Last week's commentary from Tom McMahon was only the warm-up. In this commentary and his next he's into the main game attempting to examine the relationship between these strange bedfellows; Homosexuality, Homophobia and Religion/Church. It's difficult territory to discuss in public but Tom makes the attempt.

Part one of Tom's digest version of the history of homophobia … playing with the big boys … invitation to share a historical journey … the thorny issue of homosexuality and the church.

The little boy from 15th street is cautious as he opens up this commentary. The pathway through this issue of homophobia and homosexuality is loaded with intellectual WMDs and possibly even bodily harm. I need study the navigating skills of Odysseus as he slides through Charybodis and Scylla, mindful of the price one can pay for truth telling or in my case truth guessing. Perhaps I should take out my copy of THE ODYSSEY OF HOMER, a verse translation by Allen Mandlebaum (Bantam 1990) and read up on this long, life-consuming adventure. Did you ever ask yourself if you are on such a journey, each of us an Odysseyan captain of one's own ship? Life is awesome and very diversified. The discovery of human potential is awesome What control does religion have over human life and its potential? Could the clues to understanding homophobia — aka fear of the human being — be vested in religious antiquity?

Further details of Ken Follett's books can be found in the marketplace

I want to take readers on a journey, one that has haunted me and whose connections are vague — with clarity lost in centuries of historical cover-up. I choose the male homosexual as the key player in this historical search. I claim no absolutes and I can produce no factual data. In my own mind I hurry through huge historical periods and I do fill in with imaginative ideas the gaps in periods of time that have gone silent. Can I get the contradictions into readable words? I would hope that those who journey with me have read Ken Follett's WORLD WITHOUT END and PILLARS OF THE EARTH. Follett offers the religious stage for the drama of life in the Middle Ages; his fictional characters are real life. I enjoy greatly his take on the Middle Ages bishop.

Homophobia and Homosexuality are well established ways of life in the old Roman Empire; although suppressed under watchful eyes, sexual orientation and diversity do not disappear in the Middle Ages but definitely go underground, along with any open awareness of sexual problems, especially heterosexual relationships ... (quoting Peter DeRosa in Vicars of Christ) in the 1300's "Peter Comestor said: the devil never harmed the church so much as when the church adopted the vow of celibacy".

Screen shot of Spiegel interview With Gay Theologian David Berger. Click the image to read the full interview.

Ever since clerical sexual abuse has raised its fire-breathing-head from the seemingly placid clericalism of the mid-1900's I have suspected a golden thread of harmful evil that deeply infested the very roots of the Roman structure. Can I trace the tarnished thread of abusive power from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century? My search must find its way through goodness, aka Genesis godliness, as I believe all creation is sound, good, and beautiful. I will struggle with the issue of good and evil. Throughout our journey I need carefully and respectfully separate those genuinely homosexual by nature from those man-made homosexuals who have continued to deny their sexual orientation so as to maintain power positions in society. I am seeking out the homosexual that is mentioned in last week's interview with Edgar Berger, the "big boys/old boys club" that plays hard ball religion, all "for the glory and honor of God". The old boys' club members are secretive and manipulative. (Brian can you run again here the LINK to Berger interview, Spiegel Online.)

Let the journey begin, as my 82-year-old mind digs deeply in my memory bank. I shall not be cautious. I shall cross paths with episcopacy. I offer here part one with a conclusion next week.

With my background as a retired army chaplain I have maintained a modern interest in soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress. My imagination takes me further back to the collapse of the Roman Empire and legionnaires who, returning from the battlefields, may have found devastation of family and property … nothing of life left. I am mindful here of the statue of the Rape of the Sabines in Rome. Women are stolen and natural life is void. Mentally damaged men sought refuge in the monastery which is fast becoming the all-male bastion of rules and restored order. (Note the use of "religious orders" that has come down to our present day.) We will find them again in the era of the Crusades, for example, The Order of Knights Templar, their ranks filled with warrior-monk-clergy-priests. Their pseudo-existence is found today in the comic Knights of Columbus and the Knights and Dames of Malta, appointed, as in by-gone days, by papal authority. As far back as the 4th century Benedict the Great's monastic rule had severe punishments for monks who abuse children.

Psychotherapist Richard Sipe and lawyer-advocate Fr Tom Doyle have brought this to our attention in their expose of modern clerical abuse. There is a long-lived connection between loneliness and religion as warfare. Sexual power is not eliminated by taking a vow; it can be suppressed while remaining explosive. Its power is not diminished just because women are not present. Here we run aground on the mystery of the possibility of making a male a homosexual. Here we have a resurrection of the question of "institutionalized homosexuality", as asked two weeks ago. Is the collapse of the present day seminary system an omen of a greater failure?

In the collapse of the Roman Empire the monastic system becomes the haven for disturbed personalities; at first perhaps minimal in numbers but as time goes on and society disintegrates the monastery becomes the center of education and betterment of one's way of life. The taking of vows particularly that of chastity becomes the watchdog of internal order and there isn't a woman in the household. Sex, women, family, marriage, and human relationships are seen as evil. The question of male to male relationship is mute, even to this day. Thomas Merton will journal his physical relationship with M to counter this tragic thinking of the monastic Middle Ages. (Learning to Love, the Journal of Thomas Merton Vol 6, 1966-67). The woman as source of evil, from the convenient story days of Eve will be an icky-sticky until after Vatican Two. When women are outlawed does the genital/sexual instinct in the male die? Does a homosexual have nature's power boaster, testosterone? A powerful inner struggle with nature will dot history as midwives are burned as witches, and pregnant women are seen to house the devil. The general atmosphere is confusing and certainly not of the Creator. The bishops have deliberately bypassed that Genesis tells us God saw male and female as good.

The flexing all-male power...

One of the first signs of the flexing all-male power and the annihilation of women from ordered religion shows up in the bishops at the Council of Nicea in 325 c.e., they recommending that a priest (non-monk, a worldly secular, allowed to marry perhaps like Peter, supposed first pope and surely not a monk) avoid marrying a widow. The camel's nose is under the tent of a married clergy. The relentless pursuit of ridding the ordained priesthood of women is underway. Myriads of minor Church Councils will railroad the issue of women and clergy to a finality (so the bishops proclaimed at the time) in 1139 c.e. when Pope Calistus 2 sanctions the First Lateran Council's destruction of clerical marriage. Having listened to Peter Damian they declared all church clerical marriages null and void. Peter D. has some choice words to describe the legitimate wives of priests … she wolves, whores, pigs, seducers, devil females etc.. I wonder if Peter ever thought of his mother?

San Pedro Damiani, Biblioteca Classense, Ravenna – Italia

Look up Peter Damian, born 1007 c.e. on Wikipedia. I copy only a snippet from the introduction "Peter was born at Ravenna, orphaned early, and after a youth spent in hardship and privation …" Note the early age of the death of his mother, the same situation of John Paul the 2nd. Peter also favored flagellation for the monks to control their bodily desires. Under Peter Daman's exhortations Pope Nicholas the 2nd, 1059 c.e., did implore the bishops to give example of chastity; they replied defiantly that they were not equal to the task of preserving celibacy and not interested in any punishment of law breakers. The whole was a mess!

Given that with the absence of female nurturance some already abused males would make a way of life out of suppressing what they called "evil tendencies". There is far too much evidence that an epidemic of homophobic conduct had been unleashed into the now male-only system of the Church. Is it here that I ask the questions: does one have to be a homosexual to become a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church? Does a simple heterosexual priest have a chance of being celibate in today's highly sexualized world? My response will be carried in next week's commentary. (Brian LINK here to the article on the closing of Belgium seminary by John Dick.)

Click the image above or HERE to read John A. Dick's commentary in NCR on the closure of the American College of Louvain..

The seminary of today is all male, the priest factory that hopes to stamp the male mind with the ability to live life without women. A homosexual by nature will be attracted to this all male atmosphere. The seminarian must be indoctrinated in the same way that Middle Age bishops were prepared for office seeing the female as a danger to his vocation.

What is the office of a bishop? Before the humanization of Vatican Two a priest was consecrated as a bishop, given the fullness of the priesthood Jesus himself bestowed on the twelve at the Last Supper (so they say!) The door way to power in the church is opened in seminary days. Someone among today's seminarians will be the cardinal-archbishop of Los Angeles, New York, or Sydney — a powerful financier.

Keep in mind that old Roman Law saw children and women as property. Abuse is as old as humankind. We will find being abused a way of life in the Industrial era of Charles Dickens and the likes of Oliver and The Artful Dodger. Supposedly the celibate parentless life of a bishop or priest immunes him from child abuse, at least not his own children. Today's newspapers carry a different story and the bishops have been most clever in making sure the spotlight does not turn on the episcopal rank.

As I have written in previous commentaries I have an imaginative picture of Christian communities of the early centuries offering to society a starkly different picture in which respect for one another and love of neighbor is dominant ... "see how these Christians love one another"...

The bishops of the 325 Council of Nicea recommend that a priest not marry a widow. I sense discrimination and wonder about the position of women as the early Christian community begins to disappear. Women are forbidden in the cloisters of the monastery. I recall reading that marriage and family life was a feather in the hat of a married priest around 900 c.e.. Benedictine historian Godfrey Dieckman told us of the rivalry between a secular priest and a religious order priest as to who's Mass could get a soul out of purgatory faster. The question is money for the monastery or funds for the upkeep of a priest's family. The history of celibacy and clerical marriage is muddled and murky.

"It is harder to crack a prejudice than an atom!" ...Einstein

Tom McMahon, in San Jose, Ca. Has Tom lost his way in the confusion? Yes and no! I still have my eye on Follett's medieval bishop comparing him to today's men in scarlet. This commentary took many hours to put together. I wish it had more clarity. 13/12/2010

[Index of Commentaries by Tom McMahon]