Soul responsibility

"What do you think of the new Pope?" someone asked me today for the umpteenth time. What can I say about the Pope some call the German Shepherd? It's a little too soon to tell. How's this: Former Hitler youth? Perfect!

"Pope Benedict Vows New Battle for Souls" reads today's Reuters headline. Indeed. The Catholic Church needs a new infusion of believers to fill its church pews and waning coffers. But I'll tell you right now, his work is cut out for him if he hopes to convert the nonbelievers from QVC to BVM.

"Why is the Pope getting so much press?" one of my colleagues, a lapsed Catholic himself, mused.

Hmm, maybe, with more than 1 billion adherents, because it's the largest denomination in the world.

"Yeah, but what does he do, besides ride around in his Popemobile?"

Other than condemn homosexuals and forbid women from being priests? Good question.

I was a good little Roman Catholic for the first 20 years of my life. By good I mean I attended Mass every Sunday, received the Sacraments, and believed I was a sinner who was going to Hell if I didn't live the way I was told. My parents sent me to 12 years of Catholic school, including 4 years at an all-boys' high school. In retrospect I'm glad, because all of my closest friends turned out to be gay, and we all helped each other become healthy, well-adjusted adults. The principal, a cleric, was drummed out of the school for chasing a boy around his desk. The vice principal, also a cleric, was gayer than Paul Lynde. I'm sorry, but fey, drag-wearing religious figures fostering intolerance of gays is unforgivably hypocritical and pathetic.

My friend Dennis, also gay and a lapsed Catholic, chillingly recounts a parent-teacher meeting in which a nun told his mother in front of him, "Give me a young mind and it's mine for life." For some minds, this remains true.

According to the Catholic Church, gay boys make Jesus very angry. In theory it's OK to be homosexual; just don't act on it--or even think about it. Pray every day that God will lead you back to the righteous, and God-mandated, path of heterosexuality. Early in his papacy, Pope John Paul II quickly surpassed Ronald Reagan as the person I despised the most for his irresponsible and judgmental attitude toward persons with AIDS. My dislike of him only deepened over the years.

But undirected anger is such a waste. As I learned to accept myself and take responsbility for my actions, which ironically I learned as a budding Catholic, I experienced a conversion--away from Catholicism, that is. Although the Church's judgment of me did play a role, my decision had more to do with practicality.

At Christmas Day Mass in 1982 I was on the verge of accepting myself as a good person, albeit one at odds with Church teachings. I listened intently to the liturgy on this celebration of Christ's birth, praying to God for guidance in helping me choose the right path. During the Eucharistic Prayer the priest consecrates the host for Holy Communion. Catholics, unlike other Christians, believe in transubstantiation, the transformation of the symbolic bread (host) and wine into the real presence of the body and blood of Christ. Even on a purely abstract level this amounts to cannibalism. As I listened to the words, I suddenly realized: I'm going to eat the newborn baby Jesus!

For 20 years I'd been hearing the words over and over again but never really listened to them. I'd recited them like I was cramming for a test. Like other fantastic phenomena I'd been urged to accept without question--the conception of Jesus's mother Mary by St. Anne without original sin, the physical and spiritual assumption of Mary into Heaven, the union of three persons in one God--eating the baby Jesus was too much for me to handle. At that point I didn't care whether the Church liked me or not: I was just grossed out.

I tried to find the solution to this conundrum by researching books on theology and Church history, but I never did find an explanation. I did, however, learn about the gnostic gospels, the split between Rome and Constantinople, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, pogroms against Jews and Muslims, the political uses of translated texts. And finally, I hit upon the nail that drove my decision to divorce myself from the Church before it divorced me.

Yale historian John Boswell upended medieval history scholarship in 1981 when he asserted that until the Middle Ages, not only did the Catholic Church tolerate homosexuality, but same-sex unions were performed liturgically. As the Church expanded its reach throughout the world, mainly through the Holy Roman Empire, it acquired legions of uneducated, spiritually hungry folks who generously contributed everything they had to the Church. Over time Church leaders began to realize that if homosexuals did not marry and procreate, how could the Church be the beneficiary of wealth, especially land, passed down through generations to sustain the already rich and powerful lifestyle to which it had grown accustomed? Even a Gabor understands that. How would all those ongepachkit cathedrals get built? In the end, homosexuality was just an economic inexpediency rather than a spiritual depravity.

After I read Boswell's book, the notion that censure had been artificially imposed infuriated me. And then to eat the baby Jesus on his birthday... Tsk, tsk. After that, I viewed Catholicism as nothing more than a doctrinaire cult.

I hope Pope Benedict enjoys his short, transitional ride in the Popemobile. But a word of advice: Keep your unctuous hands off my land, my mind, and my soul.