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Also on this website:
Toby
Johnson's books:
GAY
SPIRITUALITY: The Role of
Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness
GAY PERSPECTIVE:
Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe
SECRET
MATTER,
GETTING
LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE
PLAGUE:
A NOVEL ABOUT HEALING.
Articles
and Excerpts:
The
Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate
Shame on the American People
The
cause of homosexuality
What Jesus said about Gay
Rights
The purpose of homosexuality
Varieties
of Gay Spirituality
Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality
as Artistic Medium
"It's Always About You"
The myth of the
Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara
You're
Not A Wave
Curious
Bodies
What
Toby Johnson Believes
The Joseph Campbell Connection
The Nature of Religion
Being
Gay is a Blessing
Freedom
of Religion
The
Gay Agenda
"The Evolution of Gay Identity"
"St. John of the Cross &
the
Dark Night of the Soul."
Avalokiteshvara at the Baths.
Eckhart's Eye
Teenage
Prostitution and the Nature of Evil
Allah
Hu: "God is present here"
Adam
and Steve
Gay
retirement and the "freelance monastery"
Seeing with Different Eyes
The
mystical
experience at the Servites' Castle in Riverside
The
Great Dance according to C.S.Lewis
The Techniques Of The World Saviors
Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the
Tar-Baby
Part 2: The
Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara
Part 3: Jesus
and the Resurrection
Part 4: A
Course in Miracles
The
Secret of the Clear Light
Understanding the Clear Light
Mobius
Strip
Finding YourTiger Face
How Gay
Souls Get Reincarnated
The
D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance
Toby's friend
and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.
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Gay Saintliness
How
could I possibly ever reconcile [my attraction to other boys] with some
grand, altruistic life purpose?
This question,
I believe, lies at the heart of the gay vocation in the
world, and of gay spirituality and sanctity more specifically. It
summons us to consider how and why we do what we do, and the reason
that our vocation so often lies in areas of beauty, creativity, and
service.
Much has been written about the fertile manifestations of our
marginality. I will put forth a radical proposition, though it is
historically impervious to proof. I venture to say that a
significant,
if not a predominant, number of male saints have been homosexual,
that
they have struggled with the meaning of same-sex desire in their lives,
most often for the person of Christ, that some succumbed to their
sexual urges, while others chose quite consciously to sublimate their
needs in works of heroic Christian virtue and fortitude.
And,
furthermore, that such needs and desires, as evil, sinful, or
condemnable as they were thought to be by the saints themselves or by
any number of "godly" others, have been the core, fundamental forces
for good, motivating, sustaining, nourishing, and inspiring these great
works.
So writes Donald
Boisvert in his marvelous book Sanctity and Male Desire: A Gay
Reading of Saints (The Pilgrim Press, 224 pages, pb, $22.00)
I added the italics and underlining to emphasize the operative words in
this passage.
Christian de la
Huerta, author of Coming Out Spiritually: The Next Step,
identifies ten spiritual functions
of gay and lesbian people.
Here's the review of Boisvert's book I wrote for White Crane Journal #64
Upon first look, Donald Boisvert's
new book Sanctity and Male Desire: A Gay Reading of Saints
seems of
interest primarily to Roman Catholics. The Introduction is about
the place of the saints in Catholic religious education, and the
chapters that follow are about various saints that influenced
Boisvert's own psychological and religious development. Certainly
others raised Catholic will resonate with this book (I certainly did).
But the discussion in the book goes far beyond parochial Catholicism,
and so the main thrust of this review must be to recommend this book to
non-Catholics (and ex-Catholics who'd resist anything even vaguely
related positively to the religion they left behind).
Boisvert is a professor of religion at Concordia
University in Montreal. He was in the seminary as a young man with the
Blessed Sacrament Fathers, then went on to earn a doctorate in
religious studies as a layman. His previous book was Out on Holy
Ground: Meditations on Gay Men's Spirituality (The Pilgrim Press, 2000,
reviewed in WCJ #48). He was a participant in last year's Gay
Spirituality Summit.
The reverence of the saints in Catholic devotion is,
to non-Catholics, one of the strangest things about the religion. In
many ways, it's been one of the most regressive aspects, focusing on
superstitions, contrived (and often unbelievable) histories, and
bizarre manifestations of zeal (including all manner of
martyrdoms--some self-brought-on--and outrageous forms of human
torture). Understood in the light of comparative religions, on the
other hand, the reverence of the saints demonstrates the true
universality –indeed, the polytheism--of Catholicity, for many of the
saints represent the importing of local deities, heroes, tribal legends
and myths into Christianity as the religion spread beyond being simply
a sect of Judaism. In this sense, the veneration of the saints shows
Catholicism as a much broader and more inclusive religion than the
Bible-based versions of Christianity that have resisted change since
the text was canonized at Nicaea by the Emperor Constantine. In many
ways, Catholicism is more like Hinduism than it is like Christian
Protestantism. While the saints, of course, aren't incorporated into
the Bible, their stories get at least as much importance in popular
Catholic devotion as the words of sacred writ.
The stories of the saints are teaching mechanisms by
which particular virtues, talents, life-situations, and manifestations
of zeal are personalized. The various traits and powers of God as
healer, miracle-worker, and wish-granter are personified in the stories
of flesh and blood human beings. Especially for children learning
Christian doctrine, the saints are symbols and demonstrations of
theological propositions and religious concepts much easier to
understand and identify with than the abstractions they represent. They
are role models of the good Christian life.
Donald Boisvert describes with reverence, but also
with poignancy and appropriate humor, how as a boy he created an altar
and shrine to his favorites, lighting candles before their statues as
part of childhood play. The themes in these saints' lives went on then
to shape his religious and personal maturation--just as they were
supposed to.
The book devotes chapters to some of these
favorites: Michael the Archangel, Sebastian and Tarcisius, John the
Baptist, Joseph, Paul and Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Dominic Savio,
and more. Except for Michael the Archangel (the Christianization of
Mars, the Roman god of war), Bosivert's saints were actual people. In
each presentation, he explains not only the history or mythos of the
characters, but also the spiritual and religious meaning and the life
model presented. But then he goes way beyond what orthodox Catholicism
would understand--and this is the exciting richness of this book--and
gives what he calls the "gay reading" of the stories.
Central to all manifestations of so-called gay
spirituality is honesty and frankness about the sexual and erotic
dimensions of life. And that's exactly what Boisvert gives us with his
"gay readings": a personal–and sometimes surprisingly "frank"--analysis
of this secret layer of the stories of his favorite saints.
In the way that the saints represent a history of
Christianity beyond the foundations in the time of Jesus, Boisvert's
analyses present the sexual layers of the religion that are generally
never acknowledged. The prime example is his discussion of the various
ways Jesus--and Jesus's body--has been depicted in art. God Incarnate
is shown as a beautiful man with, sometimes, a "hot body," even (or
especially) when naked under torture. The “honesty and frankness" are
remarkable. This discussion of Christianity gives gay men a reason to
reconsider the richness of the religion that seems so often inimical to
our concerns.
But the most important argument of the book is
Boisvert's recognition that the drive to "sanctity" is an essential
part of “male desire" (hence their linking in the subtitle) and of the
social activism of the gay political and cultural movement. Over
and over again, gay politics is about "saving the world," not just
getting one's own--and one's family's--needs met by government. Gay
lives are so frequently focused on beauty, creativity, and service.
Boisvert beautifully captures the gay compulsion to be the best little
boy, the best social contributor, the most successful lover, and
especially the most honest person one can be. It is the drive for
sanctity and integrity that impels us to come out and be openly and
idealistically gay.
I recommend this book to Catholics and non-Catholics
alike. I want to especially recommend it to those of you who are
annoyed with or estranged from Catholic upbringing. I promise you,
you'll be surprised and pleased and even possibly inspired and
spiritually justified by Donald Boisvert's blending of religion and
eroticism. He tells truths about our human psyches that most
religionists don't acknowledge. For that reason alone, this book adds a
new dimension to gay spirituality.
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