The Pope, Terri Schiavo, and moral consistency

by Jim Wallis

It's sadly rare for a church leader, or for the leaders of most of our dominant institutions, to demonstrate a spirituality that attracts millions of people around the world - particularly so many young people. But the scene of millions lining up to simply pass by the body of John Paul II in Rome this week is remarkable indeed. The enormous attraction to this pope goes far beyond agreement with all the positions of the Catholic Church or even all of the decisions of his papacy. Indeed the "ecumenical" and even "interfaith" attraction to John Paul II reflects his own practice of reaching out to more people in more faith traditions than any other pope ever has.

One of the great attractions of Pope John Paul II's spirituality was his consistency. At the core of Catholic social teaching is the idea of a "consistent ethic of life," an ethic that seeks to protect and defend human life and dignity wherever and whenever they are threatened, and which challenges the selective moralities of both the political left and right.

As I've been watching the non-stop coverage of the pope's death, I have been struck by how many people - especially political leaders - would like to claim the pontiff as their own, as someone who affirmed their causes and commitments. At the same time, they tend to ignore the other things this pope said and did that directly challenge their own political decisions.

Many conservatives are pointing to the pope's clear teachings on abortion, euthanasia, and sexual morality, which are often contrary to the positions of many liberals. But they seem to forget the strong and passionate opposition of this pope to the war in Iraq, capital punishment, and the operations of a global economy that neglect the poor and deny human rights for millions. This pope helped bring down communism, but also was no capitalist and constantly lifted up a vision of economic justice. Promoting a "culture of life" was the language of John Paul's papacy before it became the rhetoric of President Bush, and its meaning goes far beyond the narrow interpretations of the Republican Party. Yes, Pope John Paul II certainly opposed John Kerry's views on abortion, but the White House did not get the photo op they wanted when the president visited the Vatican and the pope shook his finger disapprovingly at George W. Bush over the American war in Iraq.

Consistency is deeply attractive to people who long for public integrity - particularly to a new generation. The same lack of consistency in the politically selective eulogies of the pope also characterized the highly politicized responses to the sad story and death of Terri Schiavo.

Personally, I cannot understand why parents willing to take care of their disabled daughter were not allowed to by a husband who had moved on to another life and family. Terri Schiavo was severely mentally disabled but was not dying, and we don't decide to end the lives of many similarly disabled people, even children, whose mental capacities greatly diminish their quality of life. As my wife, Joy Carroll, put it, "the issue is not their quality of life, but the ethical quality of our society." And in situations of medical, scientific, or legal complexity, the morally safer course is always to err on the side of life. However, it became painfully clear that for many political partisans the issue wasn't so much the life of this young woman but other related political issues and agendas. And a leaked Republican memo about firing up the conservative base of the party and even defeating Democratic opponents in Florida were way out of line.

Again, the issue is consistency. Will Schiavo's defenders now also care more about the loss of civilian lives in Iraq or prisoners (even innocent ones) put to death on death row? Will they refuse to accept the silent tsunami that takes the lives of 30,000 children every day due to hunger and disease, or even support the Medicaid funding for vulnerable people that helped sustain Schiavo's life for many years? Somehow I doubt it.

Consistency is spiritually and morally attractive. We didn't see much of it in the tragic drama of Schiavo. But the life of John Paul II is a lesson of its truth and power for all of us.

[Jim Wallis is a Christian leader for social change. He is a speaker, author, activist, and international commentator on ethics and public life. Wallis was a founder of Sojourners - Christians for justice and peace - more than 30 years ago and continues to serve as the editor of Sojourners magazine, covering faith, politics and culture. In 1995, Wallis was instrumental in forming Call to Renewal, a national federation of churches, denominations, and faith-based organizations from across the theological and political spectrum working to overcome poverty. Call to Renewal, a national federation of churches, denominations, and faith-based organizations from across the theological and political spectrum working to overcome poverty.Read more...]

Fwd: Requiem for the pope's physical body

Please read the following article before either condemning or approving it.  Thanks to Dale Elam for forwarding it. 

How did the pope reconcile his oppression of human sexuality with the reality of his own body?

By Michael Bronski

Published: Thursday, April 7, 2005

On March 29, four days before Pope John Paul II died, we learned that the ailing pontiff had a urinary tract infection. Maybe I was just burned out from knowing far too much about the minute details of Terri Shiavo's medical conditions, but I thought that I really didn't need to know every bit of minutia of the dying man's bodily functions. He was dying, and I have seen death before - mostly men dying of AIDS. I understand all too well how the body begins to fail and shuts down.

But once I heard about the urinary tract infection I began thinking about the pope's penis. It was an inevitable mental leap - in men, the pain of urinary tract infections are most manifest ! in an awf ul burning sensation in the urethra, especially when urinating. It hurts, you want to shake, rub and massage your penis. It's part of having a body, part of having a body that is not working. And as I thought about the pope's penis - something I had never contemplated at length before - I was reminded of the marvelous six-line poem by Sharon Olds, "The Pope's Penis," in which she writes: "It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate clapper at the center of a bell. / It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish."

Olds's poem, shocking when it is published in her 1987 book The Golden Cell, is a visceral reminder of the bodily humanness of the pope, and, by extension, of all humans. But to contemplate the corporeality of the pope - especially this pope, who spent so much of his Papacy and energy on a political and theological project that seemed intent on dragging the modern church back to its medieval roots - is jarring. Here is a pope who, after decades of Vatican II liberalizati! ons, insi sted on the Roman Church returning to the most traditional, repressive, and - to the democratic, western mind - anti-sexual and anti-humanist doctrines on sexuality, gender and personal freedom. But as I thought about the political and theological legacy of Pope John Paul II - and his virulent and hateful homophobia - my thoughts kept returning to the pope' body and his penis. What must it be like to experience life through your body even as you promote the most draconian anti-sexual beliefs and politics?

The experience of being human starts with having a body. It is how we understand the world. It is how we understand being alive, finite, powerful, vulnerable, autonomous and sexual. If it is true, as countless church teachings have stated, that the body is the temple of the soul, then it is important to celebrate that temple, to celebrate the body and to celebrate sexuality - in all of its forms. One of the major legacies of John Paul II's Papacy will be that he has! single-m indedly narrowed how the church - through its teachings and doctrines - imagined and celebrated sexuality and eroticism. Some people, particularly Catholic conservatives, would argue that he has simply carried on one of the church's longest standing traditions: the elevation of the spiritual over the corporal, the needs of the soul over the needs of the body. But this is not true. There is a very long, vibrant erotic tradition within Catholicism. We see it in the mystical writings of St. Theresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and Julian of Norwich. We see it in sacred art, where it be Bernini's powerful sculpture "The Ecstacy of St. Theresa" - which is located in Santa Maria della Victoria, Coronare Chapel - or in the myriad Italian Renaissance paintings that display the penis of the baby Jesus as a symbol of his physical humanness.

Concurrent with this tradition is Catholicism's practice of denigrating the body. From the early church fathers who saw all flesh as s! inful to 20th century church doctrines that branded all sex outside of heterosexual marriage as socially destructive, Catholicism (and many other manifestations of Christianity) declared war on the body. Pope John Paul II rests firmly and comfortably in this tradition, promoting with vigor and enormous intolerance, the idea that only heterosexual behavior - with its potential for reproduction - was acceptable and sacred. Indeed, under this Papacy, the promotion of heterosexuality and the family became a dangerous fixation that lead to extraordinary extremes of intolerance and hate mongering against homosexuals. It is now clear that with the possible exception of communism, Pope John Paul II hated and loathed homosexuality more than anything else in the world.

But why? What could drive the Vicar of Christ - who really must have had many other things to do - to such lengths that his crusade against homosexuality became not an idee fixe but a passionate, reckless obsession? The ! answer is simple. If you refuse to accept the idea that all sexuality is sacred - and that everyone has the integrity of their own sexual desires - you need to find ways to regulate and sequester sexual desire and activity. Directly linking sexual behavior with procreation reinforces the theological message that sex is not for pleasure, but for reproduction. This is a wildly curious, and horribly absurd idea when you think about all of the exuberant ways in which humans can be sexual. All of the ways in which we can use our bodies not just for sexual pleasure alone but for celebrating them as sacred temples - no matter what our religious beliefs.

The pope's theological and ideological problem with homosexuality came about because in our modern world it has been homosexuality - and all of those glorious homosexuals - who have truly embodied the idea that sexuality is sacred. Because homosexual sex never has the potential to create children, because it is - in essence - sex for! the wond erful sake of sex itself, we have become the standard bearers not just for sexual freedom, but for sexual holiness. If the body and sexuality are holy - then they must be holy in and unto themselves. There is no need to justify them with the procreation of children, or to vindicate them with post-coital shame. Homosexuals are often accused to being shameless - and that is precisely the truth. Shame is the antithesis of sacredness and the more shameless homosexuals become - demanding their civil rights, personal integrity and personal and sexual freedom - the more they exhibit to the world the endless possibilities of sexual pleasure and sexual holiness.

The pope's war on homosexuals has really been the last gasp of the church's battle against the values of the Enlightenment: democracy, personal freedom, bodily integrity and the demand that women and men be able to build lives free of religious and political tyranny. Pope John Paul II is dead, and his successor may ve! ry well c arry on this same war - but it is a losing battle. Despite what the Vatican thinks, we live in a modern world. We now understand that sexual activity need not be connected with reproduction. We now understand that human body is capable of a wide range of pleasure that can be enjoyed for the sake of pleasure alone. We are - overwhelmingly - a society that is based on secular ideas of knowledge and progress. There is no turning back. Although the pope may have won a few battles, he lost the war. In his death he is being praised, but it is an easy, cheap glory. He is not being criticized much because, well, people just don't criticize the Pope. He is like a beloved movie star. Like Julia Roberts, he just doesn't get bad reviews. Or, that other great terrible actor turned politician, Ronald Reagan.

There is little doubt - given how history has gone for the last 200 years - that secularism will win out over religious fanaticism and that humanism will win out over anti-huma! n actions . And, as is always the case, the needs of the body and sacredness of sexuality will win out over the innately fascist need to regulate, repress and destroy the body when it does not conform to the needs of the state or religion. That is why, in these past days, I have been thinking about the pope's penis. How did he think about his body? How did it feel to him when he was healthy and when he was sick? Did he experience it as a burden? As a failing? As a temptation? Or as something holy? And if so - then how did he honor it? Was it through the denial of the flesh that he preached again and again?

The idea that the body and the flesh are occasions of sin has been intrinsic to Catholic theology for a very long time. But I think that, in the end, we can always rely on the body to tell us what it wants and needs. Repression only works for so long, and even the pope - try as he might to change the world into a tyrannical theocracy - must have heard a different message when, as Olds wrote of the pope's penis: ". . . at night / while his eyes sleep, it stands up / in praise of God."

[Michael Bronski is the author, most recently, of Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulp (St. Martin's Press). He can be reached at mabronski@aol.com.]

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God wants spiritual fruit...
Not religious nuts.

Men in dresses and fancy hats oppose gay pride parade in Jerusalem

This photo could just as easily be titled "Bigotry Brings Us Together, or How Homophobia Builds Interfaith Bridges" -- a bleak trend to witness.

Here we have a meeting of religious leaders opposed to an international gay pride festival in Jerusalem: Sheik Abed es-Salem Menasra, deputy mufti of Jerusalem; the Rev. Michael Sabbagh, Latin patriarch; the Rev. Aris Shirvanian, Armenian patriarch; Rabbi Shlomo Amar, Sephardic chief rabbi. Of course, an American Evangelical brought them all together:

Interfaith agreement is unusual in Israel. The leaders' joint opposition was initially generated by the Rev. Leo Giovinetti, an evangelical pastor from San Diego who is both a veteran of the American culture war over homosexuality and a frequent visitor to Israel, where he has formed relationships with rabbis and politicians.

("Clerics of 3 Faiths Protest Gay Festival Planned for Jerusalem," Laurie Goodstein and Greg Myre, New York Times 3.31.05, reg req'd)

Posted by Philocrites at 08:45 AM, http://www.philocrites.com/.