Beyond the call...The Postulator's Question

Do I still go to mass?
Paul Hannigan asked while we waited for lunch if I still go to Mass. I said I don’t; and didn’t pursue it further. It wasn’t the right context. I was visiting him as a friend and did not want to say anything that might be inappropriate. But I am happy to elaborate on my answer so that anyone who reads this can know why I left the church.

I am gay. I had mentioned John, my partner of twenty six years, to Paul several times in the last five years – the first time in response to the question that is almost always asked by Brothers: “Did you marry?”

I became aware of my sexuality in a brutal and humiliating way (which I brought upon myself, of course) in the Novitiate. That’s why I left. By then I had learned, however, that one’s relationship with God does not depend on fitting in with institutional norms, nor even with prevailing moral standards. Even after I became sexually active, (i.e. gay as distinct from homosexual) which was not until after I had left the Army, I did not accept that my lifestyle was incompatible with being a Catholic. I was not alone.

There were – and still are – numerous gay Catholics participating in the life of the church. Many clergy, including Bishops, gave active support. Leonard Faulkner, then Bishop of Townsville, said in public that being homosexual is like being left handed. Many theologians contributed cogent arguments in support of gays participating in church life. There was a vigorous dialogue within the church which was the proof of inclusiveness that is an explicit meaning of the name Catholic. Until, that is, John-Paul II decreed that one can not be Catholic and gay.

By then I’d had a gutful of him throwing his weight around in the church – as though he was the Pope! [just kidding, of course] – declaring, for example, that people could no longer pursue the ordination of women; and silencing theologians and whole schools of theology – most notably Liberation Theology – as though nothing had been learned from the treatment of people like Teilard de Chardin; not to mention Gallelio, for whom he subsequently shed a belated tear. So I took him at his word. To have chosen participation in the church over my partner would have been an utter betrayal of the one person who has given me unconditional love.

I stopped participating in the life of the church but did not walk away from my friends in the church. With some of them I began to open myself to a view of the universe that resonated with what I had learned in the Juniorate and Novitiate and subsequent study of biblical criticism and other disciplines, yet dwarfed all previous sense of who I am and what I am here for. I am speaking of Creation Spirituality, (which JPII also condemned!) in which science and indigenous worldviews find that they can understand and dialogue with one another – and provide a context in which to critically appreciate the religion of one’s youth.

It was as a result of my immersion in such matters that I, paradoxically, came to an appreciation of the Mass before which my former understanding of it pales. I do not have to attend Mass to be present to the mystery that it mediates. Like Teilhard who offered Mass even when he had no bread and wine, I do not even need to be a priest to consecrate the world.

Zen is sweeping the footpath. The Mass is offering the world as I am in it to its creator.