DREADLOVING: What's Good About Faggots?

[UPDATE] A DREADNOUGHTER who'd know has emailed a reference for the Narnia story I mentioned in the comments:

"The Lewis book is The Last Battle, Chapter 15, and the 'heathen' characteris Emeth (the Hebrew word for "truth'), introduced in Chapter 10, ¶¶39­57,seen again in Chapter 13, ¶¶35-40, and continues from Chapter 14, ¶32 into Chapter 15."

Yet another confluence of Judaism and Christianity ad majoram Dei gloriam!

:: Veni Creator Spirtus ::

It's time to write on something central to all this: men are beautiful and love between them can lead to Christ.

John Heard - Lovers Walk, 2005

Bet you didn't expect that!

:: In You I See Him ::

DREADNOUGHT is quite devoted to the Jew.* Regardless of the questions of sexuality and morality, endlessly parsed here, there is the simple fact of my devotion. I tend the Jew, I discipline my urges, I choose not to manifest my rage if I know he's vulnerable, or irritable or scared.

Even though the Jew is in New York, I have not pursued another particular friendship, I have not actively sought out replacements. It has been something of a revelation - and perhaps something will knock it down again - but the Jew stimulates a space in my DREADHEART and that space yearns for God.

:: Another Jew ::

The paradox of all this, and it is sure to make some DREADNOUGHTERS troubled, is that this interpersonal devotion, this daily forgoing of the self for the wider purpose of our relationship, leads me inexorably into a deeper sense of God. It startles me, I'll get off the phone from speaking to the Jew and get straight onto the rosary and talk to another Jew, this time one Who also happens to be God.

:: Augustine Got there First ::

Of course, DREADNOUGHT is silly to be surprised. That model of profligate young-man-turned-mighty-Christian, St Augustine, offered many insights into the manner in which our earthly friendships mirror the love of the Creator for His creation:

"Friendship is an image of God's love for us, according to Augustine, since authentic and generous friendship mirrors the love that Christ showed for us on the Cross, and which He described when teaching that "no greater love can one have than to lay down one's life for one's friend." (John 15:13). "

"It is a love that does not look for anything in return for the love given, and finds happiness in promoting the interests and happiness of the other. Such a love warms the heart, thrills the mind, and urges the friend to give everything for the other--just as Christ does for us--and leads to happiness in this world while pointing to God, who, Himself, is Love."

It is important to note, as the Pope certainly has, that Augustine's descriptions of friendship included, mostly, intense male-on-male bonds.

Benozzo Gozzoli - Baptism of Augustine, 1465

Thus:

"Augustine regarded friendship so important and so valuable because he even believed that, of everything that exists in the created world, only true friendship could lead a person to God. As for Augustine's assertion that there was no true friendship between him and his concubine of thirteen years, it is worth remembering that in Augustine's society, educated women were rare."

"For a brilliant and highly educated man like Augustine, true friendship would have required an intellectual aspect that would have been difficult to find with most women of his time. In the culture of North Africa in the time of Augustine, as was also the case in classical culture before his time, spiritual friendship of this kind would have been restricted to his close male friends."

This is an aspect of Catholic thought that some choose to forget.

:: Radical Orthodoxy ::

Indeed it finds expression in the Catechism's exhortation to 'disinterested friendship' which, if anything, must mean the kind of relationship between males that St Augustine defined.

Claudio Coello - Saint Augustin (b. 1642, Madrid, d. 1693, Madrid)

We're on difficult ground, and what works for one man might not work for another, but DREADNOUGHT cannot see such teaching precluding passionate, committed relationships between men who are same sex attracted and can strive for, and hopefully attain, the level of chaste perfection the Church demands.

:: Polish Wit and Wisdom ::

A much better writer cum DREADNOUGHTER than I, recommends a much better poet than most anyone, on this precise point, Czeslaw Milosz:

Veni, Creator (1961)^

Come, Holy Spirit,
bending or not bending the grasses,
appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame
as they harvest or when they plow in the orchards or when snow
covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada.
I am only a man: I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in the church
lift its hand, only once, just once, for me.
But I understand that signs must be human,
Therefore call one man, anywhere on earth, not me — after all I have some decency —

and allow me, when I look at him, to marvel at you.

:: The Upshot ::

How can a religion with Christ - the sacrifice par excellence of unselfish love between men, of the love of God for Man - fail to recognise, celebrate and encourage light-giving friendship today? Happily, Catholicism does not. That's why same sex attracted Catholics know the mad rush for 'gay marriage' is a lie; because the State has no power to bless our bonding. Rather, if we structure our lives according to Catholic discipline and seek ever to work for the flourishing of our loved ones, our pairings cannot help but be blessed: they're sanctified by the example of Christ and ordained before time by the God Who is Love.

*(DREADNOUGHTERS should note that this is a historical post and not every personal detail will accord with the present situation. Everything else, however, is up for discussion).

^(Idiosyncratic formatting belongs to Blogger, not Milosz).