The Sheepcat

My Father's Sacrificial Love

On this the anniversary of my father's death, I honour his memory and ask for prayers for the repose of his soul. He was a minister of the United Church of Canada, and I now find it fitting that his anniversary coincides with the Feast of the Presentation, with its Gospel reading "Lord, now let your servant depart in peace" (Luke 2:29).

Several years ago I recalled the huge fight I had with my parents over their prayers for my deliverance from homosexuality. That post was gruelling to write, and I finally delivered the promised follow-up to it this past June over at Reclaim the Rainbow – Toronto in the form of a reflection on how my father's sacrificial love helped me become the man I am today. Thank you, Dad, and thank you, God, for all you have given me.

Anglicanism Isn't for Me

The news that I’m preparing to attend an Anglican academic girls’ school reunion has prompted a friend of ours to inquire about my view of the Anglican church. And it’s a fine day for him to have posed the question, because (in the Novus Ordo calendar) May 4 just happens to be the feast of the martyrs of England and Wales. (Canadian readers, please note that, in our country, today is instead identified with Blessed Marie-Léonie Paradis, because she was Québecoise.)

Although I was, like The Sheepcat, partly from a United Church clergy family, I was raised high Anglican. At age 8 I started asking hard questions about Anglicanism, and at age 13 I made my profession of faith for reception into full communion with the Catholic Church. My experience of thirteen years at an Anglican school – I chose to stay there following my conversion – had little to do with my decision to become Catholic; much of the Scriptural instruction I received there was very helpful, and I am very grateful for many blessings from that time, especially that of friendship. It did matter that my grade 3 classmates and I talked about whether or not we self-identified as Protestant; it was my early understanding that I simply belonged to the English branch of the Catholic Church, a claim which didn’t withstand scrutiny.

My objection to Anglicanism did not arise for the same reasons as many others’ in the ’70s – abortion and women’s ordination (which I do oppose but didn’t understand as a little child); huge crises of conscience were triggered amongst certain adults with the first ordination of a woman to the Canadian Anglican clergy, on November 1, 1976.

And I’m glad I wasn’t so sophisticated as to fully comprehend the politics around me. Rather, I was young and simple enough to be struck by the whole question of origins. In fairness, my Anglo-Catholic environment was pretty Roman-friendly; and the parishes where I was baptized and raised were linked with the Oxford Movement.

Every year church school [Sunday school] students like me were given a faith-related gift. Mine included a Bible-based story book, a statue of Our Lady, and a rosary. Except for the belief that the Queen was the Head of the Church, I was taught nothing inconsistent with Catholicism, and in fact, I received much better catechesis than many of my cradle-Catholic contemporaries. I even believed in the Real Presence (and I was horrified to learn later the early history of Anglicanism that was so destructive to the Sacraments). I didn’t know that I wasn’t being taught mainstream Anglicanism.

One Sunday thirty years ago – it was a warm morning between Easter and Pentecost – the church school teacher moved our class outside to the lawn, and set about introducing the Apostles’ Creed. “And who were the Apostles?” she asked. Hands went up. One child said they were the Disciples. Another child said they were the Evangelists. And a third child changed my life by saying, “They were the Catholics.”

Big wow. Did that mean there were people who were more like the Apostles than us? How could that be?

See, no Anglican child I knew was ever taught about Henry VIII, because no parents or teachers wanted us to emulate him. So at 8 years old, when I realized that Jesus had founded one Church and Henry VIII another, and I was in the latter, I felt cheated.

I would like to think that, had I lived in Henry VIII’s time, I would have been among those like Erasmus and Thomas More, who advocated Christian humanism and tried to reform the Church from within, perhaps at the price of my life. In university I eventually did a fourth-year paper on how Henry’s personal violation of the marriage covenant led to the wider disruption of communion and the inevitable break, in 1930, with the sexual morality with which Christians have been identified from the beginning. The fruits of a church founded on adultery have included desecration of the Sacraments to ensure a break from apostolic succession; and in turn, doctrinal confusion. (Doctrinal confusion later challenged the Catholic Church, which is now in the midst of a reform-of-the-reform.) And the schisms continued exponentially after the foundation of Anglicanism and other early Protestant churches, so that today we have thousands upon thousands of Christian denominations.

I very much resisted leaving the best world I had ever known till then, but nothing was ever the same after that Sunday. I was happily enrolled in a Catholic Sunday school the next fall. At 13 I converted formally and eagerly to Catholicism, making my profession of faith for reception into full communion.

Others on that lawn were on a similar pathway, and my Anglican church school teacher became my Catholic Confirmation sponsor. As I grew up we lost touch, though I did see her briefly upon the passing of our old pastor, another convert. She went to Quebec and became a Sister in the Congregation of Notre Dame. I heard her news through other convert friends, and was able to write to her before my wedding to The Sheepcat. I extended a printed invitation along with a handwritten letter acknowledging that she would probably be unable to attend, because of illness and frailty. The Sister wrote back, declining the invitation as expected, but telling me two great things.

First, she was confident that our marriage would be successful, because I had known to describe The Sheepcat as “a gift from God.” Second, she has prayed for me every day of my life. Another big wow! From our various wedding guests we received small gifts and large gifts and no gifts and fancy gifts – but this Sister’s intangible gift was the best of them all, and without it, I don’t know how I would have turned out. (Subsequent to our engagement, I joined The Sheepcat in teaching Confirmation at our parish. I tell this anecdote to our students, to encourage them to carefully choose holy sponsors.)

As for the rest: A couple of the Anglicans I knew as a child have become large-E Evangelicals; almost all the rest are now Catholics or Orthodox Christians who are also small-e evangelicals. Meanwhile, most current Anglicans my husband and I know are either swimming the Tiber as a group, or struggling within the various fractured remnants of the Anglican Church of Canada. “The time [has] come when people [do] not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, … accumulate teachers and … stop listening to the truth and [are] diverted to myths” (2 Tim 4:3-5).

I’m too hungry to have stayed in a church setting without nourishing food. As a Christian who accepts the Creed, I’m left with the fundamental issue of what to do with John 6. Here are some chapter excerpts:

v 51: “‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.’”
v 55: “‘For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.’”
v 60: “Then many of his disciples who were listening said, ‘This saying is hard; who can accept it?’”
v 66: “As a result of this, many (of) His disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied Him.”

Typically, only those Churches (Catholic and Orthodox) which maintain apostolic succession teach that Christ is truly present on the altar as He promised to be. Sacred Tradition is sacred. Other traditions may not be.

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.

Update (2 February 2012): At last, on the anniversary of my father's death, I've linked to the follow-up post, a Father's Day reflection on how his sacrificial love helped me become the man I am today.

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.