EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

[sisyphusshrugged]

You know, I realize that Howell Raines is not a popular guy at the New York Times right now, and if I thought with both hands for a week I couldn't imagine a more effective way for them to bitchslap him than by not only hiring Andrew Sullivan to write for the Sunday book review section but putting his review on the front page.

Surely there must be someone over there who read the damn thing, and shouldn't they have realized that it's just a tad creepy to publish an Andrew Sullivan review repeating at painful length a story about a barely pubescent boy who "somehow" found himself snogging with an unhappily married woman, and the Wise and Holy monk who convinced the boy that his sin was taking advantage of her?

Um, excuse me? Does anyone who is not actually Andrew Sullivan think that fourteen year old boys are the parties responsible for any sexual interactions they may "tempt" fully-grown adults into? Fully-grown Roman Catholic adults? You're supposed to avoid near occasions of sin because your own weakness makes them a moral danger to you. This does not constitute a sin on the part of the teenager you've chosen to use. (A corollary Catholic doctrinal factoid for Mr Sullivan: if you knowingly have sex with a seronegative person without using protection, you are not, morally, off the hook because they tempted you by being willing to let you do it. What is it exactly about the church that you accept, the costumes?)


This is a quantum leap in Andrew Sullivan's headlong flight away from owning his own shit that I personally would have preferred not to witness, and I would have thought I was safe with the Times.

edit: It has been brought to my attention that I wasn't clear here.

Sullivan's call for recognition and an embrace from the church for homosexuality is one of the few things about him that doesn't offend me. I believe very strongly that love is something that God approves of, no matter who has issues about it.

I do believe that love requires that you recognize the humanity of others as not just equal but the same as your own, and that if you presume to demand as a right the respect that you deny others as a convenience, you need to settle back and work on yourself.

Comments

[pnh.livejournal.com]

Wow, maybe it's the cradle Catholic in me, but I didn't have anything like your eeeeeeew reaction. I'm fairly out of patience with Sullivan, but this particular review seemed benign and even interesting.

This certainly seems like a bit of a distortion:

"...a story about a barely pubescent boy who 'somehow' found himself snogging with an unhappily married woman, and the Wise and Holy monk who convinced the boy that his sin was taking advantage of her?"

I haven't read Hendra's book, but from Sullivan's review it would appear that this "Father Joe," to whom the kid had been remanded by angry adults, basically helped the kid avoid being traumatized. The way you've described it makes it sound as if "Father Joe" landed on the kid's back with threats of hellfire, whereas from the review it's clear that he basically said that at worst the boy was guilty of minor selfishness. His central message to the scared kid was one of forgiveness, and he also seems to have gone out of his way to explain that adults are often nuts where sex is concerned.

The older woman certainly bears a bunch of responsibility, but it seems like a big non sequitur to the actually story of Hendra and Father Joe. As does, frankly, Sullivan's own self-reported abominable behavior. Maybe it's the fact that, like Sullivan, I'm one of those disgruntled American cradle Catholics who wishes they didn't feel pushed away by an increasingly stridently right-wing Church, but I find myself flinching when someone I like barks out "What is it exactly about the church that you accept, the costumes?" Gee, what I actually like is the sacramental imagination, the community of saints, and the idea that God is about forgiveness and love. Like Andrew Sullivan, I've done a lot of shitty things in my life and I could use some of that. Angels don't need churches; weary sinners do.

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

I'm one of those disgruntled American cradle Catholics who wishes they didn't feel pushed away by an increasingly stridently right-wing Church, but I find myself flinching when someone I like barks out "What is it exactly about the church that you accept, the costumes?" Gee, what I actually like is the sacramental imagination, the community of saints, and the idea that God is about forgiveness and love. Like Andrew Sullivan, I've done a lot of shitty things in my life and I could use some of that. Angels don't need churches; weary sinners do.

What I have a problem with in Sullivan's 'connection' to the church is not that he's a cafeteria cradle Catholic, as am I for that matter, but that in his breaks from the church he has gone toward the personal aggrandisement over the church doctrine every time. Just war? Pas de quoi. Living wage? What kind of communist crap is that? Human dignity? But... one wouldn't dine with them.

I am all over choosing the voice of your conscience over dogma. I have less than no use for people who choose personal aggrandisement or laziness or ideology over dogma and then presume to speak of morality.

I don't see any more than the palest circumstantial equation between you and Sullivan, but I suspect you're being a better christian.

[pnh.livejournal.com]

"What I have a problem with in Sullivan's 'connection' to the church is not that he's a cafeteria cradle Catholic, as am I for that matter, but that in his breaks from the church he has gone toward the personal aggrandisement over the church doctrine every time. Just war? Pas de quoi. Living wage? What kind of communist crap is that? Human dignity? But... one wouldn't dine with them."

Now on this, you and I completely agree.

Still, I have some reservations about defining gay Catholics' desire for acceptance as "personal aggrandisement," specifically because that's the charge that right-wing worms like Deal Hudson constantly throw at them. So I'm reluctant to lob it even at a careerist little weasel like Sullivan. Yes, it would be nice if he were more alive to other moral imperatives, but that doesn't mean it's wrong for him to want justice and love. That perfectly human and good desire is the chink in the armor of his wickedness.

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

Oh, see, I thoroughly agree with his desire for acceptance for homosexuality from the church. What I meant by self-aggrandisement is that while he fights to correct what (I see as) a stricture that Christ would not have laid, he holds himself out as having the moral authority of a Catholic while he doesn't feel the need to stand up for any of the moral teachings of the church when they don't coincide with the political party with which he's affiliated himself or the standards of personal responsibility he doesn't choose to meet.

Truly, I don't think God cares who you love, as long as you are as honorable as it's within you to be about it.

I just don't think Sullivan is, and it really upsets me (possibly past the point of measuring my words as much as I should) when he sticks medals he hasn't earned on his chest, whether they be for honest love or an honest relationship with the church he maintains to be part of.

We can all make our case for what a commitment to life requires, but I think we can agree that it requires that you don't make casual commitments to death.