Summary: The experience of America’s queerfolk has been not unlike that of the Irish in America. Both the LGBT and Irish-American communities have undergone a long process of integration --not assimilation-- into an American community composed largely of immigrants, and in which every person is a member of some minority. Full participation of the Irish as first-class citizens in our American commonwealth is now a matter-of-fact reality. America's queerfolk should be guided by the experience of the Gael in America and take hope and inspiration from it.
By: Paul S. Marchand
"You will be assimilated; resistance is futile."
-Locutus of Borg, from Star Trek, the Next Generation
I refuse to be assimilated!
-Anonymous Queer National, c. 1992
As any aficionado of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, or Voyager can tell you, the Borg are a nasty lot. They are a mixture of man and machine, a collective bent on conquering the galaxy by "assimilating" everything in their path, turning conquered races into Borg drones, parts of a hive in which no single member possess any distinct individuality. Among the Borg, the pronoun I yields place to the pronoun we, as it often does in highly homogenous or totalitarian cultures.
As Americans in general, and as queerfolk in particular, lesbians and gay men, together with the bisexual and the transgendered, necessarily live lives in which our definition of ourselves as a community is intimately bound up in our identification of ourselves as individuals, in which I necessarily comes before We, and is its prerequisite. Of all of the great nations of the world, America stands out as the quintessential "nation of immigrants," composed of voyagers and exiles from every one of the worlds tongues, nations, and stations; from every religion or none at all, from every zone of conflict or street of violence, from the vastnesses of continents scorched by equinoctial suns to the fringes of green and seagirt islands such as Éire, granite-buttressed and battered by the ageless pounding of Atlantic breakers.
In a sense, every American is a member of some minority group or other. We queerfolk are no exception. To be sure, our American story has been until recent years largely identified as the history of the white settlers, primarily British and northern European, who came to what is now Virginia and the northeast. Yet in truth, our history is the history of a lengthy series of arrivals, even that of the first peoples who arrived so many thousands of years ago across the now-drowned land bridge between Siberia and Alaska.
On Saint Patrick's day, of course, we recall the experience of the Irish in America, and rightly so, for that experience has molded the history of America and of Éire, and has changed the lives of every Irish-American, and every Irishman. The story of the Gael in the New World is almost a textbook example of the importance of integration as against assimilation. We who are of Irish descent brought with us from the ancestral island a culture, a world view, a faith, and most importantly, a faculty for the written and the spoken word that has been almost without peer in the history of the English language. If nothing else, our own Irish integration into the American commmonwealth has been witnessed by a string of recent Presidents of Irish descent: Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, and even Obama (or is that O’Bama?).
Yet the one great sin against blood, faith, and heritage of which the Irish-Americans can never be accused is that of being assimilated into an alien culture and entirely abandoning their own. Instead, the Irish ---like so many others before and since--- beginning as outsiders, integrated themselves into American society, and in so doing, influenced that society in ways both obvious and subtle. Even the Famine Irish, who fled the Potato Famine of the 1840s ---and were often the poorest of the poor and the rudest of the rude--- came as members of a culture that though often dormant under English occupation, possessed and possesses still an ancient and noble heritage. And without the leavening and the gifts of the Irish and of their culture, our own American culture would be perceptibly poorer.
After all, the Irishman James Joyce once asked, who but the Irish could have taken the tongue of the conqueror and made it so brilliantly their own?
On the Feast of Saint Patrick, then, American queerfolk should perhaps look to the Irish in America, not with simple nostalgia, or even with mere pride of ancestry (if, dear reader, you happen like the author to be of Irish descent), but rather as our teachers, from whose example and history in this country we may take instruction and inspiration. For against the Irish immigrants, particularly the Famine Irish, were ranged many of the most powerful social and political forces of the day, united in fear and dislike of a proud but primitive people from a different culture, of a Roman Catholic people in a Protestant republic, of a communitarian people in a land of rugged individualists, and of poor people in a society just beginning to come to terms with the potentialities of staggering wealth.
Why, the nativist element demanded, did we have to admit the Irish at all? And if we had to let them in, why couldn't the Irish just be assimilated until they adopted the faith and culture of the Protestant population? Against such an initial background, the history of the Irish community in this country has been a history of initial rejection, a history of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic bigotry and fear, yet also a history of slow, steady surmounting of barriers, a history of building bridges, paying dues, and establishing bona fides, a history, in short, of integration.
Yet such a history is decades in the making, and true integration is the accomplishment of generations. For Irish-Americans, the struggle to secure equal rights was in many ways closely parallel to the struggle that we are waging today as queer people. Over against us are powerful social and political forces as united in their fear and dislike of us as their forebears were of the Irish. For in a society that still defines family largely as biological units, we define family in other, perhaps more spiritual ways. Indeed, our struggle to be able to create families, and to place those families squarely within the ambit of protection that the law should guarantee to every family, has not been an overnight thing, but has indeed been the outcome of decades, even generations, of work.
In a society that fears any expression of social nonconformity, we queerfolk are cultural subversives, questioning the dominant paradigm at every turn. In a culture that tends to regard aesthetics with a jaundiced and Puritan eye that sees beauty as pagan and per se unacceptable, we embrace beauty, taste, and elegance forthrightly as essential aspects of a life worth living in full. Against a mentality that seems to have little time for joy and the pursuit of happiness, we demand the right to find joy and to pursue happiness, and to live life as if there were twenty five hours in every day; for who (even with HIV/AIDS having been reduced, more or less, to the status of a long-term chronic illness) can truly know how much time he or she has?
Finally, of course, in contrast with a narrow and limited conversation about gender roles, we dare to speak the love that others would constrain to silence, honestly admitting the possibility that two women or two men can love one another, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
In short, we make many of our straight neighbors uncomfortable, in much the same way as the communitarian, Catholic, Irish, must have discomfited their individualistic, Protestant, neighbors. And if we have taken the blueprint for much of the legal strategy of our cause from the struggle of the African-American community, perhaps we ought to take the blueprint for our social and political integration from the Irish. Our community, as such, is in many ways a new arrival on the American scene since Stonewall, and past experience suggests that it is unrealistic to expect the immediate crumbling of all barriers.
Yet, as the Irish demonstrated, open participation in the life of the larger community leads to habituation; habituation leads to accommodation; accommodation leads to toleration, and toleration leads to acceptance and integration. When integration happens, barriers fall and hitherto separate cultures or subcultures can teach and learn from one another, and can enrich one another. Who would have thought, just two decades ago, that we might well be nearing the day on which David and Jonathan (or Sean and Patrick) or Ruth and Naomi (or Bridget and Siobhan) might be able to go and get themselves married, legally and fully, in a nation that has finally acknowledged that it is as okay to be queer as it is to be Irish?
If, then, on Saint Patrick's Day the Irish part of me can say "I'm here, I'm Irish, get used to it," the queer part of me can take the same tack, and together with my LBGT brothers and sisters, also say "We're queer, we're here, we're fabulous, get used to it." The challenge, thus, is a simple one. If today, the presence a contingent of gay and lesbian Hibernians marching in a St. Patrick's Day Parade, or the mere fact of a Pride Parade, can cause controversy and confrontation, let us set our goals, aspirations and efforts toward an ultimate reality of integration such that in due time the presence of lesbian and gay Hibernians in a St. Patrick's Day Parade or a pride parade ---or Bridget and Siobhan’s wedding--- is nothing more than matter-of-fact reality, unremarkable in itself.
When, and only when, our integration is so complete that our participation in the life of the nation is accepted as a matter of course, will we be able to speak of being true, first class citizens in the contemplation of our law, our politics, and our society. Only when our participation is accepted as an everyday reality will we truly be able to say that we -like the Irish- have finally come to America.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an Irish/Celtic-American attorney with a typically French name that would fit comfortably into any Paris or Marseilles phone book. He lives and practices in Cathedral City, where he served two terms as a city councilmember. The views contained herein are his own, and not those of any entity or organization with which he is associated. They are not intended, and should not be taken as, legal advice. This post is an adaptation of a column Mr. Marchand wrote in 1998 and has been updated.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS: ROB PORTMAN’S VOLTE-FACE ON MARRIAGE EQUALITY
Summary: It must suck to be Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman right about now. The Senator’s dramatic reversal of his position on marriage equality, from opposition to support, together with his disclosure that his 21-year-old son Will, a junior at Yale, is gay, has called forth attacks from marriage equality supporters and from angry, hair-on-fire extremists of the religious right. Marriage equality supporters have condemned the Ohio senator for being insufficiently empathetic, while the angry rightists have demanded that he either “change” or reject his son. Ronald Reagan pointed out that political change usually begins around the dining table, and Harvey Milk noted that the cause of LGBT civil rights usually does better when our straight neighbors actually know queerfolk. Rob Portman is going through much the same evolution that millions of Americans have gone through in the last generation. Those of us who support marriage equality should cut him and Will a break and not demand an absolute purity of motive from him that many of us would find impossible to muster in ourselves.
By: Paul S. Marchand
It seems that Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman has had a “Road to Damascus” experience with respect to the issue of marriage equality, altering his position from “oppose” to “support,” declaring his position forthrightly in an opinion piece in the Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch. Such experiences, representing as they do decisive, nay, irrevocable reversals of view, have long been a part of the cultural heritage of the Roman-Christian West.
Since the time of Saul of Tarsus’s dramatic conversion to Christianity which began with his God-confronting experience on his way to persecute followers of Jesus Movement in Damascus, the concept of a dramatic volte-face, of a 180° shift in opinion, has usually been referred to as a “Road to Damascus” experience.
Yet, the road to Damascus differs for every soul that travels it.
Both Ronald Reagan and Harvey Milk understood, perhaps even more than the late, great Tip O’Neill, that politics isn’t just local, it often begins around the dining table. Harvey Milk, in particular, understood that when advocating for equal rights for queerfolk, nothing helped get the point across quite as much as actually knowing an LGBT person.
On marriage equality, Rob Portman’s road to Damascus seems to have run right through his dining room for the most Milkian of reasons; the Senator’s son, Will, 21, a junior at Yale, is gay. Moreover, Will Portman has apparently been out to his family for the last two years.
Yet, as a unique as every human being’s road to Damascus may be, it must suck to be Rob Portman right about now. The Senator has taken considerable flak from both sides of the marriage issue. From one side, the Senator has been excoriated for lacking empathy. The gravamen of such criticism is that marriage equality was not an issue the Senator could support until the issue surfaced right in the middle of his own family; under such a construct, it is apparently more important to be supportive in the abstract than to come round to a position of support because one may have been moved by the compunctions of family.
Social conservatives have excoriated both Portman père and Portman fils, the father for supporting marriage equality, and the son for simply being gay. The Senator has been attacked for allegedly lacking principle and not standing up for “godly ways,” while he has been urged, often in the nastiest terms imaginable, to subject his son to so-called reparative therapy, and to reject his son and cast him out if his son refuses to “change.” The sheer nastiness of the commentors on the discussion thread attached to Sen. Portman’s op-ed piece in the Dispatch, calling down the wrath and ill will of an angry Old Testament deity upon him beggared description, and was some of the most sickeningly hateful speech I have ever beheld on an Internet comment thread.
Assailed as he is from both the purist left and the angry, hair-on-fire “Christian” right over his heartfelt candor, it must suck to be Rob Portman right about now.
Yet, those of us who have been on the side of the angels in the marriage equality struggle should consider cutting Rob Portman of little bit of slack on this issue. At the risk of reifying as canonical Harvey Milk’s observation, or worse, over-linking it with Ronald Reagan’s homely political acumen, we should acknowledge that Pauline conversions like Sen. Portman’s don’t occur in abstract vacuum. Advances in civil rights for queerfolk usually occur when those of our straight neighbors who happily consign our queer butts to the back of the bus suddenly discover, mirabile dictu, that they actually know one or more gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered people.
In 2013, the reality of having a queer friend, a queer coworker, a queer neighbor, or a queer child has become so matter-of-fact that a majority of Americans have experienced it. Notwithstanding such antediluvian fools as Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, who claims that there has never been a homosexual in the recorded history of his family, most Americans are within --- at most --- two degrees of separation from a GLBT person.
Such a reality of nearness, together with the substantial statistical likelihood that while working in Washington, Sen. Portman would have encountered queerfolk on Capitol Hill, suggests not only that the Senator may well have been psychologically habituated to the possibility that one of his children might be gay, but also that Portman would have sought out counsel from persons within his own party, including former VP Dick Cheney, who were out as the parents of LGBT children. Will Portman’s coming out to his dad may not have been as much a surprise as otherwise thought.
But, neither Rob nor Will Portman will ever again have the luxury of not participating in the national conversation about civil rights and marriage equality for queerfolk. To a certain extent, I can empathize to a greater degree with Will Portman then with his father. Will Portman now finds himself injected into the vortex of the highly public debate at a time when politics has become a full contact, no holds barred, Breitbart-nasty, enterprise in which little, if any, attention ever gets paid to personal destruction or collateral damage. At best, Will Portman can hope to be spared anything but an Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame. At worst, he will be pursued, belabored, and even stalked by right-wing religious fanatics.
Still, faulting Rob Portman for being “insufficiently empathetic” strikes one as holding the Senator to an unreasonably high standard. Would it have been better if Sen. Portman did not know a single queer person, if he had acted solely out of some kind of abstract attachment to an impersonal principle? Such a view strikes one as naïve. That is not how opinions are formed. In an America in which a majority of voters want to get rid of all those scoundrels on Capitol Hill, but who remain convinced that their own Representative or senator is a fine fellow who deserves reelection, we would be foolish to think that personal considerations don’t or shouldn’t matter in politics.
Ronald Reagan was right when he noted that great political change often begins around the dining table, and Rosa Parks was right in her understanding that significant change also can happen when a single person dares to take a seat at the front of the bus.
Of course, Rob Portman is no Rosa Parks and he’s no Ronald Reagan. He is simply one of millions of Americans having to adjust a priori opinions in the face of an unquestionable reality that such opinions, if persisted in, will do harm to the very family values he professes to uphold. Blood is thicker than water, so let’s give Rob Portman --- and Will, too--- a break and leave off demanding a purity of motive from him that many of us would find impossible to muster in ourselves.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City. Having served eight years in public office, he can understand why Rob Portman might want to be careful in his utterance, particularly when reversing himself on so live an issue as marriage equality. Mr. Marchand litigated one of the first marriage equality cases in California, twenty years ago. The views herein are his own, and are not intended to constitute legal advice.
By: Paul S. Marchand
It seems that Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman has had a “Road to Damascus” experience with respect to the issue of marriage equality, altering his position from “oppose” to “support,” declaring his position forthrightly in an opinion piece in the Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch. Such experiences, representing as they do decisive, nay, irrevocable reversals of view, have long been a part of the cultural heritage of the Roman-Christian West.
Since the time of Saul of Tarsus’s dramatic conversion to Christianity which began with his God-confronting experience on his way to persecute followers of Jesus Movement in Damascus, the concept of a dramatic volte-face, of a 180° shift in opinion, has usually been referred to as a “Road to Damascus” experience.
Yet, the road to Damascus differs for every soul that travels it.
Both Ronald Reagan and Harvey Milk understood, perhaps even more than the late, great Tip O’Neill, that politics isn’t just local, it often begins around the dining table. Harvey Milk, in particular, understood that when advocating for equal rights for queerfolk, nothing helped get the point across quite as much as actually knowing an LGBT person.
On marriage equality, Rob Portman’s road to Damascus seems to have run right through his dining room for the most Milkian of reasons; the Senator’s son, Will, 21, a junior at Yale, is gay. Moreover, Will Portman has apparently been out to his family for the last two years.
Yet, as a unique as every human being’s road to Damascus may be, it must suck to be Rob Portman right about now. The Senator has taken considerable flak from both sides of the marriage issue. From one side, the Senator has been excoriated for lacking empathy. The gravamen of such criticism is that marriage equality was not an issue the Senator could support until the issue surfaced right in the middle of his own family; under such a construct, it is apparently more important to be supportive in the abstract than to come round to a position of support because one may have been moved by the compunctions of family.
Social conservatives have excoriated both Portman père and Portman fils, the father for supporting marriage equality, and the son for simply being gay. The Senator has been attacked for allegedly lacking principle and not standing up for “godly ways,” while he has been urged, often in the nastiest terms imaginable, to subject his son to so-called reparative therapy, and to reject his son and cast him out if his son refuses to “change.” The sheer nastiness of the commentors on the discussion thread attached to Sen. Portman’s op-ed piece in the Dispatch, calling down the wrath and ill will of an angry Old Testament deity upon him beggared description, and was some of the most sickeningly hateful speech I have ever beheld on an Internet comment thread.
Assailed as he is from both the purist left and the angry, hair-on-fire “Christian” right over his heartfelt candor, it must suck to be Rob Portman right about now.
Yet, those of us who have been on the side of the angels in the marriage equality struggle should consider cutting Rob Portman of little bit of slack on this issue. At the risk of reifying as canonical Harvey Milk’s observation, or worse, over-linking it with Ronald Reagan’s homely political acumen, we should acknowledge that Pauline conversions like Sen. Portman’s don’t occur in abstract vacuum. Advances in civil rights for queerfolk usually occur when those of our straight neighbors who happily consign our queer butts to the back of the bus suddenly discover, mirabile dictu, that they actually know one or more gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered people.
In 2013, the reality of having a queer friend, a queer coworker, a queer neighbor, or a queer child has become so matter-of-fact that a majority of Americans have experienced it. Notwithstanding such antediluvian fools as Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, who claims that there has never been a homosexual in the recorded history of his family, most Americans are within --- at most --- two degrees of separation from a GLBT person.
Such a reality of nearness, together with the substantial statistical likelihood that while working in Washington, Sen. Portman would have encountered queerfolk on Capitol Hill, suggests not only that the Senator may well have been psychologically habituated to the possibility that one of his children might be gay, but also that Portman would have sought out counsel from persons within his own party, including former VP Dick Cheney, who were out as the parents of LGBT children. Will Portman’s coming out to his dad may not have been as much a surprise as otherwise thought.
But, neither Rob nor Will Portman will ever again have the luxury of not participating in the national conversation about civil rights and marriage equality for queerfolk. To a certain extent, I can empathize to a greater degree with Will Portman then with his father. Will Portman now finds himself injected into the vortex of the highly public debate at a time when politics has become a full contact, no holds barred, Breitbart-nasty, enterprise in which little, if any, attention ever gets paid to personal destruction or collateral damage. At best, Will Portman can hope to be spared anything but an Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame. At worst, he will be pursued, belabored, and even stalked by right-wing religious fanatics.
Still, faulting Rob Portman for being “insufficiently empathetic” strikes one as holding the Senator to an unreasonably high standard. Would it have been better if Sen. Portman did not know a single queer person, if he had acted solely out of some kind of abstract attachment to an impersonal principle? Such a view strikes one as naïve. That is not how opinions are formed. In an America in which a majority of voters want to get rid of all those scoundrels on Capitol Hill, but who remain convinced that their own Representative or senator is a fine fellow who deserves reelection, we would be foolish to think that personal considerations don’t or shouldn’t matter in politics.
Ronald Reagan was right when he noted that great political change often begins around the dining table, and Rosa Parks was right in her understanding that significant change also can happen when a single person dares to take a seat at the front of the bus.
Of course, Rob Portman is no Rosa Parks and he’s no Ronald Reagan. He is simply one of millions of Americans having to adjust a priori opinions in the face of an unquestionable reality that such opinions, if persisted in, will do harm to the very family values he professes to uphold. Blood is thicker than water, so let’s give Rob Portman --- and Will, too--- a break and leave off demanding a purity of motive from him that many of us would find impossible to muster in ourselves.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City. Having served eight years in public office, he can understand why Rob Portman might want to be careful in his utterance, particularly when reversing himself on so live an issue as marriage equality. Mr. Marchand litigated one of the first marriage equality cases in California, twenty years ago. The views herein are his own, and are not intended to constitute legal advice.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
GOBSMACKED!
Summary: the Vatican has gobsmacked us again. New Pope Francis I is an Argentine Jesuit. First of that name, first from the Western Hemisphere, first Jesuit. We don’t know at this point whether Francis intends to honor Francis of Assisi, the apostle of poverty, or Francis Xavier, the great early Jesuit. If the new pontiff cleaves to the conservative line of his two last predecessors, he will do real damage to the church in the global North, while not necessarily contributing to the church in the global South which is now the home of most of the faithful. As other commentators have noted, we should perhaps hope and pray for a pontiff who will be more like a John XXIV than a John Paul III or a Benedict XVII. The Roman church needs a new aggiornamento, while we who are not Roman continue to watch cautiously inasmuch as the Roman Catholic Church tends to set the tone for the Christian community’s dialogue with the larger world.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Once again the Vatican demonstrates its capacity to gobsmack the world at will. The conclave has concluded its work and given the Roman church a new Bishop of Rome.
Francis I is the first pontiff to carry that name.
Francis I is also the first Pope from the Western Hemisphere, specifically, from Argentina.
Francis I is also the first Pope to be a member of the Society of Jesus.
Let’s run that by one more time: first Francis, first Western Hemisphere Pontiff, first Jesuit Pope.
Life seems to be imitating art of late at the Vatican. When Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI resigned, life seemed to be imitating the plot line of a Morris West novel, whether it be The Shoes of the Fisherman or The Clowns of God. Now, life seems to be imitating Walter F. Murphy’s novel The Vicar Of Christ.
Murphy’s 1981 novel now seems eerily prescient, postulating as it does a fictional Pope Francis I from the Western Hemisphere. Though Murphy’s Francis is an American, we should perhaps not be so gobsmacked at the idea of an Argentine Pope. The majority of the world’s Roman Catholics now reside, like the majority of the world’s Anglicans, in what is often referred to as the global South. Still, the new pontiff’s choice of the name Francis seems a departure that no one had expected.
Already, a bit of controversy has begun to arise over whether the quondam cardinal-Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose the name Francis to honor St. Francis of Assisi, or whether he chose it to honor Ignatius Loyola’s able and dedicated assistant St. Francis Xavier. The Assisi reference makes sense if the new pontiff intends to pursue an agenda of the Roman church not only being poor, but of being seen to be poor. After all, St. Francis of Assisi has gone down in the history of the church as a staunch advocate of holy poverty.
On the other hand, invoking St. Francis Xavier makes some sense for a pontiff who, for the first time in history, comes out of the Society of Jesus. Xavier, after all, is one of the great and notable Jesuit saints.
No matter which Francis Papa Francesco had in mind, the task awaiting him would be enough to try the resolve of either Francis of Assisi or Francis Xavier.
To certain extent, we who are not of the Roman obedience have a luxury of being able to view the challenges confronting our Roman brethren and sistren from a somewhat broader perspective than that of those Roman Catholic brethren and sistren. Not being in the metaphorical forest, we can see both the forest and the trees.
Francis I will need reserves of patience and openness of mind which seem to have evaded John Paul II in his later years and for which Benedict XVI (having been in charge of the Holy Office) is not viewed as having possessed. The new Pope is widely regarded as being from the so-called conservative wing of the church. If he opts to continue the kind of conservative agenda set under John Paul II and carried forward under Benedict, he will spend his pontificate desperately attempting to stem the tide of crisis by papering over the cracks in the edifice of the institutional church.
On the other hand, if Francis I opts to attempt to reclaim the momentum of Vatican II that Paul VI frittered improvidently away, he may find himself facing an angry backlash from ultramontane curialists and conservative bishops in the global North who have come to see themselves as water carriers for conservative political movements in their own countries. At all events, the new pontiff will have to address sympathetically the significant social changes in the global North that have cost the Roman Catholic Church dearly in terms of declining numbers of faithful laity and committed clergy.
The last thing our Roman brethren and sistren need is a pontiff to thunder against the principled decisions they make with respect to the most profound and intimate issues of their own lives. A Pope who seeks to reinforce and militantly reaffirm every jot and tittle of Paul VI’s breathtakingly ill considered encyclical Humanae Vitae, or to impose hyper-conservative doctrinal and/or dogmatic litmus tests on his faithful may well find himself stuck administering a church of the global South from a beleaguered outpost in a global North that has left him behind.
While the coming of any new pontiff (and this is my fifth) causes me to entertain a certain degree of skepticism, I am prepared for the very short time being to give Pope Francis I the benefit of some small fraction of doubt. It may be that the perspective of a pontiff from both the Western Hemisphere and the global South, who comes out of the Jesuit experience (and who is thus emphatically not Opus Dei) may awaken him to the critical need for a new aggiornamento. It is half a century since good Pope John XXIII dared to fling open the windows and bring both light and air into a church that had stultified under his predecessor Pius XII.
As an Anglican, I would like to be cautiously optimistic about such a development. Those of us outside the Roman observance owe ourselves and our fellow non-Roman Catholics a duty to the truth to acknowledge that the Roman Catholic Church is very much the elephant in the Christian room, and that what Rome does still has an outsized impact on the way the rest of the world views the Christian community. Thus, we should neither deny nor pooh-pooh what has happened in the Vatican today. Instead, we should hope --- even pray --- that Francis I will have the grace to lead his church out of the doctrinaire traps into which his predecessors allowed it to fall.
If Jorge Mario Bergoglio truly wishes to embody the visions of Francis of Assisi and Francis Xavier, he should, as more than one commentator has noted, be more John XXIV than John Paul III or Benedict XVII. Vatican III, anybody?
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California. As an Anglican, he understands, pace Donald Rumsfeld, that you don’t deal with the ecclesial bodies you want, but with the ecclesial bodies you’ve got. Though he is Anglican, he has a pragmatic understanding of the influence any Roman Pontiff can bring to bear. The views contained herein are not intended as legal advice, and should not be so taken. By the same token, those views are also not intended, and should not be taken as, catechesis or instruction in the Faith. At all events, the views contained herein are his own.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Once again the Vatican demonstrates its capacity to gobsmack the world at will. The conclave has concluded its work and given the Roman church a new Bishop of Rome.
Francis I is the first pontiff to carry that name.
Francis I is also the first Pope from the Western Hemisphere, specifically, from Argentina.
Francis I is also the first Pope to be a member of the Society of Jesus.
Let’s run that by one more time: first Francis, first Western Hemisphere Pontiff, first Jesuit Pope.
Life seems to be imitating art of late at the Vatican. When Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI resigned, life seemed to be imitating the plot line of a Morris West novel, whether it be The Shoes of the Fisherman or The Clowns of God. Now, life seems to be imitating Walter F. Murphy’s novel The Vicar Of Christ.
Murphy’s 1981 novel now seems eerily prescient, postulating as it does a fictional Pope Francis I from the Western Hemisphere. Though Murphy’s Francis is an American, we should perhaps not be so gobsmacked at the idea of an Argentine Pope. The majority of the world’s Roman Catholics now reside, like the majority of the world’s Anglicans, in what is often referred to as the global South. Still, the new pontiff’s choice of the name Francis seems a departure that no one had expected.
Already, a bit of controversy has begun to arise over whether the quondam cardinal-Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose the name Francis to honor St. Francis of Assisi, or whether he chose it to honor Ignatius Loyola’s able and dedicated assistant St. Francis Xavier. The Assisi reference makes sense if the new pontiff intends to pursue an agenda of the Roman church not only being poor, but of being seen to be poor. After all, St. Francis of Assisi has gone down in the history of the church as a staunch advocate of holy poverty.
On the other hand, invoking St. Francis Xavier makes some sense for a pontiff who, for the first time in history, comes out of the Society of Jesus. Xavier, after all, is one of the great and notable Jesuit saints.
No matter which Francis Papa Francesco had in mind, the task awaiting him would be enough to try the resolve of either Francis of Assisi or Francis Xavier.
To certain extent, we who are not of the Roman obedience have a luxury of being able to view the challenges confronting our Roman brethren and sistren from a somewhat broader perspective than that of those Roman Catholic brethren and sistren. Not being in the metaphorical forest, we can see both the forest and the trees.
Francis I will need reserves of patience and openness of mind which seem to have evaded John Paul II in his later years and for which Benedict XVI (having been in charge of the Holy Office) is not viewed as having possessed. The new Pope is widely regarded as being from the so-called conservative wing of the church. If he opts to continue the kind of conservative agenda set under John Paul II and carried forward under Benedict, he will spend his pontificate desperately attempting to stem the tide of crisis by papering over the cracks in the edifice of the institutional church.
On the other hand, if Francis I opts to attempt to reclaim the momentum of Vatican II that Paul VI frittered improvidently away, he may find himself facing an angry backlash from ultramontane curialists and conservative bishops in the global North who have come to see themselves as water carriers for conservative political movements in their own countries. At all events, the new pontiff will have to address sympathetically the significant social changes in the global North that have cost the Roman Catholic Church dearly in terms of declining numbers of faithful laity and committed clergy.
The last thing our Roman brethren and sistren need is a pontiff to thunder against the principled decisions they make with respect to the most profound and intimate issues of their own lives. A Pope who seeks to reinforce and militantly reaffirm every jot and tittle of Paul VI’s breathtakingly ill considered encyclical Humanae Vitae, or to impose hyper-conservative doctrinal and/or dogmatic litmus tests on his faithful may well find himself stuck administering a church of the global South from a beleaguered outpost in a global North that has left him behind.
While the coming of any new pontiff (and this is my fifth) causes me to entertain a certain degree of skepticism, I am prepared for the very short time being to give Pope Francis I the benefit of some small fraction of doubt. It may be that the perspective of a pontiff from both the Western Hemisphere and the global South, who comes out of the Jesuit experience (and who is thus emphatically not Opus Dei) may awaken him to the critical need for a new aggiornamento. It is half a century since good Pope John XXIII dared to fling open the windows and bring both light and air into a church that had stultified under his predecessor Pius XII.
As an Anglican, I would like to be cautiously optimistic about such a development. Those of us outside the Roman observance owe ourselves and our fellow non-Roman Catholics a duty to the truth to acknowledge that the Roman Catholic Church is very much the elephant in the Christian room, and that what Rome does still has an outsized impact on the way the rest of the world views the Christian community. Thus, we should neither deny nor pooh-pooh what has happened in the Vatican today. Instead, we should hope --- even pray --- that Francis I will have the grace to lead his church out of the doctrinaire traps into which his predecessors allowed it to fall.
If Jorge Mario Bergoglio truly wishes to embody the visions of Francis of Assisi and Francis Xavier, he should, as more than one commentator has noted, be more John XXIV than John Paul III or Benedict XVII. Vatican III, anybody?
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California. As an Anglican, he understands, pace Donald Rumsfeld, that you don’t deal with the ecclesial bodies you want, but with the ecclesial bodies you’ve got. Though he is Anglican, he has a pragmatic understanding of the influence any Roman Pontiff can bring to bear. The views contained herein are not intended as legal advice, and should not be so taken. By the same token, those views are also not intended, and should not be taken as, catechesis or instruction in the Faith. At all events, the views contained herein are his own.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
A MEDITATION FOR LÆTARE SUNDAY
Summary: today is Lætare Sunday, the fourth Sunday in Lent. The Latin verb lætifico, from which the title Lætare is taken, implies rejoicing. Yet it is not the hectic rejoicing we would normally associate with the concept of joy, but rather the consciousness of incipient joy we feel in the coming of spring, and the sense of things approaching fruition. Though I am aware that there may be some who will take exception to a meditation on Lætare Sunday occurring in a concededly secular and somewhat political blog, I must crave indulgence. There is more to life than politics, and more to life then quotidian temporal pursuits. Those who wish to take umbrage are free to do so, but Lætare Sunday is hardly a time for people to harsh each other’s mellows. As the days grow longer with the coming of daylight saving time, we feel within ourselves that sense of things being made new; we should be grateful therefor.
By: Paul S. Marchand
There are two Sundays in the kalendar of the Church year set aside by name for "rejoicing." The first is Gaudete Sunday (III Advent), and the second is Lætare Sunday (IV Lent). Though both gaudeo and lætifico are now routinely translated out of classical Latin as meaning "rejoice," they, like most word doublets, are not strictly synonymous. In several Latin-English dictionaries, for example, lætifico is translated as "to fertilize, to cheer, to gladden," and "to delight." The related word lætus is variously translated as "fat," "rich," "fertile," "glad," "joyful," and "happy." Gaudeo, on the other hand, is translated simply as "to rejoice."
In many ways, there is a distinct difference between rejoicing and happiness. The first implies almost an isolated occurrence; the second suggests a state of being. The spouses rejoice at the wedding feast; by God's good grace they may find lifelong happiness together, even if that life offers few occasions for anything akin to the revels of their nuptial day.
Thus, the sense of gaudete is one of a celebration, of cutting loose to mark a memorable occasion —a great victory, a wedding, a baptism, a graduation, an anniversary— that does not happen every day, and which stands out apart from the quotidian rhythms of our existence. Perhaps the single most perfect illustration of gaudete is the immortal photograph of the sailor and his girl kissing in Times Square on V-J Day, 1945. There is a frenetic, hectic quality to gaudete, (as there is in fact a frenetic, hectic sense of Gaudete Sunday, coming as it does during the flurry of the holiday season), that tends not to lend itself to deep thought or meditation, but rather to ecstacies and spectacle.
Lætare, by contrast, is slower, neither hectic nor frenetic; its sense is one of things growing to fruition, a sense of the intrinsic goodness of God's creation, fat, fertile, and rich with the potential that only a passionately loving God can call into being. Who, watching the earth's natural springtime increase, cannot be imbued with a sense of gladness in beholding it? When the hills don their coats of green, and the verbena mantles the desert with its Lenten purple, and the freshly sown fields begin to give forth their produce, one would have to possess a heart of stone not to apprehend the wonder of God's creation, as God renews the face of the earth.
Here is no hectic flurry of activity; here is no sudden need to make merry. Here instead is the coming together of God's creative, redemptive, and sanctifying power, carried out almost imperceptibly, yet more irresistible than the power of the mightiest glacier or of the deepest ocean swell. Apprehending the sense of things coming together to renew the face of the earth and to further God's divine economy, we begin to apprehend the sense of gladness Lætare Sunday is intended to awaken in us. Subtly, as Fr. Andrew Green of St. Paul in the Desert in Palm Springs once noted, the Lenten emphasis is shifting.
We have heretofore been three Sundays in the wilderness, taking time to reconsider ourselves and our lives, for that is the precise purpose of a penitential season. Indeed, in Latin, the word Pœnitentiæ implies reconsideration. Any first year student of the law of contracts can tell you that the Locus Pœnitentiæ is that "Place of Reconsideration" in which one party to a contract may back out: before the hammer falls at auction, or during the statutory three-day period prescribed in many States to permit a consumer to withdraw from a credit contract. A Penitentiary is that place in which our incarcerated convicts will (we hope) reconsider their actions and find repentance before returning to society. Even the returning prodigal necessarily passed through a period of reconsideration, leading to a repentance experience that turned him once again toward home and family, as we are all called to turn again toward our spiritual home in God's Kingdom.
Yet at some point, God calls us to leave off a heavy regimen of repentance in favor of opening our eyes to the fruits of repentance, to see with clear eyes, with tested eyes, with enlightened eyes, the beauty of holiness that suffuses creation, and to be glad therein. And thus our emphasis shifts, we find ourselves confronting not so much the necessity of periodic re-examination of our own lives —for, as Fr. Green notes, an excessive emphasis on re-examination can easily turn into prideful egoism— so much as we open our hearts to the realization that Lent is also a preparation for Easter, a time for allowing the seeds of our faith to sprout anew in the richness of the Spirit.
As our emphasis shifts, of course, it becomes incumbent upon us also to be aware that our apprehension of things coming to fruition, our sense of gladness at the earth's increase, necessarily presupposes a trust in God and in God's good providence that ofttimes seems incomprehensible to the temporal world. We live in a society that tends to organize itself without reference to first things, or to eternal things, preferring to concentrate on the immediately verifiable here and now. Over against stubborn empiricists who refuse to believe what they cannot see, we, like Thomas the Apostle, profess and confess a Lord and a God whose ways are emphatically not the ways of the temporal world. Ours is a faith based on patience, on solidarity, and on a quiet confidence that the transitory things which attract the passing adoration of that temporal world are powerless to distract us from the Way of the Cross.
A world that has grown old, a world that seeks to beguile itself with sensation and momentary pleasures, looks at this Lenten time with frank incomprehension. Yet, with God's help, this time is readily understandable; a patient people, a solid people, a faithful people, finds in these days of Lent a time of gladness, a time of thanksgiving at the earth's increase, a time of cheer even in repentance, and most of all, a time of expectancy of Resurrection.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any organization, diocese, or parish. This post is an adaptation of a post originally written almost 20 years ago, and updated since. It is not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice or as catechesis/instruction in the Faith.
By: Paul S. Marchand
There are two Sundays in the kalendar of the Church year set aside by name for "rejoicing." The first is Gaudete Sunday (III Advent), and the second is Lætare Sunday (IV Lent). Though both gaudeo and lætifico are now routinely translated out of classical Latin as meaning "rejoice," they, like most word doublets, are not strictly synonymous. In several Latin-English dictionaries, for example, lætifico is translated as "to fertilize, to cheer, to gladden," and "to delight." The related word lætus is variously translated as "fat," "rich," "fertile," "glad," "joyful," and "happy." Gaudeo, on the other hand, is translated simply as "to rejoice."
In many ways, there is a distinct difference between rejoicing and happiness. The first implies almost an isolated occurrence; the second suggests a state of being. The spouses rejoice at the wedding feast; by God's good grace they may find lifelong happiness together, even if that life offers few occasions for anything akin to the revels of their nuptial day.
Thus, the sense of gaudete is one of a celebration, of cutting loose to mark a memorable occasion —a great victory, a wedding, a baptism, a graduation, an anniversary— that does not happen every day, and which stands out apart from the quotidian rhythms of our existence. Perhaps the single most perfect illustration of gaudete is the immortal photograph of the sailor and his girl kissing in Times Square on V-J Day, 1945. There is a frenetic, hectic quality to gaudete, (as there is in fact a frenetic, hectic sense of Gaudete Sunday, coming as it does during the flurry of the holiday season), that tends not to lend itself to deep thought or meditation, but rather to ecstacies and spectacle.
Lætare, by contrast, is slower, neither hectic nor frenetic; its sense is one of things growing to fruition, a sense of the intrinsic goodness of God's creation, fat, fertile, and rich with the potential that only a passionately loving God can call into being. Who, watching the earth's natural springtime increase, cannot be imbued with a sense of gladness in beholding it? When the hills don their coats of green, and the verbena mantles the desert with its Lenten purple, and the freshly sown fields begin to give forth their produce, one would have to possess a heart of stone not to apprehend the wonder of God's creation, as God renews the face of the earth.
Here is no hectic flurry of activity; here is no sudden need to make merry. Here instead is the coming together of God's creative, redemptive, and sanctifying power, carried out almost imperceptibly, yet more irresistible than the power of the mightiest glacier or of the deepest ocean swell. Apprehending the sense of things coming together to renew the face of the earth and to further God's divine economy, we begin to apprehend the sense of gladness Lætare Sunday is intended to awaken in us. Subtly, as Fr. Andrew Green of St. Paul in the Desert in Palm Springs once noted, the Lenten emphasis is shifting.
We have heretofore been three Sundays in the wilderness, taking time to reconsider ourselves and our lives, for that is the precise purpose of a penitential season. Indeed, in Latin, the word Pœnitentiæ implies reconsideration. Any first year student of the law of contracts can tell you that the Locus Pœnitentiæ is that "Place of Reconsideration" in which one party to a contract may back out: before the hammer falls at auction, or during the statutory three-day period prescribed in many States to permit a consumer to withdraw from a credit contract. A Penitentiary is that place in which our incarcerated convicts will (we hope) reconsider their actions and find repentance before returning to society. Even the returning prodigal necessarily passed through a period of reconsideration, leading to a repentance experience that turned him once again toward home and family, as we are all called to turn again toward our spiritual home in God's Kingdom.
Yet at some point, God calls us to leave off a heavy regimen of repentance in favor of opening our eyes to the fruits of repentance, to see with clear eyes, with tested eyes, with enlightened eyes, the beauty of holiness that suffuses creation, and to be glad therein. And thus our emphasis shifts, we find ourselves confronting not so much the necessity of periodic re-examination of our own lives —for, as Fr. Green notes, an excessive emphasis on re-examination can easily turn into prideful egoism— so much as we open our hearts to the realization that Lent is also a preparation for Easter, a time for allowing the seeds of our faith to sprout anew in the richness of the Spirit.
As our emphasis shifts, of course, it becomes incumbent upon us also to be aware that our apprehension of things coming to fruition, our sense of gladness at the earth's increase, necessarily presupposes a trust in God and in God's good providence that ofttimes seems incomprehensible to the temporal world. We live in a society that tends to organize itself without reference to first things, or to eternal things, preferring to concentrate on the immediately verifiable here and now. Over against stubborn empiricists who refuse to believe what they cannot see, we, like Thomas the Apostle, profess and confess a Lord and a God whose ways are emphatically not the ways of the temporal world. Ours is a faith based on patience, on solidarity, and on a quiet confidence that the transitory things which attract the passing adoration of that temporal world are powerless to distract us from the Way of the Cross.
A world that has grown old, a world that seeks to beguile itself with sensation and momentary pleasures, looks at this Lenten time with frank incomprehension. Yet, with God's help, this time is readily understandable; a patient people, a solid people, a faithful people, finds in these days of Lent a time of gladness, a time of thanksgiving at the earth's increase, a time of cheer even in repentance, and most of all, a time of expectancy of Resurrection.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any organization, diocese, or parish. This post is an adaptation of a post originally written almost 20 years ago, and updated since. It is not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice or as catechesis/instruction in the Faith.
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