The Sheepcat

Back in the Saddle

Welcome, readers from The Catholic Register. For an overview of the blog, we recommend the "Best of the Sheepcat" links in the left sidebar, including an account of The Sheepcat's rage at his parents when he found they were praying for him to leave a gay lifestyle and our three-part engagement story.

We're looking forward to blogging again on a more regular basis. Loyal readers of The Sheepcat will know that for the past year we've been preoccupied with a serious illness in the family; we're happy to report that the family member in question is now settled in a nursing home very close to our home and parish.

Our improved family circumstances have allowed us to proceed at last with the long-time invitation to co-facilitate a Toronto chapter of EnCourage, which had not been active for many years. EnCourage offers peer and pastoral support for family and friends of persons with same-sex attraction. It and Courage are the only Church-approved apostolates dealing with SSA. We plan to begin monthly meetings of EnCourage Toronto in the fall, and in the meantime we've been accepting referrals to speak with affected individuals. To be clear, our blog represents our own views and not necessarily those of the Courage Apostolate.

A separate and more recent initiative has been the founding of the policy group Reclaim the Rainbow – Toronto, which consists of Toronto-area Catholics who have experience of SSA either in themselves or among their loved ones, and who are loyal to the Magisterium. We have been lobbying our local Catholic school trustees to provide authentically Catholic support at the level of home, parish, and school.

We greatly appreciate the excellent new document from the Commission for Doctrine of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) entitled "Pastoral Ministry toYoung People with Same-Sex Attraction." Without compromising on any of the hard teachings, our bishops offer compassionate guidance to the Catholic community at large, priests and pastoral workers, parents, educators, and especially young people themselves. Ottawa's Archbishop Prendergast explains to Canadian Catholic News, "If we are going to be Catholic school boards and we are going to try to have equality and equity in our outreach to young people then we need to be clear about what the Church’s teaching is." Rightly the document warns, "Avoidance of difficult questions or watering down the Church’s teaching is always a disservice. Such attitudes could lead young people into grave moral danger." LifeSiteNews has responded with grateful coverage, while an editorial from The Catholic Register commends the letter.

The choice of Monday as the document's release date was significant. This is Pride Week in Toronto, a time when increasing numbers of people affected by same-sex attraction and seeking an alternative to a gay lifestyle have been seeking the support of Courage or EnCourage. It also marked six months since the death of Courage co-founder Father John Harvey, at the hour of mercy on the feast of his namesake, the Beloved Disciple.

Readers of The Sheepcat may recognize part of a photo we used in our post memorializing Fr Harvey in today's Catholic Register profile of The Sheepcat. In media interviews and public appearances we consistently reiterate our position that we can't operationalize the unmerited grace The Sheepcat received as he discovered heterosexual attraction. Sometimes parents of a same-sex-attracted child hear our story and hope we can offer some program of change for their child. That's not our message; Courage is for chastity, not marriage, and we surrender the particular outcome to God. For parents faithful to Church teaching and hopeful that their child will leave (or be preserved from) a gay lifestyle, our message is this: Pray without ceasing, never giving up on your child, and make sure he or she knows that no matter what he or she does, you and God will always, always love him or her.

We can and do testify to the powerful experience of unconditional love, therapy, support groups, the Rosary, and Eucharistic Adoration; not to do so would be for The Sheepcat to be one of the nine lepers who didn't go back to thank Jesus (Luke 17:11-19). We're also honest in explaining that The Sheepcat continues to experience a degree of same-sex attraction, which is no barrier to our joyously living out our vocation to married life. As compelling as The Sheepcat's story is, though, the stories of our faithful celibate friends with SSA are even more compelling. We're eager to include their voices along with ours as, with the help of your prayers, we continue to proclaim the truth about God's design for our sexuality.

Happy Anniversary, Holy Family!

Today our parish celebrated the tenth anniversary of the dedication of Holy Family Church, which was rebuilt after a 1997 fire destroyed the original building.

The grill in front of the tabernacle bears the inscription "Domus mea domus orationis vocabitur," which comes from Isaiah 56:7. "My house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples." It really is a house of prayer, being open to the public daily from early morning until 9 p.m. It's such a blessing to be able to walk two blocks from our apartment and spend a few minutes kneeling before our Lord in the tabernacle.

Holy Family Church will always be special to us as the place of our wedding and where one of us was received into the Catholic Church. We owe a great debt to the Fathers of the Oratory for all they do in the service of the Lord.

"I was glad when they said unto me, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord.'"

Rev John F. Harvey, OSFS, RIP

Father John Harvey, founder of the Courage Apostolate, passed away at the hour of mercy, Monday, December 27. He was 92. We've been temporarily inactive with this blog in recent months (and we ask our readers' continued prayers), but we're making an exception because of the special circumstances.

We met Fr Harvey in January 2009, when he came to the Archdiocese of Toronto on a speaking tour. At a time when some family members and friends had grave reservations about The Sheepcat's capacity to be a husband, he believed in us and helped us to prepare for the great sacrament of marriage. While marriage is not the goal of Courage (most members who wish to pursue the possibility of opposite-sex relationship seek professional help outside the group), he had seen enough successes to know that The Sheepcat's transition was authentic and that we would have what we needed for our life together. We were touched that he made time to see us privately, and his advice to us has proven valuable.

The occasion of that five-day visit is memorialized in the first-ever Salt and Light FOCUS episode on homosexuality, which features Fr Harvey and other interviewees, including us.

We and other Courage members saw him again when he returned to Toronto for a social visit in August of that year, a few weeks after our wedding. Here we are at the end of the Courage lunch.

We remember Fr Harvey with affection and gratitude. May he rest in peace, and may his ministry flourish. Already a cause is pending for the canonization of his Courage co-founder, Terence Cardinal Cooke, and we wouldn't be surprised to one day see a cause put forward for Fr Harvey too.

Courage has posted a brief notice, which links to a memorial by the Order of St Francis de Sales, the order to which he belonged for 73 years. How fitting that Fr Harvey died on the feast day of his namesake, the beloved disciple, St John the Evangelist.

Thanksgiving

On this Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, we thank God for our marriage and all the other blessings in our lives.

We've been meaning to reply to a few comments that readers posted here on the blog the some months ago or shared with us in person, but since June we've been providing care to a much-loved family member who's been in hospital with a serious illness. Please be patient and know that you're in our prayers. As ever, we ask for yours.

Mrs Sheepcat Officially Joins the Blog

Several major pro-life publications have carried the work of the former Miss Blanche the Davidian under her real maiden name, and she has already written a guest post here under her "maiden alias." By the time Mrs Sheepcat and I met, she had been interested in Catholic perspectives on homosexuality, this blog's primary theme, for more than a decade. And we do a lot together, perhaps more than many couples. So we decided a while ago that she should become a joint author of the blog.

We updated the tagline accordingly – "Catholic commentary by a former gay activist and his wife" – and hope to freshen up the blog in various ways over the coming weeks.

Mrs Sheepcat has a few posts in the pipeline, but her health has not been very good lately. She has major surgery scheduled for next month. We ask for your prayers.

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.

Solemn High Mass for Candlemas

On Tuesday, St Brigid's in the east end of Toronto saw its first Solemn High Mass in probably 45 years or more. Fr Venette of the FSSP was the celebrant, and two transitional deacons from St Augustine's Seminary filled the roles of deacon and subdeacon.

All told, the celebrant and his assistants and we singers in the choir loft together with the people in the pews numbered more than a hundred. Not a bad turnout for a first-time event on a snowy night.

The occasion was Candlemas: in the 1962 Missal, the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary; and in the Ordinary Form, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord.

When some of our family members attended a United Church service on Christmas Eve, the people processed around the church with lit candles. Our relatives hadn't heard of such a thing being done; surely this ultimately came from the Catholic tradition of a Candlemas procession.

Tuesday being the twentieth anniversary of my father's death, I found the Tract particularly poignant:

NUNC dimittis servum tuum, Domine * Secundum verbum tuum in pace: Quia viderunt oculi mei * salutare tuum Quod parasti * ante faciem omnium populorum: Lumen ad revelationem gentium, * Et gloriam plebis tuae Israel.

[NOW dismiss Thy servant, O Lord, * in peace, according to Thy word: For mine own eyes hath seen * Thy salvation, Which Thou hast prepared * in the sight of all the peoples, A light to reveal Thee to the nations * and the glory of Thy people Israel.]

For more pictures, see the FSSP Toronto Facebook group.

How Can Anyone Be "Mother of God"?

The title of Mary as "Mother of God" was one of those puzzling peculiarities of Catholicism, as far as I was concerned back in my Baptist days. Jesus was God, and Mary was Jesus' mother, but how could she be mother of, well, all of God (who is infinite and timeless)? Catholic moral teaching had a reassuring solidity to it, even if not all its rules then struck me as necessary, but the Catholic way of thinking about the Virgin Mary I found downright disquieting.

Part of the answer is that Mary is in fact not mother of God the Father, nor of the Holy Spirit. But because Christ's divine nature, "eternally begotten of the Father," is united with his human nature in a single person (as solemnly affirmed by the fifth-century Council of Ephesus), his mother is truly the Mother of God.

The best short summary I've found of the doctrine is a General Audience by Pope John Paul II on 27 November 1996. And Jeff Mirus has a lovely compilation of reflections on Our Lady.

Suffice it to say a devotion to Mary, Mother of God, is an aspect of my faith I now treasure.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

Temple Prostitution: A New Way to Be Inclusive

From the nephew of the late Fr Richard John Neuhaus comes this brilliant piece of satire.

The Holy Family, Icon and Model of Every Human Family

Mrs Sheepcat and I wish you a happy Feast of the Holy Family.

This day is extra-special to us because our parish is Holy Family Church, and we applied the theme to our wedding. After we signed the register, we consecrated our marriage to the Holy Family with the following prayer and left the bridal bouquet for Our Lady at the icon.

Photo by Greg Schilhab.

O Jesus, our most loving Redeemer, who having come to enlighten the world with Thy teaching and example, didst will to pass the greater part of Thy life in humility and subjection to Mary and Joseph in the poor home of Nazareth, thus sanctifying the Family that was to be an example for all Christian families, graciously receive our family as it dedicates and consecrates itself to Thee this day.

Do Thou protect us, guard us and establish amongst us Thy holy fear, true peace and concord in Christian love: in order that by living according to the divine pattern of Thy family we may be able,
all of us without exception, to attain to eternal happiness.

Mary, dear Mother of Jesus and Mother of us, by thy kindly intercession make this our humble offering acceptable in the sight of Jesus, and obtain for us His graces and blessings.

O Saint Joseph, most holy Guardian of Jesus and Mary, help us by thy prayers in all our spiritual and temporal needs; that so we may be enabled to praise our divine Savior Jesus, together with Mary and thee, for all eternity.

(Recite the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be 3 times.)

Amen.

Through prayer cards based on this image and quotation, we asked our guests to pray for us. We ask for your prayers and assure you of ours.

The Holy Family is the beginning of countless other holy families.

The history of mankind, the history of salvation, passes by way of the family. The family is placed at the center of the great struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between love and all that is opposed to love. To the family is entrusted the task of striving to unleash the forces of good, the source of which is found in Christ ... so that their family will be strong with the strength of God.

I speak to all people of our day, so that they will come to appreciate the grandeur of marriage, family and life; so that they will come to appreciate the great danger which follows when these realities are not respected, or when the supreme values which lie at the foundation of the family and of human dignity are disregarded.

May the Holy Family, icon and model of every human family, help each family unit to grow in understanding of its particular mission in society and the Church. May Mary and Joseph accompany us all with their constant protection.

With these sentiments I bless every family in the name of the Most Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Pope John Paul II
from Letter to Families, 1994