DREADNOUGHT - SITE ARCHIVED

A Statement from John Heard

2010-07-14T22:27:00.005+10:00

"I was rather young to be so far north, but there is a period near the beginning of every man's life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place" - The Years of Wonder (E.B. White, 1961
)

As this site approaches 600,000 page views, it is a good time to reckon with the past and make some disclosures that will, no doubt, influence the way my public efforts are received in the future.

DREADNOUGHT was started as an experiment, a very public but also necessarily personal exploration of the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. It was an attempt to chronicle my experiences; primarily (although I did not always know it at the time) to set down what it feels like to be a same sex attracted Catholic.

At first I was motivated by that most common and human desire – to know I was not alone. Next, I wanted to know it could be done; that one could be a Catholic and a same sex attracted man, a creature of ordinary passions (albeit not properly "normal") living out a life of relative equanimity. Of course, I always knew one could (if it came down to a discussion of possible facts, I existed), but the available cultural models for "gay" men at the time seemed to offer either a life of radical promiscuity or a shadow-world of psychologically circumscribed denial and / or repression. This was the "liberated" / "Catholic"-"ex-gay" dichotomy.

However, the early and sustained popularity of the site and the massively over-subscribed comments boxes, not to mention the thousands of emails received, testified to the existence of a vast, otherwise overlooked (or ignored) cohort. At first people were mostly intrigued: piqued, or offended by the idea of a "gay, Catholic, conservative". Some were put off by any talk of a "post-gay" reality. Yet, many also said they thought like me, and a significant few eventually revealed they were themselves just the same. Now, "post-gay" is cliché and younger same sex attracted men are relatively nonchalant about their feelings. What their desires mean about who they are and what kind of men they can become does not seem like such a pressing issue.

The conversation here has mirrored this shift away from identity politics generally. Over the years we discussed, sometimes for the first time in a serious and public context, how same sex attraction is not always simply sexual and that it is not properly thought of as constitutive. We decided that it is better thought of as an attribute, a more or less strong tendency, in a wide constellation of self-making attributes. We talked about how it is a part of one’s personality, not the defining feature of one’s "category" of humanity. We talked about how religious/ethical ideas about moral order and human flourishing did not always happily translate into post-1960s psychology-inflected English – but that did not automatically mean the latter was preferable, humane, or true. In this way, the "liberated" / "Catholic"-"ex-gay" dichotomy was revealed as a fallacy and the lived experiences of millions of men, brought to light and described on this site, helped confirm its demise.

Rarely now does the English-speaking media refer unquestioningly to the old cultural models. Rarely too does anyone, without malice, fail to acknowledge that the Catholic teaching on same sex attraction distinguishes between homogenital acts and same sex desires. This is a major achievement. Further, many good religious types, who might otherwise have persisted too long with rigid and unfair ideas about their brothers and sisters, here expressed a change of heart and revealed a depth of fellow-feeling that will remain one of the chief boasts of this experiment and the best testament to the wider influence of what we have done.

Some years ago I closed down the comments boxes. The blog was pretty much finished as an example of that genre from that point. Still, the hardier types, the seekers and learners persisted with me. They have followed my writing through the years. Strangers identified as DREADOUGHTERS and DREADNOUGHTERS became "gracious friends". I am thankful for their support and I have always admired their verve. I always will. I have cherished your shared stories and prayers.

I think, together, we have conclusively answered the founding question in the affirmative, giving hope to many who would otherwise have chafed under an ill-fitting categorisation. There is no need to stereotype our inner lives and intimate physical selves. As curious, offensive, impossible, or crazy as it seemed at the time, this site and all of the many discussions we have had here have helped demonstrate definitively that it is possible, that it is relatively commonplace, and that we are not in fact madmen.

To get to this point, however, there were pitfalls to navigate along the way. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to discuss the issues, to share their stories and sorrows. Newspapers and magazines came calling. I was booked for television and radio appearances. From a relatively young age, I had the singular experience of hearing people I had never met, and who did not recognise me standing nearby, strenuously debating the merits of my views. Diverse people all over the nation and overseas held opinions on the quality of my voice, the nature of my beliefs, the attractiveness or otherwise of my appearance, and the ‘real reason” I said x or did y. The day I saw my picture on the front page of the National Catholic Register, just below an article on President Barack Obama, supplied another shock.

I have never really believed this interest had much to do with me. Rather, it is more likely that I simply started writing and talking about sex, politics, and religion at a time when any combination of those topics was considered provocative. Early on, however, I did sometimes poke a stick at tender things to see if people would flinch. It is very satisfying for a young man to be feted and – most flattering of all - consulted. It was a wild ride, in some respects, and I only stepped back from punditry when I realised that I risked morphing into one of those "nattering nabobs of negativism" that Spiro Agnew famously proscribed. I regret to say that it actually took a while for me to learn that I did not always have the answers, that something was not necessarily learned (or pressing, or popular) simply because I had an opportunity to express my view of it for or against.

In the course of my public efforts I have, therefore, learned a number of valuable lessons, but chief among these is a realistic sense of my limitations. I hope I am a much more humble man now. I know I am a more careful man than I was when I wrote some of the posts here. I particularly regret sometimes playing the man (or woman - Martine Delaney) rather than engaging with ideas. Like many young men, I found certain people beyond ridiculous and I sometimes judged them on the basis of what I knew of their views.

Only being judged and dismissed as a human being, simply because of someone’s having read a snippet of something I once said, or wrote, or did – taught me this lesson. Empathy is hard won, but it changes a man.

What I do not regret is stating clearly and honestly how I felt at any given time. I do not regret having been a young man of firm beliefs. Some things have remained true and strong: my faith, my belief in a place for same sex attracted men and women in the Church (including, for men, as priests), my more or less overarching intellectual (and more deep-seated cultural and political) conservatism, and my commitment to the promotion of marriage, improving the lot of families generally, and support for sage policies that contribute towards ensuring that we view ourselves as a community of carers, rather than just a loose association of competing interests.

What I have left behind, however, is a certain egocentrism and unfounded confidence. I no longer write or act as though I might sally forth into debate on any topic and quickly come to grips with the best solutions. I have read too much of Burke and Hayek to persist in that sort of error. On some issues, indeed, particularly parenting and relationships – my views have shifted and matured, but I have always returned to my core beliefs for insight. I have been blessed to have been guided by an enduring moral compass, even if it has sometimes caused me to wince in hindsight at the imprudent or uncharitable things I said and did in earlier times.

I have resisted all counsel to delete the site. The development of any human being is slow and sometimes unhappy (c.f. "the crooked timber of humanity"). My development has had its humiliating points, and I have been cursed/blessed with an ability to write whatever it is that I think in clear, limpid prose. That means I have occasionally been stridently stupid, and I admit I have sometimes been fragrantly offensive. No one will ever wonder what I thought growing up. It is all online here. My youthful triumphs and humiliations are public. The site is archived by the National Library of Australia!

The posts on DREADNOUGHT are a part of who I was, the feedback has contributed to the man I have become, and the lessons I learned from almost six years of thinking-out-loud will hopefully discipline me in whatever comes next. I can promise those who still read that these hard-won, character-building experiences will govern any service I hope to offer.

Now it just remains to (1) update the disclaimer that has always sat on the sidebar, (2) to archive the site and most of its functions, and (3) to sketch a bit of the future for faithful readers:

1 - I have always disclosed that "DREADNOUGHT is not a member of a political party and does not contribute financially to any party political entity" – a statement which is, as of this month, no longer accurate and has been changed.

2 - From this time onward, DREADNOUGHT and all related content is irrevocably archived. Statements previously posted here, opinions offered, positions clarified and refined should only be relied on as examples of my views, etc. as at the date posted. All intellectual property (including, but not limited to, writing, photographs, etc.) is © John Heard.

3 - I will no longer respond to emails sent to the address on the sidebar. The DREADNOUGHTERS Facebook Group will remain, as it belongs to the members and they will decide its fate. Following discussions with my editors, I will no longer post columns for syndication on this site. Those DREADNOUGHTERS who remain interested in my writing can consult The Spectator website.

I was rather young to be so far north.
- JH

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - Dante, Limbo, Pagan Thought, Conversion, and Superlative Christianity

2010-06-06T12:03:00.008+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's latest column for syndication is on Dante, pagan thought, Christian beauty, and conversion. It ran in The Record newspaper last week.

:: BEING HEARD - ‘Superlative Christianity’ ::

By John Heard

Reading Dante as a young man, I was transfixed by the descriptions of Limbo. Having discovered the classical world (its literature, philosophy, and artefacts) at about the same time I loved any news of the virtuous pagan. In Dante my heroes, a collection of people who lived good lives without (indeed, before) Christ, were remembered. They avoided the torments of Hell. It meant something that the things I found good, true, and beautiful in the best of Greek and Roman culture were worthy in Christianity too. Indeed, Dante’s great synecdoche for this idea, the pagan poet Virgil leading his late medieval Christian Everyman through the thicket of despair, a sage guide through Hell and Purgatory, is one of the most generous and humane metaphors in world literature. It speaks volumes about the nature and sensibility of Christianity.

For a serious young man searching for such things, here were proofs in literary form of an understanding as old as the Church: Christianity completes, it does not readily deface.

The mechanism is sublime. Sometimes called, nowadays, inculturation – it is the expropriation by the Church of pre-existing modes and expressions. Christianity, in this cultural sense, is the superlative form of whatever good has gone before. This is also known as conversion and that is a better term. The idea, after all, is that Christians turn the best of pagan culture toward the cross.

So, for instance, the Vicar of Christ (the Holy Father) is also the Pontifex Maximus (the Supreme Pontiff, greatest bridge-maker), an ancient title inherited from Roman state religion. Christmas and Easter, the greatest Christian festivals, rest on pagan religious roots. Similarly, instead of destroying the Pantheon (a temple dedicated, literally, to all Roman gods) Christians converted the building. To this day, Sancta Maria ad Martyres resounds to the unceasing worship of the One, as do so many other converted temples in Rome and all over the Christian world.

What she does with stone and concrete, the Church extends to purest thought. The Stoic philosophers (Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius) alongside the best of the Greeks (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle) sought a more humane future. Their ideas were saved, converted, and transmitted by Christian scholars. In a sense, these pagan thinkers wrote and reasoned towards cultural Christianity. At the very least, they laid the foundations for systematic Christian philosophy. Reading Epictetus’s Enchiridion, for instance, reveals how much influence the ancient thinkers had on Catholic moral theory. Later, Christianity – via St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas – would repay the favour.

In Christianity, then, a gap is closed between the ancient world and the New Jerusalem. The bridge Christianity builds is active, vivified, and holy. This is one of the senses in which the Church is the "sacrament of salvation" for the whole world.

There are ramifications in this for secular modernity, not least because Western culture often betrays a neo-pagan influence. The hallowing of pagan achievement, indeed, demonstrates how Christianity transforms the very nature of man’s work. What we can achieve ourselves is magnified by grace. In that sense, one answer to Richard Dawkins and his type, so enamoured of the gifts of man, is “all of that and more”. Further, the hypersexual “gay culture” is undone, found wanting by comparison. The Catechism teachings on self-mastery, for instance, are a rich source that builds on the scala amoris discussed in Plato’s Symposium. Like hapless tourists who stumble into the Pantheon on Pentecost, Catholics awakened to this rich patrimony often find themselves surrounded by tinkling bells and falling roses. Indeed, we happen at times onto things which express an almost impossible beauty.

Pantheon, Pentecost 2010 (John Sonnen)

For, just as the light of Christ edifies a pagan temple and amplifies its beauty the Gospel can edify modern man and amplify our happiness. No longer is the Pantheon, for instance, just an architectural wonder, the first true dome in history. Now, and forever, in niches where once idols stood, the triumphant cross and statues of saints prove that, in St Thomas Aquinas’ trenchant formulation, “newer rites of grace prevail”. In the same way, we can seek the ultimate achievement of a life lived well.

Anyone who laments the historical fact of conversion should know that he risks preferring the pagan past with all its brutality and bloody spectacle, a past that the best pagans despised.

Christianity does not readily deface at all. Rather, the Church in this creaturely reality is the superlative form of older, worthy orders. The whole mystery is contained in those enduring images: petals streaming from the oculus of the Pantheon at Pentecost and Virgil leading Dante through Hell and Purgatory, stopping short of the beatific vision.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

:: Resources ::

- read the Divine Comedy (Longfellow trans.);

- read the Enchiridion of Epictetus (Carter trans.); and

- the Golden Sequence (English).

DREADAPPRECIATION: Eve Tushnet

2010-06-05T21:50:00.001+10:00

:: By the Time it was Real Enough to be Threatening ::

There are a large number of new DREADNOUGHTERS, many via Eve Tushnet's site (following Mark Oppenheimer's profile piece in the New York Times). You are all very welcome. Explore the sidebar, engage with other DREADNOUGHTERS, and check out my writing on same sex friendship, self-mastery (sublimation), and holy sex / marriage. It also seems appropriate to post this short, genuine appreciation I started some months back and shelved for such a time.

:: Catholic Women in Refrigerators ::

DREADNOUGHTERS sometimes ask why DREADNOUGHT doesn’t write more about the issues faced by same sex attracted Catholic women (as women). The fact is, however, that DREADNOUGHT credits some of the saner, literary-critical arguments from difference. Plus, there is Eve Tushnet.

:: Sweetness, Sweetness I was Only Joking when I Said ::

So many times, over the years, I have read details of Eve's life, or encountered passages in her writing, and thought how uncanny, how true. There she is, it's Eve, not me - but she is aligned with the general DREADNOUGHT project, even in cultural externals (although, she is a comics fangirl where I am little more than a dilettante, with a thing for Cap arcs and one-off masterworks such as Dash Shaw's The Bottomless Belly Button). Eve has a blog on "Gay Catholic Whatnot", holy sex, Christian friendship, and marriage. Eve writes for a conservative standard-bearer publication and riffs on the Smiths. Eve was one of the first DREADNOUGHTERS. Eve gets it.

:: You're the One for Me, Fatty ::

She writes as though she really understands what it is like to be a same sex attracted Catholic (and she appreciates the tension for primacy around those designations). So much so, in fact, that she provides proof - when I need proof - that the attempt to find a space for same sex attracted men and women in the Church has nothing to do with me, or with any particular site, that it is wider, more catholic - that it is indeed entirely Catholic. We are both trying to map a path for same sex attracted men and women: feeling forward, failing, reading Flannery O'Connor, sampling pop riffs, getting attached to the Eucharist, blogging about it, trying again. Although we have never met, I think of Eve as a "gracious friend" and I regularly return to her writing for inspiration and refreshment.

:: Test Everything, Hold Fast to What is True ::

I recommend her site to same sex attracted women, on air, in print, and as often as appropriate online. In sensibility and discipline (although Eve publicly identifies as celibate, rather than someone called like all Christians to chastity), we are walking the same bright line and we both want to see the "marriage wars" resolved in favour of love (i.e. it has little to do with vapid equality-speak).

:: The Upshot ::

Check out Eve's post on Alan Bray and Frederick Roden, just in time for Corpus Christi.

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - Pope Benedict XVI, Sex Abuse Scandal, Media Reporting & Religious Imagery

2010-05-06T21:03:00.002+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT'S latest column for syndication is on the sexual abuse scandal, media manipulation, and conditioning. It was first published online in early April, and ran in The Record newspaper this week.

:: BEING HEARD – ‘Against a Particular Sort of Conflation’ ::

By John Heard

Human beings are creatures too. Certainly, we share a creaturely susceptibility to basic needs. Alongside the lower order animals, we seek sustenance. We long for companionship. We want warmth and air. This is part of our embodied nature. We are in the world.

It comes as little surprise, then, to learn that human beings fall for some of the same tricks we use to train dogs, horses, and other animals – indeed – that we respond to the same systems of reward. We are vulnerable, in other words, to conditioning. This means that we can be manipulated by the clever use of stimulus and response. Ring a bell, feed a dog, and observe his salivation - now repeat the exercise. Eventually the dog will salivate upon hearing the bell. This is classical conditioning.

There are more subtle versions of the technique, but from even this basic example it is easy to understand how the existence of conditioning, and its deliberate use, might equip a perceptive man with successful shortcuts to learning and persuasion. Indeed, the basic fact of human vulnerability to conditioning is well known and regularly exploited in advertising. The results there are instructive.

The typical method is very close to the classic stimulus-response model. Think of a preeminent brand. Now, think of the way it is presented to the market. Chances are that images, sounds, and other stimuli will be used to pair the brand with desirable attributes, such as youth, vitality, freedom, or happiness. Think of a cola commercial. Like the dog when he hears the bell, viewers salivate on cue.

Sometimes, more often in political advertising, conditioning is used to create a negative association. The thing in question (e.g. a candidate) is linked with scandal, corruption, weakness, or some other undesirable trait via the use of ominous music, grainy imagery, or any of a number of symbols that connote wrongdoing or irresponsibility. Pigs and clowns are stock stand-ins and irritation is a commonly targeted response. At the last Australian Federal election, for instance, the Australia Labor Party used conditioning (an advertisement that featured a loud, annoying buzzer) to persuade the audience from voting for the Coalition. Such attempts are highly successful – at least until the audience learns to resist the manipulation.

Certainly, once apprised of such things, one can sort manipulative aspects out from facts. We can attempt to discern the truth of any situation, free from the tricks and tactics of control.

Catholics generally, but especially those in Western nations where methods of marketing are entrenched and relatively sophisticated, must be wary. Indeed, an otherwise fair newspaper article on vocations to the priesthood, for instance – perhaps reporting on a rise in the numbers of young men entering the seminary – might be accompanied by a photograph of empty pews. The hidden message is obvious and negative.

Similarly, in times such as these when the Church is assailed by allegations of child sex abuse, some sub-editors and other publishing professionals will choose manipulation and conditioning to sell another message alongside the bleak news. In many cases, indeed, abuse allegations - some of them trumped up, too many painfully real – will be accompanied by distracting stimuli (particularly images of a deeply sacred nature and Gregorian chant excerpted from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass) meant to vilify Catholics. The idea is to condition nasty, bitter, cynical responses: all priests are paedophiles, all religious people are sex-obsessed, and all nuns are harsh and cruel.

Here are just two recent examples:

1. An article in the Guardian newspaper “Vatican Hit by Gay Sex Scandal” (4 March 2010) included a photograph shot at an angle that suggested the Holy Father and his assembled cardinals were themselves engaged in a homosexual group sex act. The subliminal message was so blunt and obvious that the liberal Huffington Post called the newspaper out on its “Photo FAIL”.

2. A digital image by Judy Green that ran alongside an opinion article (22 March 2010) by Madeleine Bunting in The Age newspaper (the article was syndicated from the Guardian) showed a stained glass window-style priest figure vested in surplice and stole (perhaps for confession). His hands were on the shoulder and head of a small boy. This otherwise innocuous image was given a deeply offensive subliminal meaning by means of a black square, such as one might see in a censored image, inserted across the priest’s eyes.

Both images were deeply offensive to Catholics, perhaps deliberately so given the consistently prurient treatment of these issues in certain publications, but – and this is the real worry – both images were also highly manipulative. With sustained deployment, such tricks are used to condition readers to associate Catholic imagery, sacraments, and even individuals with gay sex acts and child sex crimes.

Once one knows the truth about conditioning, however, it is easy to see through the dirty tricks. Catholics can change the channel, or buy another newspaper. If the source is a public one, paid for with tax dollars, Catholics must protest until the situation improves.

The issues surrounding same sex attraction on the one hand, and child sex abuse on the other, are certainly serious enough without a nasty, distracting war of propaganda and image manipulation waged by unscrupulous publishing professionals. Forewarned is forearmed.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

:: Resources ::

- DREADNOUGHT on Sex Abuse and Silence; and

- Vatican Resources (Public Documents on the Abuse of Minors).

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - Lenten Clarity, Same Sex Attraction, Secular Modernity, Fatherhood & Beauty

2010-03-22T20:30:00.008+11:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's latest column for syndication is on Lenten clarity, those things the world cannot give, and whether or not there is enough beauty in the world to sustain even one same sex attracted man. It was held over due to a production error, and ran in The Record newspaper during the second week of May 2010.

:: BEING HEARD - ‘A Single Man’ ::

By John Heard

I open my mouth and place inside the things I have longed to taste. I dress the way I feel. I “live and move and have my being” in the midst of a world of incredible advantage. Order and rhythm, bright light, and clean lines all round – these say I am modern. I am educated. I am doing well. All of this, this glittering now, it seems like my birthright.

Freedom is mine, that is for sure. It is my right. With it, I can make the people and things about me shift and shake. I can convince, and when that does not work or I cannot be bothered, I can coerce. Yes, I can (pos sum). That is my right. I have this rare power, this gift - the peculiar threat of secular modernity. Everything that is done to me, is done at my command, or at least with my tacit approval. I do not resist. I do not need to; everything here reflects my will. If not, it stops. I can make it so it stops.

We are to believe that this is the pinnacle of human endeavour. That this is freedom. That we live at last in an age where all of history, the blood, the struggle, the glimpses of peace and light, these have come together and fallen apart. Same sex attracted men and women, in particular, hear about our liberation all the time. Women too. Even black men, we are all so free and lucky. We strain against the future and pop into the past, usually when it suits us, on a whim. We have these things: nostalgia, melodrama, celebrity, and romance. They are real, we suppose. We can have it all, all of the time. Or not at all. Whatever. We are fortunate.

Still.

Lately I have longed for other things. I have wanted a child. That is something this world - the world of Pride marches and “gay marriage” - cannot give to me, not legitimately, not so that I know it is right, and good, and natural. I have also (perhaps predictably) become fixated on dogs. I think about how I would get one and how I would train him. I fantasize about how faithful and clever and good he would be to us. Sitting outside. Next to me on the sofa. Alert, but wise. Energetic, but sure. A sight hound. A wolf hound. A surrogate son. I could get one. I probably will, if I want to get a dog.

Still.

Lent rushes up like that shockwave across the Pacific. It brings news of suffering, of other people and their loss and struggle. It brings Haiti and Chile. It brings Him. The cross undoes modernity because the Passion is bleak and bloody and cruel. So is life. That is real. There are few clean lines on Golgotha and little left standing in Port au Prince. There is so much darkness in Concepción. The rhythm of the world is blunt, staccato. It is shocking. It is not order. It is the centurion’s stomp, and the people’s wickedness drones (ison).

Lent, which starts with ash and, if you are lucky enough, with a worthy performance of Psalm 137 Super flumina Babylonis - Lent reveals the limit of modernity.

Why? Because there are not enough beautiful things in the world to sustain us – not enough for even one same sex attracted man, let alone all the men on earth. We live in a degraded reality, after the Fall. We are broken too. There is only so much we can do. Rights do not come into this, this is about that feeling I get when I see a child and know he is not my son and that my son will not be. There is a limit to the spaces, the apartments, the stages, and the parties one can beautify, for instance, in light of that fact. One’s appearance can only be perfected, and then what? The social graces one can own and deploy? The men one can gather and discard? The silence. The money. Always, that lack. Our inheritance? Barren. We are sick of ourselves.

Same sex attracted men must look elsewhere, then, we must turn to G-d. For nourishment, we must turn to G-d. For love, we must look at G-d’s wounds. This is Lent. Lest our souls turn dry, our hearts cold, we must fight the bitter and seek truth. We must serve truth. We must model love. I must model love.

How? Submit. Learn. Serve. Love. People ask me all the time, as if I know, as if I made it up. That is the script, though. It is not mine. It is His. It is Him. This is what I write: Love Him and live.

All of the rest of it passes away. That is Lent too: remember man that Thou art dust, and unto dust Thou shalt return.

So: Quickly! Lent is so short. Huge emotion is not enough. My loneliness and yours – these are not enough to redeem man. Only Him. Always Him.

:: The Upshot ::

Oh my G-d. “How shall we sing the Lord's song: in a strange land?” This is what Lent is for, to find out how, to find out where the waters run deep and true. And this is faith: to love that wisdom and maintain the source until all the days have run.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

DREADCLARITY: Pope Benedict XVI, The Equality Bill, The Sexual Orientation Regulations, UK, Wales, Discrimination, Homosexuals & Natural Law

2010-02-10T19:17:00.014+11:00

:: Update ::
DREADNOUGHT's post featured on the New York Times Pope Benedict XVI site, ranking second (above offerings from the Associated Press and The Scotsman). The entries are selected by New York Times editors.
NYTimes.com - Pope Benedict XVI News (February 11, 2010).
:: A “New Social Order”? ::

DREADNOUGHTERS, especially English-speakers, have been following the controversy surrounding the Equality Bill in the UK Parliament (thank you for your messages). The Bill had passed the House of Commons but, after what was termed an unusually blunt intervention by the Holy Father in the internal affairs of a nominally Protestant state, the Bill stalled in the House of Lords. The Bill is of particular interest because the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, while supporting the general thrust and many of the key protections, have opposed certain provisions relating to "sexual orientation" which, the Bishops maintained, threatened to limit religious freedom.
:: Natural Law / Positivism ::

DREADNOUGHTER Brother Lawrence Lew OP, of Blackfriars Oxford, has put together a readable précis of the Catholic thinking that likely informed the Holy Father’s statements. It is useful for Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Most helpfully, by couching the controversy in the language of natural law and natural rights, one can appropriately parse the debate.
:: Justice / Equality ::
One can discern, for instance, how it is that one of the signal consequences of the Catholic teaching on human sexuality - that one cannot unjustly discriminate against same sex attracted men and women on the basis of their experiencing same sex attractions - coheres with the view that, in some circumstances, discrimination on the basis of public statements and other action (i.e. homoactivism) may be licit (where it is not necessary for the preservation of meaning). Indeed, there may even be times - when choosing men for priests, when choosing the Head of a Catholic school, for instance - when it is right and good to allow religious groups to follow the dictates of conscience - against the treatment of equality as an intrinsic good.
:: The Upshot ::
Let us be clear: this Bill would have the State actively instructing private individuals and groups in matters of conscience and religion. UK Citizens would have to comply with the legislation, or face penalty. The Bishops claim, indeed, that the Bill "raises some serious difficulties" with regard to religious freedom, difficulties which "will seriously hamper their work in [the UK]". DREADNOUGHTERS, of course, especially in Massachusetts will be familiar with similar instances elsewhere.
:: Resources ::
- Equality Bill (Full Text + UK Government Documents);
- Mandatory Sex / Social Curriculum in "Faith" Schools; and
- Documents from the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales.

DREADPUBLISHING: John Heard Reviews 'In Search of Civilization: Remaking a Tarnished Idea' by John Armstrong - The Spectator Australia

2010-02-01T19:54:00.014+11:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's review of John Armstrong's new book on civilization was published recently in the Australian edition of The Spectator. The review is written for a general, non-specialist audience. While it does not explicitly engage the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, the general tone and broad concepts treated (i.e. truth, beauty, and goodness) should be of interest.

:: The Upshot ::

DREADNOUGHTERS can keep up with DREADNOUGHT's other writing (on political, cultural, and social themes) by checking The Spectator archive (it is free) or subscribing to the magazine. There is also a collection of related material here.

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - The Least Likely: Same Sex Attraction & Christmas Joy AD2009

2010-01-06T21:34:00.009+11:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's latest column for syndication is on Christmas joy.

:: BEING HEARD – ‘The Least Likely’ ::

By John Heard

Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in – O Little Town of Bethlehem

Shy Christians stand back a little from the manger. Certainly, same sex attracted men and women hesitate at Christmastime. All of us can doubt. We can start to wonder about the Christmas miracle: did He really come for us? There is, after all, a sadness that visits at this time of year.

However, sadness indulged grows into a crutch (not for me, we think during the dry times, He came for them). We may start to think that we have a separate dispensation, if we think at all. Typically there is just a sense, a sad and lazy hunch, that we are separate from the strictures of faith.

This is the danger at Christmastime: that Catholics will leave Him behind just as the mystery of the Incarnation is coming into view.

Therefore, we learn again that a Christian cannot just nod and watch. That is the Advent lesson: active hope. We are not happy if we merely witness the passing scene. We must commit to Him. Never really assenting intellectually, never permitting the grace of Christmas to transform our hearts, these are ways to miss Christ. (Kitsch, or an obsession with pointing out things about Christmas that are ostensibly kitsch, is a way to miss Christ too). Despair is always a way to miss Christ. Despair is, traditionally, a sin against the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, Christmas Christians yield to hope. We must. At Christmastime, we return to faith, we hope and love. We try to give and try to keep ourselves open for the secret we know is the most wonderful, the most surprising aspect of the Christmas festival: that it can come so easily. If only we let it undo our doubts, Christmas makes sense. It makes complete sense. It is everything we want it to be.

Still, we hesitate. There is family and travel, which can seem like chores, and there are preparations, and – in many cases, significant financial outlay. The English-speaking peoples still celebrate Christmas as a major feast, perhaps for many it is the major festival, and that costs. Still, people will say, “it is Christmas”, to justify the expense.

It is, indeed, and Christmas is justification enough for a bit of extravagance.

Finally, there is the night. I have often written about Christmas night. It is effortlessly impressive. It is fascinating. It is one of those rare times, the other is the Easter Vigil, when the Church stays up and waits for Christ. The darkness gives way to light. Anxiety cedes to jubilation. The Church, united with the Holy Father and led by the bishops and priests, participates in the Communion of Saints and marks the turning of the tide. In the dark of Christmas night, we measure a still point. We use the precious Cross to find peace at the centre of our turning world (stat crux dum volvitur orbis is the motto of the eremitical and coenobitic Carthusian order). On Christmas night, most awesomely, we trace the shadow of the cross to the manger at Bethlehem.

Advent shriven, newly meek Christians, then, stand back a little from the manger too - but not out of hesitation. There is little doubt. Now come faith and awe. Christmas night restores the sacred and on Christmas morning, we grow into the warm light of grace.

That Christmas comes ringing is a sweet boon. Christmas comes shining! It frees and saves. Christ is G-d-with-us, after all. We long to meet Him. Same sex attracted men and women, Catholics everywhere, we stretch forward to touch His manger.

:: The Upshot ::

This is, then, the specific Christmas lesson - it is joy. Prepared by Advent hope, we believe at last that He came for us. That He came especially for those who despair. That He came, indeed, for same sex attracted men and women and for the least likely Christians, those who stand back a little from the manger, for whatever reason. He came to show Himself, and teach us how to love.

Venite, adoremus Dominum!

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - Advent Downunder, Same Sex Attraction & Christmas Carnality

2010-01-06T20:57:00.012+11:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT wrote a column for syndication on Advent hope, being Downunder in the lead-up to Christmas, and a peculiar experience of summer carnality. It ran in The Record newspaper this week.

:: BEING HEARD – ‘Advent Interrupts’ ::

By John Heard

In a hot dry land, one can long for snow. Certainly, it is diverting for people in the Southern Hemisphere to imagine Advent in the North, in New York City (if you are inclined - I am) and most people can picture Dickens’ London (or, at least, the city that soothes and perfects Ebenezer Scrooge).

The snow is ever-white there, in the Northern places. It lightly coats things first - trees, cars, and slow-moving people - and then it falls more determinedly. It is still gentle, though, the snow in the Northern Hemisphere. As imagined from Australia, Advent snow (in Rome, in London, in Montreal) is dust. It is confetti. It flutters and swirls.

Of course, that is nonsense.

Still, the Northern Advent and Christmas imagery is compelling. Certainly, in a hot dry land one’s thoughts turn naturally to winter fantasies. Indeed, for people in Australia (and South Africa, not to mention for Americans and Europeans overseas) our Advent narratives, our visual cues, all the accumulated English-speaking ideas about what Advent and Christmas should be (no, must be), these encourage us to long for snow. We yearn for a White Christmas, as silly as that sounds. In the middle of a desert continent, many Australians, for instance, experience a genuine desire to roast Christmas chestnuts, drink eggnog, and wear cable-knit sweaters.

Certainly, Catholics Downunder can become disoriented. Red dust. Dust storms. Heat and wind? What does that have to do with what is going on in the Church?

A similar thing occurs in Lent. Many of the symbols then point to spring and summer, to new life. In Australia, however, the shadows really do lengthen on Good Friday, and there is no climatic relief in sight. There is actually less daylight, not more, on Easter Sunday.

So what?

Southern Hemisphere Catholics grow up, then, between two worlds. There is the world we know from the cultural and liturgical cues provided by our historically Northern, culturally European faith and then there is the great hulking, sometimes rudely physical fact of our geography. Australia really does hulk, too. It is massive. It fills one’s mind with silence, dust, and heat.

There is no support in those facts and impressions, however, for cultural relativism. It is too easy to observe the fact of Australia’s difference, for instance, to parse its unique climatic experience of Advent, and then make some tired claim about the Mass (it too European) or the faith (it is stuffed with cultural, rather than properly spiritual, add-ons). People, even well meaning Australians and others, have been making those sorts of claims for decades. Enough.

A Catholic in the North is equivalent in essentials (body, heart, soul, and mind) as a Catholic in the South. It would be irrational to claim otherwise. Catholics are typically human, then, at least as far as we know. Man needs G-d, which is faith. G-d does not change, which is reason. The Catholic Church is where man finds G-d. Ergo, end of story.

What one can say, however, is that Advent takes Catholics by surprise. Again, it is like Lent. Both seasons come when we are settling down into sin. Perhaps we are lazy and weak, content to miss truth, and beauty, and goodness – but Advent calls us out of that rut. Advent calls us back to Christ.

Advent in Australia might be unique in this: In Australia, perhaps, one feels a little different by the time Advent arrives.

For same sex attracted men, certainly, Advent downunder comes as a summer shock. The summer sun brings with it summer bodies, and summer’s special temptation is carnality. However, the Church calls us out of that rut. Advent calls us back to Christ.

For Catholics generally, and finally, Advent interrupts the flow. It pushes us forward into the manger. We turn our minds to Christmas, to the shepherds and their flocks, and the angels, and the lowing beasts, and that unimaginably sweet vision of Mary - beautiful and holy - wrapping the Son of G-d.

:: The Upshot ::

Advent prepares the way, then, and it cleans us up. Done right, Advent makes us ready for the wonder of Christmas night. It does not matter where we are or what climate we experience. Advent is everywhere, and it is now.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

DREADCLARITY: Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, Father Federico Lombardi SJ, Bruno Volpe, Homosexuals, Transsexuals & Salvation

2009-12-07T19:10:00.013+11:00

:: Update ::

An Italian-language news interview conducted by Bruno Volpe with a retired former Curial official (Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán) was published on Wednesday. In the interview, Sig. Volpe claimed to feature the Cardinal's personal musings on St Paul in relation to the question of the salvation of "homosexuals" and "transsexuals" (i.e. if same sex attracted individuals and transsexuals would enter the Kingdom of Heaven). The report caused a media stir. In a follow-up interview posted to the same Pontifex website, the purported comments were used again by Sig. Volpe to advance so-called "reparative therapy" claims (e.g. that same sex attraction is a "disease").

:: Not So Fast ::

A terse Vatican response, which re-stated the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, quickly followed publication of the first Italian interview. The response has been reported in some places as a public "rebuke" of Cardinal Barragán. It is more accurate, however, to say that the Vatican response focussed on the credibility of the Pontifex.roma.it website, as the Vatican spokeman (Father Federico Lombardi S.J.) immediately stated that the website is not an official media outlet of the Holy See, indeed that it "lacks authority and is not a good source...for the Church's thoughts on...homosexuality". Certainly, Cardinal Barragán claims that his comments were mis-represented and a highly-regarded Vatican-watch journalist has backed the Cardinal.

:: The Upshot ::

DREADNOUGHTERS will also note, of course, that Cardinal Barragán formerly headed up the Curial office responsible for the pastoral care of health workers, a body that has no authority to issue doctrinal directives. Cardinal Barragán has previously acknowledged this fact, and his statements to that effect are a matter of public record.

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - What Remains, Fr James Martin SJ, What Should A Gay Catholic Do In Life?

2009-12-05T10:58:00.006+11:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's latest column for syndication is on comments made by Jesuit Father James Martin on what remains of life for same sex attracted Catholics. It ran in The Record newspaper last week.

:: BEING HEARD – ‘What Remains’ ::

By John Heard

In a short piece for the America Magazine group blog, Father James Martin S.J. asks: “What is a gay Catholic supposed to do in life?”

He provides a list of those things same sex attracted men and women “are not to do”: “enjoy romantic love”, “marry”, “adopt a child”, “enter a seminary”, and “work for the Church and be open”. “Nothing” about this list, he states, is “surprising or controversial: all of the above are Church teaching”. Yet, he claims, “taken together, they raise an important pastoral question…what kind of life remains for these brothers and sisters in Christ, those who wish to follow the teachings of the Church?”

That is a provocative way to phrase the question; to set it up in terms of what is left for same sex attracted Catholics, after obedience. After all, one rarely writes: What is a faithful, married Catholic supposed to do in life? He cannot date women (something many would associate with romantic love), he cannot enter a seminary, he cannot work for the Church and be open (about wanting to date women), and many married men cannot adopt a child (because they would be turned down by the adoption agencies, for various reasons, or indeed simply because their wives and families demur). What can the good Jesuit mean by phrasing the question in this negative and faintly histrionic way?

Let us start with what Father Martin cannot mean. He cannot mean, for instance, that same sex attracted men and women are set apart in terms ontology, that we might somehow need or want something that other men and women do not, or cannot need or want in / from life. This sort of question is close to the sort one might ask if intelligent alien life were discovered in the universe. The Church does not teach that same sex attracted individuals are a third sex, indeed, or another form of life (c.f. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 241). Father Martin cannot mean, therefore, what some homoactivists mean when they ask of the Church: what kind of life do you offer for us?

It is important to tease this out because those familiar with the debate about human sexuality, and Catholics committed to the culture of life generally – will find that Father Martin’s question sounds a bit like a secular, modernist complaint. That Father Martin’s Church is, indeed, she of the resounding “no”. This is a testy, cruel vision of Catholic thinking – and it is a bleak view of the Church.

However, such a vision only makes sense in a separatist context. If we cannot bring ourselves to think of same sex attracted men and women as human beings, then we cannot see any life for them in Christian obedience. Their very assent to faith, their "yes" to G-d, appears to neuter them, to cut them off from love and life. As Father Martin suggests, and gently (he writes “pastoral”, not ontological) - this sort of extreme self-abnegation would make for a “lonely, loveless, secretive life”. I will go further: it would make for hell on earth.

However, and as millions of same sex attracted men and women will attest, the Church offers same sex attracted individuals the same life she offers all men and women: eternal life via the Cross. Those who go about their daily lives, those who go to Mass, and struggle to model obedience, and fail, and try again – these are Christians. That is all, and miraculously. We understand, indeed, that a Christian is not to look for life beyond obedience, rather obedience – even obedience unto death on the Cross – is true life.

The result is not the remains of a life it is life. It is life in Christ, life with Christ.

The Church does not then, if we are thinking right, really teach that a same sex attracted man cannot get married to another man, and she does not teach that a same sex attracted woman cannot adopt a child. She does not teach in this negative manner at all.

She teaches, rather, what it is that men and women need to live good, true, and beautiful lives – and in her mercy she shares this information with the world. That she points out, in detail in some cases, those ways of living that are contrary to human happiness only demonstrates the Church’s special care for same sex attracted men and women. She stoops to the obvious, because men and women are weak, willful, and sometimes plain lazy.

I think Father Martin knows this, and indeed his writing is marked by a certain solidity. He is one of the best of the younger Jesuits, obviously faithful. He does not mean to suggest an answer, then, that would contradict the Church’s view of love and life in Christ. Rather, he shows a keen pastoral sense.

By thinking through Father Martin’s question, by asking what he can be asking, and discounting what he cannot be, English-speaking Catholics can learn to think and read with the Church. Certainly, same sex attracted Catholics can discover their home in the Church – at the foot of the Cross, with everyone else.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

:: Resources ::

- DREADNOUGHT on Same Sex Attracted Candidates for the Seminary;

- DREADNOUGHT on Holy Sex and Christian Friendship;

- DREADNOUGHT on Self Mastery and the Ladder of Love (Plato's scala amoris); and

- DREADNOUGHT on Gay Couples and the Help of Gracious Friendship.

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - ANGLICANORUM COETIBUS

2009-11-09T22:39:00.011+11:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's latest column for syndication is on the Vatican's response to "those Anglican faithful who desire to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church in a corporate manner". It ran in The Record newspaper two weeks ago.

:: BEING HEARD - ‘Our Beloved Brothers and Sisters’ ::

By John Heard

This is a moment of grace, perhaps even a moment of history, not because the past is undone, but because the past is transformed - John Hepworth (Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion)

When I lived at Newman College, the Jesuit-led residential community at the University of Melbourne, I had an Anglo-Catholic friend. That is, I always thought of him as specifically Anglo-Catholic, rather than something else, because he attended services in both chapels, sang in the (Anglican) Trinity College choir and listened to Gimmel recordings of early sacred (Catholic) music. Certainly, he wavered between what he saw as compelling, and in some respects competing, traditions. He was raised in the Anglican Communion, but I know he was drawn to catholicism intellectually and spiritually (doctrinally he was quite sound). Still, he was not sure – when I knew him – whether or not he could find the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church in Rome, attached to the See of Canterbury, or somewhere in the Christian East.

The poignancy of his situation, living as he did in a college named for one of the most famous Anglican converts to Catholicism, was not lost on him (and it was not lost on me). I frequently urged him to “come home”.

Regardless, I have known few men of a more profoundly Christian sensibility. His witness, important during my formative years, was impressive and serious. He introduced me to Lectio Divina. It was my Anglo-Catholic friend who encouraged me to study the debates that swirled, in the early Noughties, around the Radical Orthodoxy school of theological and philosophical thought, an engagement which led – in turn – to a thesis in natural law. And it was he, ambling down the hall, rumbling at my door (he had a distracted, donnish mien), asking me to come aside and pray evening prayer with him, who first showed me what catholicism might mean, what it might demand of those who profess to “hold and teach the Catholic faith that comes to us from the Apostles”.

I thought of my old friend this week when I read about the Holy Father’s plans for individuals and whole communities from the Anglican tradition. I thought of him, a man I have always considered a spiritual brother. I thought of him, someone who was a signal guide in my own journey of faith and obedience, even though we mostly lost touch when he went up to Cambridge. What a wonderful thing the Pope has wrought, I thought. This gesture of tremendous solicitude, this great gift to Anglo-Catholics, this is – in part – for him.

It is also, however, for us – for Catholics everywhere. In the same way that my friend’s witness and example surely strengthened my faith, the witness and example of those who choose to return under these provisions will strengthen and sustain the whole Church. Particularly in English-speaking countries, the closer union and collaboration of Catholics, the witness of diversity, the bond of unity, G-d-willing - these may flower and bear much fruit.

Of course, some will fuss. Some Catholics will think to bring up thorny issues at first instance, and complain about married priests. Some Anglicans, on the other hand, will point to the Catholic teaching on Anglican Orders (i.e. they are invalid - Apostolicae Curae), but in the main, the quotation from John Hepworth describes how many people are feeling. The past cannot be undone, but by this gesture, the Holy Father has moved decisively to transform the history of English-speaking Christianity.

It is perhaps no coincidence, then, that the website of the Cause for the Canonisation of John Henry Newman had this message as its “thought” for Wednesday October 21, 2009:

To the narrow-minded and the bigoted the history of the Church for eighteen centuries is unintelligible and useless; but where there is Faith, it is full of sacred principles, ever the same in substance, ever varying in accidentals, and is a continual lesson of "the manifold Wisdom of God".*

Ever the same in substance, ever varying in accidentals, the faith is rich, pure, and true.

:: The Upshot ::

It is with great joy, and profound gratitude, then, that English-speaking Christians everywhere will receive, and prayerfully support, the Holy Father’s gesture. Our beloved brothers and sisters are home at last. “Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers…”

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

:: Resources ::

- The Cause for the Canonisation of Ven. John Henry Newman; and

- Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus (Full Text - English).

*(John Henry Newman, ‘Wisdom, as Contrasted with Faith and with Bigotry’, 1841).

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - Same Sex Attraction, Catholicism & Beauty

2009-10-24T14:53:00.002+11:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's latest column for syndication is on beauty, same sex attraction, and the persistence of faith. It ran last week in The Record newspaper.

:: BEING HEARD – ‘Beautiful Wounds’ ::

By John Heard

People often want to know why I am (still) a Catholic. The “still”, of course, implies that a same sex attracted man should, as a default position, find the Church at best inhospitable and at worst – totally repulsive.

Indeed, I received an email the other day that was full of the most remarkable claims. You are “stifling” yourself, my interlocutor – a total stranger – wrote. You have “given up your own mind to allow a man who sits on a high chair in the center of Rome, Italy” to take over. I must be a slave to that “Vatican Church”, he claimed, and recent events in Boston and a sordid history everywhere had shown it to have “inhumane attitudes about sex”. In the mind of my reader, Catholicism is nothing more than a pernicious lie, a monstrosity that takes “glorious pleasure” and turns it into abuse, “soul-killing guilt”, and shame.

The exaggerated claims aside, what impressed me about the email was its literary richness. It is difficult for anyone with a public profile to avoid brickbats, but rarely are they so expressive. No one writes about “glorious” this, and “stifling” that, indeed, unless he is alive to beauty. No one bothers to write an email full of such things unless he suspects the person at the other end is similarly alive, and might demonstrate some fellow feeling. That sense, that longing, I recognize and cherish. It is, of course, in discussions on the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, the first place to look for common ground.

Typically, too, honesty – upfront, raw, and personal, if necessary – works wonders. Sometimes, indeed, when asked why I am a Catholic, I respond that I have been “wounded by Christ”. Occasionally, depending on my interlocutors, I vary the wording, “I have been wounded by the crucified One” I say, or I have been “wounded by Him”. This is not hyperbole; it is a condensed version of my re-conversion story, however purple the language.

Still, I have learned that when speaking to those who are profoundly secular, whether willfully so (i.e. apostates) or because of their cultural and social experiences (i.e. closer to what Christians once called heathens, without malice, and some now refer to as neo-Pagans), it is best to speak to beauty first.

Certainly, it might be better to say – in some contexts – when asked about my faith and its persistence, that I have been wounded by Beauty. When people start to get alarmed, modernity abhors discomfort after all, there is an opportunity to introduce some other ideas: virtue, suffering, love, truth, and what Aristotle knew as telos (the end of things). From beauty, the discussion, then, can flower.

Beauty hunts me, I might say – and, when we really get going – Christ hunted me down and would not let me escape Him. Of course, it is never as planned and formulaic as that, nor can a Catholic aim for stilted phrases when speaking to non-believers. Rather, the goal is to be as eloquent and compelling as Francis Thompson. He wrote of the persistence of faith - the “unhurrying chase, // And unperturbèd pace, // Deliberate speed, majestic instancy” - in his celebrated poem The Hound of Heaven.

Here is the Holy Father on the same notion:

“The beautiful wounds, but this is exactly how it summons man to his final destiny. [It]…has nothing to do with superficial aestheticism and irrationalism or with the flight from clarity and the importance of reason. The beautiful is knowledge certainly, but, in a superior form, since it arouses man to the real greatness of the truth”.

The hound of heaven, the beauty that arouses man to the real greatness of the truth, these are things to offer when someone questions one’s faith.

In my experience, certainly, there are few people indeed who are totally dead to beauty. Even the most rabid anti-Catholic will know, then, and respond graciously to, an invitation to shift from polemic / apologetic, to a less fraught mode.

Especially in the context of a discussion about the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, it is usually better to start at beauty, to discuss truth and goodness, and then – when some agreement has been reached about those enduring topics – to invite one’s interlocutor to wade out a little further in the waters of Christian thinking.

This helps me answer the question: Why are you (still) a Catholic? Beauty, truth, goodness, Him.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

DREADTALK: 'On Gay Couples & The Help Of Gracious Friendship' John Heard - September 30, 2009 At The University Of New South Wales - Remarks

2009-10-06T21:07:00.009+11:00

DREADNOUGHT delivered the following prepared remarks during an event at the University of New South Wales.

-- ON GAY COUPLES AND THE "HELP OF GRACIOUS FRIENDSHIP" --

THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

What does it mean to be faithful to each other amicitiae gratuitae auxilio?

John Heard

Thank you very much for being here with me. I must thank the Catholic Chaplaincy, and Daniel, for inviting me, and I must express my gratitude to the Archdiocese of Sydney. I appreciate your efforts on my behalf.

My comments here, at UNSW, come at the end of a loose, three part series of discussions, wherein I have engaged the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. Earlier this year I introduced the topic “Holy Sex and Christian Friendship” at the University of Sydney, and I spoke then about what someone might mean by that phrase: “holy sex”.

I also spoke about what someone cannot mean by it, and I discussed an idea of friendship that holds male on male bonds to be beautiful (good and true). I also acknowledged, of course, that many people today find Christian friendship – indeed, perhaps much of Christian thinking generally – challenging. I sought to engage that reticence. I seek to do that today, as well. I sent a direct invitation to the Queer Representatives at this university, and I hope some of them have joined us today.

In this context, at Sydney, I talked:

- about the condemnation of homosexual acts;

- about marriage and the family;

- about how, in Catholic thought, there is no such thing as a sexual orientation, beyond “male” and “female”;

- about how holy sex might be said to make us more human; and

- about a series of lectures given by Pope John Paul II, the Theology of the Body – which I chacterised as a profound attempt to speak meaningfully of man’s original nature (including about our original sexual nature).

Yesterday, at Macquarie University, I spoke about a Platonic conception of the ascent to beauty, about the "ladder of love" described in Plato’s Symposium, and about how a same sex attracted man might start to answer the question: what happens to eros in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality? I introduced the idea of sublimation, and discussed why someone might want to discipline erotic inspiration and direct the energy towards creative, beautiful ends. I spoke of how this effort, that discipline, might offer something unique to same sex attracted men and women seeking a middle ground between so-called “reparative therapy” techniques, on the one hand, and the glorification of sex per se that tends to characterise so much of late modern “gay culture”.

At Sydney, then, I focused on right action and Christian truth; on what we can discover about properly ordered relationships (both horizontal relationships, those we have with each other, and vertical ones, those we might want to enter into with G-d), and I suggested ways in which Christian friendship might be considered worthwhile and compelling. At Macquarie, I constrained myself to a discussion of beauty and sublimation. Today, however, I want to bring those two threads together.

I am interested, finally, in what might be called, in another context, “gay relationships’.

In the previous discussions I returned time and again to an excerpt from the Catechism , which deals specifically with same sex attraction. It is relevant here, too. The Catechism states, in the context of a universal vocation to chastity, that:

“Homosexual persons are called to chastity [too]. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.”

I have previously unpacked various parts of this teaching, but let us zone in on that phrase, “disinterested friendship”.

First a note about the translation. In the original Latin, the Catechism phrase is:

“Personae homosexuales ad castitatem vocantur. Ipsae, dominii virtutibus quae libertatem educant interiorem, quandoque amicitiae gratuitae auxilio, oratione et gratia sacramentali, possunt et debent ad perfectionem christianam gradatim et obfirmate appropinquare.”

In my shoddy rendering, that comes out somewhere near “with the help of gracious friendship”. The official English translation, however, has the more opaque reference (to “the support of disinterested friendship”), which appears to be a direct translation from the Italian version (which speaks of “un'amicizia disinteressata”). The German, if anyone is interested, has something like “with the help of selfless friendship”.

I will use “with the help of gracious friendship” from now on, because that translation helps to pick out the most important parts of the phrase, for our purposes.

In any event, the phrase is provocative. What does it mean?

Some Catholics, particularly in the United States, have taken “the help of gracious friendship” to refer to group therapy, or to recommend so-called “reparative therapy” techniques. I spoke at length, yesterday, about some problems I have identified with “reparative therapy”, from a Catholic perspective, and how some allied approaches seem to me to distort the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, especially as it bears on a Christian understanding of the passions, and the discipline of “self-mastery”. Today, then, let me just follow that up by listing some problems I think of as ancillary to the general problem of offering therapy, at first instance, to same sex attracted Catholics.

In the efforts that have grown out of this interpretation, indeed, there has too often been a stress on the professional mode. Priests, for instance, are sometimes encouraged to recommend psychological methods in the confessional, and too much of the language of “reparative therapy” seems to me to be co-opted, and quasi-religious. The worst of it reads, indeed, as psycho-babble. On the website for a so-called “Reparational Group”, one of a number attached to the otherwise commendable Courage apostolate, for instance, I found a reference to “those of us who struggle homo-emotionally”. That is a phrase laden with concepts that are not found in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. This is an important point.

Further, inasmuch as such efforts often centre on a detached facilitator, therapist or support group, surrounded by a network of same sex attracted people, they also seem to me to fall short of the Catechism’s reference to “the help of gracious friendship”. Certainly, where same sex attracted Catholics are encouraged to pay for psychological services, the fact of payment alone would render the help offered in that context somewhat less gracious ("gratuitous") than the Catechism demands. Finally, those who seek guidance on the Catholic teaching on human sexuality should not, simply because of the therapeutic context of some of the reponses to the phenomenon, and the nomenclature attached to those responses, be treated as though they were suffering from a mental disorder.

Nor, however, should Catholics respond to the challenges posed by the Catechism reference to “gracious friendship” by impossibly glorifying same sex relationships. Like all human interactions, same sex interactions are only as virtuous and worthy as the actions and intentions of the relevant parties allows. As Michael Kirby is fond of repeating, “gay people are as boring”, and I might add, as prone to error, “as everybody else”. It is no secret, either, certainly not to same sex attracted men in particular, that too many same sex interactions fall far short of even common standards of decency, love, and consideration.

Let us return, however, and try to pick out a properly Catholic approach. What does “gracious friendship mean”?

On a popular Catholic blog, What Does the Prayer Really Say, the phrase came up in the context of a fraught discussion. One of the posters there asked for a:

“plausible description of what the Catechism means for gay and lesbian couples? What does it mean [he asked] to be faithful to each other “[with the help of gracious friendship]”?”

It seems to me that the answer to this question is not tremendously tricky. Nor is it harsh. But it will take us some time to unravel, first because of the complex nature of Catholic thought generally, second because we want to be sure that we are always referring back to the properly Catholic understanding of human sexuality, and third because some of us are living the answer, or trying to model it, and we are not perfect, and we cannot always trust our self-reports.

The first thing to say, on this, is that, of course, “the help of gracious friendship” means precisely what it says. In the Catholic context, we might think of this concept as the assistance same sex attracted Catholics receive from (A) other Catholics, and (B) each other. It is important here to note that the Catechism specifically assumes that the assistance offered models a particular sort of relationship, one that is characterized by grace (a vertical element) and friendship (a more horizontal notion).

On the help same sex attracted Catholics receive, then, from other Catholics, we might say that the “help of gracious friendship” must refer, at first instance, to the pastoral attention offered by properly formed priests and religious. Such help cannot be underestimated. When I had my first same sex sexual encounter, the first person I told was my confessor. The first words I heard, about same sex acts, were the words he spoke. In the sacramental context, of course, those words took on a particular resonance and power, the friendship was already gracious, but where priests and religious interact with same sex attracted men and women in other contexts, let me suggest - humbly - that they might recall the Catechism reference to the “help of gracious friendship”.

Parents, relatives, and friends, these people also have a role to play in terms of the help same sex attracted Catholics receive from other Catholics. Their responses must always aspire to the “gracious friendship” that the Catechism models.

What interests us most, however, is the second sort of help I mentioned, the “gracious friendship” same sex attracted men and women might offer to one another.

In this context I think, first, of the thousands of readers who write to me and comment on my writing, those who write to offer corrections to my ideas, in particular. Over the years, indeed, a community has developed and we now call call its members DREADNOUGHTERS. DREADNOUGHTERS are Christians, agnostics, Jews, and other seekers. We form a diverse collection. DREADNOUGHTERS are men and women who are same sex attracted and own sex attracted, priests and laymen, older and (mostly) younger - but all of us are open to engaging the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. We discuss homosexuality and other allied issues. By supporting each other – prayerfully, graciously, and lovingly – in a sincere and hopeful effort at Christian friendship, we attempt to model “gracious friendship”. There are currently more than 200 people, from all over the world, who collect together on a Facebook Group called, simply, DREADNOUGHTERS. I think of the DREADNOUGHTERS, when I think of "gracious friendship".

Second, and perhaps more provocatively, I have never lost faith in the idea that two men might, if properly formed and worthily inclined, model for each other the most loving and enduring sort of friendship. Let me move, now, to a discussion of some of the problems and opportunities I see, then, in this more fraught context. What we want to know here is, indeed, what does it mean to be faithful to each other “with the help of gracious friendship”?

My ideas on this part of the topic are still unsettled, as you will notice. I am living this, and some of you will be living it too.

One of the most frequent questions I receive, indeed, via email is any of a number of variations on “yes, but can a Catholic male have a boyfriend?”

The “yes” typically implies some sort of acceptance of the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. This is important. No one is going to make an effort to find out what it means to be faithful to someone else with the “help of gracious friendship” unless it really bears upon his life; unless the person thinks the answer will transform the nature and quality of his interpersonal relationships.

The rest of the question betrays a yearning for friendship, for companionship, however expressed. I cannot think of this yearning, the basic need for closeness with others, as anything other than worthy.

Often, however, this yearning is couched in jarring, or as described before, co-opted language. Some people use the language of late modern romantic narratives. They claim to be waiting for their one great love, and they hope to meet someone who will sweep them off their feet. Other times, although less frequently, one of my readers will write in a style heavily inflected with the language of marital union, even though this language will not admit male on male coupling (without great stress to the syntax and grammar of the marriage claim).

It is important, then, to get this yearning right. The best way to understand what it is that a same sex attracted man wants from another same sex attracted man, then, in this specific context is not a “boyfriend”, or a “husband” – rather he wants the “help of a gracious friendship”.

What might such a thing look like? Unlike some commentators, while I am wary of what Catholic experience calls “near occasions of sin”, I do not think the Catholic teaching on human sexuality necessarily precludes same sex attracted individuals living together. Certainly, same sex attracted individuals – like all other Christians – must keep in mind, and attempt to limit, those situations which we might wander into willingly, despite the fact that we know they will make us more inclined to choose the wrong course of action. But the analogy here is with cohabitation, with mixed dorm rooms and male and female campuses. If the Church trusts male and female university students to live together side by side, in some situations, without that experience unduly restricting their horizons for right action, there can be no proper blanket reason for rejecting all cohabitation arrangements that might spring up between same sex attracted men and women.

So, living together is not immediately out of the picture. What else is there? Well it must be repeated that, if the individuals are truly interested in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, homogenital acts cannot figure in any properly Catholic understanding of the “help of a gracious friendship”. I do not think, at this slightly more mature stage in the public discourse on sex and religion, a discourse characterized by freedom of religion and expression, that voluntary adherence to a religious creed should continue to prove controversial in this respect. No-one, after all, is forcing me to live my life as a Catholic human being. I joyfully choose this path, however useless and unworthy I might prove to be.

So, same sex attracted Catholics might live together, but there is no place for homogenital acts. What else? At this stage, some of my readers get very specific. "What about caresses?" "What about sharing a bed?" "I sometimes see my friend naked, and I like it, what am I to do?" Such questions, while obviously immediately and sincerely vexing for the individual involved, are not really amenable to general directives. There is a reason, after all, that the Church has not spelled out the finer details of all moral and sexual matters – she provides spiritual directors, confessors and others to help any individual to discern the best path to holiness in light of the particular sorrows and blessings of his or her given experience.

The important thing to note, in this context, is that the discernment process should be characterized by joy. If we are constantly grumbling about the restrictions imposed, then we are not modeling “gracious friendship”, for we would be lacking either the vertical aspect, which speaks to one’s right relationship with G-d and His laws, or we would be deficient along the horizontal dimension, for failing to see why this particular relationship is worthy of my time and effort.

Finally, let me say something further about the idea of “disinterested friendship”. There is a tradition, in the Christian Church, of discouraging what have been called “particular friendships”. The reference to “disinterested friendship” is, especially in the context of writings on relationships between Christian religious, a response to this tradition. I first encountered the phrase in the writings of St Aelred (of Rievaulx), which will be known to his same sex attracted readers, in particular, as an expressive and early body of writing which explicitly engages some of these issues, albeit in the context of what St Aelred calls “spiritual friendship”. It might be worthwhile, at this point, to indicate that I think that whatever it is that we mean by “gracious friendship” must align, in its broad outlines and in many of its practical applications, with what St Aelred meant by “spiritual friendship”.

Let me finish, then, by asking you to give me your thoughts on these ideas. What does the phrase “gracious friendship” suggest to you? What do you think of the ideas surveyed (of “reparative therapy”, of same sex attracted men and women living together and attempting, in that context, to remain faithful to the Catholic teaching on human sexuality)?

Thank you very much.

- - ENDS - -

:: The Upshot ::

After the prepared remarks, there was a one and a half hour question / wide-ranging discussion session. I was privileged to speak with so many keenly intelligent young people. DREADNOUGHT is grateful to the organizers, and to the men and women who asked questions. This has been a marvellous series.

:: Resources ::

A selection of photographs taken on the day:

John Heard speaks at the University of New South Wales (Discussion).

John Heard speaks at the University of New South Wales.

John Heard speaks at the University of New South Wales (Lecture).

DREADTALK: 'On Self Mastery and the Scala Amoris' John Heard - September 29 2009 At Macquarie University - Remarks

2009-10-03T21:38:00.011+10:00

DREADNOUGHT delivered the following prepared remarks during an appearance at Macquarie University.

-- ON SELF MASTERY AND THE SCALA AMORIS --

MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA

What Happens to Eros in the Catholic Teaching on Human Sexuality?

John Heard

Some months ago, I was invited to speak at the University of Sydney. I chose to discuss the topic Holy Sex & Christian Friendship; and I structured my comments there around the concepts: history, communion, and innocence.

While at Sydney, then, I had an opportunity to discuss what someone might mean by that phrase: “holy sex”. I also spoke about what someone cannot mean by it, and I discussed an idea of friendship that holds male on male bonds to be beautiful (good and true). I also acknowledged, of course, that many people today find Christian friendship – indeed, perhaps much of Christian thinking generally – challenging. I sought to engage this reticence.

In this context, I talked:

- about the condemnation of homosexual acts;

- about marriage and the family;

- about how, in Catholic thought, there is no such thing as a sexual orientation, beyond “male” and “female”;

- about how holy sex might be said to make us more human; and

At the end of that discussion, a representative of the Queer Action Collective said, in effect, very well – you may have made a compelling and apparently intelligent defence of the ideas you have been discussing, but what happens to eros (or erotic love) in the Christian teaching on human sexuality?

In particular, she wanted to know what happens to erotic love in the context of holy sex and Christian friendship?

This question, which I could not engage at the time, animates our discussion today. For it reveals, of course, the wider problem of what there is in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality for same sex attracted men (and women)?

The discussion today is the second in a loose series of three talks on the broad topic of holy sex and Christian friendship. So, Sydney some months ago, Macquarie today, and then UNSW tomorrow.

The remarks from the first discussion are already available online.

It will help to know that while in the first lecture I spoke to the topic generally, and quite broadly, today I will focus on what might be thought of as some problems and opportunities that beauty presents in the context of the Catholic thinking on sex and morality. Specifically, I want to engage the question – what happens to eros? – by investigating the erotic charge associated with naked male imagery, and seeing where that ends up after it has been put through the Catholic wringer.

Tomorrow, for those who are interested, I will present some ideas about living together, or sharing one’s life with a mate. Tomorrow might be thought of as the practical side of things (praxis), then, an attempt to respond to the hundreds of emails I have received asking me some variation on the question: “can I have a boyfriend?”

Today, however, and in preparation for that, I want to start thinking (theoria) about sublimation – about what a Catholic might do with erotic love, and how the process of self-mastery and self-discipline might be considered appealing, or even noble.

My ideas on this are still nebulous, as you will hear. This is at least in part because of the fact that I am living this. Some of you may be living it too.

What we are really looking for is an answer to the topic question, then. What happens to eros in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality?

Eros is one of three concepts that are typically used to get a grip on what we mean when we talk about love. I spoke of the other two, about agape and, briefly, philia, in the first lecture. Tomorrow, I will speak at length about philia. Today, however, we are all about eros.

Eros is, of course, a concept that covers erotic love, what today we might think of as (1) initial arousal and sexual interest, and (2) what has sometimes been called, in various strains of psychoanalysis, the life-force, the love and energy, that opposes us to death.

It is the first idea of eros, of eros as arousal and sexual impulse, that I am interested in today. It is this idea of love that speaks most pointedly to us, especially those who are trying to work out what the Church might have to offer us in terms of our sexual feelings and impulses.

Pope Benedict XVI in his Encyclical Letter Deus Caritas Est described eros as:

“That love…which is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings...”

We should contrast this idea of eros as unplanned and unwilled, as a force that imposes itself on human beings, with the treatment of the passions in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“…passions are emotions or movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to act…The passions are natural components of the human psyche…In themselves passions are neither good nor evil. They are morally qualified only to the extent that they effectively engage reason and will. Passions are [only] said to be voluntary, [when]…they are commanded by the will or because the will does not place obstacles in their way...It belongs to the perfection of the moral or human good that the passions be governed by reason."

Here we have, albeit in a very condensed form, the answer to our questions about what happens to eros in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. For, indeed, inasmuch as eros is experienced as a passion, the Catholic teaching on sex and morality understands it in a very precise way. As the Catechism continues:

“Strong feelings are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons; they are simply the inexhaustible reservoir of images and affections in which the moral life is expressed. Passions are morally good when they contribute to a good action, evil in the opposite case. The upright will orders the movements of the senses it appropriates to the good and to beatitude; an evil will succumbs to disordered passions and exacerbates them. Emotions and feelings can be taken up into the virtues or perverted by the vices.”

This is why, indeed, I constantly make the point to Catholic audiences, and to my homoactivist interlocutors alike, that same sex attraction, understood as a passion, is morally neutral. It is neither sinful nor virtuous. As anyone can tell you, and as the Pope understands, eros imposes itself on us. What matters is how we deal with love when it arrives.

Against some people, then, especially those who might be taken with so-called “reparative therapy” techniques, I have consistently stated that it is not clear, then, that a Catholic ought to attempt to re-program his passions. There is no Catholic sense in which a passion, simpliciter, needs "repair". Same sex attracted Catholics do not, as a matter of fact, need psychotherapy to alter their attractions. No one does. That sort of thinking has nothing to do with the properly Christian discourse on eros and moral responsibility.

Against some homoactivists, however, I must use the same argument, but in a different way. For, indeed, it is often said that a man’s private sexual interests and activities are not the proper subject of moral or religious interest at all, except that some people want to extol them. A late modern sort of hedonism seems to hold in much of what now passes for gay culture, and it is not hard to see it as another sort of quasi-religious ideology. This time, the ideas are tied up in a recognizably neo-Pagan context. Gay culture and practice returns time and again to body worship, to muscle worship, penis-worship, and anus-worship, always with an emphasis on sex for the sake of gratification, or domination, or any of a number of superstitious add-ons, including Romanticism and Hollywood-type fantasies - which draw their potency from the idea of sex as always good. It is not, in this context, even so much about hedonism, because pleasure need not be part of the mix.

"In the Christian life…[in contrast with both the previous ideas, and uniquely, it is thought that]…the Holy Spirit himself accomplishes his work by mobilizing the whole being, with all its sorrows, fears and sadness, as is visible in the Lord's agony and passion. In Christ human feelings are able to reach their consummation in charity and divine beatitude. Moral perfection [then] consists in man's being moved to the good not by his will alone, but also by his sensitive appetite, as in the words of the psalm: "My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.""

I want to engage this Christian understanding, distinct from reparative therapy, on the one hand, and from the glorification of sex per se on the other, to see how a same sex attracted Catholic might learn to understand himself, and to learn to position himself vis a vis eros, so as he might start to say that his heart and flesh sing for joy.

In the Catechism, at 2358, the Church teaches that the "inclination...to homosexual acts" is mostly experienced as a "trial". When engaged a step earlier, however, when the inclination is still unformed (i.e. it has not been perverted by the vices), one can - I would like to suggest - receive the erotic inspiration as a challenge. One might engage reason and will to direct one's passions towards the service of virtue.

Indeed, at 2359, the Catechism teaches that:

"Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection".

There is mention here of "the virtues of self-mastery", "disinterested friendship", "prayer", and "sacramental grace", but no mention of "reparative therapy" or even of psychological treatments taken as a type.

A defence of "reparative therapy" would, I think, and as an aside, need therefore to be couched in these terms. How does it help a Catholic to grow in the "virtues of self-mastery"?

Passions are disordered, remember, inasmuch as they "effectively engage reason and will" AND they "are perverted by the vices". This is why, indeed, the condemnation of "homosexual acts" is found in Catholic teaching, while there is no condemnation of homosexuals per se.

But to serve virtue, one must discipline one’s will and look to one's acts. These are the activities of reason and will which relate to volition; the ways in which the Catholic teaching on human sexuality can be said to lead to human flourishing.

One obvious benefit, right at the outset, is that the Catholic path promotes self-knowledge.

There is also a sense in which it can be said that the Catholic teaching on erotic love, the exhortation to “self-mastery which teaches…inner-freedom”, derives from Greek, indeed, Platonic understandings of the value of philosophy, and what might be called an “ascent to the beautiful”.

It is the central claim of this discussion, in fact, that the scala amoris introduced in Plato's Symposium might provide a way for a same sex attracted man to get a grip on what happens to eros in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality.

In the Symposium, then, Plato includes a series of attempts to describe the nature of love. He puts various ideas into the mouths of various interlocutors. Two of the speakers (Phaedrus and Pausanius) focus on the Athenian tradition of an older male lover with a teenage boy. Eryximachus is close to us today in that he gives a view of love as craft and science – he is something like a technocrat, in love with his specialization – in love with specialization itself. Aristophanes and Agathon describe love in the language of comedy and tragedy, their respective vocations.

Alciabiades, however, is the most interesting for our current purposes. We might contrast the view of love that he is given to offer, with the true version revealed later in the speech of Socrates. Alcibiades seems to me to read like something of a spokesman for the running “gay culture” ideal of sex, while the idea of a ladder of love that comes through in Soctrates’ speech aligns with the Catechism call to “self-mastery”, “inner freedom”, and “Christian perfection”.

There is no time now to properly interrogate both speeches. It is enough, however, to pick out the main points.

Alcibiades was beautiful and famed for his licentiousness. He desired Socrates, and wanted him because, in a curious form of celebrity-worship, he thought that the true images, the real philosophy he discerned within Socrates could be transmitted by sexual contact. His love, then, was not totally shallow – he really saw something true and good and beautiful in Socrates, despite Socrates’ otherwise unappealing appearance - but his attempts to get a grip on love were deficient. Alcibiades failed at loving Socrates.

For Alcibiades, indeed, “sex [could] lead to virtue, without the need for hard work”. Alcibiades tells how he tried to seduce Socrates. He attempted to use his physical attributes, he is like some contemporary go-go-dancer, trading on his body so as to get at the true and good and beautiful things he has discerned, but it is all to no avail.

For Socrates is after something else. As Catholics, too, we are after something else. Socrates rebuts the speeches of all of the other guests, describing them as fantasies which participate in the creative force of love (that erotic power that the Pope spoke about), but which pervert it, making love a slave to context and personality. Socrates is not interested in sorts of love, after all, he is interested in love itself.

This sets us up for what comes next: the ladder of love.

The basic idea of the ladder of love is sublimation of the passions, in the service of real love. Instead of fixating on one particular object, one sexual partner, one apprehends the beauty in the curve of his lips, the beauty in the shape of his thigh, and tries to see that beauty in all of its manifestations. One cannot worship another person’s muscles, in this context, one should rather ascend to a higher level of contemplation. Not this muscle, not that penis – but all muscles, all penises, and then – beyond that – the recognition that one does not (and cannot, rationally speaking) worship a penis or a muscle, but rather one likes those things in the first place because it is there that one is awakened to eros, or by eros, to beauty. One can then begin to see beauty elsewhere, and to move ever higher on the ladder of love until one comes, at last, to love beauty itself, and so to love truth and goodness.

In the Catholic context, truth, beauty and goodness sometimes stand in for love and Catholics worship Love Crucified. To recall Pope Benedict’s Encyclical again – for Christians – G-d is Love.

In the time that is left, we will not totally apprehend what is going on here, and we cannot hope to get a complete sense of what Plato means from this crude précis of his ideas. So I admit, indeed, that I cannot completely answer the question today about happens to eros in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. I can, however, start to show you what I mean, in part, and hopefully get you thinking in the same direction.

I was watching a television documentary on John Ruskin the other day, and the narrator intoned:

“Art is not just a distraction from the grueling trick of life, it is life. It is our imaginative proposal for what like can be”.

Taking this idea as our starting point, then, we might try to explain where eros goes in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality by looking at the agency of beauty. How does beauty figure in our understandings of morality? What can the beautiful do with / to the erotic?

If we draw on the Catholic idea of the passions, and man’s sensual appetites, it is clear that eros, and love generally are implicated wherever beauty and goodness meet.

Again, the promotion of self-knowledge and “self-mastery" in the Christian tradition, does not immediately suggest to me a reliance on a therapist as that relationship is understood in modern, secular, English-speaking models of the mental health industry - and the understandings of "disinterested" and "friendship" might actually militate against paying a "professional" for "reparative therapy".

But they do suggest the ladder of love that Plato has Socrates expound. Here is an example of how I think about the ascent to the beautiful in the context of same sex attraction.

SLIDE 1 – Highly eroticized image of a half-naked football player (it is David Williams) – we say that it is highly eroticized because it is packed with eros, it hits our eros buttons. It is designed, in fact, to do so. We are right to ask, in this context, what for? To sell something? To increase someone’s fame / notoriety? We seem to have become comfortable with deploying eros in this manner, to sell, to promote, but perhaps we might deploy eros to improve ourselves, to seek after beauty (truth and goodness)?

SLIDE 2 – This was the ideal of classical Greek sculpture. The ideal is eros transformed, in line with ideas that fed into the Platonic ladder or love, and re-deployed, so as to provide an education in virtue. The Greeks worked to sublimate the sexual (notice the penis size) to make room for other more enduring things, like civilization and excellence. Here the viewer is taught something about grace, and proportion.

SLIDE 3 – In Hellenistic sculpture, eros is more obviously sublimated. It is used to feed excitement into a narrative context. Eros is associated with, and it complicates, this depiction of The Dying Gaul – we now learn something about pity, or perhaps (from the perspective of the victor) about the ambivalent nature of victory.

SLIDE 4 – Ascending up the ladder of love, getting further away from the base sexual force we encountered in the first image, eros can also be disciplined so as to tell not just a story, but archetypal stories. Here we have Hercules, identified by his cudgel and lion’s skin.

SLIDE 5 - From archetypal stories, we can move to expressions of even more refined notions. Sublimated eros is also transformed into civic virtue. We are no longer learning about how things are, or how people say they are, but about how things should be, about how men should be. We learn how government should be done, and how men should conduct themselves.

SLIDE 6 – Finally, in this context, we might also learn about the value of abstraction, or stylization. If we are not interested, after all, in the particular – and we seek after the universal – we can approach the cool grace and serenity of this archaic kouros. We come, here, to eros deployed in the service of religious and purely philosophical ends. No longer are we focused, in the language of the ladder of love, in the beauty of a man’s thigh – but we seek after beauty itself.

SLIDE 7 – We start to notice things like the hair, in this sculpture, and we might be moved by the grace and poise depicted. We learn, too, about excellence and balance.

SLIDE 8 – The same erotic charge is discernible here, but it drives a new, elevated search. Instead of being diverted to gratification, it is disciplined and enlarged by contact with, and contemplation of, the beautiful. We start to yearn for the good, for the true.

SLIDE 9 – We seek these marks of the beautiful and true wherever we might find them. The erotic force that might have compelled us onto a sexual partner, or might have animated our sexual fantasies, is redirected toward other things. We notice the beauty of these capitals, designed by Andrea Palladio.

SLIDE 10 - We swoon at his Villa Capra, La Rotonda, and – having been challenged earlier when looking at Greek sculpture – we might note especially the grace and proportion we can see in his angles and lines. We start to appreciate angles and lines around us. We develop a taste for such things.

SLIDE 11 - We can take this knowledge, this sensibility, anywhere. Instead of just looking at things, we can start to create a world of grace and beauty.

SLIDE 12 – We might take a second look at dance, for instance, and delight in even obscure things, like this depiction of King Louis XIV of France. Louis is dancing as Apollo before his court at Versailles. In such sophisticated examples, eros sublimated vivifies new stories, this time of nationhood, manhood, and power. Eros sublimated can establish, and found. It can create.

SLIDE 13 – Angles and lines. Beauty and form.

SLIDE 14 – Style has its place, too. We might trace the pleasing lines of cut and shape, as discernible in this image from the iconic fashion book Take Ivy.

SLIDE 15 – Personal excellence suggests itself to me in the context of fashion, especially in male style. Angles and lines, more beauty and form. The act of putting on clothing, or putting on a suit or a dress, is an act of sublimation. It is also often a direct conduit to virtue, to modesty in particular. As with all of these examples, sublimation does not kill eros, it diverts eros to virtuous ends.

SLIDE 16 – We can trace pleasing shapes, and the cut of cloth, and its reflections in symbols of power and victory. Eros helps to make sense, too, of images that speak to us of defeat and shame. Here is an image of Richard Nixon that could be viewed as the 20th Century’s version of The Dying Gaul. It provokes similar mixed reactions. It provokes reactions.

SLIDE 17 – A tree installation I found beautiful, which echoed Nixon’s arm gesture.

SLIDE 18 – When we become skilled in seeking for beauty, we find its marks everywhere. Our world opens up, and we participate in a vision of creation that is quite remarkable for its depth and richness. We discern a pattern, an order, behind otherwise atomized things and people. This is Versailles.

SLIDE 19 - What about the Christian focus in all of this? It helps to know, in this context, that Christian art and imagery participate maximally and deliberately in this idea of sublimation. Images and symbols point beyond the physical facts of things and great liturgical art intends to convey something divine. By filling their Churches with things of beauty, Catholics hope to create an environment conducive to the contemplation of beauty and truth and goodness.

SLIDE 20 – Because Christian believe G-d is love, then, this contemplation ascends to Him. The Pagan ladder of love becomes the Christian’s ladder to heaven. By faithfully treading this path, same sex attracted men and women – indeed all human beings – are called to seek after G-d. This is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

SLIDE 21 – Christ is; at the end of the Christian’s striving. He is the object of our love. He is, to answer Plato’s implicit question, beauty itself. G-d is love.

SLIDE 22 – In this manner, albeit crudely, we might say we have participated to some extent in the ladder of love. Christ is the answer to what happens to eros in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. Both in the particular sense that Hugh Eakin’s erotic impulses are sublimated here into a depiction of the Cruficied Christ, but also in this richer sense that a dwelling on the ladder of love allows us to think about.

Thank you very much.

- - END - -

:: The Upshot ::

This second lecture was an attempt to engage a question held-over from a similar event at the University of Sydney in April, 2009. A slide-show accompanied the final section. The third event in the series was held at the University of New South Wales on the following day (details to come).

DREADTALK: 'On Gay Couples & Friends In Help And Grace' John Heard - September 30, 2009 At The University Of New South Wales - Sydney

2009-09-15T21:23:00.000+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT will address students and faculty on the topic (A Same Sex Attracted Catholic Speaks Out) On Gay Couples & Friends in Help and Grace at the University of New South Wales in Sydney:

- Wednesday September 30, 2009

- 1PM – 2PM (40 mins lecture, 20 mins for discussion)

- Venue (TBC)

- Subject matter (natural law generally / ancient and Christian ideas on friendship, “what does it mean to be faithful to each other in “amicitiae gratuitae auxilio?”” (as the Catechism puts it), homosexuality, love, and the Catholic teaching on human sexuality)

The event is the third in a loose series. The first address (on April 30, 2009) was instigated and organised by student leaders associated with the University of Sydney Catholic Chaplaincy. The second address will be given on Tuesday September 29, 2009 at Macquarie University.

:: The Upshot ::

UNSW is a research, publishing, and teaching powerhouse. By speaking in such venues, to such bright young people, DREADNOUGHT hopes to make a compelling contribution to the discourse on sex, politics, faithfulness, and same sex attraction. (Plus, they ask the right questions).

DREADTALK: 'On Self Mastery & The Ladder Of Love' John Heard - September 29, 2009 At Macquarie University - Sydney

2009-09-15T20:41:00.001+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT will address students and faculty on the topic (A Same Sex Attracted Catholic Speaks Out) On Self Mastery and the Ladder of Love at Macquarie University in Sydney:

- Tuesday September 29, 2009

- 1:00PM – 1:50PM (30 mins lecture, 20 mins for discussion)

- E6A 102

- Subject matter (natural law generally / Platonic and Christian conceptions of the scala amoris, the Catechism on “dominii virtutibus quae libertatem educant interiorem” (the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom), beauty, homosexuality, love, and what happens to eros in the Catholic teaching on human sexuality)

The event is the second in a loose series. The first address (on April 30, 2009) was instigated and organised by student leaders associated with the University of Sydney Catholic Chaplaincy.

:: The Upshot ::

Macquarie is an innovative university in Australia. DREADNOUGHT is grateful to the student organisers and the Catholic Society & Chaplaincy for the invitation. Contact them for more information.

:: Coming Soon ::

DREADNOUGHT has also been invited to speak at the University of New South Wales on the following afternoon.

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - The Blessed Virgin Mary, Titian, Same Sex Attracted Men & The Woman Of Revelation 12

2009-09-15T19:58:00.010+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT'S latest column for syndication is on the Blessed Virgin Mary, a painting by Titian (again), and unexpected grace and light for same sex attracted men and women.

:: BEING HEARD – ‘The Woman of Revelation 12’ ::

By John Heard

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a painting. It was more than that, of course, I wrote about the Blessed Virgin Mary and how Catholics relate, or try to relate, to her. How we try to reach up after her. I wrote about how same sex attracted Catholics, in particular, need her to model purity; about how Catholic men and women everywhere want her to stay a while, and be our Queen, our Mother - if not a constant companion in daily toil.

I attached an image of the painting to the article, and it was published alongside. Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin, however, has not left me alone. There was the time I sent off another column, one I had copied and pasted to re-write from the earlier template, only to notice afterwards that the painting was still electronically attached.

There was also the time I was checking email (as I am wont to do, on my phone, at all hours), during which the image popped up unexpectedly. Large and luminous in the darkness, the experience revealed another detail to grasp about Titian’s Virgin: she is bright. In the glow, her features shone. The Virgin reflected the light emanating from about where the throne of G-d might be (although Titian left that sort of concrete detail out). In this, I decided, Titian is a mystic.

Diego Velázquez, 'The Immaculate Conception' (1618)

Certainly, since then, I have had cause to think of Mary under another title, one additional to the many I cited in the original article. She is sometimes thought of as the “woman clothed with the sun”, who appears in the captivating twelfth chapter of Revelation. Commonly, statues of Mary, then, show her “with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars”.

Scriptural experts in the marginal notes of the Bible I’m reading claim that the woman figured here stands in for the whole people of G-d. She is Israel, ranged against the darkness.

That does not detract from the depictions of Mary as the “woman clothed with the sun”, however. Such interpretations simply complicate the reading. Mary is the Mother of the Church (another title) and Catholics understand themselves to be the people of the New Covenant – Israel.

I am not clever enough to follow this to the logical end. I cannot offer theological insights, and there is no room to make too much fuss about Mary as the Moon that mirrors the blessed light (the grace) that proceeds from the Most Blessed Trinity (her Sun, and ours).

William Blake, 'The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun' (c. 1803-1805) - Brooklyn Museum

It might be enough to say, though, that the experience of thinking on Mary, about the woman of Revelation 12, an experience prompted by spending some time with a superlative piece of art (even in reproduction, even on an iPhone screen), strikes me as a distinctly Catholic activity.

It is also, of course, and some may already be thinking this, a peculiarly queer activity. One of the common stereotypes has same sex attracted men, of course, as more sensitive to art and artistic interests. Mooning over a Titian then, particularly his Assumption of the Virgin, is a moment that is both Catholic and queer.

I do not mean to comment much about this fact, except to point it out. There might not be anything, after all, that is terribly exciting about this unexpected unity, other than the fact that I did not expect to mark it, and I doubt others would. Most people, of course, simply do not think about same sex attraction.

For those who are same sex attracted, however, especially for those who model much that is queer, and little that is currently Catholic, properly speaking – such moments are looked for, let me tell you. Many young men, in particular, but young same sex attracted women too, look for such moments. They want to see how they can fit in the Church.

Not, indeed, just because of what people say about being queer, or “gay” (a notion that has always made very little sense to me). Not even, either, because they might have a fully formed intention to choose Catholicism, to live and grow in the faith of Titian, and of (so many) other creative spirits. Many of the men who write to me do not.

They are not really looking for a reflection of themselves, then, and they do not want an insight into someone else's faith.

Rather, they look for a window onto a moment of grace. They seek truth, and goodness, and beauty. They seek, then, the Blessed Virgin, and they seek G-d.

Happy are we who already know and love Our Lady. Happy, is she, who dwells so close to the Light.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - The Latin Patrimony & The New English Translations of the Mass

2009-09-14T19:41:00.002+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's latest column for syndication is on changes to the English translations of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite. It was published in The Record newspaper two weeks ago.

:: BEING HEARD – ‘The Latin Patrimony’ ::

By John Heard

Soon, English-speaking Catholics will confront a new challenge. The English translations of the Third Edition of the Missale Romanum (2000), completed in stages during the last decade, are slated for release sometime after the Vatican grants final approval. At the time of writing, and according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, approval is expected to come through early next year.

Recently, English-speaking Catholics experienced minor changes in the 1969 Mass of Pope Paul VI. Since May 11, 2008 Australian Catholics - for instance - have been asked (.PDF) to assimilate a new posture (standing after the Priest says “Pray brethren…”) and gesture (bowing profoundly before receiving the Most Holy Sacrament).

On the follow-through, however, we have seen mixed results. Congregants are standing at the right time, perhaps because it is hard to stay seated when the priest indicates that it is time to rise, but the individual gesture of respect is sometimes lost or garbled.

Typically, indeed, and since I was an adolescent, I have knelt to receive Holy Communion (directly on the tongue) when the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered in the Ordinary Form or, where kneeling is impractical (i.e. would endanger the Host) – I usually genuflect, and then present my tongue, hands folded. Now, after the recent changes and in line with some restored directives from Pope Benedict XVI (who has confirmed that Communion on the tongue is the universal norm), I see many Catholics adopting this posture. Some others bow profoundly. Others still incline their heads slightly. Yet more simply proceed as before. They offer no gesture of respect, and none is currently demanded by the priest / bishop.

This strikes me as curious. Having been drilled in the Catholic teaching on the Eucharist (the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ) as a child, I always found it awkward and embarrassing to have to touch the Host with my hands (the fashion in the 1980s, when I was undergoing catechesis). As an altar boy, I was marked by the great piety evident at Benediction (which our Parish Priest still celebrated in Latin). The humeral veil. The double genuflection. As a same sex attracted young man, in the 1990s, I was still drawn to more pious modes and, frankly, I found it a relief not to have to associate my hands, so often the incorrigible agents of my imperfection, with the Sanctissimum during Mass.

I cannot help thinking that, benefitting from a similarly impressive (it need not be academic) education in Eucharistic theology and pious practice, more Catholics would follow the directives on gesture. It comes naturally from the Catholic ethos. As the old saying goes, if Catholics really believed what they say about the Eucharist, they would approach the altar on their hands and knees.

The new translations will present a much more profound challenge, in the same vein. There is a risk that, without a proper rollout, including (re)-education, we could see a similar gap between norm and practice. Inasmuch as the purpose of the re-translation process is to ensure that the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite more closely conveys the sacrality and beauty of the original Latin, there can be no room for a haphazard application and sloppy uptake.

Good Catholics must resolve, now, to learn as much as they can about the changes before they come into force. Those charged with responsibility for the liturgy must prepare for catechesis and (re)-instruction, so as to ensure the more perfect, seamless assimilation of the new texts.

Indeed, careful study will pay off when the full force of the changes hits. Some of the central texts of the Mass, and many common prayers, have been significantly re-worked. While it is something of a chore to re-learn prayers that one has recited all one’s life, the grace and eloquence, the elevated style, the unambiguously sacred tone of the restored translations, makes the task a joyful, prayerful experience.

Certainly, in the weeks since examples of the restored Mass texts became available for study online, many Catholics have remarked on how much of an improvement they represent.

I must admit that as a bi-Riter (someone who attends both the Ordinary Form and the usus antiquior of the Roman Rite) I was tempted to retreat completely into the unambiguously sacred liturgical architecture of the 1963 Mass of Blessed Pope John XXIII. However, that would be uncharitable. While the restoration of the English translations of the Ordinary Form will no doubt (and happily) prompt some Catholics to seek out the relatively stable usus antiquior, the Holy Father has cross-fertilization in mind. The Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms are one and the same Rite.

As Roman Catholics, it is our duty and our joy to receive both Forms, and indeed to study both, for the more perfect rendering of latria (sacrificial adoration) to the Most Holy Trinity.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - Same Sex Attracted Men, Titian & The Assumption Of The Blessed Virgin Mary

2009-08-27T19:47:00.006+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT’s last column for syndication is on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It ran in The Record newspaper on Wednesday August 12, 2009.

:: BEING HEARD – ‘The Marian Model’ ::

By John Heard

This year, the Feast of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary falls on a Saturday (August 15) - this Saturday. The Assumption is a holy day of obligation.

How Catholics speak about Mary tells other people much about our faith. There is, first, her simple name. In Catholic homes, “Mary” – regularly referred to just like that, simply as Mary - is a familiar and beloved member of the family. She is remembered amid all the accumulated joys and sorrows of daily life. She is one of us.

Indeed, Catholics frequently refer to “Our Lady”. This brings out, too, the next layer of meaning in how Catholics speak. Our Lady is revered and respected. She is given a place of honour in Catholic chapels and homes. An image of Our Lady, some icon or statue, usually features in Catholic spaces, and many people will have seen a Catholic mother for instance, while dusting, lift such an image and quietly apologize - “Sorry Mary” (that familiarity) – before returning the image to its place, sometimes with a reverential kiss (the respect).

Then there are the titles Catholics employ to call on Mary. The beautiful Litany of Loreto lists many of these. Catholics call on Mary, for instance, as the Mirror of Justice (speculum iustitiae), the Seat of Wisdom (sedes sapientiae), the Mystical Rose (rosa mystica), the Gate of Heaven (janua caeli), and the Queen of Peace (regina pacis). Here, some of the more complex theological meanings associated with the person of Mary are expressed. Jews, in particular, will notice the Scriptural associations – Mary is the Ark of the Covenant (foederis arca), the Queen of Prophets (regina prophetarum), and the Tower of David (turris Davidica).

In the East, Mary has always been known as the Theotokos – the G-d-bearer, an ancient and much revered title. More recently, she has also been called the Mother Thrice Admirable, a conflation of Mary’s attributes as the Mother of G-d, the Mother of the Redeemer, and the Mother of all men. In speaking of Mary in this way, by stressing her maternity, Catholics refer to the link between Mary and Heaven. These titles express Mary’s unique role in the salvation of mankind, and her singular position of honour. Mary is the “singular vessel of devotion” in the Litany. She is the Christian par excellence.

This draws out another layer of meaning. Catholics often refer to Mary as “spotless”. She is “stainless” in other formulas, “immaculate” and “pure”. On the Miraculous Medal, which many Catholics wear or carry, Mary is implored in this way: “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee”. Catholics also directly refer to Mary as the “Immaculate Conception”, which – alongside these other epithets - expresses a dogmatic truth (infallibly defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854) about Mary’s birth. She was conceived without sin.

Beyond these modes, there is the depiction of Mary in Christian art. There is no space here to parse all the famous examples, so let us consider one compelling painting.

Titian, Assumption of the Virgin (1516 - 1518)

Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin (1516 – 1518) shows the dramatic moment of Mary’s bodily assumption into Heaven. She is arrayed in splendour, supported by dancing cherubim, and ascending to G-d, Who gazes down on the scene with paternal benevolence. Underneath the clouds, however, all is chaos. The apostles stand transfixed in a moment of uproar. Most of them have their hands in the air, and Titian has given them expressions of shock and wonder.

Most interesting for our purposes is the figure in red, his back to the viewer, that Titian uses to tie the earthly section to the Heavenly segment. His whole body is stretched upward, and his hands grasp for where Mary’s feet must have been just moments before. The apostle, for all the commotion, is intent. In his tense, extended form and the wonderful expressiveness Titian has given to his details – the taut calf, the raised heel, the splayed fingers and the thrust back head – we have a picture of the Catholic attitude to Mary.

We strive, with our titles, with our ways of speaking about Mary to bring her back down to us, to make her one of us, to have her stay in our homes and hearts. But we also want to piggyback on her glory. Catholics implore Mary, after all, because she has clean hands. It is better that our petitions should reach G-d via His most favoured creation.

While we are implicated in the still churning dust of earth, the chaos depicted so movingly in Titian’s masterpiece, we need Mary’s intercession. Same sex attracted Catholics, in particular, sometimes feel rooted to the earth, as though we might never make it to sanctity.

:: The Upshot ::

Mary was obedient, she was pure, and her life was marked by sorrow. She sailed on up. On Assumption, and always, Catholics reach for her blessed feet – and strain every nerve - to follow after her.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion, and politics online, and on Facebook join the DREADNOUGHTERS Group.

DREADPUBLISHING: John Heard Interviewed In The National Catholic Register By Barb Ernster

2009-08-07T20:59:00.011+10:00

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT was interviewed by Barb Ernster for a front page profile piece in the National Catholic Register.

John Heard in the National Catholic Register - August 9 - 22, 2009

The National Catholic Register is the oldest national Catholic newspaper in the United States. Recently, it was one of only seven Catholic media outlets (plus the Washington Post) handpicked by the White House for a meeting with President Barack Obama.

:: The Upshot ::

The full profile is now available online (subscription only). It was featured in the August 9 - 22, 2009 print edition in the United States. Welcome new DREADNOUGHTERS!

:: Resources ::

- The DREADNOUGHTERS Facebook Group; and

- Previous NCRegister articles on DREADNOUGHT, and social networking.