Category Archives: Commentaries

“It’s not about you!”

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That’s what I want to scream whenever I read about or see news coverage of opponents of same-sex marriage speaking about “protecting” and “defending” marriage “as it’s always been”!

Dusk on a Winter's Eve - Washington, DC

For over a decade I have worked for national mental health organizations, currently in an area affecting millions of people on a daily basis. The issue we deal with affects millions of adults, but typically its “age of onset” is in childhood, often as a child is getting ready to attend school for the first time.  Fortunately, there are federal laws which guarantee that every child in this country — regardless of ability or disability — receive a free and appropriate public education (FAPE), and that such education be provided in the least restrictive environment (LRE). Implementation of these laws is a never-ending challenge for parents, teachers and school systems. Yet I wonder if, at the time of their introduction and passage, these laws were met with opposing arguments saying that public education should be limited only to children without any physical or mental impairment? I wonder if opponents argued that in order to receive that education paid for by taxpayer dollars, every child had to walk through the door on his own and couldn’t come in if she were in a wheelchair or otherwise physically challenged? I wonder if opponents tried to derail the legislation by taking the focus off children with disabilities (i.e. what the law is about) and putting it on the non-disabled children (i.e. what the law is not about)?

I pose that question because that’s exactly what opponents of same-sex marriage continually do. They attempt to frame this issue not in terms of what it is about, but in terms of what it’s not about.  When they argue their side, they don’t talk about gay people, and in fact do everything they can to frame it in terms of of everyone except gay people. So, instead of betraying either the ignorance or ugliness (or both) of what they really believe (“being gay is a choice,” “homosexuality is evil,” “gays and lesbians are sinners,” “they should just go back into those closets and not expose ‘our’ children to their unhealthy lifestyle,” etc. etc. etc.), they frame the issue of same-sex marriage and the civil rights of LGBT people almost entirely in terms straight people and children.

If you’ve any doubt, here are the talking points the so-called National Organization for Marriage suggests its supporters put on a 3×5 card, always ready at hand:

  • Marriage is between a husband and wife. The people of [this state] do not want marriage to be anything but that. We do not want government or judges changing that definition for us today or our children tomorrow.
  • We need a marriage amendment to settle the gay marriage issue once and for all, so we don’t have it in our face every day for the next ten years.
  • Marriage is about bringing together men and women so children can have mothers and fathers.
  • Do we want to teach the next generation that one-half of humanity—either mothers or fathers—are dispensable, unimportant? Children are confused enough right now with sexual messages. Let’s not confuse them further.
  • Gays and Lesbians have a right to live as they choose; they don’t have a right to redefine marriage for the rest of us.

Notice that every point except the last one has nothing whatsoever to do with gay people. They all have to do with husbands and wives, (straight) mothers and (straight) fathers, and children (of heterosexual parents). And even the point that does mention “gays and lesbians” tries to start off positively, though it does so by perpetuating the lie that one’s sexual orientation is a choice.

Each of these points is easily be rebutted one by one; and for those actively engaged in the debate, it’s important to be able to do that.  From my perspective, however, it’s equally if not more important not merely to rebut these talking points, but to reframe the issue in terms of what it’s really about.  Previously, I’ve written about how those who oppose same-sex marriage get the answer wrong, because they have the question wrong.  “The issue isn’t about you!”  It’s about gays and lesbians.  It’s about those whom God created and gifted with same-sex attraction and whether or not society will recognize the full humanity of gay people, providing the full respect our humanity demands. Is that so hard to understand?

So, instead of playing their game and simply rebutting their talking points, here are a few of my own:

  • Sexual orientation, in all its diversity, is part of our God-given human nature. In every age and in every culture, God has created a certain percentage of people with same-sex attraction.
  • Marriage is an important civil and religious institution by which societies publicly sanction and support the loving, committed relationship of two people.
  • For gay men and women, establishing stable, loving, and committed relationships is good for themselves and good for society as a whole.
  • Just like a straight couple who either choose not to have children or marry later in life yet still enjoy the rights, benefits, and privileges of marriage, so too should gay and lesbian couples enjoy these same rights, benefits and privileges.

Yves Congar: “Motives of conscience and conviction”

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While exploring the recently found blog of theologian Joseph Komonchak, “In verbo veritas” I came upon this gem from the journal of the late Yves Cardinal Congar, OP. Père Congar, a great advocate of ecumenism and influential theologian at the Second Vatican Council, wrote this in his journal:

Experience and history have taught me that one must always protest when motives of conscience or conviction call for it. Undoubtedly this incurs some unpleasantness, but something always remains from it”; Congar, Mon Journal, p. 14 (as quoted in an unpublished paper of Joseph Komonchak on the initial work of Vatican II’s Preparatory Theological Commission)

“Undoubtedly this incurs some unpleasantness”… Indeed!

I don’t know Congar’s writings very well, so I don’t know whether the understatement here is intentional. But, knowing that he was a man who had personally experienced the heavy hand of Church authority, Père Congar’s choice of words makes the point all the more poignantly. Perhaps this phrase jumped out at me because I find myself so frequently facing situations that challenge my conscience and convictions. I recently saw a Facebook post which ostensibly promoted drug testing for recipients of “welfare.” (By the way, at the federal level at least, there is no  program called “welfare.” The federal programs that support the poor and needy are Temporary Assistance for Needy Families [TANF] and Supplemental Security Income [SSI] for the disabled). Upon seeing the post, my immediate reaction was to think, What tests did Jesus require before he fed the multitudes or otherwise served the poor and needy? What offended me most was not so much the issue itself — after all, any issue about which people disagree is legitimate fodder for discussion and debate.  No; what bothered me was the tone of disrespect and judgment. I suppose just having heard presidential candidate Mitt Romney state that he wasn’t concerned “for the very poor” didn’t help, but I have to wonder why so many of us — many of us who claim to be Christian — have such antipathy toward the very ones whom Jesus most frequently lifted up.

Commonweal Article on Economic Justice

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I’m always struck how Catholics who would readily identify themselves as “conservative” or “traditional” tend to be guilty of the same sin they ascribe to their more “liberal” brothers and sisters, namely that of a cafeteria approach to religion.  The offering that conservative Catholics tend to pass over is the one that deals with such things as social and economic justice, despite the fact that every Pope of recent history, including Benedict XVI, loudly proclaim such teachings, included the dreaded “redistribution of wealth” so that the God-given fruits of this world are not denied to the least among us. I wonder what the most currently well-known Catholics in the US — Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum — would have to say if the Pope himself were to call them out on the relevant planks of their platforms?

There’s a good article at Commonweal (Plutocracy or Democracy? How Bad Policies Brought Us a New Gilded Age) that takes on some of this stuff. As always, some of the comments are just as telling as the article itself. My own comment, in response to another’s condemnation of homosexuality as among the factors that has wrought “devastation” on so much of family and society, is also there:

Tim MacGeorge subscriber 01/31/2012 – 11:06pm

@Patricia McCarron: I find your naming “the spread of homosexuality” as one of the causes for a societal decline you lament to be offensive, uncharitable, and patently untrue. With a broad brush you so blithely denigrate the millions of loving, committed relationships that God’s gay and lesbian sons and daughters have formed for centuries; relationships which only recently are beginning to receive the societal recognition and support they deserve. All of us — including those of us whom God created gay or lesbian — are created in the image and likeness of God.  Yet, instead of recognizing this fundamental truth of theological anthropology, American bishops fight with every fiber of their being legislative efforts to recognize the loving, stable and committed relationships LGBT people form.

Where, one might ask, are the episcopal voices raised to proclaim the principles of Catholic economic and social justice Mr. Cochran identifies? They are too busy saying that gay people can’t adopt children in need of a loving home, or that gay people are “intrinsically disordered” and therefore society shouldn’t be surprised when violence is perpetrated upon them. Such rubbish would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.

No straight, married couple has ever had their marriage harmed by the loving, committed relationship of a gay couple. To lay the blame of the decline of the “traditional family” or a high divorce rate of straight couples at the feet of gay people is preposterous.  And, as far children being a requirement for marriage, if two straight people who are beyond the age of bearing children are allowed to get married (for, in the language of Catholic theology, “the good of the spouses”), why can a gay couple not enjoy the same rights and blessings of marriage?

Believe what you will, Ms. McCarron, but please keep your hate-filled lies to yourself and let God’s LGBT children live the lives God’ created us to live.

The Big Business of Prisons

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The Caging of America is a thoughtful and very disturbing look at the American prison system.  As Americans we tend to think of ourselves as civilized and even quite religious. Christianity itself embraces not only justice, but justice tempered by mercy and forgiveness.  Yet one has to wonder if mercy and forgiveness have any role in the big business of the American “correctional” system?  One has to wonder what is wrong with a society that seems not only to mete out harsh punishments such as long sentences disproportionate to the crime and the isolation of solitary confinement, but also to do so in such numbers and with such frequency.

Of the many, many troubling issues Adam Gopnik’s commentary addresses, what jumped out at me most is the link between private, for-profit enterprise and US prisons. I’d always thought of prisons as a necessary function of government, something undertaken for the common good and safety of society, whose purpose was not only to punish but also to rehabilitate. I’d thought of prisons as something we would willingly do without if the lesser nature of humanity were diminished in the ongoing creation of a more just, peaceful, and humane society.  Oh, how naive I am! This quotation form the article says it all:

No more chilling document exists in recent American life than the 2005 annual report of the biggest of these firms, the Corrections Corporation of America. Here the company (which spends millions lobbying legislators) is obliged to caution its investors about the risk that somehow, somewhere, someone might turn off the spigot of convicted men:

‘Our growth is generally dependent upon our ability to obtain new contracts to develop and manage new correctional and detention facilities. . . . The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.’

Brecht could hardly have imagined such a document: a capitalist enterprise that feeds on the misery of man trying as hard as it can to be sure that nothing is done to decrease that misery.

Could there be any greater affront to Justice itself than a business whose success is linked to crime and a system that seeks to keep as many people locked up for as long as possible, as cheaply as possible??

An Act of Gracious Self-Forgetting

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I received an email this morning from a dear friend who said he had been listening to today’s episode of “On Being,” with Krista Tippett.  In The Inner Landscape of Beauty, Tippett speaks with John O’Donohue, an Irish priest, poet, and philosopher whom she interviewed shortly before his unexpected and all-too-early death in 2008 at the young age of 52.  So moved was I by what I heard (moved even to tears, I’m not ashamed to say), that I immediately bought O’Donohue’s first book, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom.

I look forward to spending mornings of the coming weeks the thoughts and beautiful words from this, the first of O’Donohue’s books.  Only a few pages in, I know this is the kind of book in which my underlining could get carried away, but here’s just a taste of what he says:

Love begins with paying attention to others, with an act of gracious self-forgetting.  This is the condition in which we grow.

Now what, Mr. Mutty?

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New Ways Ministry’s blog, Bondings 2.0, has an interesting post today about the leader of the Maine Catholic Conference. Apparently Marc Mutty has had some second thoughts about the ways in which he characterized the impact legalization of same-sex marriage might have in The Pine Tree State. In Catholicism, of course, we’re all about changing hearts and moving more and more toward the greater good.

My comment to the post is below:

Yes, Frank, thank you for sharing this story. And while I share the respect expressed by others who are able to admire someone who now sees the “error of his ways,” the question then becomes, Now what?

At the time of the Maine initiative against same-sex marriage, I took the time to write to Mr. Mutty’s boss, Portland Bishop Richard Malone. Bishop (then Father) Malone had been a professor and advisor of mine at St. John’s Seminary College in Boston. “Dick” Malone — whose doctorate came from a secular, not Catholic, institution, Boston University — was well-like and admired as a careful thinker, a good teacher, and someone who challenged students with high academic standards. I reminded Bishop Malone of this in my letter, challenging him to see that from the perspective of reason, opposition to same-sex marriage (especially in the civil context) is on very flimsy footing. Needless to say, I never heard back from him.

So, I come back to my initial point, which I hope Mr. Mutty would consider. In our theology of Reconciliation, when we recognize we have done wrong, we are called upon to embrace a firm “purpose of amendment” through which we commit to changing past ways. So, Mr. Mutty …. Now what??

TFTD: Forgiveness and Reclaiming our Human Dignity

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Almost by definition, forgiveness is a mutual act. There is both the one who forgives, and the one who is forgiven. Forgiveness is one piece of the more full and all-encompassing act of reconciliation, by which not only is a wound healed, but a broken relationship is restored.

In my own experience, there are two lessons about forgiveness that have been hard for me to learn.  The first is that giving forgiveness — at least forgiveness that’s worth giving — is not a singular act. No, it is something that must happen over and over until my own heart is healed and the need to forgive no longer exists. This is the lesson of the so-called Parable of the Unforgiving Servant in the Gospel of Matthew (18:21-22):

Then Peter approaching asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.

The second lesson about forgiveness may be even more of a challenge.  It’s the challenge to forgive even when the other person does want, request, or even acknowledge the need to be forgiven. In some sense, this is almost like a second injury. It’s one thing to be hurt deeply by another person; it’s another thing to have that injury ignored, minimized, or otherwise unseen and unacknowledged. And yet … even in such situations as this, forgive we must. As Henri Nouwen writes,

But if our condition for giving forgiveness is that it will be received, we seldom will forgive! Forgiving the other is first and foremost an inner movement. It is an act that removes anger, bitterness, and the desire for revenge from our hearts and to reclaim our human dignity...The only people we can really change are ourselves. Forgiving others is first and foremost healing our own hearts. (Bread for the Journey, January 27, emphasis added)

Forgiveness is first and foremost something we do for ourselves, and we do so because failing to forgive means we are carrying around a weight and burden we don’t need. Failure to forgive is an act of self-injury.

Is there someone I need to forgive today, whether or not he/she knows it? Let today be the dawn of a new day — the day I take one step along the path of forgiveness, a path that leads me to reclaim the fullness of my human dignity and healing my injured heart.

All images © 2012 Timothy MacGeorge

Jean Vanier: Another Voice for Professional Social Work

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I’m reading an article in the Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work. It’s entitled, Jean Vanier: An Alternative Voice for the Social Work Profession.  Vanier is the founder of the L’Arche communities around the world that provide home and community for adults with developmental challenges.  The main thrust of the article is about the value of religio-poetic language in the field of social work — a field that for the last half century has been much more focused on building its reputation as a profession. At one point, the author, Anne Marie Walsh, PhD, writes the following:

Social work is in the often privileged position of realizing some of what Vanier suggests.  The profession works closely with very disadvantaged people, the weak within a competitive capitalist society; even the profession itself tends to be seen as somewhat weak, unable to generate its own funds, women’s work, a pseudoprofession which is not doing the “real” work of building, earning, and producing.  The exposure to the capacities (and not only the challenges) of those with whom we work offers social workers a view of he complex strengths and the dignity of many whom the “real world” might reject.  And of course, our exposure to the lives of others touches our own weaknesses.

Despite the messages we hear so very often — especially in much of what passes for political “discourse” these days — the truth of Jean Vanier’s perspective is so very evident to me in his commitment not just to community, but to community of care. As Vanier says:

That is why we need community, because we can do nothing all alone.  We need to belong. We only know ourselves and each other when we live with our weaknesses.

 

Aloneness, Solitude, and Community

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I often struggle with loneliness.  Despite the fact that I have lived alone for the past ten years, the solitariness of being single is at times overwhelming.  In his meditation for January 22 in Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith, the late Henry Nouwen has this to offer:

Community Supported by Solitude

Solitude greeting solitude, that’s what community is all about. Community is not the place where we are no longer alone but the place where we respect, protect and reverently greet one another’s aloneness.  When we allow our aloneness to lead us into solitude, our solitude will enable us to rejoice in the solitude of others. Our solitude roots us in our own hearts.  Instead of making us yearn for company that will offer us immediate satisfaction, solitude makes us claim our center and empowers us to call others to claim theirs. Our various solitudes are like strong, straight pillars that hold up the roof of our communal house. Thus, solitude always strengthens community.

I venture that Nouwen would also say the layer between solitude and community — relationship with another — is likewise nurtured by the fruits of allowing our aloneness to lead us into solitude.  When we know and are at home at that center where we can breathe deeply and profoundly and simply be who we are — it is then that we are best able to move beyond our center and relate with the “other.”

And in this relating, Love lives most fully.

 

 

All Images © 2012 Timothy MacGeorge

Love and Humor in the Face of Rejection

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The young man described in today’s Caroly Hax column (in the Washington Post) does sound like quite an “impressive human being.”

As his sister describes him, he clearly knows his own truth so deeply that he is able to see beyond his mother’s rejection and not be controlled by her attempts to control. Perhaps he knows well the source of her non-maternal behavior — fear? ignorance? having been rejected or hurt herself? Whatever the reason, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all find ways lovingly to stand our ground, speak truth to untruth — all with open arms and gentle humor!