Philip Jenkins has a great piece up on The New Republic site explaining why homosexuality is such a big deal for African Christians, especially Nigeria's Anglicans. I knew that it was vitally important in Christianity's rivalry with Islam, as Jenkins explains. But I had no idea about this:
The Muslim context helps explain the sensitivity of gay issues in one other key respect. In the region later known as Uganda, Christianity first arrived in the 1870s, when the area was already under Muslim influence and a hunting ground for Arab slave-raiders. The king of Buganda had adopted Arab customs of pederasty, and he expected the young men of his court to submit to his demands. But a growing number of Christian courtiers and pages refused to participate, despite his threats, and an enraged king launched a persecution that resulted in hundreds of martyrdoms: On a single day, some 30 Bugandans were burned alive. Yet the area's churches flourished, and, eventually, the British expelled the Arab slavers. That foundation story remains well-known in the region, and it intertwines Christianity with resistance to tyranny and Muslim imperialism--both symbolized by sexual deviance. Reinforcing such memories are more recent experiences with Muslim tyrants, such as Idi Amin, whose victims included the head of his country's Anglican Church. For many Africans, then, sexual unorthodoxy has implications that are at once un-Christian, anti-national, and oppressive.
Then it occurred to me: he's talking about St. Charles Lwanga and the Ugandan martyrs, Catholics who died for the faith at the hands of a pederast king. It is encouraging to see that today, in the modern West, we have Christian leaders who, in the tradition of those faithful Catholic martyrs of Uganda, are willing to give their lives to be witness to the Gospel. Oh, wait...
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it's not the Archbishop's place to be making decisions about whose sins disqualify you for participating in the Eucharist.
It is precisely a bishop's responsibility to make those decisions.
In general, the worthiness of each person who receives communion is known only to God, and moral responsibility for unworthy reception is a matter of individual conscience (with the obligation to properly inform that conscience). But in the case of one who is flagrantly and publicly persisting in gravely sinful behavior, the bishop has the right and duty to admonish the person and, if necessary to prevent scandal or sacrilege, to refuse to administer communion to such a person.
"But in the case of one who is flagrantly and publicly persisting in gravely sinful behavior, the bishop has the right and duty to admonish the person and, if necessary to prevent scandal or sacrilege, to refuse to administer communion to such a person."
So then you'd support him withholding the Eucharist from a newspaper columnist who routinely writes anti-immigrant screeds or a Supreme Court justices who votes in favor of the death penalty? Or someone who came to mass in a BMW while passing homeless people on the street?
Because those are arguably more profound examples of "gravely sinful behavior" than being gay, something that was never mentioned by the Lord. Jesus talked endlessly about poverty and murder and lack of hospitality, but never about homosexuality. I realize we live in a tupsy-turvy world where somehow homosexuality--which is barely discussed in the scriptures and they opaquely--is so much more serious than any other sins.
Fair enough, Rob. (Returning to read your reply after some time has elapsed!) You gave Boswell a cursory hearing and were not convinced. This is certainly your prerogative. What I don't get is the utter contempt and dismissal of a noted scholar who was NOT so treated by a majority of his peers.
You said: Ridiculous, thoroughly discredited, pro-gay "scholarship." "Ridiculous" I grant you, since that epithet is your opinion. But you certainly haven't shown that Boswell is "thoroughly discredited." For that to be the case, I think you'd have to show that a majority of his own peers dismissed him. Yes, there is significant criticism of his conclusions. But he's not "discredited" by any definition that makes sense to me. And you put quotes around "scholarship" as if his is phony, but again, you haven't shown this to my satisfaction. Point out errors if you can--but why dismiss him entirely as a scholar simply because you consider him "pro-gay"? Does the mere fact of being pro-gay discredit a scholar in your eyes? If so, you should discredit Camille Paglia, because she IS gay, is out, is not ashamed of it, and has said, among her many dramatic utterances, a good many things that would be considered pro-gay. if, as you say in your reply, you're not discrediting "his scholarship per se," then you should not put scare quotes around the word and call him "discredited."
You quote approvingly Simon's statement: History stripped of even the most basic respect for truth and concerned only with inventing "facts" This essentially calls Boswell a liar. Even if you feel he is slanting his conclusions in the wrong direction, that's a far cry from calling him completely unreliable. I still think you're being unfair. Which, of course, is also your prerogative, but you have made comments I respected more! Overall, I do think of you as an honest man with good intentions, so I get frustrated when I run into what I think of as a blind spot.
Sig -- when I wrote 'Ridiculous, thoroughly discredited, pro-gay "scholarship"' I did not have Boswell alone in mind, but that whole school of scholarship. The reason I put it in scare quotes is that, to my mind, it has nowhere near the objectivity that true scholarship does, and in that regard is akin to such things as, say, Afro-Centrist history or Christian Theocracy. There are certainly capable, even some excellent, scholars connected with those two movements, yet I reject their programs wholeheartedly. Why? Because the conclusions drawn from their scholarship to me seem faulty, and I don't think you can draw a hard line between the scholarship per se and the conclusions (although as I said above, I do believe that a distinction may be made.)
I don't think Boswell was a liar, but I do think his own commitment to homosexuality colored his conclusions. His work in this area seems to me to have a strong undercurrent of self-justification.
Daniel,
There is no Catholic teaching against being against illegal immigration per se, but only under certain circumstances. The same goes for the Death Penalty, which isn't according to Catholic moral teaching an intrinsically deformed act. Such is not the case for homosexual behavior or say abortion. Consequently under certain conditions one can be a consistently good Catholic and be op[posed to illegal immigration and for the death penalty. You are comparing apples and oranges.
Jesus never said anything about having sex with animals either, but as a good rabbi, he not only gave the Law to Moses but he upheld it. Paul and plenty of other Church Fathers were sufficiently aware of homosexual behavior and that is no state secret. The fact that there are more serious sins than those of the flesh doesn't in any way make those of the flesh non-sinful.
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