INCREDIBLY HUNG UP ON SEX

Why do Christians flip at any suggestion that Jesus and Mary Magdalene may have been an item? Why did the nuns who taught me throughout my school years cultivate the myth that Jesus was an only child? Was it because, heaven forbid that Mary should have had sex with the long suffering Joseph? (I was 50 years old when I realised Jesus had siblings.) 

Not a sibling in sight

What was the biggest unspoken question when Pope John Paul II’s letters, spanning 32 years, to a married woman were published? In my book, if he did have an oops with the beautiful Polish philosopher he deserved to be Ssainted for sticking with his vocation and serving a broken world.

SECOND COUSIN TO SIN
Fact is we Christians are incredibly hung up on sex, too often declaring it second cousin to another three-letter word – sin. Notably the heroines in our religious traditions are either virgins or reformed prostitutes. There is no middle ground. Too often we fail to take the measure of sexuality within the context of God’s plan for humankind.

Professor Dr Riffat Hassan, a Pakistani-American theologian, notes that human sexuality has been much debated in most religious traditions, including those of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. 

However, while the Jews and the Muslims regard being sexual as good and certainly not the opposite of spirituality, in our early tradition we even regarded sex within marriage, as a necessary evil! 

I paraphrase from Prof Hassan’s contribution to Behold, I make all things new, a book I recently co-edited.

The Qur’an encourages all Muslims who are able and willing, to marry a ‘virtuous’ or ‘chaste’ man or woman. Marriage is viewed as a sign of God’s mercy and a most solemn and serious pledge.

Traditional Judaism views marriage as a contractual bond commanded by God. A man and a woman come together and create a relationship in which God is directly involved (Deuteronomy 24:1).

GRUMPY OLD MEN
But in our early tradition celibacy was viewed as the prime Christian vocation. Paul didn’t think there was any point in saddling oneself with a spouse because he believed Jesus’ return was imminent. Although we must give grumpy Paul his due, he did say it was a personal opinion.

St Augustine didn’t make things easier. He taught that, while sex in the Garden of Eden had been good and rational, the grand Fall turned it into a mindless, bestial enjoyment. A sin that held us back from the contemplation of God.

As Karen Armstrong, eminent historian of religion, points out, his doctrine of original sin would fuse sexuality and sin indissolubly in the imagination of the Christian west. For centuries this tainted the institution of matrimony. Augustine’s teacher, St Ambrose of Milan, believed that ‘virginity is the one thing that keeps us from the beasts’. The North African theologian Tertullian equated marriage with fornication.

St Jerome wrote, ‘It is not disparaging wedlock to prefer virginity. ‘No one can compare two things if one is good and the other evil.’ (I kid you not)

IT GETS WORSE

Martin Luther, who left his monastery to marry, inherited Augustine’s bleak view of sex. ‘No matter what praise is given to marriage,’ he wrote, ‘I will not concede that it is no sin.’ (Nonetheless he and Katharina, a former nun, did produce six children.) He regarded matrimony as a ‘hospital for sick people’ which merely covered the shameful act with a veneer of respectability, so that ‘God winks at it.’

It wasn’t until the 16th Century that Frenchman, John Calvin, became the first western theologian to praise marriage unreservedly. Thereafter Christians began to speak of ‘holy matrimony.’

In short, the present enthusiasm for ‘family values’ is relatively recent. Mind you Catholic priests and gay Anglican priests are still required to be celibate. And the Catholic ban on artificial contraception implies that sex is only for making kids.

SEX CAN BE SPIRITUAL
Yet it was the Catholic Cardinal Basil Hume who wrote, ‘every experience of love gives us yet another glimpse of the meaning of love in God himself. Human love is the instrument we can use to explore the mystery of love which God is.’

Of course there is loveless sex but, let’s face it, sex between two people who do love each other can be glorious. A hymn to our Creator.

Needless to say, passion is fueled by obstacles – the basis of the world’s most famous love stories. 

Throw a priest in the mix and you have a doozy.






MEGGIE AND FATHER RALPH

Anyone out there old enough to remember The Thorn Birds? A best-selling book in 1977 and a popular TV series starring Richard Chamberlain and Rachel Ward. The love story involving Meggie Cleary and the strikingly handsome and ambitious priest, Father Ralph de Bricassart tugged at heart string across the world.


It struck a special chord with me because a 17-year-old school friend had had an affair with an equally beautiful Catholic priest. All of 16 myself I walked her path of desolation through the minefield of nuns, parents and Church as she was labelled a temptress and he was relocated.

I’ll never forget the day he arrived to conduct a three-day silent retreat for us girls – about 150 teenagers with raging hormones and not a boy in sight. As he walked on the stage, black cassock, white dog collar, thick black hair, the collective ooh, aahs and giggles must have sent shock waves through the gaggle of nuns who had joined us for his first address.

It was group adoration at first sight.

For my friend – tall for her age, a bit overweight, introvert and battling a bad case of acne, it was the beginning of much, much more. Long story short, she arranged a private session to pour out her troubles. It was close to end of term and they continued to meet during the school holidays. Her mom, a single parent with problems of her own, thought it was for spiritual counselling.

I can’t remember how the truth eventually emerged but I will never forget the depth of my friend’s misery. How she was judged and why she attempted suicide. Nearly 20 years later we bumped into each other in a shopping mall and she shared that she still loved him. She even joked that he’d helped to clear her acne.

As a mature woman all I could think about was how he had abused a desperate young girl. Years later when I was ordained into Anglican priesthood I came to understand that it’s not all about paedophilia or abuse. Priests fall in love; ordination doesn’t stifle libido, therein lie some of history’s most famous love stories.


MODERN LOVE STORY

The recently published letters written by the sainted and popular Pope John Paul II to the Polish-born US philosopher Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka have added to the cache. Although her letters are still locked away, the 350 he wrote reveal real affection and I found his gift of a mini scapular to her deeply moving. A gift from his father, he’d worn it since childhood and it would have been one of very few possessions.

She was married and he had taken a vow of celibacy but that scapular, an intimate item, reflected a deep spiritual bond.

In case you are wondering, a mini-scapular consists of two postage pieces of cloth, wood or laminated paper. About the size of a postage stamp it features a prayer text or a devotional picture linked by cords and is worn with one image hanging on the chest, the other on the back. 



DOING WHAT ONE OUGHT
One of Pope John Paul’s better known quotes is: Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought. Against the backdrop of his deep friendship with Tymieniecka it assumes huge significance.



Edward Stourton, the lead journalist behind the BBC report, was told that Tymieniecka had professed her love in a letter written from a park bench in Krakow in summer 1975.

John Paul visited her and her family the next year when he spoke at Harvard.

In a letter dated Sept. 10, 1976, he wrote: “Last year I was trying to find an answer to the words, ‘I belong to you.’ Finally, before leaving Poland, I found a way — a scapular.”

In subsequent letters, he referred repeatedly to it, saying it allowed him to “accept and feel you everywhere, in all kinds of situations, whether you are close, or far away.”


THE END
Friends of Tymieniecka told Stourton she was at the Pope’s bedside on the eve of his death at age 84 on April 2, 2005. Her husband, Hendrik S. Houthakker, a Harvard economist who served in the Nixon administration, died in 2008. She died in 2014, at 91.



It’s a great story, possibly because it leaves so much to the imagination and it has the best of ingredients – a beautiful brainy woman and the most powerful man in the Catholic Church.

NO VOCATION UNDER THE DUVET

Writing this blog has been a wake-up call.

I have always fallen short in the retentive memory department and I really battle to recognise people until I have had a lot of interaction with them.

The former translates into cramming for school exams, struggling to remember names in my congregations, forgetting birthdays and the dates of life’s milestones. The latter is a mild form of ‘face blindness’ which is why it didn’t help when the Lesotho police once put me in the same room as a man who had held a gun to my head the night before.



I’d helped them capture him and his accomplices but he’d changed his distinctive tee shirt and red shoes which I would have recognised like a shot. He was also too far from me in the large room to pick out his distinctive body odour which I still recall 40 years later.

Of course the cops had to let him go.

Reams have been written about face-blindness, which in its extreme form is called prosopagnosia and is a neurological disorder. Who knows, my mother may have dropped me on my head as a baby but I’m pretty certain that both deficiencies are the outcome of being an adored only child primarily focussed on future achievement and self.

It hurts

Problem is, I hurt people, as in when I confused two women in my parish. The one had visited me in my home with her husband but I mistook another for her the following Sunday.


It’s why when I shop in our local mall I smile and greet all shop assistants – many of my parish work there. I also do a lot of nodding and eye contact as I wander for shop to shop. If anyone half smiles at me I do a proper greeting. (Father Christmas and I should open a charm school together.)

A fuzzy past



As I blogged my journey towards Anglicanism and my rather unusual priesthood, I was forced to work out dates and remember details that were part of the blur of my past. Looking back, I am amazed that my lifelong friends have stuck with me. (Spare a thought too for the rectors I have worked under and my bishops.)

The now

The blog was also a whole lot more. It forced me to take measure of the present. One in which I, a ‘retired priest’, pick and choose my involvement with Church. I commiserate with friends who still have to attend Council meetings and synods as well as deal with pew politics. I pontificate on Facebook. Twitter, Google+ and in the blogosphere.



By the 20th post it was becoming increasingly more difficult to write. Besides being thoroughly bored with myself, the blog was a convenient distraction from the relevance of my present relationship with God and my chosen Church.

I’d forgotten the key lesson I’d learned so many years ago from the Mother’s Union at St James in Diepkloof, Soweto: There is no retirement from God or ministry. Vocational seasons may end but you can’t spend the Winter of your life in bed with a duvet over your head.





The blog posts proved a soul-jolting alert that I had allowed myself to drop into a quagmire of complacency. I’d forgotten the long hard journey I’d undergone to reach an understanding that my prime vocation lies in my talent for communication, not parish ministry.

I’d forgotten, and hadn’t even blogged about, the long battle to accept that editing the Southern Anglican magazine, serving as the archbishop’s international media person and using my writing skills was my vocation.

In recent years I’ve effectively relegated my vocation to ‘the good old days’.

As I reached blog post 32 it was like pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks. December offered the excuse to take a break. Blog 33 wasn’t any easier, particularly within my personal anger of yet another Anglican delay regarding homosexuality. When I re-read that rant I knew it was less about my relationship with Anglicanism and a whole lot to do with spending the winter of my vocation under a duvet.

For what it’s worth, herewith the result of my reflections. If anything they prove, yet again, that there are no coincidences. They are God-incidences. And, yes, God does have a sense of humour.

The first step was to acknowledge that my vocation is not to swan in and out of my parish on high days and when the rector is on leave. I may have to use Google a whole lot more these days but I can still write.

So, if writing and editing is my ministry where do I stand?

Ever stood on a rake and had the handle swat your nose? That’s what happened to me as I reviewed 2015, which I’d come to regard as annus horribilis. I’d lost my main source of income as the publisher I worked for had his own problems. There was a mad scramble to survive financially.

True to form, I tackled the problem myself with only the occasional desperate arrow prayer. (I’m superstitious about praying for money.) Eventually things got so bad, I conceded that I could do with some Godly assistance. (A smidgeon off a grovel.)

Call it luck or a God-incidence, shortly afterwards I was commissioned by the Church of Sweden to edit a remarkable book. Called 'Behold I make all things new'. Its contributors present a compelling case for reinterpreting the Jewish, Christian and Muslim sacred texts with regard to homosexuality.

I’d lived through the reinterpretation of the Bible to prove that apartheid was not God’s will. I’d watched Anglican theologians reinterpret Scripture to allow women to be ordained into priesthood. I had seen the pain Christians inflict on God-loving homosexuals. In short, I jumped at the chance to edit that book.

Besides providing a welcome editing fee, it has proved a personal blessing and I can’t wait for it to be published. (I will keep you posted).

In January this year I finished my mystery novel. Far from holy, it is also in the publishing pipeline and is set in the Anglican Church. Its main character is Archbishop Sibonelo Shakespeare Khumalo (his mother was an English teacher) and some of you may have met him on his Facebook account.

Shakes has a lesbian daughter who expects him to live up to his promise to preside over her marriage service and a wife that reads the bible far more literally than he does. But his immediate challenge is that he needs to solve a couple of murders to stop a campaign to defrock him.

It’s meant to be a fun read. The God-incidence is that the writing of it has forced me to walk in the shoes of an Anglican archbishop who is torn between his personal life, current theology and the need to avoid schism.

Needless to say, I was so busy with both books that the ‘vocation thing’ lost priority. Besides, there are two other books in the pipeline, I manage three Facebooks accounts, two Twitter accounts, this blog, a LinkedIn account and I potter in Google+.

I’ve hit the pause button. Please pray for me as I try to discern if God has deftly recalled me into a vocation of communication or if I am just interpreting that ‘call in the night’ to suit myself.

Meanwhile, I am encouraged by Rabbi Meir Baal Hanes who says: ‘Any interpretation of scripture which leads to hatred or disdain of other people is illegitimate.’

In the same vein, Karen Armstrong, the moving spirit behind the worldwide launching of a Charter of Compassion in November 2009, has stated: ‘If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology.’