldean Catholic Church this past weekend of Pentecost Sunday. If I understand correctly, the Assyrian Church of the East, from which they came home to full communion with Rome, is not an Orthodox Church but a Nestorian sect.

Link via CWN.

Couple Reverses Sterilization

A friend of Radical Catholic Mom's tells how she and her husband decided to reverse the vasectomy he'd had done before they reverted to the Catholic faith. It's a remarkable story, concisely told, and I enjoyed this remark:

Unfortunately I don’t think that NFP is presented nearly enough [in RCIA] and one of its pitfalls is that some of the best NFP stories are from larger families. People see this and automatically think that NFP is only appropriate if you want to raise a baseball team or something which is totally not the case.

De Marco: Conversion Is the Crossing of a Threshold

Pietro De Marco responds to Aref Ali Nayed's criticism of the baptism of Magdi Cristiano Allam, and to some Catholics who, in their haste to recoil from any hint of triumphalism, show a kind of embarrassment instead of joy at the entry of another soul into the Christian fold.

In effect, conversion is always the crossing of a threshold. It marks this threshold, it shows it where it had not appeared before, making it visible to those who out of habit or through cloudiness of vision no longer recognized it, or to those who, although knowing it, deny it out of ideology, nihilistically....

The fact that the arrival point is not guaranteed, that it must always be desired as if it were not possessed, as a gift that remains under the sovereignty of the Giver, all of this does not negate, but rather confirms the reality of the threshold. The precariousness of the gift, in fact, is such only for man. But with the crossing of the threshold, we know that He, the divine Lover (as the true mystics know him, beyond his ineffability) "takes us as it were by the hand, and introduces us to lasting life, to the true and correct life." And therefore: "Let us hold on tightly to his hand!". These are the tender, perfect words dedicated to baptism by Benedict XVI at the homily for the Easter vigil, at which Allam was baptized.

Chiesa is proving invaluable to me as a source of sober commentary on the West's relations with Islam in its diverse forms, neither marching to the drumbeat of American neoconservatism nor embracing a woolly-minded Eurorelativism.

Outspoken Journalist Converts

The biggest religious news from the Easter weekend was the Pope's baptism of Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born Italian journalist who has been an outspoken critic of radical Islam. I don't have anything original to add here but agree with Samir Khalil Samir, sj, writing an excellent commentary in Asia News:

[J]ust as with the Regensburg address, this baptism is a message in defence of religious freedom, of evangelisation and of co-existence between religions....

What is for me somewhat disjoined is that [Allam] chose the moment of his baptism to continue his analysis of Islamic fundamentalism.  That was the precise moment in which Magdi could have communicated how Christianity is the fulfilling of Islam’s religious leanings.

The original story as covered by ZENIT: Magdi Allam Recounts His Path to Conversion.

Fr Federico Lombardi, a spokesman for the Vatican, defends the baptism while saying the Pope does not necessarily agree with all Allam's opinions. Says Lombardi,

Maybe this is why the pope accepted the risk of this baptism: to affirm the freedom of religious choice which derives from the dignity of the human person.

John Allen weighs in with thoughts on why the baptism of this one man was carried out in such a prominent manner that anyone could predict it would arouse a strong reaction in Muslim quarters.

• For a pope committed to reawakening a strong missionary spirit in Catholicism, receiving a high-profile convert during the Easter Vigil is a symbolic way of making the point. In effect, Benedict is saying that the church shouldn't shrink from receiving anyone who knocks on its door, even if there's a political price to be paid.
• Allam's baptism can also be read as a statement of solidarity with Muslim converts to Christianity around the world, many of whom suffer in various ways on account of that decision.
• Finally, the episode illustrates an important wrinkle to Benedict's personality -- stubborn indifference to the canons of political correctness. Benedict is a gracious figure, but he also refuses to sanitize what he regards as important matters of belief or practice in order to avoid PR headaches. Whether that amounts to moral courage or tone-deafness to public reaction is a matter of opinion, but the pattern is clear.

Sherry Weddell at Intentional Disciples

• gets into an interesting exchange over the prudence of giving the baptism such a high profile
• explains the main reasons Muslims give for converting to Christianity and shows (scroll down to near the end of the comments) why there's more to evangelism than speechifying
• clarifies just what one prominent Muslim cleric said about freedom of conscience.

Welcome Home

One of the great pleasures of the Easter season is to read stories about people from all walks of life who, by the grace of God, have been led to the bosom of Holy Mother Church and received into full communion at the Easter Vigil.

Nathan Kennedy, a student who had enrolled in a liberal Catholic college precisely because it wasn't very religious.

The fullness of truth does not come without its costs. Our faith is not something that should work to make us comfortable where we are, rather, it is something that that should make us bitterly uncomfortable where we are whenever we are not fully in God's presence. There is no salvation without the cross.

Allen Hunt, a former Methodist minister.

“Finally, I have always struggled with the idea I call ‘doctrine by democracy.’ I simply struggle with the concept that we Protestants vote on certain things to decide what is true.”

Ten inmates who received the sacraments from Cincinnati Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk.

Fellow inmate Bernard Perfetto said what drew him to Catholicism was "the message of love, forgiveness and hope -- three things that are in short supply in prison."

A friend of Mark Shea's with a good first confession story.

So I pray, "Mary, Mother of my God, help me to make a good confession.", and immediately as I start praying, in my mind's eye, she's there leaning over the back of the chair in front of me; she's got one hand on either of my shoulders and she's leaning in, like a mom telling her child something important, and she's praying for me. I can't hear what she's saying, but IT'S GONNA BE ALRIGHT because the Mother of my God is Praying for me and it's gonna be just fine!

SF author John C. Wright, who turned to Christianity a few years ago, has made a few choice remarks upon getting his formal religious affiliation aligned with the essentially Catholic worldview that readers of his blog have noticed.

I just hope the omnidroid created by Richard Dawkins in his secret volcano-base on Skull Island does not find me before I can swallow the Secret Power Bread that is the source of my strength! I carry a pellet of that bread in a secret compartment in my crucifix-shaped switchblade-throwing-star.

I just hope they don't ask me to pray, repent and confess my sins, live purely, or tithe to charity or anything. I would hate to join a demanding religion. Whew. Glad I dodged that bullet!

And

Third question: why are my favorite authors, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Gene Wolfe, Mike Flynn, G.K. Chesterton, all members of this monstrous Syriac cult known as Christianity? I do like my freethinker authors just fine, but Bob Heinlein, Ayn Rand, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke seem to have trouble with realism in characterization, both with their invented people, and with their invented societies.

Tripp, the husband of Barbara (Mommy Life) Curtis.

After much study and even more prayer, I know that my home is rooted in the Catholic tradition. I found that most of my concerns were from being misinformed and the more I investigated the more I realized that the Church fathers were right.

On Monday a woman I know announced, seemingly out of the blue, that she'd just been received into the Catholic Church. She is anxious about how some Protestant friends will react but already is loving the "communion of saints" and feels as if she's come home.

I recalled to her the Chestertonian image of the Church as a great cavern whose immensity one doesn't truly understand until one has stepped inside. It's infinite, in fact, because it is the mystical Body of Christ. And something actually happens when we receive the Sacrament of Confirmation. The Easter Vigil powerfully reminds us that the Sacraments are a gift.