Trans Catholic

Here’s an absolutely breath-taking and tear-jerking story about a remarkable nun who works with the trans community in and around New Orleans. She is what my Catholic has always been about, to be honest, and she is absolutely one of the best examples I know of that when Catholics are cool, they’re cooler than most. My friend Quince Mountain writes that this story is

“for me at least, refreshing in that it’s not about the awful things the church does to queer/trans folks.  It acknowledges those things, but shows how someone working underground has found ways to help trans folks where others could not.  For many, the church is such a roadblock.  And we only hear about the baddies.  Orthodox Russian nationalists, protestant Ugandan haters, etc.  At best, we get a quip from the pope.  But here’s someone doing substantive lifelong work, and she would not be able to do it without support from the church. “

Some awesome segments:

If one is new to the trans experience, a room like this might feel unsettling. It might leave one lying in bed that night asking uncomfortable questions for the first time about who or what one really is, things that might have always seemed certain and fixed and clear. Trans people represent a threat in a society anxious to keep its basic categories stable; they experience violence at rates far higher than the general population. But sit there a while, as in any room, and the stories become just stories. The people become people. For Monica, sitting at those tables in those support groups is being among family.

and

Pope Francis I has shifted the Vatican’s tone on sexual diversity somewhat; further Christmas condemnations seem unlikely to be coming from him. “Who am I to judge?” he famously asked with regard to good-willed gay people. The mother church of his Jesuit order in Rome held a much-publicized funeral in January for a murdered homeless trans woman, though he has yet to speak about living transgender people specifically.

There is a lot more to the Catholic Church than ponderings emanating from the Vatican. Williamson says, in his experience, “the Catholic Church is one of the most affirming groups toward LGBT people” — in the pews, he means, not the hierarchy. A study by the Public Religion Research Institute found that U.S. Catholics affirm a rather vague statement about transgender rights at a rate somewhat higher than the national average.

James Whitehead is a theologian who teaches at Loyola University in Chicago. In recent years he and his wife, Evelyn, a psychologist, have devoted themselves to understanding the transgender experience in Catholic terms. They had been studying lesbian and gay issues for years, and as they sought out trans people it struck them how familiar the arc of their lives seemed.

“This is the same old story,” he says. “The kind of transition that trans people are talking about is very similar to the journey of faith through darkness and desert that people have been making for thousands of years.” He has found, in his teaching and writing, that when he describes trans experience to Catholics in terms of a spiritual journey, a light goes on, and they get it.

Hints and echoes of what we now speak of as gender transition lie scattered throughout Christian tradition. An Ethiopian eunuch is the first person baptized in the Book of Acts, and the third-century theologian Origen castrated himself after reading Jesus’ remark about those “who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” Stories of ancient ascetics recall women “surpassing” their gender through spiritual advancement, or by simply disguising themselves as men. In the Middle Ages, St. Joan of Arc was executed for refusing to stop cross-dressing; legends circulated of a female pope, also named Joan, who was also killed for gender-bending. Medieval mystics sometimes referred to Jesus as a mother and saw visions of milk dripping from his breast. The Catholic Church as a whole, led by a hierarchy of costumed men, is traditionally referred to as She and as the Bride of Christ.

The resonance goes beyond appearances. “Catholic tradition is all about the dignity of the human person,” says Edward Poliandro, an advocate for LGBT Catholics and their families in New York City. “Transgender people have a particular prophetic mission just to live and to challenge society simply by saying, ‘I’m a person.’”

I spoke at a Catholic university, Saint Norbert’s, a few weeks ago, and I intend to write a little about that experience… but not yet. In the meantime, just go read about Sister Monica. She will renew your faith – Catholic or not.

Catholic Throwdown

I have all kinds of new respect for Jack White after this.

Mary’s mother’s name was Anne, by the way. & This is a scapular – which they pronounce kind of more like scapula, which is actually the Latin term for the shoulder bone.

& Yes, I am Jesuit-educated. All hail the black Pope. (I’m kidding, though I do like this new guy.)

This post is dedicated to my friend from 6th grade, Brian Winkowski. We used to have a contest every year on Ash Wednesday to see which one of us could count more people with the ash smudge. We are both youngests from huge Catholic families, as apparently Colbert & White are too.

Habemus Papam

It’s really too bad I didn’t put money on it, because I was right,: homophobic from the Global South, as predicted.

He sounds like poverty might actually rate, however, which would be a nice change of pace for the Church, to rediscover poor people again, and maybe focus on that instead of on so-called morality. (So called as morality only seems to matter if people are female or queer; sexual abuse & all that rot they never say a damn thing about.) He is flexible on condoms as contraception – if they’re being used to prevent infection, and hey, he’s a Jesuit, but on the conservative end of Jesuit, which means: expect anything once he’s learned more.

Catholics Against Ryan

From Maureen Dowd’s column this past week:

Even Catholic bishops, who had to be dragged toward compassion in the pedophilia scandal, were dismayed at how uncompassionate Ryan’s budget was.

Mitt Romney expects his running mate to help deliver the Catholic vote and smooth over any discomfort among Catholics about Mormonism. (This is the first major-party ticket to go Protestant-less.) Yet after Ryan claimed his budget was shaped by his faith, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops deemed it immoral.

“A just spending bill cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor and vulnerable persons,” the bishops wrote in a letter to Congress.

The Jesuits were even more tart, with one group writing to Ryan that “Your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

The nuns-on-the-bus also rapped the knuckles of the former altar boy who now takes his three kids to Mass. As Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of the Catholic social justice group Network, told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, it’s sad that a Catholic doesn’t understand that “we need to have each other’s backs. Only wealthy people can ever begin to pretend that they can live in a gated community all by themselves.”

Even Ryan’s former parish priest in Janesville weighed in. Father Stephen Umhoefer told the Center for Media and Democracy, “You can’t tell somebody that in 10 years your economic situation is going to be just wonderful because meanwhile your kids may starve to death.”

Oh, & um, Ayn Rand was an atheist. Can we get that news out to the Christian Right, please?

The Other Catholic Church

A nice piece on “the other Catholic Church” which is still out there, still doing cool anti-poverty work, and still taking a lot of risks:

This is the church of the Maryknoll Sisters in Central America and the Cabrini Sisters in Africa. There’s a stereotype of nuns as stodgy Victorian traditionalists. I learned otherwise while hanging on for my life in a passenger seat as an American nun with a lead foot drove her jeep over ruts and through a creek in Swaziland to visit AIDS orphans. After a number of encounters like that, I’ve come to believe that the very coolest people in the world today may be nuns.

So when you read about the scandals, remember that the Vatican is not the same as the Catholic Church. Ordinary lepers, prostitutes and slum-dwellers may never see a cardinal, but they daily encounter a truly noble Catholic Church in the form of priests, nuns and lay workers toiling to make a difference.

It’s high time for the Vatican to take inspiration from that sublime — even divine — side of the Catholic Church, from those church workers whose magnificence lies not in their vestments, but in their selflessness. They’re enough to make the Virgin Mary smile.

I know I’ve said more than once that when Catholics are cool, they’re cooler than many.

(h/t to Doug for the link)

Anti Pope

Richard Dawkins and Chris Hitchens want to have the Pope arrested when he comes to the UK. I saw the story on MSNBC & laughed for a full five minutes, because: why not? Is there some rule about why we should respect religious leaders globally? Don’t people who aren’t Catholic have the right to see justice for those kids?

I think it’s brilliant. After that, we can arrest all sorts of religious leaders for whatever, & then – no more religious bullshit.

I know it wouldn’t work. But the idea is lovely.

Continue reading “Anti Pope”

US Nuns Rock the House (& the Church)

It’s rare that a bit of political news actually makes me tear up, but the efforts by the Catholic US nuns today did:

Their numbers and influence may be declining, but American nuns demonstrated Wednesday what generations of schoolchildren already knew: They are a force to be reckoned with.

By sending a letter to Congress in support of the Senate healthcare bill, a wide coalition of nuns took sides against not only the Republican minority but against their own church hierarchy, as represented by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which opposes the bill. The nuns’ letter contributed to the momentum in favor of the legislation, despite opposition that is partially rooted in a disagreement over abortion funding.

“We agree that there shouldn’t be any federal funding of abortion,” said Sister Simone Campbell, the executive director of Network, a national Catholic social justice advocacy organization that spearheaded the effort. “From our reading of the bill, there isn’t any federal funding of abortion.”

Rock on, ladies.

Shrove Tuesday…

… might be better known as Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, to those of you who weren’t raised Catholic, but it’s today. While in a Taco Bell I saw a sign that said Great Taste During Lent which listed a bunch of their vegetarian options. I grew up in one of the most Catholic cities in the world, but I have never, ever seen a sign like that. I shouldn’t be too surprised in a town that still has a “Friday Fish Fry” tradition, but okay – I was surprised. Taco Bell: where Catholicism and Vegetarianism intersect.

Since I seem to have mostly given up meat – it’s been about two months now, even if I am far from a purist about it – I’m not sure what exactly I should give up for Lent. That I should give up *something* is a no-brainer. I don’t give up anything because I’m a practicing Catholic – despite my mother’s best wishes, I am an apostate – but flexing a little self-discipline muscle isn’t particularly bad for a person. I have until midnight to make up my mind: suggestions? Is it possible to give up a negative? As in, can I give up not writing?

In the meanwhile: HAPPY MARDI GRAS! (I am so jealous of my friends who made it down to NOLA in the past week! What a party.)