I was a sophomore in high school when I reverted to Christianity. After a brief stint as a Lutheran (don’t ask) I decided to settle down in the Episcopal Church. (Maye you shouldn’t ask about that, either.)
In my defense, I was brought back to the Faith by C. S. Lewis and T. S. Eliot. They were my touchstones, my lodestars. I couldn’t imagine being any “kind” of Christian except the kind they were. Both were Anglicans, members of the Church of England. I couldn’t join the C. of E., not being English and all that. So, I became an Episcopalian.
Eventually I found my way to the Church of the Advent in Boston, which I will love and cherish until the day I die, and for many aeons afterwards. But first I joined the little parish down the road from our house in rural Massachusetts. We’ll call it St. Jasper’s.
For me, St. Jasper’s was a mixed bag. The priestess was a kind of high-church liberal. She chanted parts of the Mass and used the old BCP, but her homilies toed the Episcopal Church’s line on divorce and immigration and whatnot. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t know there was anything better on offer. (That’s part of the reason I’ll always be grateful for the Advent. It taught me to have standards.)
A few months after I started coming to St. Jasper’s, they invited me to join the vestry, the parish’s lay governing body. I was the only person under fifty who went to services there of my own free will, and they wanted my advice on how to attract a younger crowd. I didn’t have to think about it much. “Take down the rainbow flag outside the door for starters,” I said. The invitation was withdrawn.
On the one hand, I still feel bad about the whole episode. They’re lovely people at St. Jasper’s, and they really didn’t mind that I was a “conservative.” (Actually, they offered the position to my father instead.) I was just being smug. Old habits and all that.
On the other hand, I was obviously right.
Now, I know this argument has been made a million times before. But it’s true. The “mainline” churches’ obsession with “outreach” to the “LGBT community” is absurd. You don’t have to be a moral traditionalist to see that.
Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that homosexuality is perfectly acceptable by Christian standards. Still, why the rainbow flags? Presumably there are lots of other activities you consider morally acceptable: watching porn, smoking weed, playing squash, whatever. Why make such a big deal about the gay stuff?
Why is that that the only symbol you display outside your church besides the cross—assuming you’ve got a cross? Why are sodomy and transvestic fetishism such an important part of your identity, especially when most of your congregants are elderly WASPs who probably close their eyes when they flip past HBO?
Even if it’s not grossly unfaithful to Christian teaching, doesn’t it strike anyone as… disproportionate?
I’m too young to be scandalized by anything, and I had no illusions about the Episcopal Church going in, so I wasn’t exactly shocked by the LGBT stuff. Mostly I just found it annoying. It’s still annoying, of course—this genital myopia. But as the years go on, I mostly just find it sad.
Christianity is the richest spiritual, liturgical, musical, architectural, poetic, artistic, moral, philosophical, and political tradition in history (in addition to being the one true Faith, etc.). Jesus, John, James, Peter, Paul… Benedict, Augustine, Anselm, Francis, Aquinas, Dante… Tallis, Herbert, Johnson, Newman, Hopkins, Chesterton, Eliot, Lewis, Waugh… How can anyone take that—all of that—and boil it down to sex, gay or otherwise?
As I was typing up this essay, I saw the news about Michael Banner, the Cambridge dean who argued that Our Lord became “trans” when the centurion pierced His side. You can Google it if you want to, though I wouldn’t recommend it. But if you’ve seen the reports already—well, it proves our point exactly, doesn’t it? Imagine looking at Jean Malouel’s Pietà and still being unable to think about anything but sex. How unbelievably sad.
But I hadn’t meant to talk about Dr. Banner. I wanted to write about a New York Times essay by Michael O’Loughlin. Mr. O’Loughlin is a correspondent for America, a liberal Catholic magazine run by the Jesuits. His Times essay is about a year old now, and yet it’s so deeply emblematic of the “progressive Christian” mentality.
Mr. O’Loughlin is himself gay, and a Catholic. Well, sort of. I’ll let him speak for himself:
I’ve felt isolated and alone at times as a gay Catholic trying to find a place in the church. I stay partly for cultural reasons, taking comfort in practicing the faith of my ancestors. I also find order and meaning in Catholicism, especially when life feels unpredictable. With U.S. bishops meeting in Baltimore this week, following months of debate about the worthiness of some Catholics to receive Communion, I’ve realized that personally, I stay in the church mostly for the Eucharist, that ritual during Mass when I believe the divine transcends our ordinary lives and God is present. I haven’t found that elsewhere.
Still, there have been moments when I felt that I had no choice but to leave, that the hypocrisy and judgment were too great. I once went so far as to begin the process of being received into the Episcopal Church but didn’t follow through. I sometimes wonder if I should have, like the time I sat at a dinner in Rome and listened to another Catholic criticize Pope Francis and suggest that despite the pope’s “Who am I to judge?” attitude, gays would, in fact, burn in hell.
Having worked in the Catholic press, I’ve read Mr. O’Loughlin’s stuff for years. (You would probably be more familiar with his colleague, Fr. James Martin.) I didn’t know he was openly gay, but I strongly suspected it. I didn’t know how much he doubted the Faith, either; though I strongly suspected that, too.
I don’t want to pick on Mr. O’Loughlin. The America crowd are easy targets. Sometimes, I think, they’re a little too easy. When I was a journalist, I was always reluctant to publish articles about Fr. Martin & Friends. It felt like we were giving them free publicity. But I think there’s an important point to be made here.
The Christian is called to put on the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16). We’re supposed to see the world through the lens of Christianity. The Gospel is our frame of reference for all of reality. The Faith our rule and measure, by which we judge all things. Jesus is our standard of objectivity. We take Him at His word.
And Our Lord says, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matt 5:48). Of course, that’s impossible in this life. Yet this is what it means to be a Christian: striving for perfection, and accepting nothing less. We sacrifice everything and anything in our quest to become like Jesus.
Not so for Mr. O’Loughlin. For him—as for most progressive Christians—the Church is, at best, a source of comfort. Their loyalty to the Church is mostly cultural. The Eucharist is something he hasn’t found anywhere else. Now, a believing Catholic would say that it can’t be found anywhere else (except the Orthodox Church) (it’s complicated). But Mr. O’Loughlin isn’t ruling the possibility out.
I think it’s fair to say that, if he’d been raised Episcopalian, the odds of him swimming the Tiber would be pretty slim.
Of course, Mr. O’Loughlin is gainfully employed by a Catholic magazine. That also may influence his decision to remain Catholic. Then again, maybe not. I can’t see America sacking an employee just for apostatizing—especially if that employee happens to be gay, and especially if he leaves the church because it’s not sufficiently “welcoming.”
Yet that’s the whole point, isn’t it?
Clearly, America doesn’t care whether its employees are Catholic, or even Christian. They only have to accept the secular-progressive line on morality and politics. They should have a “cultural” interest in the Catholic Church, but they don’t have to believe its teachings.
This, I think, is what orthodox Christians find so repulsive about “progressive Christianity.” For progressive Christians, Jesus just isn’t a priority. They have no real interest in putting on the mind of Christ (Phil 2:5). They’d rather He put on the mind of a progressive.
That’s why George MacDonald said, “It is the one great heresy of the Church, that it has always been presenting something else than obedience as faith in Christ.” The essence of Christianity is conforming oneself to Christ; the essence of heresy is deforming Christ to oneself. We judge God, and therefore make ourselves gods.
At that point, I can’t think of anything to do except quote Chesterton:
How sad it must be to be God; and an inadequate God! Is there really no life fuller and no love more marvelous than yours; and is it really in your small and painful pity that all flesh must put its faith? How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos, scattering the stars like spangles, and leave you in the open, free like other men to look up as well as down!
This is the tragedy of “progressive Christianity.” It’s so lonely. Because, in the end, it’s just you. Your own opinions. Your own urges and appetites. Your own interests and obsessions and fixations.
(Before anyone starts: yes, the Right can make the same error. Christian conservatives may also hold up something other than Jesus as its rule and measure. I talked about that last week in “The Conservative Heresy”. These aren’t two separate arguments. They’re one in the same.)
We must always, always, be striving to become more like Jesus. For those who want to live forever, this is the safest path. This is the only path. We must seek the will of the Father, as Our Lord did (John 5:30). That’s what it means to put on the mind of Christ. He must be our alpha and our omega, our beginning and our end. We must discard our own subjectivity and surrender ourselves to that one objective Reality. We must abandon our autonomy and become God’s slaves (Rom 6:22).
If Mr. O’Loughlin isn’t there yet, it’s not necessarily his fault. Faith is a gift from God; it’s not something we earn. Yet it’s extraordinary how many of us, “conservatives” and “liberals” alike, define Christianity as something other than obeying the Father by imitating the Son through the power and working of the Holy Ghost.
If we don’t at least try to worship God, we’ll end up worshipping ourselves. Really, what can our religion be about if not Christ? Tasteless wafers, gay sex, and other “comforts.” That’s no way to live.
I think this is what Léon Bloy meant when he said, “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.”
I hope Dr. Banner and Mr. O’Loughlin become saints. I hope you become a saint. And I hope I do, too. Even if all the God stuff is hokum, I hope we all become saints. We’ve seen the alternative, and it’s tragic.
Put on the mind of Christ. What else can we do?
Update: 12/2, 12 p.m. This post was changed to make the reference to Dr. Banner and his “trans Christ” sermon less explicit. I apologize if I’ve disturbed readers or given scandal in any way. Please forgive me.