Catholicism and Homosexuality - What God Knows?

Who knows what God knows? I sit in a pew within a Church that time and time again thinks it knows what God knows. For instance, this Church called on its people in my Diocese this past weekend, on the feast of Christ the King, to contact their appropriate legislators, and encourage them to vote against civil unions of same sex couples, and guard the sanctity of marriage. Sanctity, of course, also means holiness, blessedness, sacredness and purity. I feel sorry for this Church, who after two thousand years of serious, punitive mistakes and blunders continues to preach a gospel of exclusion in antithesis to what Jesus preached. It continues to mix religion with politics despite Jesus clearly emphasizing to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. This is what I think. God is pure love. God is neither male nor female. God desires that we love one another as we love ourselves. If two human beings, regardless of gender, are totally devoted to one another in pure, unadulterated love, does not that act, in and of itself, encompass sanctity, holiness, blessedness, and sacredness? What if, say in ten or twenty years from now, we definitively find out that human beings are born, due to whatever genetic explanation is given, innately with specific sexual orientation. What then? Again, do we so blasphemously presume to know all that God knows at any given time in humanity that we can remove certain segments of the human population from having sanctified relationships? I am Catholic. I am someone who would not even consider abortion. I am heterosexual. I have a sanctified marriage. I have children. But I am not a Pharisee. I am not about thanking God with a “but for the grace of God go I” ethic. I believe in a God and a faith that welcomes all to the table. A few years ago at a catechists’ convocation a Jesuit priest by the name of Nathan Mitchell said that Jesus welcomed everyone to the table; he dined with everyone; and because of this he was crucified. How does the Church keep getting the lesson so wrong?

Time to Give Thanks For . . .

• Sabbath Time
• Family Time
• Friend Time
• Pet Time
• Home Time
• Food Time
• Work Time
• Leisure Time
• Nature Time
• Rest Time

Falling Down Days

Okay, so retirement got off to a pretty rough start. See past blog entries for details. So today, to ward off the creeping in of grief and depression, I decided to really do a super duper vacuuming job and I ended up falling down the steps wrestling 26 feet of vacuum cleaner hose - so much for a central vacuum. Well, I landed hard in the front foyer and as far as I can tell nothing is broken but I am really sore and achy. At the moment I landed I decided to just sit there on the floor and have a really super crying jag. It was great! There I was on retirement throwing the best pity party of all time! The company was outstanding and it was followed up by the best laughing jag of all time. All I could think about was what I would look like to a peeping Tom. Pretty funny stuff. This moment in time provided a well-needed cathartic release and, believe it or not, I am grateful for falling down days. As a reminder to appreciate the ordinary, Theologian Frederick Buechner in his book, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons writes: "All the absurd little meetings, decisions, inner skirmishes that go to make up all our days. It all adds up to very little, and yet it all adds up to very much. Our days are full of nonsense, and yet not, because it is precisely into the nonsense of our days that God speaks to us the words of great significance - not words written in the stars but words written into the raw stuff and nonsense of our days, which are not nonsense just because God speaks into the midst of them. And the words that he says, to each of us differently, are 'Be brave . . . be merciful . . . feed my lambs . . . press on toward the goal.' " And so I press on toward the process of retirement.