ACT UP acts out at Notre Dame Cathedral

I recall reading a column by John Leo - way back in 1989 - wherein he recounted the invasion of St. Patrick’s Cathedral by members of ACT-UP. I can’t find the piece online but I do recall most of the details. ACT UP people participated in the Mass until Communion at which time they lay across the aisle to try to prevent worshipers from receiving. Some chained themselves to pews.

Others received the Eucharist in their hand and then brought it outside to the assembled activists, tearing the Host to piece and stomping on it, (and in another case spitting out the Host) to wild cheers.

Outside was the usual political theater, gays dressed as priests simulating sodomy against gays dressed as nuns, signs saying, “Get over it, Mary!” And “Cardinal O’ Connor is a fat cannibal in a dress.”

Cardinal O’ Connor simply asked the worshipers to pray for these people and that no one would get hurt.

ACT UP found they’d gone too far with this particular demonstration and they lost a little of their media-luster, for a while.

Now, ACT UP - France is acting out.

A priest was slightly hurt Sunday at Paris’s famed Notre-Dame cathedral when clashes broke out between church security personnel and gay rights activists who performed a mock marriage of two lesbians.

About 20 members of the group Act Up entered the cathedral and proceeded to perform the mock marriage, before baffled tourists and worshippers, according to an AFP correspondent at the scene.

One militant - dressed as a priest - pronounced the two women married, while other Act UP members chanted: “Pope Benedict XVI, homophobe, AIDS accomplice.”
[...]
The president of Act Up Paris, Jerome Martin - who participated in Sunday’s demonstration - told AFP by telephone that he also had been hit in the melee, but said the priest had exaggerated the actual events.

“We did not want to be aggressive with respect to the worshipers… the aggressive security detail wanted to rip up our banner,” he said.

So, ACT-UP did not feel that coming into a church with a banner and performing a mock wedding was “aggressive.”

And Benedict XVI is a homophobe and an AIDS accomplice, why? Partly because he won’t embrace the idea that condoms will solve the AIDS problem.

I’ve always found it interesting that people who have no intention of following church teaching on chastity will DEMAND that the church change its teaching on condoms. It’s not like they’re actually paying attention to anything the church is saying, and clearly it is a ruse. Gay men are not carousing in bath houses or at the meat racks of Fire Island while thinking…”wait…the Catholic church says Condoms are Bad, and I don’t want to be separate from the church, so I guess I’ll just have to chance it and go bareback, because there is no way I’m not partying tonight!!”

For that matter, promiscuous heterosexuals, uninterested in monogamy and unconcerned about their souls, are also quite unlikely to worry about what the church thinks about condoms as they pursue their pleasure.

For too many people, the Orgasm is the new Idol. It is the Alpha and Omega of their human experience.

This is not simply the reactionary rant of a conservative. Way back when I was a liberal, I thought way too much emphasis was being placed on sex, sexuality and the almighty O. I remember nursing my elder son and flipping on the tv to find a women’s talk show carrying on about how orgasms brought meaning to their lives, raised their consciousness, made them the equal of men, yadda yaddda…

Even then, I thought this over-emphasis on the O was ludicrous. Actually the whole societal emphasis on sex as the be-all-and-end-all of life is ludicrous. Sex is great. It is also sacred. And holy. We’re not taught that, anymore. Humanae Vitae and John Paul II’s writings on the Theology of the Body try to teach it, but it’s not information being promoted by the mainstream - if anything it is information being mocked and quickly put away.

I think one of evil’s greatest triumph’s has been to take people’s understanding of sex outside of the realm of the spirit and keep it solidly in the camp of the physical. to reduce it to a few soundbites of personal empowerment, some adolescent giggles and a few sharp grunts. To mischaracterize sex as “dirty” was a failing of the Christian church. In doing so it opened itself up for the sort of mindless, reactionary silliness we have witnessed since the “sexual revolution” decided that sex was not “dirty” but “good clean fun.”

Sex outside of marriage is not sinful because it is “dirty.” It is sinful because the act by which we more closely work with God in creation, the act which takes us into the deepest recesses of our physicality, to our very essences, becomes reduced to nothing more than an end to itself, separated from the energetic and spiritual realm in which it is most fully and functionally realized. It removes emphasis on the spirit and chains you to the Corporeal, assists in the exploitation of other bodies, and keeps your mind, heart and eyes off of God. That is where the sin comes in.

We are not meant to use our bodies and each other like so much disposable tissue. If a beautiful park is not maintained, if its users are permitted to run amok within it, with no accountability to authority, the park is quickly a shambles of litter, weeds, broken equipment and squalor. It is the same with our sexuality. It is no playground meant to be exploited and run through by bands of marauding, mindless hordes, which is pretty much what the sexual revolution promoted and encouraged.

The whole world has paid a price for it, this rampant, thoughtless, ravenous pursuit of the Almighty Orgasm - deemed more delightful, more worthy, more necessary than God or Family or even Self.

I have lost a beloved brother because of it. He thought he was having a good time, some harmless fun. He instead was killing himself, devaluing and ultimately destroying himself and his essence as a created Creature who had been loved into being. And yes, I’m angry about it. I miss him every day. He bought into the program, and pursued the empty, meaningless and fleeting pleasures that are dangled before the eyes of young gay men as something fine and ecstatic to chase and gain. And it killed him.

It killed his body…thankfully, his spirit did manage to find grace and peace before the end. But before that, while he was in mid-party and mid-pursuit, there was no grace, there was no peace, there was only the World, and the Things, and the Party…all of which brought laughter, it is true (as well as many tears) but none of which brought joy, or true love, or peace.

But condoms would solve everything, wouldn’t they? Except they break. Except they run out. Except people use poor judgement because they are human, faulty creatures.

Would condoms help contain the heterosexual AIDS crisis in Africa? Everyone acts like there are no condoms in Africa. There are, of course. They made no difference in the spread of AIDS. ABSINTENCE education, though, HAS made a difference. Absintence works - for obvious reasons.

But the world, and the Prince of the world, don’t want abstinence promoted. Abstinence leads to thought…and thought, too, too often, leads to things of the Spirit. And even more often, that leads to God. It makes a Hound-dog into a Hound of Heaven. And we can’t have that.

Evil wants to keep us mindless and distracted. Our society has been distracted for 40 years by the non-stop promotion of sex, and by the over-emphasis on the big O. And many smart, beautiful-but-immature-and-reckless people have died for that O. In fact, in the past 40 years, many more have died for the Orgasm than have died for the faith.

Too many have died for the false god of the Orgasm. They are not martyrs. They are not saints. But they are victims of a tinsel mentality that urged them on, every step of the way. And they leave behind countless, countless lives full of pain and sorrow.

I miss my brother. God, I miss him.

I did not intend to write all of this. But, I miss my brother, S. He is gone nearly 6 months and the pain does not go away. We are not a “noble” family because we lost our beloved S to AIDS. And he was not noble because he died of AIDS. He was noble because he was as generous and forgiving and loving and sincerely warm a human being as I’ve ever known. The KINDEST guy I have ever known. And he is gone to us, now.

And all the “friends” who disappeared when he became sick and lost his pretty looks, they’re all continuing on. Some have HIV, some do not. They’re still renting the summer houses and living the reckless, eternally adolescent lifestyle of material things and sexual pre-occupations that are so outsized they cannot be counterbalanced by the love of family or faith, lives that are so raucous they cannot hear the quiet, simple pleading of God to “draw near…”

Now, my brother’s house is empty and his things - all those THINGS he loved and had to have, all the THINGS he acquired to try to fill the void in his life, the one he wouldn’t let God fill, because to do so would have ended the party…they have been disbursed - much of it to strangers.

S was so conflicted. On one hand he wanted God, he wanted faith - he HAD faith, but faith on his own terms, and his own terms simply brought in more conflict. He could never get settled. I asked him once, if the concept of chastity, of living his life in chastity as all non-married people are called to do, meant anything to him. It was a long and serious conversation, but he got distracted. He got distracted by the next phone call and the next party, before he could remember to ask for grace.

Grace did come, finally, stunningly, very late in the ballgame. It was a sort of 9th inning grace. But I am so grateful that it finally came.

But I miss him, and it hurts. The grief is slightly - so very slightly - healed over but it doesn’t take much to rip the scab and begin to bleed afresh. I would rather spend the rest of my life tending to his bedside than going to his grave.

But to his grave, I must go.

Jesus came that we might have life, and have it to the full. These ACT UP people call Benedict XVI (and by extension all of Catholicism) an accomplice to death, they have it exactly backwards. Like his predecessor, John Paul II, this pope is trying to save their lives. So that they might have it to the full. And while some would say that a celibate person has nothing to say to the rest of human sexuality, it seems pretty clear to me, from the example of countless saints…from the example of celibates like Mother Theresa and JPII, and yes, the Dalai Lama, that once can live life to the full - very grandly, very completely - without worshiping at the altar of the Almighty O.

UPDATE: The pope - doing his job - has declared that gay marriage is anarchy. For some reason the press is acting like this is something no one has ever said before. Meanwhile, Bob Geldof is getting heat for inviting the Pope to Live 8, because even though Abstinence education works and condoms don’t…blah, blah, blah, the pope is a bad guy, etc, etc. (H/T: For Now).

UPDATE II: Reader Mark Olsen provides us with another interesting link to an article about condoms and AIDS in Africa.

The countries with the worst HIV infection rates in the world turn out to be Swaziland and Botswana, where more than a third of adults have the virus — but only 5 per cent are Catholic. Botswana, incidentally, is pro-condoms, not that it seems to have helped much. In contrast, Uganda, where half the people are Catholic, is the one African country that has slashed its rate of infection — from a devastating 15 per cent of all adults to “just” 5 per cent. And, heavens, it worked this miracle by doing much as the Pope had preached.

You’ll want to read it all. Thank you, Mark - the article is a keeper.

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by TheAnchoress @ 2:51 pm. Filed under Benedict XVI, Culture of Life/Death, John Paul II, My brother S, Sexuality

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31 Responses to “ACT UP acts out at Notre Dame Cathedral”

The Anchoress » Troop appreciation, before the next storm Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 3:11 pm
[...] ref=”mailto:theanchoress@gmail.com”>Email The Anchoress

ACT UP acts out at [...]
The Anchoress » The Idolatry of Feminism Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 3:16 pm
[...] ref=”mailto:theanchoress@gmail.com”>Email The Anchoress

ACT UP acts out at [...]
The Anchoress » A refreshing take on Disney “Gay Days” Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 3:27 pm
[...] ref=”mailto:theanchoress@gmail.com”>Email The Anchoress

ACT UP acts out at [...]
OKIE on the LAM™ - In LA Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 3:35 pm
Pope Blasts Same Sex Unions

I’m not a Catholic, but I’ll say a hearty AMEN to these statements by Pope Benedict XVI:

He said matrimony was not just a “casual sociological construction” that changed in certain times in history but rather an institution that had its roots “…
Dave Justus Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 4:00 pm
Great post Anchoress. I had a few more thoughts on this subject here
Kobayashi Maru Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 4:45 pm
Worshipping the World

I don’t know how the Anchoress does it: day after day after day of prose so insightful and beautiful that one wonders if she has a staff - maybe identical triplets, each writing 2-3 days a week. (Or more likely, the Holy Spirit. One does not write th…
nat Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 5:34 pm
Yet, we are to believe from this
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/4573174/detail.html
story that the ANTI-gays hate the Pope, too. Who are we to believe? In this case, as in many, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

I think you’re wrong about the orgasm being a god. Are we to supress that which is an inate and natural drive of our humanity? This is supposedly a God-given thing, so why should we not discuss it, understand it, relish it, and seek it? Just because we seek it, it does not make it the be-all and end-all of life.

Still, no matter that I may disagree with you, I am truly sorry for your deep loss.
Steve M. Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 5:40 pm
Would condoms help contain the heterosexual AIDS crisis in Africa? Everyone acts like there are no condoms in Africa. There are, of course. They made no difference in the spread of AIDS. ABSINTENCE education, though, HAS made a difference.

The Uganda program is called “ABC.” “A” is for “abstinence.” “B” is for “be faithful.”

And “C”? What does “C” stand for? Gee, let me think….
stephanie Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 5:58 pm
Aww honey. I can empathize with your pain on losing your brother. I’ve lost two uncles to AIDS. Both very beloved by my uncle (their partner, at different times, obviously). Both very beloved of me. I cannot share your belief that my uncles’ love was wrong- I looked into their eyes, at different times in my life, and saw true love reflected. I can’t explain, here, what I saw…but it was spiritual, and full of grace. And no, it was not platonic.
I do agree, though, that casual sex, moving from partner to partner like popping tic tacs, does more harm than good. And my heart bleeds, still, for those beautiful young men, all of them, who died too soon.
I come at it as a person who knows how very far from perfect she is. We all make mistakes. We are all imperfect. But death…it’s such a very, very high price to pay, for those young men; for the men I’ve known- who were only looking for someone to love them. I’m glad both my uncles did, even if it was too late.
ForNow Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 6:06 pm
Bob Geldof is being blasted for inviting Pope Benedict to support Live 8. Critics say the invitation “verges on an obscenity.” http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050606/344/fki0j.html .

Meanwhile, cooperating at the request of Howard Dean’s former campaign manager Joe Trippi, Power Line’s John Hinderaker helped arrange and participated in a bipartisan blogger conference call with Geldof http://powerlineblog.com/archives/010659.php, and was quite impressed. Geldof emphasizes the need for free markets and political reform. Geldof has always been interesting.
TheAnchoress Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 6:16 pm
Thank you Nat, and Stephanie.

Nat, I never said orgasms should be suppressed - that they are in and of themselves “bad.” That would be a stupid, stupid thing to say.

But I SAW my brother and his friends and how they lived (and died). Monogamy wasn’t a goal - unending orgasms, unending physical pleasure, were and yes, I think for some it is sheer idolatry.

While Stephanie’s uncle managed to have more meaningful relationships that never happened to any of the people I know and knew (and it hasn’t happened for another gay family member, either…) I think the “partying and breaking rules” mindset too often gets in the way of anything deeper.
Bob Diethrich Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 6:46 pm
I am speechless Madame Anchoress! That was truely beautiful, one of the most thought-provoking pieces I have ever read on ANY blog! I began reading you last fall and had no idea that your brother died that way!

About 12 years ago in the same year I lost my Mother to cancer and gay friend to AIDS and both hurt me deeply. To his credit my friend left this earth with his head held high and never once blamed anyone else, the government, society etc. for the condition he found himself in.

Thank You again Madame!
Oh How I Love Jesus » Blog Archive » From The Anchoress Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 6:53 pm
[...] no slack in his lifestyle choices which led to his death. Please visit her site and read this post. If it doesn’t stir your sould and y [...]
Truthseeker Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 7:33 pm
Thank you dear Anchoress for your fantastic insight into this plague of limitless sex that blights our society and culture. While sex is great, it is a gift from God, and to treat it as a toy is degrading and wasteful.

I also grieve your loss of S, may God be close to you and your family. I know that this subject is not easy for you.

You are quite right to see this incessant clamor over the public expression of sexuality as idolatry. It is an old pagan practice that dates to the beginning of man’s history. In the days of Paul and the apostles, Corinth was a center of such licentiousness to the point that such persons involved in temple sex were said by those in other countries to be “corinthinianized.” The pagan practices have not stopped, Corinth has only moved West.

This is not a homosexual problem only, it is also a heterosexual one too. O has become the god of this world.
Anna Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 7:51 pm
I grieve with you over the loss of your beloved brother.
karen Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 8:09 pm
I thank you for your heart, A. The fact that you did not plan to write so deeply, yet did, well… that is a healing unto itself. This is what scares me so in having a teenage gal. 13 and highschool in the fall. I’m hoping that by being open about sex and how sacred it is w/in marriage will help her seek the grace needed. Even if for the most part. I know hormones, I know the big “O”. For an insecure female it’s more about looking for love in ALL the wrong faces and places. If I can empower my daughter in God as opposed to herself( that memememe you are always talking about) then I believe she will see the sense in waiting. How good it is. And I am truly sorry for your loss. I wish S’s friends had the decency to be true friends. You’re right. The big “O” leaves a big whole in one’s heart.
Linda Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 8:19 pm
Thank you, Anchoress, for sharing your thoughts, and your pain. As I once read somewhere else, it is so incredibly sad that so many have bought into the lie of a pseudo-tolerance as being equivalent to ‘kindness’, even going so far as to call it a virtue. Instead, it is a ‘kindness’ that kills. True love always has as its object what is best for the beloved — as you so obviously exemplified in your love for your brother. No, we can never change others or make their choices for them. But our love for them is never wasted in God’s economy. You have my prayers, sister in Christ.
Linda Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 8:28 pm
Karen, please do check out this link (and book) on ‘how to talk to your kids about sex, love, and character.’ One mother I recently mentioned it to on another blog took it right to her daughter’s school principal. It’s next on my amazon.com wish list…
ForNow Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 9:02 pm
ECKchooally, A, his name is spelled “Geldof.”
As Geldof might sing it:
And there is no “r” there,
’cause there is no “r” there,
what reason do we need to write—write—write an “r”?

—ForNow ForNow ForNow
karen Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 9:36 pm
Thank you, Linda! I bought “If You Really Loved Me” by Jason Evert, but this book sounds right up our alley. It isn’t just the H.S. thing freaking me out, it’s the fact that I’m a divorced and remarried parent that has to deal with her dad being the “better” of us in fun and games and no limits on a damn thing. When my two oldest are with him, I’m nervous about his influence on them. He’s into the game of “O” and has had many relationships. I’m just stating a fact here, not judging. I think I’m going to have to talk to someone at Catholic Charities and figure out how to diffuse this awful atmosphere between my daughter and the rest of our house before she gets sent packing to her dad’s. I feel her negativity, which may just be teen angst, is affecting her little sisters, 5 + 2. Well, now you guys know so much more than you asked for, did you not ask? I’m sorry. Maybe A could write on the dysfunctions of split families when one is a “devout” Catholic and the other is into “O”!?
Victor Eremita Says:
June 6th, 2005 at 11:11 pm
:C.S. Lewis called this modern fertility centered or priapic religion ‘the worship of dark gods’–after D.H. Lawrence’s phrase ‘the dark gods of the blood’. As one commenter has already said, it is possible to enjoy sex without (intentionally) centering one’s whole life around the sex drive–but there also are many people who truly see sex as a substitute for religion, though not all are as explicit about it as Lawrence was–he himself was a sort of Emersonian Romantic pantheist, but one who took the always erotically suggestive Romantic idea of the sublime and made it explicitly sexual.
:Some people do merely want the immediate physical pleasure of the act, though even those people who may seem oh so sensible about casual sex with many partners, as though it were nothing more significant than eating a meal every day, are LOOKING for something through sex–whether that is ‘the one’ or ‘the best experience’. No one is so in the moment at all times that they can be fully satisfied by a life which merely pursues immediate pleasure. In constant repetition even of something as pleasant as an orgasm, one eventually wants to find some greater meaning in it, something better than the act alone.
:But I believe what a lot of people consciously seek in sex, that which really does put it in the place of religion, is a desire for greater closeness to a fellow human being–transcendence in the physical world. Particularly in a world without God, people first try to cling more closely to one another. Unfortunately, when they try to place their faith in other human beings, they often find themselves as helplessly separated even from their neighbors as they already have been from the divine–hence for example Giacometti’s lone standing figures, heavily earthbound, alone because they cannot reach each other, alone because they are all exactly alike–or Emerson’s ’spheres’ which only ever touch at one point and can never know one another fully.
:Lawrence (for although he had no particular interest in Christian marriage before God, he did idolize the single relationship between two people–a marriage before his ‘dark gods of the blood’, at least) and those like him hope to find a sort of transcendence and meaning in sex in which he would feel himself connected to the earth and the rest of humanity once again–in a Godless world, he still wanted to come to know something other than himself.
:And, if he did not find it with one woman, he would continue looking, and looking, and looking. Even a lifelong virgin may be lost in this fantasy (for example, I believe it was Baudelaire, who spent his whole life writing Romantic poetry and then in all his life finally had only one night with a woman, and that with a prostitute.).
:Physical love, and at best romantic love (though only in its first euphoria and not in the less exciting duties it also requires later) are the only things in which people still seem willing to place a really absurd and unconquerable faith–how many stories do we see in books and film wherein being deflowered can somehow make a person better and more ‘well-adjusted’, less ‘repressed’–it has indeed become regarded as the equivalent of a religious conversion or moral awakening.
:But as you say, Anchoress, it certainly is not by mystifying sex with a refusal to speak of it openly and frankly that an idolatry of merely physical love can be countered; mystification and excessive seriousness is what the merely erotic needs most–the biggest mood-killer in an erotic situation is laughter. (Even in his own day, Lewis notes how absurdly serious so many of the oversexed vamps in the ads looked, with heavy pouty frowns–people selling sex can’t afford to make fun of it and dissipate its power.) The Greeks referred to Venus as the ‘laughter-loving goddess’. Or, as Kierkegaard would say, the erotic becomes comic when the spiritual is posited.
CaNN :: We started it. Says:
June 7th, 2005 at 2:44 pm
[...] - YET ANOTHER Study Confirms Gay Life Expectancy 20 Years Shorter … (lifesite) - ACT UP acts out at Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris (warning, explic [...]
Bubbles Says:
June 10th, 2005 at 9:30 am
I’m truly sorry for the loss of your brother.

“It killed his body…thankfully, his spirit did manage to find grace and peace before the end.”

But frankly, I find this puzzling. Where was God’s grace when your brother was first confronting this distortion of his soul? Where was His alleged grace and love and power when your brother was experiencing the growing horror of realizing what he was?

As usual, the Almighty is a day late and a dollar short. He always manages to show up after he’s needed. He then stands around weeping copious tears for the audience; Christ, the drama queen.

As always…too little…too late.
Steve Bragg Says:
June 10th, 2005 at 11:30 am
Bubbles–go and learn what this means: ‘every knee will bow’.
TheAnchoress Says:
June 10th, 2005 at 11:35 am
-I’m sorry, Bubbles, but I cannot allow that comment to simply lie there unremarked upon. Where was God when my brother was making his choices? He was right there. My brother was the one who turned away and sought the world. We are given free choice to do with our lives what we will. My brother made his choices, and then tried to get God to submit to them. You don’t do that.

-That said, when my brother finally did turn back to God for consolation and forgiveness, God was there, waiting for him - having waited for decades.

-Most of the world, btw, was emphatically NOT there for him. God was. Christ was.

-Your “drama queen” comments are terribly offensive to me, and I am sure to many of my readers. would ask you to refrain from posting in that manner about my Lord. He was, finally, my brother’s Lord, too. Where was God’s grace? Right there - but grace and faith are gifts…you ASK for them.

-Where was God? Always, always right there, waiting for the turn. Too little, too late? God is constant, Christ is constant. It is WE who are too little, too late, inconsistant, too often only turning, finally, to a waiting God when time has abandoned us. Thankfully, God does not tell us to “get lost” because we couldn’t be bothered to turn to Him earlier.

-God is there waiting for You, too. Christ is waiting for you. When you turn is completely up to you. If you don’t want it to be “too little, too late” perhaps you should start talking to him about it. I pray you will.
Bubbles Says:
June 11th, 2005 at 10:06 am
Anchoress (and Steve):

You’re right, the Drama Queen comment was grossly offensive, not only to God but to you. I am sorry for that.

As far as God “being there” goes, God is omnipresent; thus, His “being there” in relation to a specific set of circumstances, seems to me to be objectively meaningless.

When I was a child, terrible things happened and I begged God for something, anything. I did not demand or presume. I begged for ten years and got nothing but His silence and indifference. So when you say your brother turned away and sought the world, I have to wonder if all he was turning away from was silence and indifference.

Understand this, I want to be wrong. But every day seems to further confirm this bitterness. It seems to me that to call God “Father”, is to utter the most grotesque obscenity imaginable. Again, I would like to be wrong in this, but I see no reason to believe I am.

Bubbles
TheAnchoress Says:
June 11th, 2005 at 2:02 pm
Bubbles,

I’m sorry to hear that you were victimized in your childhood. I was, too, by my birth father and a brother. My birth mother was…call her MIA, that’s the kindest way to put it.

- If I did not have a “heavenly” Father to call upon I would have had no father at all. So I am grateful for that whole idea of Fatherhood.

- Why do horrible things happen to children? I can’t answer that. All I know is the things that happened to me left their marks on me, and on my spirit, in various ways. I used to stutter and stammer. I am still painfully shy, and I expect I will be forever.

- But the things that happened to me shaped who I am, too.

- They gave me gifts of observation, patience and compassion, a love of the written word (into which I retreated for safety and companionship) and a sort of instictive ability to get a very quick “read” on people, all of which has served me (and my husband and his dear and wonderful family - they ARE my family, now) in very good stead thru the years. The written word is how I make my living. It might have been so, had my childhood been different.

- There is a saying, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…” it’s a flippant sort of remark on the surface. But it is also true.

- - Where was God when I was suffering through years of abuse, abandonment and neglect? He was there. I don’t recall ever asking for deliverance…I just remember the consolation of Him, and of the feminine presence I took - from a very, very small age - to be Mary.

- The people who abused and victimized me were working out their own torments and darknesses. They were making choices in their lives, turning away, as it were, from the mercy, love and compassion of God. As all of us have our lives to live and choices to make, they were making theirs. I was simply a means or tool to that end. In the Holocaust thousands of people were making their choices and millions suffered and died because of it. And yet, if you read a book like Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place, you know that even in the depths of that evil and that darkness, Jesus was deeper still, and brought light.

- I do not really know how to help you in your pain, but you say you want to be wrong. Well, that’s a clue to how you might go about getting your answers. It’s perfectly okay to ask God where he was, to ask him to SHOW you where he was during that time, and where he might have been bringing light to you, even if you did not recognise it for what it was, at the time. It’s perfectly fine to say “give it up, Lord, so WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THIS WAS GOING ON?”

- But then…you have to be fair and give God a chance to answer. Which means…you have to be quiet so that you can hear…and you have to LISTEN so you can know. You have to shut down the noise of the comings and goings of the world for a little while…or you’ll never hear the answer, or understand it.

- I am by no means trying to get you to become a Catholic or even a Christian…but if I might suggest the quietest place I know, it’s a Catholic Church in the middle of the afternoon. Slip in there and sit where you’re comfortable and yell it out to God, in your heart and mind…and then GIVE HIM A CHANCE to talk back to you.

- And if you find God, the Father too scary, of if you are simply too angry, consider asking Mary, who is mother to us all, to pray for you, to help you get where you need to go. She never refuses.

- I thank you for the apology re your remarks; that gladdened my heart. If you decide to take on this “assignment” to get busy demanding of God the answers you need…I hope you’ll keep me apprised of how things are going. And in the meantime, I will keep you and your intention in my prayerbook. Because prayer works. Bless you.
Frank Says:
July 12th, 2005 at 11:22 am
Benedict XVI’s policies do murder people. Ratzinger said that gay people bring about their own murder by pursuing civil equality. Ratzinger has also said that Catholics must oppose giving same sex couples any of the protections of marriage, including equal access to insurance and the right to make medical decisions for one another. As a result of that opposition, a Catholic lawmaker in Virginia had a law passed which nullifies all contracts between members of the same sex which create any of the rights or responsibilities of marriage (like those cited above).

If a twisted Christianity is your own particular opiate, which it seems to be, it doesn’t harm me. However, when your opiate threatens to shorten my life as a gay man and a cancer patient, I object strenously.

As a Christian, I would remind you that God became man to share in the joys and sufferings of everyone, not just heterosexuals. By denying a non-heterosexual a chance to have a partner present at a hospital death bed you are, in many cases, forcing that patient to die alone. This is an undenialbe and profound contradiction of the meaning of the Incarnation. It is not merely un-Christian. It is ANTI-Christian.
Sigmund, Carl and Alfred » OD’d On Politics? How About A Bit On Sex And Money? Says:
May 15th, 2006 at 9:52 am
[...] A while back, the The Anchoress wrote in Act Up acts out at Notre Dame Cathedral, that I've always found it interesting that people who have no intention of following church teaching on chastity will DEMAND that the church change its teaching on condoms. It’s not like they’re actually paying attention to anything the church is saying, and clearly it is a ruse. Gay men are not carousing in bath houses or at the meat racks of Fire Island while thinking…”wait…the Catholic church says Condoms are Bad, and I don’t want to be separate from the church, so I guess I’ll just have to chance it and go bareback, because there is no way I’m not partying tonight!!” For that matter, promiscuous heterosexuals, uninterested in monogamy and unconcerned about their souls, are also quite unlikely to worry about what the church thinks about condoms as they pursue their pleasure. For too many people, the Orgasm is the new Idol. It is the Alpha and Omega of their human experience. [...]
The Anchoress » Oriana and Rosie - two women of the left Says:
September 15th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
[...] The truth is, Ms. O’ Donnell, “radical” anything is unappetizing, whether that be “radical” judges creating laws out of whole cloth, just because they want to, or “radical” gays storming St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Notre Dame Cathedral (hmmmm, musta missed it when the “radical” Christians stormed the Lilith festivals!). Can you admit that? Do you have that much intellectual honesty? [...]
Imagine There Is No Heaven « Sigmund, Carl and Alfred Says:
December 5th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
[...] asked ourselves that question and others, after reading posts by The Anchoress and Melanie [...]