The Soho Masses

This blog post isn't lashing out at +Vincent

On the 3rd of January, the press reported that the "Soho Masses" which had taken place on the 1st and 3rd Sunday of every month in Our Lady of the Assumption Church, Warwick Street, were to be ended. These masses had become a focal point for protest against the Church's teachings on sexuality and so the archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, closed them down and arranged for pastoral care for gay people to be continued by the Jesuits at a nearby parish.

It's pointless to go over the political ins and outs of this story, there's plenty of commentary on that elsewhere. However, it is no secret that +Vincent loves gay people, and so rightly so. He's a Christian. Bishops should set an example to other Christians. We are called to love our neighbour no matter what their sexuality. His previous comment aimed at Catholics who had been protesting outside while the masses were taking place, that "anybody who is trying to cast a judgement on the people who come forward for communion really ought to learn to hold their tongue", was poorly received by some, but Jesus said something fairly similar more than once. Doubtless the Soho Masses were misusing the Mass to put forward ideas going against Catholic doctrine, but it was Mass and the day a Catholic decided to protest outside the church doors that Our Lord was being offered on the altar of sacrifice and on the Cross rather than go in and see Him there is a sad one. There are places to discuss Catholic doctrine and mass is not one of them, whichever side of the doors you find yourself.

The director of public affairs for Stonewall, Ruth Hunt, is quoted in the Daily Mail as saying that "there has never been a more important time to provide a safe space for gay Catholics to pray." Well that's laughable and demonstrates a complete and utter ignorance on the subject. The idea that gay Catholics are somehow victimised by the rest of the Church is ridiculous. Laughable. Simply not bourne out in reality. I hope that if a parish priest were to get an incling of homophobia from his congregation, that he would be a good pastor to his people and point out from the pulpit that anyone who had failed to respond to gay people with 'respect, compassion and sensitivity' should get themselves shriven ASAP for the good of their eternal souls. As for her reference to "what's happened over Christmas, where there were vitriolic and mean messages from [the] pulpit about same-sex marriage", perhaps she would like to cast an eye over those homilies. Instructing the faithful to protest the gay marriage bill "clearly, calmly and forcefully", "without impugning the motives of others." Doesn't sound particularly "mean". The anger (quite a different concept to "vitriolic") that Robert Piggott detected was clearly levelled at the government which has acted in such an undemocratic manner in an attempt to distract the electorate from their failing economic policy and not at all at gay people themselves. Perhaps Ruth Hunt could refrain from comment until she has something that reflects reality to say rather than casting the Catholic Church as some sort of hate group. I grew up in a fairly middle of the road suburban Catholic parish and as I became aware of what gay people were I realised that some of the people in the congregation were gay. I had the fairly standard response of children (and for that matter clergy) to gay people today of "oh, that's interesting." Before swiftly moving on with my life and thinking next to nothing more of it.

St Jean-Marie Vianney dealing with an outbreak of homophobia in rural France

The other thing is that by moving the LGBTQ to the Jesuits at Farm Street is that they'll be able to offer much better pastoral care and that surely is much more of a priority for an organisation like the Soho group. Mass is good for anyone, it brings them closer to God and God closer to them: receiving the Blessed Sacrament or simply kneeling in adoration before the Eucharist which made you and loves you will always have that effect and that is why all Catholics has an obligation to go to mass each Sunday. However, it's not a substitute for spiritual guidance from a person with whom you can have a two way conversation. Those who have suggested that +Vincent is only speaking out on this issue now because he wants a red hat are well established as his enemies and have seized on something caring, pastoral and in line with the teachings of our Church to try and turn it into a stick with which to beat him. I can't see why they can't simply be glad that +Vincent is being a good bishop, looking after his people by teaching them the authentic doctrines of the Church and working against the state's measures that threaten her and broader society.

In this action +Vincent has at once cared for his flock by providing them with better pastoral care in the form of the Jesuits and defended them against the dangers of misleading doctrines promoted at Soho masses. Most notably what has been called the "gay lifestyle". Again I leave myself open to charges of homophobia by those who don't read the post carefully enough, but increasingly we as a society are coming to see that sexuality is something we do rather than are. That's not to say it's something one choses, I don't chose to breathe but I do it and if anyone remembers chosing to be straight they should probably get themselves down to the Farmstreet Jesuits, but by making sexuality something one is, one constructs a false identity around it. This false identitity is something that hid the beauty of the people concerned's own personality. I have a friend who explains his own campery as a defence mechanism: he was bullied for being gay at school and so it was much easier for him to have his classmates hate the façade he threw up rather than hate who he really was. I hope we don't need that any more. Certainly when I was at school the only time I saw any sort of homophobia it ended with the culprit bleeding from the nose after a group of rugby boys interveaned on the boy who'd just come out's behalf.

St Nicholas has less patience with Arian homophobes than St JMV

The Soho masses were also noted for tolerance of homosexual acts. Servant of God Fulton Sheen, a few of whose books I'm slowing seeing my way through, pointed out in a broadcast about contraception once that when one examines an eye, it is obvious what it is for and that when one looks at a penis or a vagina it is obvious what they are for. It is obviously this notion to which the Catechism refers when it says that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered". That is to say that they do not allow the genitals to fulfill their purpose, their τέλος as Aristotle would put it. However, it shows its age when it suggests that most homosexual people find their sexuality a trial. I no longer think that is true, at least in the west. I think people of all shades of sexuality have grown to understand that as gift from God which not everyone possesses. It is, therefore, something for which to be thankful. If one treats it as a trial it will inevitably become so and we'll end up with a lot of unhappy people whop are distant from God.

I, like a certain "blood-crazed ferret" and I suspect +Vincent, think that the Church's understanding of homosexuality will evolve as she experiences more loving gay couples who find themselves growing closer to God as a result of their relationships. How that would effect its doctrine I have no idea except that two people of the same sex will never be capable of receiving the sacrament of marriage. That isn't homophobic, as Stonewall or the like would have us beleive, it doens't for a moment deny that Gay people love each other or that that fact is beautiful and a reflection of God's continuing love for those whom his creative love has already done its work. It does however recognise certain obvious facts about gay relationships which are not currently fasionable or politic to mention. I had dinner this evening with a close atheist friend who is in a long term (as far as people my age are concerned), very loving relationship with another of my close friends who is of the same sex and he summed these obvious facts up nicely. He is opposed to the gay marriage bill because he sees it as heteronormative. As far as he's concerned, his relationships don't have the end goal of children and he wouldn't want them to be about that: his relationships are about two people who love each other and nothing more. Therefore it is different from his straight friends'. There is clearly nothing lesser about his love for his boyfriend than that experienced by a straight couple, but it is equally clearly a different love. He wants gay people not to feel they need to see that difference as something negative, as if it means they are deficient heterosexuals. As far as he is concerned, gay people don't need marriage and shouldn't want it. This is precisely because there is a difference beteween homosexuality and heterosexuality.

Isn't that obvious? Of course there are differences. But God's creation is full to the brim of joyous difference so why not just come to mass with the rest of all of us different people and we can all be different together and worship and receive God who made us different. Why are the Soho group so keen to section gay Catholics off into their own masses? Is it because they're scared that it might burst the bubble of their constructed gay identity if they were forced to discover that actually they're just like the rest of us. Different. But not that different.