Southern "end" of the perfect rainbow over Rehoboth Beach, DE after the local Gay Pride Celebration

Even though it rained most of the day, God must have been smiling over the Delaware Gay Pride Festival held Saturday, September 17, 2011 in Rehoboth. Late in the afternoon, a perfect rainbow — visible complete, from end to end — could be seen looking east toward the ocean.

Today’s Washington Post reports that the large number of military chaplains from the highly conservative Southern Baptist Convention may have a disproportionate influence on the debate about repealing “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” “‘If a policy makes it more difficult – in fact, discourages – one of the groups that provides one of the largest numbers of chaplains to the military community from continuing to engage in chaplaincy ministry, that should raise significant concerns for them about the…spiritual well-being of our men and women in uniform,’ said Barrett Duke…” from a Southern Baptist research institute.

Well, if the quality of that ministry is such that they need to perpetuate prejudice and bigotry based on a few misunderstood and misinterpreted passages from scripture, then perhaps the loss of their “ministry” to those in uniform might not be such a bad thing.

Dominican theologian Edward Schillebeeckx died just two days before Christmas.  He was 95. I’m ashamed to admit that I never read much of Fr. Schillebeeckx, either in my seminary years or afterward. After reading a short reflection on this influential theologian’s life and work, written by a former student, I hope to change that in the year ahead.  The reflection ended with this quotation from Schillebeeckx.

“The crucified but risen Jesus appears in the believing, assembled community of the church. That this sense of the risen, living Jesus has faded in many [churches] can be basically blamed on the fact that our churches are insufficiently ‘communities’ of God…. Where the church of Jesus Christ lives, and lives a liberating life in the footsteps of Jesus, the resurrection faith undergoes no crisis. On the other hand, it is better not to believe in God than to believe in a God who minimizes human beings, holds them under and oppresses them, with a view to a better world to come.”

—Edward Schillebeeckx, “The Church with a Human Face”

I love Miss Manners!

Her December 2nd column includes the story of gay man asking how he and his partner should respond when they are publicly confronted or attacked for having adopted a child (whose birth mother, by the way, was a heroin and crack addict). They have been told in public and by strangers that they are “not a real family, ” are “evil” and doing “an injustice” to the child. Seeking Miss Manners’s guidance on how to respond politely, she replies:

“A gentleman of Miss Manners’s acquaintance was once subjected to a barrage of unwarranted insults. Outraged on his behalf, she asked why he did not trouble to defend himself. His reply (and please forgive the inelegance for the sake of vividness) was: ‘If someone is throwing up on you, you get out of the way. You do not stay around to examine what is coming up.’

There is nothing you can say to people who, whatever they may think, see fit to hurl crude insults at you, even in front of your son. A stiff ‘I’m sorry you feel that way’ is all you can utter before turning your back.” 

“Violence,” “not a real family,” and “evil” are descriptions shockingly familiar to anyone who has read “official” Church pronouncements about gay men and women. (If you doubt this, see the blog by James Martin, S.J., What Should a Gay Catholic To Do?) Although these pronouncements are presented in ways that seek to heighten their significance, the fact remains that the medium is not the message. Verbal vomit — whether spewed forth from a complete stranger in the street, from a Fred Phelps fanatic, or even from a Vatican document with a papal seal — is still verbal vomit.