The Glass Pedestal

In the 25th chapter of the Imitation of Christ, Thomas a Kempis recounts the wretched state of the lukewarm religious constrained, as it were, by his vows on one side, and his lack of freedom in virtue on the other:

"A fervent religious accepts all the things that are commanded him and does them well, but a negligent and lukewarm religious has trial upon trial, and suffers anguish from every side because he has no consolation within and is forbidden to seek it from without. The religious who does not live up to his rule exposes himself to dreadful ruin, and he who wishes to be more free and untrammeled will always be in trouble, for something or other will always displease him."

"No consolation within and being forbidden to seek it from without"...Though A Kempis wrote this in reference to monks and nuns, his observation has always struck me as relevant to the particular cross of men and women who, by the grace of God, come into the Catholic Church and leave their "gay" identity at the entrance. Those who wish to be "born again" in the waters of baptism and live by a different compulsion--the desire to do God's will (Ps 40:8).

Of course there are those who come into the Church who do not leave the old man behind (Eph 4:22), but seek to baptize their former way of life. Those who abet such distortions of the Cross and true religion with various "gay-affirming" ministries (New Ways, Dignity, etc) do these men and women no favors. In their false compassion, they advise and encourage with a well-intentioned but misguided love devoid of truth (Eph 4:15). They may convince themselves that there is no reason to "forbid to seek consolation" and they may settle their inner cognitive dissonance by calling what is evil good (Is 5:20), but they continue to live in darkness because their life is a lie--the truth is not in them (1 Jn 2:4).

And yet there are those also who do "suffer anguish from all sides" within the Church because they do take to heart that they are "forbidden to seek consolation" in the arms of another man or woman but do not have the consolation within to sustain them in this deprivation of the senses. They seek the "glorious rest" across the Jordan promised to St. Mary of Egypt, but are not mortified to the degree that they find it within themselves. 

Can the Church help these men and women, those who have left the poisoned wells of their former disordered lifestyles in search of the Bread of Life, which is true food, true drink (Jn 6:55)? Yes, She can--by providing them with the keys to unlock their cells. In this way, there is no particularity that distinguishes these men and women from their "straight" brothers and sisters--we are all called to die to ourselves, to pick up our cross, and follow Christ (Mt 16:24). To deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world (Titus 2:12). To regard our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19). 

Because of the inherent dignity of each man and woman, the Church does not reduce us to our particular sins and disorders. We are ALL sinners in need of grace. And yet, what kind of effective "ministry" would help a man or woman who has left the gay lifestyle find their new identity in Christ and achieve wholeness of being? Courage (and EnCourage) is one such formal apostolate (the only one I know of) which promotes chastity while supporting those with same-sex attraction (SSA) be faithful to Church teaching and achieve holiness. 

I've often thought my role as a Catholic man seeking to love not just some, but ALL people, needs to include some sort of "ally" role. Not in the LGBTQA "ALLY" sense (which is a political role and one antithetical to truth, goodness, and freedom as we understand it as Christians), but in the way St. Paul says, "I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I may save some" (1 Cor 9:22). For me personally, that included attending a Courage conference to learn more about SSA and meet Catholic brothers and sisters living with SSA. It also led me to fly cross-country to do some unorthodox "boots on the ground" Catholic evangelization in a Silas-type role at the largest gay-pride festival in the country. "You will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free" (Jn 8:32). 

But I have found just as it is difficult for even a righteous man to be saved (1 Pt 4:18), the healing which must take place in a formerly-gay man or woman is substantive, because of the depths of the wound which may have caused the condition in the first place. And there are things one must watch out for as well; whereas we all to a degree struggle with issues like narcissism, self-absorption, and vanity, these qualities can be amplified in SSA individuals because of the nature and character of the particular wound which gave rise to the disorder. Dr. Joseph Nicholosi, whose recent death was met with jeers and celebration by those in the LGBTQ community for his work in reparative therapy for men and women dealing with unwanted same-sex attraction, wrote about the vulnerability of those who return to their former (gay) lifestyle:

"For many SSA men, the deepest problem they must wrestle with is not sexual identity, but core identity. The original source of this struggle is not the more obvious problem in bonding with the father, but a breach in the primary attachment with the mother. For these men, their deepest-level problem is not about sexual orientation but about something more fundamental: identity, attachment and belonging. Gender-identity conflict and attraction to men are only surface symptoms. This is the problem that the media chooses to ignore, and which both sides of the debate fail to acknowledge.

As such a man’s identity evolves, there will be an excited “discovery of my True Self,” followed by disillusionment, then a new “real discovery of my True Self,” and then again, disillusionment. At the base of this desperate search is the anguished grasp for a stable personhood, a profound emptiness and beneath it, a self-hatred. That self-hatred is often expressed in deconstructing and condemning every previous aspect of the person’s own former life, including the influence of persons most near to him.

Radical shifts in “the discovery of my True Self” are associated, in some such people, with Borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder and gender confusion, since gender identity is built upon an earlier foundation of self-identity. A fragile self-identity makes the later structuring of gender identity particularly perilous.

The restlessness such people feel is shown in a chronic state of dissatisfaction; in the narcissistic expectation that “if others really love me, they must take this pain away from me; and they [or what they stand for] are responsible for my pain.” When others fail to do this, there is a deep sense of betrayal; betrayal that these individuals failed to take away the core emptiness, and so the person in conflict may become angry at the people that participated in his former life. The pain of an identity search and the need for escape from the ordinariness of life can be alleviated for awhile by adulation. The narcissistic inflation found in celebrity, for example, can be an intoxicating balm.

This periodic disillusionment leaves behind devastated individuals who have invested deeply in the person.

The gay community wants to frame changes from ex-gay back to gay as proof that people who experience SSA were simply designed and created for homosexuality, but we would be deceived if we believed this simplistic paradigm.

Where core identity is the foundational problem, we suspect a breach in the primary attachment with the mother. From my clinical experience, there is a particular kind of client who, although he is deeply dissatisfied with gay life and does succeed in developing good heterosexual functioning, will, over time, struggle to muster the self-discipline and maturity to put in a hard day’s work, come home to wife and family, help the children with the homework, have dinner and settle down to a good conversation with his wife, and go to bed. Such a life of day-to-day investment in one’s loved ones seems too confining: it is boring, lusterless, unexciting, “just not enough.” Underneath the boredom and restlessness remains this deep, chronic dissatisfaction.

It’s not just about needing to find a partner of a different gender; it’s about getting attention, flirting, being made to feel special, distracting oneself from one’s chronic dissatisfaction with life through parties and other high-animation activities, such as the gay community offers on its well-known, drug-saturated party circuits. I suspect that “excitement” was what John was looking for when he went to the gay bar in Washington, D.C. many years ago, just after speaking at a Love Won Out conference, when he created a public-relations crisis while working for the ministry Focus on the Family. I don’t believe John was there looking for sex. I suspect he was bored with the Christian community and its expectations – I believe he sought diversion, flirtation, adventure, and – a favored word in gay politics- “transgression.” Of course, every shift the person makes from “I thought I was such-and-such…” to “Now I really know who I am,” will always have its cheering admirers." 

Getting attention. Wanting to be special. Feeling confined. Deep, chronic dissatisfaction. In my experience, just because one takes on a new identity as a Catholic, it does not all of a sudden heal one "at the root" from all disorders and attachments. This goes back to the words of A Kempis, who laments this pitiable state of being for the lukewarm religious. In this instance, for the formerly gay-man, he cannot indulge himself as he used to, and so is confined by the law of God. And yet, because he has not learned to heal in the way he needs to be made whole psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually, he "has no consolation within" either. 

When Christ was made to carry his cross, I always found it interesting that in salvation history Simon was written into the story as an instrumental figure in ensuring Jesus made it to Calvary. We are often called to carry our own cross most of the way, but when we falter, we benefit from the help of other Christians who lift us up. 

For Christian men and women with SSA, their cross can feel like a solitary one, one that precludes any such Simons, were someone see them "as they really are." As a heterosexual man, I have tried to be a "helper" to those I know who experience SSA while living as faithful Catholics; not in any formal type of "ministry" which can often reduce people to their particular sexual orientation, but simply as a man and a friend to a fellow brother in Christ. Dr. Nicolosi writes of the latent trauma in need of healing in the gay man or woman in the following way:

"Homosexuality is, in my view, primarily a symptom of gender trauma. Although some people may have been born with biological conditions (prenatal hormonal influences, inborn emotional sensitivity) that make them especially vulnerable to such trauma, what distinguishes the male homosexual condition is that there was an interruption in the normal masculine identification process.

Homosexual behavior is a symptomatic attempt to “repair” the original wound that left the boy alienated from the innate masculinity that he has failed to claim. This differentiates it from heterosexuality, which arises naturally from undisturbed gender-identity development.

The basic conflict in most homosexuality is this: the boy—usually a sensitive child, more prone than average to emotional injury—desires love and acceptance from the same-sex parent, yet feels frustration and rage against him because the parent is experienced by this particular child as unresponsive or abusive. (Note that this child may have siblings who experienced the same parent differently).

Homosexual activity will be the erotic reenactment of this love-hate relationship. Like all the “perversions”—and I use that term not to be unkind, but in the sense that homosexual development “perverts,” or “turns a person away from,” the biologically appropriate object of erotic attachment—same-sex eroticism contains an intrinsic dimension of hostility."

The gay "issue" (and, most recently, the "trans" issue) at the forefront of social, cultural, and political today is a juggernaut that can often set Christians on the defensive.  While it is true the LGBTQ movement is an "enemy" to the Faith as a body politic, it's individual members are brothers and sisters who are not yet redeemed but are not beyond such grace. 

I think this is something a formerly gay friend of mine did well--seeing the trannies, the BDSMs, the "freaks" of the streets of San Francisco--as children of God worthy of love and not outside the possibility for redemption. He was a kind of formerly gay Paul of Tarsus in the Catholic underground, and I felt called to be his Silas. It was a queer type of ministry (no pun intended), certainly unorthodox, and not that effective ultimately. Like everyone today, I think this man (and myself, by extension) were simply trying to figure things out as we went along, and address a need that the Church did not seem to be able to as a top-heavy bureaucracy without much integrity or credibility on the issue anyway.

Unfortunately, that last point seems to have driven this man from the Church, as if he is, as A Kempis describes, "suffering anguish from every side because he has no consolation within and is forbidden to seek it from without." Whether it is unhealed trauma, a lack of accountability, an unaddressed narcissism, or a kind of cognitive dissonance he can no longer reconcile internally, I do not know. He has since turned to Russian Orthodoxy, I believe, as perhaps a way to remain on the path of hopeful salvation. He would not be the first, and certainly not the last. We are living through an age of apostasy as Our Lady predicted, after all. 

One thing I resented of the Catholic peanut gallery, the Church fanclub who put this man on a glass pedestal during those years of his high-profile social media life was the way they canonized him in this life. "Oh, you are a saint!" "He is a hero, a saint!" This is befitting of no one in this earthly life, and we should be ashamed to burden people with such adulations, opening them up to temptations to pride and vainglory. There is no one who is good, no not one. (Rom 3:10). 

Looking back in hindsight, I think this stemmed from a misplaced hope--hope for those mothers with a gay son, a lesbian daughter who had left the Church; for heterosexual Catholics who didn't understand what it meant to be gay and had so few people to look up to who seemed to be both (formerly) gay and orthodox, challenging the bishops and being "in the trenches". We all wanted this type of ministry to be effective, because the odds were so against us all.  I also think, in hindsight, that this friend of mine was not yet healed "in the root" and the restless desire to do perhaps prematurely took people's hopes and trusts and ultimately betrayed them. Of course, he is answerable to no one but God alone, who will judge him. And really, the blame lies with us for such premature canonizations and should be a warning to us all. "Take heed, lest you fall." (1 Cor 10:12)

We are all working out our salvation, and we should be doing so not in confident self-assuredness, but with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12). The celebrity priests, the overconfident religious pundits, the lay Catholic influencers and talking heads--no one will escape the judgement. Maybe we can all just have the humility to admit we are doing the best we can to figure it out as we go what we don't always understand with one hundred percent surety. Glass pedestals have a tendency to break rather easily.

I held on to the shirt in the photo below for a number of years. It was a reminder of that time when I didn't think, but simply obeyed, the directives of the Holy Spirit to fly out to Pride and "do the work" in the vineyard. I did my part, and I also paid the price for this obedience. But great grace came with it too. I always thought some day it may be a relic of sorts, not because of me, but because of the one who gifted me with it. I admitted recently, though, that I may have been mislead. That is not the fault of my friend, but mine. 

And maybe it touched a nerve--maybe my friend's leaving the faith was simply a mirror held up to my face; what is to keep me from the same fate? Perhaps I just haven't gotten close enough, dug deep enough, and am living in a kind of blissful ignorance of the Stockholm-nature of the Catholic Church, which is nothing but rot, hypocrisy, and deceptiveness. It can be a very hard time to hold the line today. Apostasy and betrayal tends to touch a nerve.  

I laid the shirt in the garbage a couple weeks ago, and took out the trash, to put it to rest. I still pray for my friend--he has, admittedly, been through a litany of traumas. But if anything, through this and many other past incidents of feeling let down by others, I have come closer to learning the meaning of the scripture, 

"Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish. Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God." (Ps 146:3-5)