gay marriage

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Can the Roman Catholic Church Be Dragged Out of the 12th Century?


I was brought up in the Roman Catholic Church.  It was a curious upbringing because my mother was the Catholic but my father was a Unitarian.  It was the odd confluence of an extremely conservative church, Catholic, with an extremely liberal church, Unitarian.  And in those days, the 1950s and 1960s, marriage of Catholics to non-Catholics was discouraged, to say the least.  My parents were married in 1946 in the Rectory of St. Michael’s Church in North Andover Massachusetts.  Church weddings of that sort were prohibited in those days.  My mother saw to it that I was in church every Sunday and in Sunday school immediately following.  As I got older I was required to attend religious classes once a week after school.  First communion and confirmation were a given and something we all actually looked forward to.

In the early 1960s Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI oversaw certain transformations in the Catholic Church.  Prior to then the Catholic mass was said entirely in Latin.  Latin was removed in favor of the language spoken locally.  The American Catholic Church embraced the idea of bringing folk music into its services.  It seemed the Catholic Church was embracing the idea of change and was becoming a friendlier and less feared church than it had been.  In the years since the church also embraced the idea of having deacons, lay people who passed out communion, and lay people who assisted in performing the mass.  Also, most nuns’ habits gave way to ordinary clothing.

Unfortunately, since the death of Pope Paul VI, the Roman Catholic Church seems to have reverted to its extremely conservative ways.  In doing so it has once again turned its back on the needs of Catholics word-wide.  The church seems to be in total denial of its responsibility to its membership.

The Archdiocese of Boston, one of the largest diocese by membership in the country, has such difficulty in attracting young men to its seminary that it usually graduates and ordains new priests in numbers less than 10.  I suspect the reason for this is simple, the church still requires a lifetime promise of celibacy by its priests.  This is contrary to every human predilection known.  And of courses, priests cannot marry.  Some years ago I had a good friend who was a priest who had just entered his 40s.  He could no longer deny his attraction to women and observe his vow of celibacy.  He was an excellent priest but found it necessary to leave the priesthood as he found the requirements imposed upon him to be untenable.  I think this is a very common occurance.

Along this same line, I had to travel to Oklahoma City for business about 15 years ago.  My stays out there became extended and encompassed weekends.  I visited one of the 3 Catholic Churches there where I found an aging priest.  He told me he could not retire because there was no one to replace him even though he was in his late 70s.  I also found out that there are many small cities in the plains states that have Catholic Churches but no priest assigned.  They are served by traveling priests.

The obvious solution to this problem seems simple enough, allow priests to marry.  But for reasons which defy logic, the very conservative College of Cardinals steadfastly refuses to even consider such a change. Here is their logic as presented on catholic.com: “Theologically, it may be pointed out that priests serve in the place of Christ and therefore, their ministry specially configures them to Christ. As is clear from Scripture, Christ was not married (except in a mystical sense, to the Church). By remaining celibate and devoting themselves to the service of the Church, priests more closely model, configure themselves to, and consecrate themselves to Christ.”  But this was a change the Roman Church made in 1139.  The Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and others, never adopted this belief.

Pope Francis recently reminded, and reaffirmed, that divorced Catholics who had remarried and not gotten an annulment of their first marriage, are “living in sin” and therefore cannot receive communion!  I believe the Catholic Church is the only major church in the world which prohibits its member from remarrying without getting an annulment.  I once asked a priest about an annulment and he explained that in essence it is a declaration that an actual marriage never existed.  For me to have pursued, and received, such a declaration would have been essentially perpetrating a huge fraud.  I was married to that woman for 14 years and had 3 children by her.  Of course it was a marriage!  But the Catholic Church states it wants me to still attend mass but I just cannot take part in the most important part of the service.  This is like inviting me to a birthday party but telling me I cannot have any cake and ice cream.  The concept is absolutely absurd!

Next we have birth control and abortion.  I absolutely understand the church’s stand on abortion, it is entirely contrary to its most basic beliefs.  And while I absolute agree with the prohibition regardless of circumstance, I also believe it to be an entirely personal moral dilemma and that each woman needs to make a decision based on her on conscience and without the intrusion of outside influence.  It is a discussion between her and the God of her understanding.

But other forms of birth control are an entirely different matter.  The use of condoms and contraception are a modern day necessity.  For a married Catholic to follow the church’s teachings exactly, they would need to go contrary to the basic and loving desires, forgoing all sexual contact out of fear of pregnancy.  This is an absolutely absurd idea and prohibition.

Finally is the church’s stance towards gay people.  Their stance is easy to understand in the light of what the Bible says. I have two problems with that however.  First, all the various versions of the New Testament today are translations from ancient Greek.  But the problem is that Jesus Christ spoke in the Aramaic language, not Greek.  This means at the very least there was a translation made.  But was that translation from an oral tradition or the written word?  No one knows.  But we do know that Aramaic had about 5000 words total.  Now compare that with the over 1 million words in the English language today to get a feel for the problem.  Noted writer, Dr. Isaac Asimov, related how the word for young girl and virgin in Aramaic are the exact same word.  It is my belief that the first person relating the story of the birth of Jesus was referring to Mary as a young girl because we believe she was likely as young as 12 when she married the much older Joseph.  That she was a virgin was a more important concept to 10th century Rome than 1st Century Palestine, Turkey, and Greece.  The mysticism surrounding a virgin birth was more valuable to Dark Age church leaders than explaining a sexual congress between Mary and Joseph.  By the 12th century the Catholic Church was all about putting even the mention of sexuality into the closet.  What does all this have to do with being gay?  Simple, it is my belief that large portions of the New Testament are both incomplete and incorrect translations.  The Gnostic Gospels sheds some light on this with its Gospel of Mary, something the Roman Church has chosen to distance itself from.  But more to the point, it could mean the admonition of one man laying with another may have originally been a prohibition of adult men bedding boys, something which happened frequently in those days, particularly in traveling merchants.  That gay men existed at the time of Jesus is undeniable.  But so did pedophilia and I believe Jesus saw that as a much more serious problem than man’s inability to understand gay love.  One is an abuse of power, position, and children, while the other is a different sort of love.  I do not understand love between same sex individuals but I do accept it.  It just as real as any other sort of love and that is all I need to know.

To be fair, the Roman Catholic Church is not alone in favoring certain absolutes of human behavior.  Evangelical and other conservative Christian churches in the world espouse many of the same tenants.  But it is a requirement of any church to tend to the needs of its followers.  The Roman Catholic Church is absolutely failing in this respect and that is likely the primary reason it has seen church attendance plummet and parishes closes even though the number of people who identify themselves as Catholic rises.

The Roman Catholic desperately needs to make itself more attractive to all its members, not just those who adhere to its rigid tenants.  I suspect that if all those Catholics who regularly attend church today were to suddenly stop attending church because they violate one or more of these basic tenants, Catholic Churches worldwide would become empty.  The Catholic Church does not lack for theologians, both lay and ministerial, who desperately want the changes I have mentioned.  But as long as a very small and very conservative group of Cardinals are allowed to continue as they have, church attendance and membership will continue to fall.  But worse, the church will continue to ignore many of the most basic teachings of Jesus Christ.

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Equal Protection Under the Law For Gay People


That was the question one of the justices on the U.S. Supreme Judicial Court asked today.   I guess I am not too smart, because I felt pretty certain that every American citizen was guaranteed that by the Constitution.  Does that mean parts of our population do not considers gays to be American citizens?

I am not gay, have no gay feelings or tendencies, and cannot say I really understand gay.  But I am extremely fortunate that I have never harbored any bias or ill feelings towards gays.  I was a member of one of the most conservative groups in American society, the military.  I remember there being a fair number of gay soldiers, a few even worked for me.  But I looked upon their sexual preference as being no different from my own.  I always preferred white American women.  I lived in Korea and Italy and many men were quite taken by Oriental women or European women.

That there is something wrong with a person who defines himself as gay in an entirely religious position, taken directly from the Bible.  But in this country, supposedly, our laws are supposed to be made without any religious consideration.  The Defense of Marriage Act, and the California voter initiative, show that is not exactly true.  What I find most remarkable about the California law is that it was pushed by conservatives.  Why is that remarkable?  Conservatives are, supposedly, proponents of keeping government out of our personal lives.  Or is that only when it suits them?

I belong to a very conservative religion, Roman Catholicism.  There is zero chance that in my lifetime, or anytime in the near future, that the Catholic church will condone same-sex marriages by its priests.  There are like-minded protestant churches, Mormans, Pentacostals, Baptists, and many others I feel pretty certain.  But here’s the thing, the gay community is not advocating for them to do so!  They are advocating for legal civil ceremonies.  And in this country, according to the First Amendment, that should be all right.

I believe I can say with a fair amount of certainty that there are gay communities in all 50 states in the union.  And within those communities there are gay couples who are rearing children.  By allow civil marriages, those gay married couples would automatically assume the same responsibilities for child rearing that everyone else has now.  Corporate America would benefit because married couples need have only one health insurance policy between them for coverage.  As it stands now, unmarried gay couples must each have their own policy.

The bottom line is simple.  Gay people have existed in all of recorded history and will continue to do so.  The right thing to do is to accord them 100% of the same rights, enjoyed and guaranteed, to non-gay Americans.

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I Do Not Understand “Gay,” But I Accept It


With all the problems that exist in our country today, why is there such an uproar over what gay people do or do not do.  I cannot stand the visual thought of two men kissing, but I do not condemn it.  The religion I was brought up in thinks it is an “abomination.”  For the life of me I cannot understand why this should be true.  Is it because of some poorly translated texts from ancient, and by-the-way not original, documents say it is so?  It is difficult to understand how any thinking person could think such a thing.

For many years I was in one of the most testosterone driven organizations in the world which was openly anti-gay, the US Army.  There were plenty of gay men in the arm, a couple of whom served under me.  I never had a bit of trouble with them. They were outstanding soldiers.  I never had or heard a single complaint in all my years about any of the gay troops, that their lifestyle was somehow corrupting us or interfering with our mission.

Now gay people want to be legally married.  So what?  Conservative Christians claim it is some sort of attack on the sanctity of marriage, and upon the family itself.  They fail, however, to explain exactly what that means and worse, they fail to show the slightest bit of evidence to support their contention.

Gay people, to the best of my knowledge, are asking that each state respect the civil union of same gender couples.  They have not, again to the best of my knowledge, asked anyone to allow them to be married in all the churches of the United States.  I do know that certain churches do conduct same-sex marriages in states where such unions are allowed, but is that not their own private business?

My wife was, at least in part, reared by a gay man, her uncle.  And that was because her natural father had deserted the family.  My wife is 100% straight and very well-adjusted.  Her male role model, her gay uncle, was a very intelligent, strong, kind and good man.  He taught her a lot.  He also lived with the same man for 25 years, a feat many heterosexual partners find difficult to achieve, I being among those.

I heard, and saw, a man who professed to be a conservative minister of some evangelical church contend that God hates all gays.  That stunned me.  I considered for a long time what God’s response to such a statement would be and I think, and truly believe, that God spoke to me and said, “How dare you question my love for any person!”  Now that is in perfect harmony with everything Jesus Christ ever said.

I think it high time everyone stopped worrying about who loves whom, and start worrying about how dangerous our city streets have become; or how difficult it is increasingly becoming for the average middle-income family of five to survive on their present wages.

The truth is, gay marriage is not going to hurt a thing, certainly not the marriage.  What hurts marriages more is poor communications between couples, money and the lack of it, sex, selfishness, lack of honesty, lack of commitment.  Any attack upon any marriage, or the entire institution, is purely an inside job done by those who have yet to clean up their own side of the street yet before complaining about what someone else wants or does.

Marriage is truly a first amendment right.  Are we now selectively going to deny that right to people whose life-style we disagree with?

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American Politics Sounding More Like Iranian Politics


That I should make such a charge might sound rather harsh at first blush but it does need consideration.  The Republican party this year has decided to make gay marriage its featured issue.  It is a moral issue steeped in religious conviction and having little to do with proper helmsmanship of a government.  Since 1979 Iran has been run by a series of religious ideologues who rule, according to them, by the rule of the Qur’an.  The Republican party will couch their issue in moral correctness but you need only ask yourself on what basis that correctness is formed.

Decades ago the Republican party always portrayed itself in the light of national security, hawkishness, and conservative economics, and that was more than enough for them.  In 1952 they enlisted Dwight David Eisenhower to be their presidential nominee.  In truth, party leaders did not know what Eisenhower’s political preference was when they asked, but he was a national hero and someone who epitomized what they stood for.  Eisenhower ran roughshod over Stevenson that year and again four years later.  He could best be described as a “Nationalist” who Americans idolized.  The most popular political button of the era said, “I Like Ike.”   That was enough.  Not once in either elections did any sort of religious banter enter.

In succeeding elections, right through Clinton’s first election, economics and defense continued to lead the way.  Only once during that time, the early 1980s, did religion make a forray into politics and that was the Jerry Falwell “Moral Majority.”  This far-right political rhetoric, as had been historically true, quickly ran amok and fell into disfavor with the general public.  People recognized that they were not served well by any religious group that tried to control their political convictions.

Today that far right ideology has made a resurgence in the form of the Tea Party.  Madison Avenue marketing has made this into a group that harkens to our nation’s founding, and the men who bravely defied King George III.  But was it lost in translation is that those men of 1774 were a group of disparate political beliefs, some were even self-described agnostics.  Their aim was to make a single point that truly represented the beliefs of all Americans and had absolutely no political designs whatsoever.  The be certain, had the crown relented, ended the tea tax and returned colonial governorships to the control of the people, the revolution, at least at that moment, would most certainly have been delayed, if not completely avoided.

Our country has many pressing problems but nowhere in the top ten, or probably even the top 100, should be found the issue of gay marriage.  That issue, as it is being promoted by the left, is one of civil authority only.  That is the only place it can be politically.  Otherwise it becomes an issue that is contemptuous of the first amendment.  I expect that few American church, at least in the near future, will allow gay marriage within their domain.  But that a political body gives credence to a lawful joining of a couple needs to be left at just that.  It is absolutely not an assault on the institution of marriage as a religious institution.

One thing people of conservative ideology need to consider is the children.  It is not illegal for a lesbian couple to conceive a child.  In fact, once that child is born, the lesbian mother is held to certain legal standards.  A legal marriage between that couple serves to extend that legal, and moral, responsibility.  Even more, gay men can legally enter into a contract to have a surrogate birth a child.  And as in the case of the lesbian couple, a gay male couple would also be held to the rule of law in the care of that child.  Without marriage, the law has little standing with the otherwise unrelated parent.

The thing is, this is one of the most foolish issues the Republican party has ever brought to the front.  To me it says they are more interested in spending short resources on defending that position than to finding solution for the far more pressing issues of the day.  We still have a fragile economy.  We have enormous issues with our military strength and our foreign policy.  We are struggling with issues of non-renewable energy sources, water shortages, and a decaying national infrastructure.  Does it not make more sense to put those issues at the forefront than allowing gay people into legal contracts?

Iran has allowed itself to be led by ultra-conservative religious groups.  They are the “Qur’an Thumpers” of their nation just like the “Bible Thumpers” of ours.  I have no problem with religion.  I think it a very good thing.  But as was recognized in 1789, it has no place in our government.  We can never be a country that is religiously defined except that each person is allowed to believe as he wishes and that no one religious view can prevail over another.  If the issue of gay marriage is allowed into our political arena then it is necessarily dragging in a strictly religious viewpoint.  No court could make a decision on gay marriage, from a moral point of view, as to do so would be to assault the first amendment.  The far right has made this a moral issue and therefore a religious issue.  Following this tack is tantamount to agreeing with the direction a government like Iran takes.

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Who Owns God?


If you went to church with me when I was a kid, you would have heard that God was properly defined by the Roman Catholics, and everyone else had an incorrect version.  And that was even after Vatican II.  While Catholics certainly have moderated their world view of their religion, it still reeks of “we got it right.”

In today’s world we hear a lot about the Moslem version of God.  I think it fair to say that their view is an extremely unpopular one here in the United States.  That probably includes most Moslems who live here as well, but that is just a guess.  I say that because it is my firm belief that most Moslems who live here have adopted a very moderate, or mainstream, view of God.  They certainly are not the ones yelling, “death to infidels!”  And they certainly are not advocating a jihad against America.

These most basic of feelings that all humans seem to hold, that of a person deity, are the very reason I speak up strongly for the separation of church and state.  We are the only country in the world, that I know of, that has this admonition.  Those Americans who want God worked into portions of our government would do well to ask themselves, which God.  That is, which particular religious slant on God are you in favor of?  You have to choose simply because there is no generic God that I have ever heard of.  That is because as soon as you evoke the name God, in each person’s mind this takes on a very particular point of view.  Hence, our forefathers understood that extremely well and they did not want a Church of England God, or even one of their homegrown versions to have any place in our government.

Since monotheism has existed there has always been a mix of God and religion.  For most of history men have been incapable of separating the two.  Mostly, they have had no desire to separate the two.  I believe that is because they have the notion that there has to be a mixed for a society to be successful.  For a long time that actually worked.  Prior to the 20th Century most societies lived almost entirely within themselves.  Tribalism, as sociologists call it, defined a religious belief and that tribe in turned formed a government for itself.  The people were monolithic, that is, all of one kind.  Until the 20th Century it was not at all unusual for a person to never travel more than 20 miles from where he was born.  That meant these societies were so homogenous that singular beliefs usually worked.

Still, certain groups of people decided even before the 20th Century that their take was the proper one and anyone not so defined was a “heathen.”  For Americans, a great example of this was the European view of the Native American cultures.  Even those Native Americans were mono-theistic, since the did not refer to “God,” and did not understand the European concept, it was clear to those European that the Native Americans were obviously heathens.  Many organized religion set out to bring Christianity to a group that neither wanted nor needed Christianity.  They were mono-theistic and it was Christian ignorance that brought on the problems.  Christians had a long history of such foolishness.  The Inquisitions of the 15th Century and before that the crusades to the middle east to ostensibly recover the Holy Grail.  I say ostensibly because the true reason was the European belief that old Christian churches were somehow being desecrated by the Moslems.  Just a little bit of education by the Christians about the Moslem religion would have shown them that nothing could have been further from the truth.  Even so, I doubt that would have stopped them.  Ignorance and passion have a way of getting together in mankind to bring death and destruction to anyone who has the temerity to believe something different.

I have serious problems with the way the Moslem religion is practiced in the Middle East.  Even in today’s world they are still little more than second class citizens in their own societies.  In Saudi Arabia they cannot drive a car.  Why?  I have not a clue.  In many countries in the Middle East, a woman found guilty, or even suspected, of infidelity to her husband is subject to stoning and death.  Most such countries also require her to wear a burka, to one extent or another.  Men, on the other hand, are not hindered by any such restrictions.  Even the adulterous husband does not fear for his life.

But I can allow for that a whole lot more than some of the practices that are going on right here in America.  These days in America there is more religious intolerance than I think we have had at any time in our history.  And I am a US historian by degree so I can say that with some conviction.  The native Americans of Massachusetts had a word for religious tolerance that bears remembering, “Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg,” which means, you fish on your side, I fish on my side, and no one fishes in the middle.  They were all about peaceful co-existence.

Conservative politicians in America have taken God hostage and are holding him over the heads of Americans.  They tell us how our morals need to be shaped.  They do this via their own religious background.  They are openly contemptuous of anyone who dares believe anything different as well.  They are smart enough to live the name God out of their discussions, but if you could nail one of them down on the origins of their belief, which I doubt you could, they would have to admit that it is directly tied to their God.  One of the great debates in America today is over gay marriage.  Those against it say it is somehow ruining the institution of marriage.  Really?  How is that a country that has literally hundreds of definitions for religion can only have one with regard to marriage?  I find that rather peculiar, and rather disingenuous of anyone to make such a claim.  For centuries in this country the acceptance of marriage free from all religious entanglements has been understood as an absolute right.  If two people desire only a judge or justice of the peace to declare them legally married does that not separate marriage from all religious views?  The corruption comes when people insist that when the marriage is between same-sex individuals somehow God has to be magically introduced into the equation.  That is some of the worst logic I have ever heard and yet, it is the conservative Christians of this country who had taken God and force-fed it upon our entire society.  They tell us that their version of God and marriage are the correct one and God help anyone who differs with that version.

I have many friends who have very conservative Christian views of the world.  I am happy for them.  Some I even admire in the way they practice their religion.  I think they know better than to tell me what is moral and what is not.  They simply are not interested in hearing my lash out at them, and they know they will.  But Americans have become extremely lazy about the separation of church and state.  Instead of finding abhorrent anyone trying to force via legislation morality upon them, they allow politicians, PACs, and religious groups to get away with exactly that.  They are allowing those groups ownership of God, and in doing so, allowing for a particular take on God to be foisted upon all Americans.  It is time for that to stop!  In fact, it is long overdue.  The death of this country is very likely to come from religious zealots who have little tolerance for opposing views.  They are still living in 16th societies that no long exist.

Americans gasp when they hear about the religious intolerance and excesses of the Middle East.  But Americans need to take a second look at themselves.  Are we not doing the same sorts of things?