Spring into Creation!

I spent the past 3 days on a camping retreat with my university’s Newman center. I am so grateful I went. It was three whole days of pure fun, fellowship, faith, and “friendly”-competition. The only thing I was not prepared for was my friend Madeline’s 18 year-old little brother, with olive skin, greenish-blue eyes, and a smile that can melt your hear. See, going to an all boys school conditioned me to make it really hard to get crushes on straight guys. I mean I think straight guys are hot but I have never had feelings towards one until three days ago. Its freaking me out. He is just so sweet and cute and I don’t even know… but anyways enough of my pitiful and pathetic crush on a straight boy, the retreat was amazing! 

I am sunburnt to a crisp and I am so grateful to have all of these wonderful people in my life. It was so nice reminiscing on past events, obstacle course that involved me with a bright purple wig, and even though my team game in 9th place it was still perfect. 

I am making a reclamation

I am reclaiming my spiritual identity. I am reclaiming Christ for me. I am reclaiming Him queer, for each time I see his face and his body upon that cross I see all of us who have been persecuted by those in charge, those that make these bullshit binaries, and those who refuse to even dare think outside the box. I am reclaiming Catholicism, as a queer religion, as a source of great truth admits the dark and oppressive history that cloaks it. I am reclaiming Chastity, not as a vow to abstain from sex, because lets be honest Sex is fucking wonderful, but instead I am reclaiming Chastity to take my my sexuality into my own hands and work with it and polish it into the beautiful gift that it is. I am reclaiming my spiritual identity. I am a Queer Catholic. I break the bonds of Church conformity and I find beauty in the love and compassion of the Sacred heart of Jesus. I am critical of the pope and in no way do I believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. I do believe in One, Holy, and Catholic God. Because you see, Catholic, it means universal. The Catholic Church, the Catholic God, is a universal Church, it is a universal God. And those other faiths, systems of thought, that are made up of believers, non-believers, and skeptics, those are just all the ways God manifests Theirs self in order for them to understand. God is not an objective truth. God is a subjective experience. You experience Them everyday, you experience Their love everyday, your interpretation might not be that that is the love of God, but it is. So I am making a reclamation, my spirituality is one that it is Queer, one that is Catholic, and one that takes the love and compassion of the words of Christ and puts them into work on the daily. 

I did it..

I had my meeting with the head of my University’s Newman Catholic Campus Center to discuss the construction of an LGBTQ Inclusive Ministry program. She seemed to be supportive, but she will have to discuss it with Father. If this goes through my Newman Center will be the only openly LGBTQ Inclusive Christian Group on Campus. 

Lord hear the cries of your people.

That may have been the loneliest mass I have ever gone too… Even though I was surrounded by all my friends, I still felt unloved and unequal. That petition in the back of the church has made me feel so alone and isolated in the Body of Christ.

I sat through the whole mass silent and shaking as I watched my friends before it started signing this document where they were proclaiming, in less harsh of words, that they saw themselves and their straight identity to be above mine. I started mass silent and listening to each word said, each song sung, and watching each action made. As it continued my heart began to sink, my head began to throb, and my throat became dry. As Father started his homily, I began to feel each of his words tear at my chest, grip my throat, and puncture my heart, as he spoke about “respect” and how we are called to respect the wounds of our neighbors. He said this while a petition in the back of the Church openly destroys both my equality as well as my identity. How hypocritical can you be Father, how unaware that your very words on “respecting the wounds of others” are tearing wounds into my soul. 

My soul which for me is a not a puzzle of pieces that fit together, but more so as a Stain Glass Window in which each facet of my identity is carefully crafted by God, out of love and compassion, and welded together to form a beautiful image of myself in which God’s light can shine through in dazzling colors… you father you took that window and with the rock of your words… broke it… by the time the consecration came around I am fighting back tears and trying to feel something other than clashing feelings of anger and apathy. I refused to accept communion because I refuse to consume Christ in such a state of anger. As I knelt to pray… my walls broke. The last rock had it my window and tears like rivers began to pour from my eyes. It was then when I was truly alone… it was then when I realized the effects of the Archbishop’s letter and it was then when I realized why Fr. Ryan at St. James refused to release the letter. Fr. Ryan wanted to save his LGBTQ parishioners this pain… this betrayal… 

Never have I felt this alone during mass… 

SSA…

I hate the phrase “suffering with SSA (same-sex attraction)”, it enforces the old ideas of homosexuality as a mental disorder/mental disability. I am a GAY Catholic and I am a CATHOLIC Gay, and when I hear people in my Church tell me that it pains their heart because I am “suffering with same-sex attraction” it makes me mad beyond all belief. My sexual orientation is not a curse, it is a gift from God. God gave me the beauty that is homosexuality, to allow me to see the world from a different view, to give a voice to those who believe in Him and those that have been silenced by the heteronormative “Truths” that is forced upon me by the people in my Church. I love being Catholic, it is a huge factor of my identity and it makes me stronger everyday. I love being queer and it wasn’t until I accepted the fact that I was gay that my relationship with God blossomed and grew. By accepting the truth that God made me to love a person of the same-sex and by staying in a Church that so unrightfully belittles my sexuality as a “mental disorder” I have become a beautiful intersection of contradicting identities and God has been leading me down a tough road, He is calling me to build this bridge between the two communities and its hard and is my cross to bear. (I am also well aware of Church teaching and its use of the word “disorder” meaning deviation from the natural order God intended) God intended me to be gay, He blessed me with this queer Catholic life. The only thing I am suffering from is the inability for people in my Church to treat me with Acceptance, Respect, Sensitivity, and Compassion (which in accordance with Line 2358 of the Catechism is how you are suppose to treat people who have “deep-seated homosexual desires” and honey mine are about as deep as deep goes)