The headline jumped out from the December 13 edition of The Washington
Post: “Gay Christians Choosing Celibacy Emerge From the Shadows.” As the call
for “homosexual marriage” increases at an alarming rate, it is encouraging to
know there are homosexual persons embracing and promoting their call to
virginity--while expressing spiritual insights into that sacred vocation for
all.
The article featured Eve Tushnet, a 36-year old writer and speaker who
converted to Catholicism in 1998, when “she thought she might be the world’s
first celibate Catholic lesbian.” She writes for spiritualfriendship.org, a
blog for celibate homosexual Christians that draws thousands of visitors each
month.
Tushnet says that celibacy “allows you to give yourself more freely to
God.” The focus of celibacy, she says, should be not on the absence of sex but
rather on deepening friendships and other relationships. She urges people not
to focus so much on the sex they can’t have, but on other avenues where they
can experience true intimacy.
Tushnet uses the image of a kaleidoscope: “The jewels inside are
desires. If you turn it one way, it’s lesbianism. If you rearrange them, it can
be community service or devotion to Mary.”
Tushnet’s words shed much needed light on a world obsessed with the
physical pleasures of sex, while failing to understand the interpersonal and
sacrificial communion that constitutes genuine intimacy--that sex and intimacy
aren’t necessarily one and the same
This truth was presented in the article most presciently by Julie
Rodgers, a lesbian hired this fall to serve homosexual persons in the
chaplain’s office of Wheaton College, a prominent evangelical school in
Illinois. While holding that God does not bless same-sex relationships, Rodgers
sees injustices done to homosexual persons by churches, and tries to heal them.
“Evangelicals are really trying to figure out what to do,” Rodgers told
The Washington Post. “There is a real panic about how to move forward. How do
we think and talk about sexuality? We haven’t had a robust understanding around
celibacy in the past. We are trying to find a congruence between faith and
spirituality that does not try to align with traditional marriage but does recognize
that we can live without sex, but we can’t live without intimacy.”
We can live without sex, but we can’t live without intimacy. If we were
to write a list of five truths the world desperately needs to hear, this would certainly
be one of them.
Yet this is really nothing new. Catholics have a ready answer for
Rodgers’ observation “We haven’t had a robust understanding around celibacy in
the past,” and her question “How do we think and talk about sexuality?”
The answer? St. John Paul II and his Theology of the Body.
John Paul II did not address homosexuality specifically in the Theology
of the Body, but he gave ample attention to celibacy, which he called “an
exclusive donation of self to God.” The following quotes shed much light on the
celibate vocation to which many heterosexuals and all homosexuals are called.
Each quote is from a series of talks in the spring of 1982:
“The observation, “When they rise
from the dead they neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Mk 12:25)
indicates that there is a condition of life without marriage. In that
condition, man, male and female, finds at the same time the fullness of
personal donation and of the intersubjective communion of persons, thanks to
the glorification of his entire psychosomatic being in the eternal union with
God.”(March 10)
Paraphrasing Jesus in Matthew 19:11-12, Pope John Paul II said:
“I shall speak to you of
continence. Undoubtedly, you will associate this with the state of physical
deficiency, whether congenital or brought about by human cause. But I wish to
tell you that continence can also be voluntary and chosen by man for the
kingdom of heaven.” (March 17)
Explaining what it means to be celibate for the kingdom of heaven, Pope
John Paul II said:
“Continence for the kingdom of
heaven is certainly linked to the revelation of the fact that in the kingdom of
heaven people ‘will no longer marry’ (Mt 22:30)…. Because God will be
‘everything to everyone’ (1 Cor 15:28).
“Such a human being, man and
woman, indicates the eschatological virginity of the risen man. In him there
will be revealed, I would say, the absolute and eternal nuptial meaning of the
glorified body in union with God himself through the ‘face to face’ vision of
him….
“Earthly continence for the
kingdom of heaven is undoubtedly a sign that indicates this truth and this
reality. It is a sign that the body, whose end is not the grave, is directed to
glorification. Already by this very fact, continence for the kingdom of heaven
is a witness among men that anticipates the future resurrection….
“So, then, continence for the
kingdom of heaven bears, above all, the imprint of the likeness to Christ. In
the work of redemption, he himself made this choice for the kingdom of heaven.”
(March 24)
Speaking further of this likeness to Christ, Pope John Paul II said:
“Whoever consciously chooses such
continence, chooses, in a certain sense, a special participation in the mystery
of the redemption (of the body). He wishes in a particular way to complete it,
so to say, in his own flesh (cf. Col 1:24), finding thereby also the imprint of
a likeness to Christ.” (March 31)
