The Pope Flap

Getting our mouths washed out with soap was a threat my buddies and I heard countless times during our childhood, all across the neighborhood. We worried some about it, but never saw any of our elders actually carry it out. Maybe the time finally has come to translate these off-putting words into action, especially among religious leaders, as a counterpart to getting our feet washed by some of them.

Somehow, Pope Benedict recently got it into his head that the interests of Christian-Muslim dialogue would be served by quoting in a lecture an almost never read medieval passage that characterized some of the prophet Muhammad's teachings as "evil and inhuman." Even 24 hours later, the Pontiff's brain still had some waking up to do. He was declared surprised and upset that Muslims took offense at what he said. Then he apologized, but only for the effect his words had, not for quoting them in the first place.

The trouble was that by the time the Pope finally began clarifying what he did and did not intend his lecture to say, the rallies and the official condemnations, along with the usual shoot-yourself-in-the-foot stupid remarks --- for one, comparing the Pope with Hitler and Mussolini --- had reached the level of mindless frenzy. Is there anybody out there still interested in conversations about Christianity and Islam that make sense?

Ok, guys, put a sock in it for a minute, and let those who are suffering the consequences of your insensitivity and rage get a few words in edge-wise. In the first place, your Holiness, you of all people should have known better than to try to get a discussion going on jihad by sticking a blowtorch in Muslims' faces as your opening move. And your "extremely upset" reaction of surprise was pretty lame, don't you think? Now, secondly, Muslim friends, take a step back out of the blowtorch's range --- it really isn't the kind of flame that can inflict damage, except to false pride --- count to ten, read the Pope's act of quotation for what it really was, ill-considered and irrelevant, and join the rest of us again in working out how to thank the Almighty for our lives together.

It is tedious to keep reading and hearing ill-informed and even malicious caricatures of fellow human beings' deepest religious sentiments and convictions --- sorry, The Prophet was not an off-with-your-head kind of a guy --- and the condescending attitude that lies behind them. And it is no easier to deal with the ready-fire-aim reactions of religious fanatics whose sense of outrage may be appropriate once in a while, but whose fuses are too short to allow them ever to express it constructively. Arrest the Pope when he touches down in Turkey? Come on.

Both the defaming of others' faith, and the assaulting of the defamers, have long since become very dangerous enterprises that all too readily sweep up innocent bystanders, whether in churches, mosques, or on the street, in their fury. I know of no better way to prevent the assaults than to cut out the defamations that provoke them. But I also know of no better way to prevent the escalation of religious violence than to get a handle on the narcissism that takes the slightest criticism as an occasion for wanton destructiveness. Effigy-burning touchiness, with all of the humorlessness that leads up to it, is no more attractive in a religious rally than it is in a gang-related street brawl. Muslims certainly have cause for irritation when The Prophet is insulted. But Muhammad knew well that insults go with the territory, and he handled them far better in his own day than many of his followers are handling them in ours.

Holding provocativeness in check, though, along with scaling down our reactions to it, does not mean avoiding the hard issues that keep otherwise sincerely motivated religious people from experiencing, together, that all-surpassing love from the Divine Lover who is called by different names but who is, by any name, Love-itself. The Pope is right, and profoundly so, to stand his ground in calling for dialogue on the violent manifestations of religion, and Muslims need to come to terms with the deeply misleading pronouncements of some of their most revered clergy who love swords more than ploughshares, and weapons of mass destruction most of all. But the Holy Father also needs to be more straightforward about the Christian tradition itself, which included Holy War stuff long before The Prophet ever had the grace to be be born among us.

Two Sexual Roads Less Traveled

One Catholic writer I try to keep up with is Donald Cozzens, lately of John Carroll University. He is out with a new book, Freeing Celibacy, that is simply stunning in its eloquence and integrity. The thesis of the book is an old one: the right kind of decision to live out one's life without sexual experience, for the greater good of the gospel, is the outward expression of an inward, spiritual gift from God. Fr. Cozzen’s exposition of the thesis, though, is anything but something from a distant past.

Cozzens stays clear of the intellectualization about celibacy as the sexual ideal that has dominated Roman Catholic pastoral theology in the past, and instead focuses on the present experience of a very small number of very real, humble, and quietly inspired men and women for whom only "a mysterious pull of grace" toward singleness can fit their personal spiritual journeys. Movingly, Cozzens allows these beautiful people to tell us on their own terms why they cannot be the people they sense God wants them to be without relinquishing their yearning for sexual intimacy, and why the commitment to celibacy involves, seemingly paradoxically, a lifetime of struggle as well as graced ministry, performance, and achievement.

The idea of celibacy as a charism is especially relevant to a whole lot of really bad things still going on in the Catholic Church. Trying to be celibate when you are not called or enabled by God for the task is one way to end up as the quirky, cranky, manipulative, abusive, or downright dangerous kind of human being that all too many priests have ended up being. ( I am well aware that there are other ways to wind up like this.)

But trying to be a marriage partner, as Protestants are pressured to be, is not much of an alternative when you are neither called nor equipped for that task. The particular brand of Protestantism that I still represent, United Methodism, itself has a long way to go on this issue. Officially, the denomination supports what sounds like a credible, dual sexual standard of fidelity in marriage and celibacy in singleness. In actuality, though, the latter serves not as a cajoling of the unmarried to hold off on sex, but as a cover for an irrational opposition to homosexual relationships, and for a hypocritical attitude toward celibacy itself.

Both celibacy and the marriage relationship are divinely bestowed opportunities for expressing our sexual nature to God's glory. But, and contrary to a thousand years of misguided Christian teaching, celibacy is not the ideal for everyone. And neither is offspring-begetting marriage, contrary to even more years of de-forming Genesis 1:22 into yet another spirit-killing law. Some married couples cannot produce offspring, others choose not to, and neither the inability nor the choice invalidates the sacredness of their sexual activity together.

God invites couples to "be fruitful and multiply." God invites individuals to make a life-long commitment to chastity. And God's prevenient grace equips some, but not all couples, and some, but not all individuals to accept and live out these invitations. Neither invitation is a demand, even when it is experienced as a calling from God Godself. (The biblical word is even stronger: summons.) God's great gift of freedom is never overridden by God's enthusiasm for getting some of his people onto a different track.

As I finished my reading of Fr. Cozzen's book, I found myself following a different line of thought from his own: the winsome descriptions that some celibate priests and nuns share about their commitment to chastity are strikingly similar to those of more than just a few men and women who understand their being gay and lesbian also to be a living out of God's grace, gifts, and will. They, too, have found their deepest humanity and service to God through struggle, prayer, commitment, and through grace-filled, life-giving friendships with both men and women. For gays and lesbians, there is also the transforming quality of an intimate, same-sex relationship bound by a commitment to permanence and fidelity. Self-assured critics who proclaim such a relationship an "abomination unto the Lord" know neither gays, lesbians, nor the Lord very well.

Like celibacy, gay and lesbian sexuality isn't for everyone, in spite of the fanatical fulminating going on these days about the dangers the latter pose to keeping the world safe for straightness. The evidence suggests that it, like the road to celibacy, will always be a less traveled road. But it is hardly a road that leads to perdition. That road is the more traveled road of people unwilling to look deeply enough into their own sexuality to want to make its expression, in whatever form, a fit offering to God.