Sons of the Church

The Witnessing of Gay Catholic Men

Thomas B Stevenson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317953425
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The book that can help you reconcile being both gay and CatholicSons of the Church: The Witnessing of Gay Catholic Men spotlights testimonials from over thirty gay Catholic men to answer the question, How can you be gay and Catholic? Dr. Thomas B. Stevenson, who received degrees from the University of Notre Dame, Boston College, and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, explores this question, using various interviews to thoroughly analyze the many dimensions of being gay and Catholic while providing a powerful and convincing criticism of Church teaching on homosexuality. This thoughtful, surprisingly reverent book is the answer for those gay readers who long for a religious connection, as well as for Catholic readers and those in pastoral positions who want and need to hear the stories of gay people firsthand. Sons of the Church: The Witnessing of Gay Catholic Men tells one storythe story of what it is like to be gay and Catholicthrough the various stories of over thirty gay Catholic men. Each chapter is arranged thematically, beginning with experiences of being homosexual and Catholic during childhood and youth. Subsequent chapters delve into the ways these men each finally accepted themselves and integrated their sexuality, related to others who did or did not understand, dealt with homosexual promiscuity, found intimate relationships, became a part of a community, and ultimately came to terms with the Catholic Church and their faith. Throughout, these 'witnesses' explain how their faith in God guides them through the various experiences and issues they face. The positive aspects of Catholic Christianity are respectfully explored at the same time as the present Church teaching on homosexuality is challenged.Sons of the Church uses interviews to explore:

• Catholics coming to terms with their homosexuality
  
• the experiences of young men recognizing their sexuality
  
• suffering and oppression by society and the Church
  
• acceptance of self
  
• integration of goodness and lovability of homosexuality
  
• moral issues of promiscuity among gay men
  
• gay relationships and the Catholic dimensions of commitment
  
• criticisms of gay culture
  
• the Catholic Church teachings on homosexuality
  
• the answer to the question, How can you be gay and Catholic?

Sons of the Church: The Witnessing of Gay Catholic Men is enlightening reading essential for educators, students, counselors, priests, nuns, psychologists, and theologians. Catholic people, gay people, and every educated reader will find that the interviews and ideas here stimulate thought and create a greater understanding of the issue of homosexuality and faith.

1 Homosexuality in Youth

"How can you be gay and Catholic?" This is a question I and others have faced for years. The tone of the questioner, whether he or she is a gay conversation partner at a bar, an academic, a student, or, indeed, at times a fellow Catholic, is often one of incredulity. Underlying the question seems to be an impression that being gay and being Catholic are irreconcilable. The viewpoint of this book is that being gay and being Catholic are reconcilable. The words and stories of numerous gay Catholic men, woven throughout the text, illustrate this truth in a variety of ways.

This book, then, is a journey into some issues and concerns of homosexual Catholic men. It is divided into seven chapters. The first two chapters deal for the most part with issues concerning our witnesses in their youths. The rest of the book covers a variety of issues that relate to their adult lives. We'll begin our journey by addressing the theme of discovery of sexual attraction during our witnesses' youths.

Scott C., who was forty-four when I interviewed him and lives in a suburb of Chicago, went to an all-boy's high school. He states simply, "I found myself being attracted to many of my classmates and also some of the upperclassmen." Mark M., forty-five, from a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, shares, "I remember we had a doctor come in seventh grade to talk to us about the facts of life. I knew that I was supposed to be attracted to girls because the other guys were talking about it. And I was of course attracted to them {the other boys}. "John F., thirty-nine, from Chicago, speaks of his developing attractions, "When I was eighteen and that time frame. You don't have to be explicit, but in the locker room at gym change I can't figure out how I'm not going to look even though I really want to." Finally, Greg P., forty, also from Columbus, adds his own somewhat humorous story. "I'm Finnish by heritage, so it was what we would do in the ethnic area when they'd have the Finnish steam bath. You have the women on one side, the men on the other. All the men are there nude. And I was always fascinated by men. And I guess it was like, huh, I always wondered why Dad stopped taking us. He knew my eyes were traveling too much."

Notice the language of Scott C.: "I found myself being attracted to." In the testimonies of the more than forty Catholic men interviewed for this book, not one person spoke, with particular regard to his youth, of choosing to be attracted to other boys or to men. Instead, the language, better yet the experience, speaks, in one way or another, of finding one's self being attracted to boys or men. Such descriptions give the lie to an argument which implies, if not advocates, that homosexuality is a choice. More often than not the predisposition within this argument is to view homosexuality as immoral. For something to be immoral there has to be culpability or responsibility, and culpability or responsibility by their nature entail choice. So goes, it seems to me, the basic reasoning of some people, in particular some Christians, with regard to homosexuality.

As an initial response to this argument, it is worth pointing out that, in their youth, if given the choice, many of our witnesses might very well have chosen not to be homosexual. (Although you should keep in mind that this would have been a stance in their youth. In later years they will speak differently, indeed much more affirmatively, of their homosexuality.) For example, Jeff M., forty-five, from Columbus, referring to his youth, states matter of factly, "I didn't want to be gay." Mitch S., thirty, from Des Moines, Iowa, says, "I always thought, I can't be gay. Everything is too good for me. I'm smart. I'm athletic. I'm popular. I'm going to be successful. There's just no way. I don't have a problem with people who are gay, but I can't be gay." A prayer that Mark M. says he would have imagined for his youth certainly does not indicate that he would have chosen to be homosexual: "Remove this from me. Take this away." Indeed, perhaps this prayer does voice a choice—a choice not to be homosexual.

Furthermore, as I hope this entire book will bear out, our witnesses do face or have faced moral choices in terms of their sexuality. Contrary to the argument that views homosexuality itself as a choice, these witnesses experience homosexuality as a condition of their existence, a given in their life, in relation to which choices will be made. Homosexuality itself is not chosen. This given condition is what Andrew Sullivan, in Virtually Normal, calls the "involuntariness of homosexuality." Moreover, it is acknowledged by the American Catholic Bishops when they say in their 1997 message "Always Our Children," "Generally, homosexual orientation is experienced as a given, not as something freely chosen."

It is in relation to this given condition that many of our witnesses had to navigate in their youths through some very painful and alienating waters. One such initial experience was commonly understood in terms of being different, John M., fifty-eight, who grew up in Poland, shares his experience of this phenomenon: "I sort of always knew I was different. I didn't know why. But I knew I was left-handed and that was something that was accepted. So I was different in that way, but there was also something else and I wasn't sure what it was. I never associated any of this as bad. But I did feel the loneliness. Being different sort of set me apart and that made me sad. ... By the time I was a teenager, I realized there was something wrong, because some people were beginning to point fingers at me. And, in fact, I really tried to turn away from it. I still didn't feel like it was sinful, but I felt like I was a weirdo."

For now we'll shy away from the damaging repercussions of believing one's homosexuality is sinful or believing that one is a weirdo. The point I wish to take note of here is the confusion or lack of understanding John experienced in relation to feeling different. He didn't even have words for it. The experience of Jerry G., sixty-eight, from Chicago, parallels this: "I didn't fit into the social picture at school. I didn't know why or what was the matter, but from early on I knew there was something different about the whole thing. So much so that after my first year in high school the Brothers called my father in and said. 'Maybe it would be best for him to change schools and areas where he's not known {emphasis added}. That was the best advice that ever came up because I went to a neighborhood where the kids were from all over the place. They didn't know me. I didn't know them. We didn't have to communicate."

Notice again, in the story of Jerry, the lack of understanding about being different. And, notice also, that although the good Brothers may have been saving Jerry from persecution, nonetheless there is a logic that says he needs to go somewhere where he's not known. The implication is that he could not be known as the person he was, with his difference, where he was. For many, such an experience might make them feel like less than a person. Fortunately, for Jerry it did not turn out so.

The confusing and alienating experience of being different is also related by Mark M.: "The only negative experience I had in grade school was the increasing awareness that I was different from the other guys, and I didn't know what to do with that at all. And of course that became worse by seventh or eighth grade. Now what is interesting to me is that I thought I was the only person in the world like me, because I was so isolated." Mark's experience of being different continued through high school: "I was president of my class, on student council. I think that's kind of the way I dealt with being different. I was very sociable. I was a person who bridged groups. I'd go to dances and I had to of course find somebody to go with. Other than that I didn't date. My parents never raised questions about that. It seems odd in retrospect. So, I didn't have any trauma to reflect on in terms of being in school. It was just the increasing sense of being really different and that my difference was something that, as long as I didn't have to discuss it with anybody, was kind of not real. Maybe that's because I'm extroverted, so once I say it, it becomes real, so I just didn't talk about it."

But what is it that Mark could have said? What word could he have put to his difference? John M. and Jerry G. did not put a word— homosexuality, gay, or whatever—to their differences either. Whereas any young person's growing awareness of his or her sexual feelings and attractions might be somewhat confusing, the difference and added difficulty for many people experiencing homosexuality, especially those of older generations, is that they commonly encountered silence about it.

For some of our witnesses it was a common experience not to even hear the word homosexuality, as if the word was somehow anathema itself. Leo R., forty-nine, from Columbus, succinctly describes such an experience: "It was understood that that {homosexuality} was not to even be discussed, thought about, talked about. No way possible. It doesn't happen here." Bob S., forty-three, also from Columbus, is equally succinct in voicing an external attitude regarding homosexuality in his youth: "We're certainly not going to talk about this {homosexuality}."

Michael S., thirty-nine, from Chicago, who grew up in a very faithful and loving Catholic family, nevertheless echoes the sentiments of Leo and Bob in a story describing how he tried to understand homosexuality and how, in a way, that attempt was silenced by the response of his father (in what could have been a well-intentioned response on his father's part): "A big thing that happened to me when I was about twelve was, I did ask my father, because I had seen, I'll never forget it, in the TV guide, there was a summary of that movie, That Certain Summer, which was a made-for-TV movie, the first made-for-TV movie that dealt with homosexuality. And so I asked my dad, I didn't even know what that word was, I said, 'Dad, what is this word, homosexuality, there's going to be a movie on this week?' And my dad was very, and he hardly was ever this way, but he seemed to get a little angry, and he was like, 'Don't concern yourself with that, that's not anything you would want to really know . . . but that's basically when two men do what a man and woman would do. And that's wrong.'"

Michael interprets his father's response: "It was like, get that out of your mind, was basically what my father was saying. Don't think about it. So I know that sounds like a contradiction {from the way he generally describes an open and loving atmosphere to his family}. . . . But that was one time he was very stern, would be the word. So you know, when I think back about that, if I did have any feelings I was pushing them out of my head."

Chris T., twenty-nine, from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in describing confusion about his sexuality and abuse by other young people when he was young, indirectly describes an environment in which he could not talk about his difference, his homosexuality: "At some points there was some gender confusion there about should I really be a girl if I'm attracted to a boy. But it wasn't that this is wrong or that I necessarily wanted to change, but I didn't see that as an option of two boys or two girls getting together. I thought that it had to be a boy and a girl. So that presented some confusion.

"So I just kind of kept that inside and didn't really talk about that a lot. But there were all sorts of things going on around that same time when I was discovering this. I started getting teased a lot by classmates and members of the community and that was happening in fourth grade on until I graduated from high school. It started small but then it peaked around eighth or ninth grade and then it started going back down. There were the verbal taunts that escalated to physical intimidation and violence and some sexual intimidation and all of that. So that was pretty tough to deal with and there wasn't really an outlet that I could talk to anybody about that with. You know, no friends or family or counselors that I felt comfortable talking with."

Whereas Chris could not share his story because he felt there was no human ear to hear him, Mitch S. was alienated by the stories of others in which his experience was not reflected. The alienation occurred when "Craig, Dan, everybody was having these sexual {heterosexual} experiences and of course telling stories and I never had the stories to tell. I think that was the most difficult because it was very clear in my mind that I was not having the same experience that everyone else was."

Leo, Bob, Michael, Chris, and Mitch all describe experiences in which words or stories about homosexuality were not heard. An alienating silence reigned. We need to stop and examine this phenomenon. Imagine, if you will, a conversation with a friend wherein your friend, after listening to your experience, shares a story of his or her own that relates to it and thus confirms your experience. Or imagine a therapeutic context in which you have been grappling with a painful experience and are finally able to put a word or a name to the experience. In either case, it seems to me that the spoken word or story that comprehends your experience can be a liberating event. Perhaps such experiences can leave you with a sense of being liberated from feeling abnormal, from feeling you are less than a person, and from feeling you are outside the community of your fellow human beings. Indeed, perhaps you feel like you are returned to yourself, returned to life. Conversely, the lack of a word or story that fits your experience can be a depersonalizing event, leaving you alienated or isolated from normality, from the human world. Although times are changing, and stories, movies, and television shows increasingly bring homosexuality into the larger context of human life, most of our witnesses encountered a lack of words and stories integrative of homosexuality while growing up. So, if I might rephrase an old adage, whereas a silence that is full of listening, or wonder, or appreciation, or adoration, or even sorrow, may indeed be golden, not all silence is golden. In order to become a person, to integrate one's experiences, there is a need for words and stories that comprehend those experiences, even if, I might add, the silence of prayer is the horizon for those words.

Silence, then, is one way our witnesses received in their youths a nonaffirming message regarding their homosexuality. But outright condemnation was encountered as well. As we have already seen, Chris T. spoke of being taunted and intimidated in his youth because of his difference, his homosexuality. Brian H., forty-nine, from Chicago, echoes Chris in describing why he had to keep his homosexuality a secret during high school: "Oh, because I was always afraid. This was an all-boys' school. And you know, I was sort of earmarked as being gay. You know, just in the way boys do other boys. I think probably it was just teasing me and stuff. But, because of that, I just played it carefully. I didn't know what to do. What do you do when you are sixteen or seventeen years old, you know, in 1972?"

There are more extreme stories of victimization. Tim D., in his thirties and from Ohio, shares an experience from his youth: "I have to say growing up gay I've been through lots of ugliness. It's good because to me it's something that I want to make sure I never do to anyone else. So if I have a huge group of friends and I share ... things that I've been through or other people've been through it opens doors to people by thinking, 'I never knew people could do that.' One incident, it's so sickening today. I look back and have issues with it.

"I worked at Houlihan's. I was a cook. I got along fine for the first year. The second, this girl made a mistake, she said, 'Tim, you can tell me anything. I love you, you're my friend. Are you gay? I'm just curious. You don't have to tell me but I love you anyway. My brother's gay.' Finally, one day I said, 'Yes.' Damn, did that fly like wildfire. In five, ten minutes that whole place knew I was a 'faggot.' The cooks found out. It's hard to forgive what they did. I ordered a buffalo chicken sandwich hamburger and what the cooks did is they went back into the rest room, they dipped it into the toilet, and they peed all over it. There's witnesses to it so I know it took place. Oh, and they ran it on the floor, too, in all the grease and everything on the bare floor. I had not a clue that this took place, but I knew something was wrong because everyone was watching me eating it. I thought they put hot sauce on it. I just started eating it and the girl that let me know, she was watching me, her friends were watching me, the prep cooks were watching me. I probably had ten people watching me and the only thing I thought was they put hot sauce on it. I never thought they'd go that low. That's why I was naive. I ate it and ate it and they were laughing and cutting up and I thought I'm going to bite into a pepper anytime. Weil, I didn't. Later, about three-quarters of the way, I just threw it away because I thought something's not right. Later, they told me, another girl, bless her heart, she was a waitress and I liked her and she came hack and told me. And she started screaming and hollering and she told me what they did."

Tim bears witness in a powerful way to the victimization by others for being homosexual. He is the "faggot." The person, Tim, is denied. He is forced to eat like an animal. The person, Tim, is treated with disdain and degradation. Beyond denial, beyond degradation, would be, it seems to me, destruction. If a person or group of people are not worthy of being treated as people, then it is not a far stretch to view them as worthy of destruction.

Sean F., who is sixty-seven and lives in Columbus, shares a story that bears witness to the possibility of destruction at the hands of others. (And, although this story does not refer to his youth, it does refer to the potential violence that has so often been a condition of a young gay person's life.) Approximately thirty years ago, Sean was "cruising" for other men in a park in Cleveland. The park was in a wooded area on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie. While wandering in the park he spotted and overheard a few guys talking about faggots. They in turn saw him, came after him, and then, "They pushed me off of the cliff. It's sixty feet into the water. But there were some trees at about forty feet and I hung onto those. They didn't see me and I stayed there as long as I could and then gradually made my way up and over to get my car. I got in my car and started out and, bingo, they came right behind me. There was a carload of them. I got to get to the police station. Yes, they're following me. We're well over the speed limit. I make it through a traffic light; they don't. They come around anyhow. They swerved around cars. They were intent. One fellow had a baseball bat and they tried to pull up next to me and bang on the window and knock me and that sort of thing. I got pretty well bashed over the eye. They pulled right into the parking lot behind me as I pulled right up to the door of the police station. About three policemen came out and so that car disappeared real fast out the driveway."

Consciously or unconsciously, to some degree homosexual people have lived in fear. Perhaps we can understand our next topics, the ways our witnesses fought with themselves about being homosexual, or pretended not to be homosexual, or, perhaps most commonly, engaged in some form of secrecy, hiding, or isolation, as responses to this threatening atmosphere, to living in a fearful world.

Jeff M. speaks of not wanting to accept his homosexuality for a number of years in his youth: "As far as being gay, I first realized it when I was probably about fifteen and pretty much fought it up until my early twenties. Basically during my late high school years and my early college years I kind of avoided any type of sexual situation by either drinking too much or smoking too much pot, or doing some other type of drug, so that I wouldn't have to deal with it."

Pete L., fifty-five, from Louisiana, speaks to this theme of fighting his homosexuality: "Until I was out ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Homosexuality in Youth
• 2. Catholicism in Youth
• 3. The Acceptance and Integration of Homosexuality
• 4. Promiscuity
• 5. Commitment
• 6. The Absolutization of Gayness
• 7. How Can You Be Gay and Catholic?
• Bibliography