God and I Don't Talk Anymore
God and I don’t talk anymore. At least, not the God that solely exists within the confines and norms of the Catholic Church.
For many years, I confused my relationship with God to my relationship with the Church; I thought that, by distancing myself from the Church, I had to expel any remnants of a relationship with the divine from my life. It has only been through dedicated spiritual practice and exploration that I have restored my relationship with the divine, a force I refuse to diminish by limiting myself to specific models of communal faith and worship.
It has taken, of course, a long time for me to come to this conclusion. For many years, I desperately tried to fight for my inherent dignity as a human being in the Catholic church and the various communities within it. In 2013, I—alongside many queers around the world—celebrated an unexpected, yet welcome, glimpse of hope in the papal inauguration of the current Pope Francis. The first pope from the Society of Jesus, a sect of Catholicism dedicated to social justice, Francis symbolized a drastic shift in the Church’s culture. Unlike the waves of homophobia and shame queers experienced at the hands of the Catholic Church—and the environment it fosters—in decades prior, Francis’s progressive ideologies promised to restore the dignity and faith of queers long marginalized by narrow-minded Catholic beliefs, individuals, and organizations.
As a queer man who has been immersed in Catholic schooling and community for the past eight years, I’ve had many firsthand experiences with the tension that arises between Catholicism and queer life. For many queers who, like myself, try to simultaneously embody queerness and practice Catholicism, the New Testament and the ideals its chapters represent are a source of profound solace. Sure, ignorant organizations and believers like those of the Westboro Baptist Church can quote tired passages from the books of Genesis and Leviticus to advance their blatantly homophobic agendas. But, as long as the New Testament promises that God does not judge, that God forgives, that God loves unconditionally, us queers are still able to find a home in the Church.
It is unfortunate, then, that the unconditional forgiveness and love of the New Testament rarely manifests in the everyday language and actions expressed by authoritative figures in the Church. Here, I am specifically referring to the recent remarks released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) on gay marriage: that the Catholic Church cannot bless such marriages because it is “impossible” to “bless sin.” These statements, which Pope Francis has explicitly supported, signify the boundaries of the “progress” occurring within the Church. While Francis is progressive in the sense that he is the first pope to support same-sex civil unions, his progressivism is merely relative to the prejudiced and homophobic ideologies of his predecessors.
Francis’ failure to holistically support queer—or, more specifically, gay—members of the Church is a perfect example of how the Church treats its queer members. On the one hand, members within the Church call for social acceptance of queer individuals and refute their social marginalization (for example, Francis’ earnest support of same-sex civil unions). On the other hand, however, the Church continues to malign queer life and love as inherently “sinful.”
In this sense, the Church’s attitudes towards queer individuals—regardless of their affiliation with Christianity—are incredibly contradictory and hypocritical. How will queers feel accepted if their ways of loving are repeatedly insulted as “wrong” and “unnatural”? What progress can truly be made within the Church when it refuses to accept queer individuals beyond a superficial, performative level of tolerance?
I will never understand how members of the Church tell queers they love them, that God loves them, and simultaneously shame them for the ways in which they love. I will never be able to grapple with the indelible harm these ideologies inflict upon queer youth who are only just discovering themselves. I will never forget praying to a God I wasn’t sure I believed in, begging him to help me become different. To help me become someone other than myself.
God and I don’t talk anymore. And, in terms of my mental, physical, and spiritual health, that’s for the better. Faith should be a life-affirming source of stability and community, a resource for those in need of help and support. Catholicism was never that for me. To have a relationship with the God that existed within the Catholic imagination was to constantly fight for my right to be respected in and by the Church, for my right to live without suffering discrimination and hate.
In Cruising Utopia, cultural critic José Esteban Muñoz informs us that queerness can be centered around a specific desire: one “that resists mandates to accept that which is not enough.” The tolerance the Church extends to its queer members, in my mind, is “that which is not enough.” It is not enough for queers to be happy, to be fully respected by their community, or to have their dignity recognized. Contextualizing Muñoz’s understanding of queerness with the Church’s demand that queers within it accept the fact that their love will never be respected by their religion, I argue that queers have never needed the respect or validation of the Church, an institution that continues to witness waning membership and scandal.
Taking a step away from the Church has helped me to recognize my inherent dignity and allowed me to cultivate a healthy relationship with my sexuality that rejects any association with sin, shame, and guilt. So, while God and I might not be on speaking terms, my distance from the Church has helped me to begin a conversation with and within myself: one through which I can begin seeing and loving myself without imbibing perceptions that have been forced upon me.