NEALE WALSCH AND CONVERSATIONS WITH A TALKATIVE GOD

FROM BOOKS TO FILM

Finally Conversations with God, the film, has reached Hong Kong. I’ve seen it and also heard its remarkably repetitive musical theme - music as mantra perhaps. The film is quite biographical. As such its conversations are almost more encounters with varieties of American ruthlessness towards the kind of unfortunate that Neale Walsch once was on the streets than conversations with whoever/whatever precisely is the talkative God of his best selling books. These records are now out in 37 languages and the film also shows how a certain type of book deal is done.

Walschs’ bad times are used to make him look chiefly a victim/saint full of publicly relevant feeling once he becomes famously influential. The reality might be a little different. Not only does the real life Walsch look, dare I suggest it, a bit more canny and streetwise than Henry Czerny’s sugary performance of him, but his beliefs suggest something a little more aggressive than the mild mannered talker of the film. His website recently defined his work this year as “A Civil Rights Campaign of the Soul against the Judgemental God”.

Walsch’s God is and isn’t new. The writer studied a variety of spiritual traditions from youth on but his, or his God’s, statements (for which one must go more to the books) offer a synthesis (pot pourri!) for the modern world of many religious thinkers and philosophers. But also their denial, like most obviously he’s a God of Love echoing Judaeo-Christian tradition yet also very much not the God of that tradition because he doesn’t want, judge or oppose anything. But judge is something even lovers do. “God” for Neale is however simply Pure Intelligence (which could signify an idealization of the cerebral/intellectual interests of the writer's Virgo sun sign) and Essential Energy.

Whatever within the nature of this conversing deity owes more to Walsch’s past influences (he was raised Catholic), to unconscious inventions or even the dictation of spirits (since I can’t allow God is involved for reasons that will be clear) is an open question albeit the author claims to be uniquely “inspired”. He doesn’t regard himself as channelling at all. Even so, what’s certain is that it’s rather contradictory to present an unwanting, therefore impassive, God as one so exceptionally keen to dialogue unless you’re prepared to identify your unconscious self and God more than Walsch seems to want to do. The film does moreover suggest in conclusion that we call upon this “God”, so he’s (sort of) separate and out there.

WHY SO POPULAR?

It’s notorious that Americans have little sense of history hence also religious history. Even so it’s quite ambitious (or arrogant) to imply that all the prophets and thinkers before oneself must have got it wrong about God either for yesterday's or today's world so that with at most a nod in the direction of past inspiration one can as good as start again.

Why don’t fans and devotees (since Walsch is now almost a cult figure) have a greater suspicion about what’s being offered? Basically I think this guru profits from the (un)philosophical postmodernism of the times which doesn’t want the big picture (“grand narratives”) of the major philosophies with their generalizations. Accordingly it will suffice if individual statements sound helpful, wise, comforting and relevant (and taken in isolation undoubtedly some are). They especially seem so for America where Walsch’s success began and which has a known yen for positive thought formulae taken on board very pragmatically and often regardless of the larger framework from which the statements may derive.

However… what there sometimes is of Walsch’s bigger picture does raise questions. Beyond reincarnation you need to believe (rather pantheistically and hinduistically) that everything and everyone is “one”. But are they really so, and especially as they are right now? It used to be that religions including Hinduism separated people out by initiation to obtain higher knowledge. In the world of Walsch's conversations there’s no initiation and everybody is one in God. But do you really believe you and God are “one” with murderers, torturers, paedophiles, etc. I suspect Walsch fans aren’t passionately asking themselves these questions. And they don’t need to because this God denies that evil like death really exists, (death and birth are the same thing). This means Walsch comfortably also denies any hell really exists - but again is that really true when (as indicated last article) people often experience negative N.D.E s that take them to such a zone?

HANDWRITTEN SPIRITISM

While undeniably seers have on occasions been told to ‘write” the words of God as a single message usually communications from God are precisely words of God, speech and also reverberant declarations of limited length that the recipient may need time to absorb so that dialogue gets slowed or postponed. Frequent automatic writing such as Neale relies on and which allows the author more rapid reaction and dialogue has most affinity with modern spiritualism or channelling though Walsch doesn’t allow the comparison – as said he claims he’s “inspired”. Given the frequent contradictions that channelling is known to turn up tricksy spirits that esoteric writers link to the astral plane are often said to be responsible for it, while some Christians might go further and speak of demons and “doctrines of demons” scripturally warned against (1.Tim 4:1). The latter are what (if Walsch’s conversation phenomenon is more psychic/spiritual than just imaginative and unconscious) the author has some chance to be dealing with. Especially so since Walsch's God so emphatically keeps (in essence even if without specific source references) denying cardinal scriptural concepts and beliefs.

WHO HAS CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD and WHY?

In fairness it’s easy to be critical and deconstruct but what would a true conversation with God be like? It’s what perhaps everyone feels they occasionally want and need and at the folk/popular level of almost every faith tradition people attempt it and assume its possibility because it’s human to pray and ask questions. But is it right and possible under the rules of the main religious systems? Supposedly not if you’re a Buddhist since Buddhism is “atheistic”. Not if you’re a Muslim since then your duty is hearing and “submission” (which is what Islam means),not dialogue. Hinduism is more about devotion and mantras than conversation though the dialogue idea is known but more as a concession to the devotee's failure to realize the illusion of everything including his/her separate self.

So one is left with the dialogue of I-Thou communication of Judaeo-Christian tradition that Walsch is avoiding or indirectly opposing. In Judaism conversation exists but is somewhat restricted to prophets and the super observant who should cover their heads if male. It’s Christianity that through Jesus has democratized dialogue whose range, (but not style or content), effectively Walsch imitates without acknowledgement.

Even in Christianity dialogue has tended in recent centuries to be more Protestant than Catholic. In Catholicism saints and priests enjoy some privilege here. Traditionally believers speak more to Mary, saints and angels below God. Evangelicalism stresses “personal relation with Christ” and thus a familiarity in prayer but this relies on opening to relation through a degree of imagination and a Jesus who confirms contact or supplies “guidance” or deep intuition through scripture. Since however even at its most relevant scripture is not "modern" (no planes, no computers, no word for "homosexuality" etc) the scope of dialogue can be limited in some areas. This leaves us with direct experience charismatics who lay claim to the Spirit and (arguably) democratize experiences lost over time or hidden in monasteries and mysticism (Teresa of Avila seems very “charismatic”). Also instead of concentrating on God through Jesus or on just Jesus they may address and hear from all members of the Trinity.

In contrast to the automatic writing of Walsch, charismatics have automatic speech, (“speaking in tongues”). This is said to be incomprehensible unless translated by gifted associates but experience is that while they are "uttering", concepts, ideas, phrases cross the speaker’s mind so that usually he/she, even without any translating witnesses, approximately knows what’s being said by themselves and/or by God. This is therefore the nearest to “conversation with God” (short of the revelations of prophets who anyway more declare than dialogue). It’s also dialogue of an internal spirit with and through Holy Spirit, a major contrast to Walsch’s “soul” talk which is said to thrive (like wicca and magic rites) on use of emotion. Although charismatic experience appears emotional and may be introduced by surges of emotion as a shift in level of consciousness takes place the core experience of Spirit appears to be cool, not impersonal, but detached.

NEALE WALSCH AND LESE MAJESTE

Emotional/devotional/love relation to God is directed upon Jesus by almost any believer, not just charismatics. A more mental/”intellectual” relation attaches to the Spirit through whom the “mind” of God is known while the “will” or power of God is most known in relation to the Creator/Father. Some would maintain (and I myself only discovered it in the course of processing the variety of experiences recorded in Thunder Perfect Minds) that only certain subjects are appropriate or even allowed with one member of the Trinity rather than another. Perhaps one of the bigger shocks of my spiritual life came when I was told that certain issues (political and rights issues in this case) that I considered a proper subject for prayer must be referred to Jesus and not God the Father (whom I believed I was addressing) because there was something else we would discuss. When I had time to absorb this –the initial shock of the communication in its sheer force and clarity left me almost reeling – I wondered if in feeling terms the comparison shouldn't be with those who got their protocol wrong in Versailles and strayed into the apartments of Sa Majeste’s when they were meant to be directing towards Monsieur le Dauphin’s.

It’s not the only time I've felt I made some kind of faux pas. I once strayed towards mention of precisely Conversations with God. I shan’t mention it again in a hurry unless it's specifically mentioned to me. Doubtless with God there are better subjects for dialogue. I should say Neale Walsch belongs to those who have presumed, who have committed Lese Majeste. It’s a pity his readers aren’t more suspicious of the fact but it’s notorious that false prophets have big followings in the short term.

ASTROLOGICAL ADDENDA for NEALE WALSCH and HIS CONVERSATIONS

There is no birth time given for Walsch, born Sept 10th 1943 at Milwaukee, IL however…

For those who want a bit of astrology of Walsch, his success and fame are reflected in Jupiter (religion/philosophy/publishing issues) conjunct the connective nodes both on 15 Leo, a world point.

The writing and the automatic/spontaneous/unusual writing are very clearly given by Mercury (writing/ communication) fortunately trine Mars (energetic, driven writing) and Uranus (unusual innovative writing). One of the points of these conversations is to gain a “modern” vision.

I have been a bit of a voice crying in the astrological wilderness for the idea that Pluto is the true planetary symbol for God. However, given this assumption the notion of having or just wanting "Conversations with God" is clearly mapped by Mercury (conversations) in opportunity sextile to precisely Pluto.

Pluto rules Scorpio so we are not surprised that at the world premiere of Conversations, (27th Oct 06) all of Sun, Venus, Mars, Mercury and Jupiter were in the God sign of Scorpio but with a Saturn square to Mercury raising questions (Saturn is doubt) on what God we are talking about.

This fundamental problem is already in Walsch’s birth chart which shows a difficulty square to Neptune the mystical planet (which however receives an opportunity sextile from asteroid Lucifer). Neptune square Saturn can be depressing and is doubtless involved with Walsch’s life of want and beggary on the streets. I maintain that the temptation of Christ occurred when Saturn transited opposite his natal Neptune.

Due to lack of a birth time I am unable to know where the moon stands on the day and this could affect numbers of aspects important in assessing the work of persons relying on intuition and who are writers. (The Gauquelin statistics considered the position of the moon very important for writers). The moon is in either late Capricorn or early Aquarius.

SEEING JOHN LENNON IN HELL (A question in assessing some modern visions) PART 1

HELL THEMES THAT WON’T QUITE GO AWAY

Is John Lennon in hell? Whoever asks such a question? (It’s getting asked on the Net). And why ask it if you can’t be sure of the answer anyway?

What prompts me to give reply - of sorts - and highlight what strikes me as a real mystery around an iconic figure arises from attempts (against the background of some visionaries I'll be considering who seriously claim to have seen Lennon in hell) to supply a test and impose some order on a new or renewed phenomenon.

The phenomenon is the growing spate of visions of heaven and hell in recent years offering “evidence” for an afterlife. Of uneven quality and interest these have nevertheless been getting either published in the mainstream (bestselling novelist, Anne Rice, has even called Howard Storm’s Doubleday published, My Descent into Death, a book “everyone” should read) or reported on the Net. And now Tony Lawrence, a psychologist in Coventry, England is making the first “scientific” study of negative N.D.E.s (Near Death Experiences), the kind in which dying people visit hell or believe they were being dragged there by demons.

Lawrence’s inquiry follows in the line of the work of former atheist heart surgeon, Maurice Rawlings, who in his groundbreaking Beyond Death’s Door (1979) and works since records many instances of patients reporting hell visions on the verge of death. Here we have very different testimony from the accounts of blissful experiences emphasized in especially New Age writings which make reassuring accounts seem the only picture. (Pioneering N.D.E.researchers like Kubler-Ross controversially excluded Rawlings’ evidence as too upsetting or inconvenient). The negative data remind one of the rather psychic visions of the early Celtic saints who reported angelic/demonic battles around some souls who had just departed the body.

As Lawrence realizes, hell testimonies are complicated by the fact those reporting them are not necessarily obvious sinners. If the visions are not purely illusory then, religiously at least, this looks like a situation that could link to Christian claims about right attitudes and right relations to God (as opposed to just good deeds) affecting whatever happens beyond death.

Obviously even the most compelling of these modern visions aren’t any holy writ. Just because people claim visions including of Lennon in hell we don’t have to believe them. At best such witness can be treated as new apocrypha, material not tested or made canonical like scripture. There could nonetheless be value in assessing them, not just “scientifically” but religiously. Yet such work is something almost no one seems to be doing, nor are they especially trained to today.

CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE VISION JOURNEY

Assuming, as I think we can, that most contemporary visions represent vivid experiences of some kind and not just edifying inventions, a few basic considerations to apply would surely be:

1) Is the given vision to be understood more as a out of body journey to real places or a visionary/allegorical symbolization of what such places/states are essentially about? (This seems like a major question).

2) In the heaven/hell journeys are we seeing elements influenced (even contaminated) by readings not just of Bible but of Dante and various early medieval apocryphal visions of torment and bliss?

3) Similarity of report and repetition of details among visions ancient and modern are nevertheless not automatic disqualification - they could be confirmation of something. Especially as some archetypal factors could be at work. Heavens and hells exist in world myth and the collective unconscious. As such they are waiting to be picked up and embroidered upon.

4) But are what looks like embroideries upon a core vision distortions of memory or features added to suit some church or sect or even aesthetic necessity like Dante who claimed to have been allowed to glimpse heaven but whose Paradiso consciously invents most of its details? Thus Choo Thomas, a Korean visionary who has clearly taken Calvinistic ideas too seriously, reports in her undeservedly best selling Heaven is so Real that she saw her mother, (a good woman who suffered much illness throughout life)in hell simply because she never heard about Jesus. While this fits the narrowest Augustinian/Calvinistic notions (which can even have children in hell, something modern visionaries seem agreed in denying is the case) the author is arguably contradicting wider scriptural witness like Corinthian Christians being baptized for their dead forebears (1.Cor 15:29). That religious ignorance alone can’t be an automatic condemnation with God both Bible and common sense support.

5) Memory distortion could equally go not just in religious but New Age, secularist or just socially expected, convenient directions. I recall a much recorded case of some years back of a boy who returned from death saying he’d met Jesus then telling a TV show a month later he’d met “a wizard”.

Yet with all doubts and caveats admitted there comes a point in study where readers may be forced to admit something significant is getting reported even if they can’t understand what and why. If a clinically dead person reports their spirit body floated up to the next floor ward and witnessed things medical staff there were verifiably doing or saying, evidence for something must be accepted. Some people have their lives changed by N.D.E.s - Howard Storm was a rank atheist before the events described in My Descent into Death altered him for ever….

AN IMPORTANT TEST

But here’s a test. When visionaries allege they entered other worlds then they are most likely conveying truth if they can tell us something unexpected later found to be true.
It’s here that something nags me regarding claims around John Lennon and despite the fact the principle vision that includes on his fate is not above criticism as regards what I’ve called the “contamination” that I won’t take space to comment here. While I would hope what the cited vision claims about Lennon is untrue - I don’t approach this subject with the biases of either a serious fan or critic of Lennon but only curiosity - my treatment can be taken as an example of one of way to go about reading evidence in a little charted territory. .

A TRIP FROM COLOMBIA TO HELL

Here’s the grim, strange story a translation of recorded interviews regarding which is given at….
http://www.spiritlessons.com/Documents/7_Jovenes/English_7_Jovenes_Heaven.htm

Back in 1995 (the date of April 11th around 10am is given) a group of young Colombian Christians – recent converts from Catholicism by the sound of it - are preparing for a picnic and say prayers before departing. The picnic never eventuates. Suddenly a brilliant light shines through the window and not only are they surprised by the Spirit falling on them so that they speak in tongues but Jesus appears and declares he will lead all seven on a journey through hell to heaven. As regards hell Jesus says they must witness it because even Christians have ceased to believe in its terrible reality and they must warn people about it. Suggestive rather of out of body spirit journeys almost shamanic style than trance/visions a kind of funnel appears in the floor through which the group descends to the abyss.

The seven, despite their pieties, are clearly neither theologians nor saints but pretty average Latin Americans or just human beings. They are completely thrown by the experience, unprepared and confused. One of the chicas hasn’t sorted out that hell isn’t purgatory and that purgatory isn’t taught in the Bible. One of the older members of the group has earlier had a relation with consequences and will meet his aborted offspring as a child who is growing in heaven. One chico, Lupe, imagines Judgement Day must have begun so that as they proceed he is begging Jesus to forgive his sins as he fears he can only finish up with the souls he’s being shown.

Hell proves to be as richly varied as Dante’s inferno (had they as Catholics been influenced by that?) and this colourful variety alone might make it seem unbiblical enough to be questionable. However as Jesus tells them, even this hell (whose tormenting variety for all we are informed may have been the devil’s invention) is only temporary. It’s not the real and final item but awaits to be thrown into Gehenna, the lake of fire (as per Rev.20:14). It’s not explained why the demons the group see are free to ridicule and torment certain inhabitants of the deeps (shouldn’t the demons themselves be punished?) but other contemporary visions have done this. Demons supposedly vent their hatred of God upon the humanity formed in his image and they are free to do so not having yet reached the Last Judgement.

JOHN LENNON IN A HOT VALLEY

So on the group’s journey John Lennon is seen caught in a thoroughly Dantesque section of the Inferno described as “the valley of the cauldrons”. There, with millions of others from across time he is seen disintegrating and reforming much like a Dali picture (his favourite artist incidentally) yet able to observe the terrified visitors and Jesus to whom he calls out. Unlike the mostly calm Dante with Virgil the Colombians report screaming and crying their way through the entire inferno journey beseeching Jesus not to let them see what they witness. (Whoever imagined the redeemed have the joy of viewing the tortures of the lost or that the saved would have heaven spoiled for them by its opposite? – once in heaven with its many fascinations it’s cheerfully stated: “the horrors of hell were soon forgotten”, a real contrast to those whose vision journey only encompasses a hell from which they may suffer months of trauma). Depending on how seriously one can take this strangest of visions (truly the Dantesque experience for postmoderns!) it’s an interesting detail that unlike other cases it’s not stated for what, principally, Lennon, is stuck there. (Is it unbelief, “sorcery”, immorality or what?). Also it’s recorded Jesus turns away from him apparently without the feelings of pity Sandra reports Jesus as directing towards a trapped alcoholic.

Why do I hesitate over this bizarre tale which could seem, and simply be, fantasy born of some collective hallucination? If nothing else it fits my rule of the unexpected. In 1995 Lennon was fifteen years dead and not particularly newsworthy. And wouldn't there be enough figures from Nero to Hitler (not to say colourful Latin American dictators) for imaginative persons to pick out without once thinking of Lennon? Whereas other shades seen by the group in hell could more easily be deemed products of their imagination or at least what I call “contamination” of a genuine vision, with Lennon we have a known person, imperfect, but not the most obvious inhabitant of hell. So the specificity itself is peculiar.

It's also somewhat peculiar for religious reasons. Even if one is assuming the whole Christian picture of judgement rather traditionally and literally would one imagine John Lennon to be in hell anyway? One reason to doubt the idea would be because he had been taken from life fairly young and quickly, murdered, which to some degree could increase the grounds for mercy. In any case I also vaguely recalled there had been some sort of half-hearted but nonetheless genuine enough reconciliation with God, even report of being “born again” under the influence of Billy Graham whom he had been watching on TV. If even I, who am no Beatles aficionado, managed to know this one imagines such details would have filtered through to people of distinctly evangelical persuasion like the Colombians and it would surely make them try to keep a much beloved popular figure out of hell.

Whatever then were these Colombians on about? Though the Beatles’ heyday was a bit before their time were they taking an extreme and very belated fundamentalist revenge for Lennon’s references to the Beatles being more famous than Jesus? One of the group mentions that matter but goes much further. The Beatles to which Lennon belonged are described as a “Satanic” group. But had their influence really been satanic? This struck me as rather fanatic, a sign the vision was either false or severely “contaminated” perhaps by American missionary ideas. Yet remaining curious anyone of the group could even think such things I put in just a little research. When I did my easy convictions began to unwind a little and the mystery only deepened.

A SATANIC INFLUENCE?

Satanic? What about the fact that Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band had presented arch Satanist, Aleister Crowley, to the public as one of the “people we like” and had helped make him and perhaps Satanism respectable? What about the rather insulting lines of Lennon’s 1970 “God” lyric, “[I] Don’t believe in Hitler, don’t believe in Jesus” (as though there was some reason to mention the two together) and the suggestion God is “a concept by which we measure our pain”. The more famous Imagine lyric invited imagining no heaven or hell to exist but instead a utopia that would implicitly exclude God though Lennon himself said he believed God was in everyone and also that half of him believed he was God Almighty. The later, less famous and very dark Serve Yourself lyric was a denial Jesus or anyone could save us.

From a certain point of view, therefore, Lennon’s thoughts ran from one denial, dismissal and defiance of things divine to another. Then, though not overtly either atheistic or satanic as such, what about the fact that due to fellow Beatle George Harrison’s financial support alone the otherwise rejected, Life of Brian film which makes light of Christ’s life, got before the public reducing respect for Jesus and belief in society at large? Harrison himself opted (in Judaeo-Christian terms) for the idolatries of Hare Krishna cult.

Interestingly, the Colombian vision dates from 1995 i.e. many years before the true and detailed story of Lennon’s religious development came out. It has only now been recorded in any detail in Steve Turner’s recent, The Gospel According to the Beatles. In the wake of admitting to evangelist Oral Roberts that he wanted freedom from “a drug hell” it emerges there was certainly a Lennon born again phase, even to the point of church going and witnessing for and writing songs about Jesus in a way astonishing to friends and unacceptable to Yoko Ono. Ono, though recipient of a Christian education in Japan , was/is herself quite deeply and obsessively into the varieties of the occult i.e. what Revelation would damn as “sorcery” (Rev 22:15). In her world quests for rituals and magical artefacts Colombia was one of Yoko’s ports of call where she consulted witches (she now calls herself a witch) and threw out $60,000 there for elaborate rites culminating in the magical sacrifice of a dove.

It seems Ono worked on Lennon’s chief doubt which had always been regarding Christ’s divinity, a subject about which Ono and Lennon engaged passionate argument including with Norwegian missionaries. The upshot is that under his wife’s arguably controlling influence Lennon lost or denied his faith apparently to the point he was joking about the crucifixion at a re-run, which he said should be fast forwarded to the crucifixion, of the Zefferelli Jesus film that had been a factor in his original conversion. In a tirade against Christianity he declared himself a “born-again pagan” and his final belief system appears to have been some form of paganism. His reclusive last years included a lot of meditation and fasting sessions towards becoming a psychic cum guru with messages for the world, an aim he had given up on only in the last few months before his death but both he and Ono were deeply into the occult.

BAD STRIKES FOR LENNON?

If we accept this picture as true then it becomes more serious in strictly Christian terms. In another context than Lennon, the visionaries mention seeing (but, possibly influenced by biblical statements about those who fall from grace Heb.10:26-27), that worse perdition is reserved for those who deny a faith once possessed. Even if in his heart Lennon didn’t completely do that, joking about the crucifixion belongs to a nasty, bullying streak in him that in his youth caused him to mock the crippled (as I once recall reading). It’s the sort of trait only major fame causes to be forgiven and forgotten. God would be less likely to forget and if we are supposed to see Christ in others then to put it mildly it’s the opposite of everything spiritual. The same might, alas, have to be said about Lennon's moral score card in the marriage stakes since he left a young wife and child for an older twice divorced woman who arranged a mistress for him because the marriage proved so tempestuous.

It is reported that Lennon calls out to Jesus to deliver him, but Jesus passes on ignoring him at which Lennon starts cursing Christ perhaps betraying what his deeper permanent soul feelings always were, the whole very publicly declared [ I ] “don’t believe in Hitler, don’t believe in Jesus” type sentiments. These in turn might be said to fall foul of sterner gospel declarations to the effect that those who deny Christ before society will be denied before God (Mt.10:33).

Yet even if one could make a case from traditional beliefs for this Beatle to end up in perdition, does ANY of this make sense? For moderns the greater question is does hell ever make sense and can people respect, love or believe in a God to whom the idea/fate of anything like a literal hell is attributed? I shall tackle these difficult problems in Part 2, next month.

I shall also review the Colombian vision against the astrology of its timing which implies that something dramatic that wasn’t purely invention but even rather sinister for its implications did take place. And using the modern kind of exact naming and wording astrology now possible I will show against all statistical probability what’s even more remarkable than the Pope data of the previous article, namely why on that April morning of 1995 certain individuals would be so inclined to believe that, whether in a vision or the actual furnace heat of some unimaginable place, Jesus had met specifically one Beatle and turned away from him.

DESCRIBING POPE BENEDICT'S GAY PROBLEM

IDEAS UNSPOKEN, IMAGES SHOWN

This article conveys some strange facts I must introduce carefully.

Popes are not supposed to be gay, but historically numbers of them have been. Today some might say it shouldn’t be a problem, certainly no crime to their name, if we discovered they could still be gay - unless they were so “scandalously” with choirboys not safe near them. But if they were discreet, if it had been a case rather of one or two favourites, or romances, and they were assumed to be more or less celibate anyway, these milder pictures would pass - or would they?

As a biographical detail the sexual orientation of elderly pontiffs if not dismissed as unimportant could even be deemed (today at least) an advantage for understanding certain pastoral problems or the phenomenon of “gay spirituality”. I believe such a spirituality exists and can be positive and I have written at length on it by way of assessment. However, while precisely “pictures” suggestive of interests, dispositions or whatever in a pontiff might pass censorship barriers - the Italian press has recently dealt in images of Pope Benedict with a secretary they have dubbed, “Beautiful George” along with jokes about prada shoes, trendy accoutrements and arrays of handsome associates - meaningful words and ideas remain harder to admit. In two years I have never been able to put forward issues around gay spirituality with Pope Benedict mentioned as possibly relevant to the larger scheme of things. Easy public acceptance regarding whatever might be the truth about ruling popes still can’t be counted on.

With rank scandal to report there would be unstoppable interest, perhaps outrage. Given anything less spicy no matter what the facts and their potential to influence policies and attitudes these can finish closer guarded than Fort Knox, reference to them more scandalous than scandal itself. What then really is involved for the individual concerned and/or public attitudes to homosexuality more generally in thinking, imagining, or assuming any Pope could be gay?....

A PRIEST SURPRISES ME

When Pope Benedict was elected in ‘05 I was keen to look into what people and the skies (astrology) might be saying about the possibility this pontiff was the last in a long line as per a controversial, centuries old Prophecy of the Popes attributed to the Irish St Malachy. I was struck, as were even astrologers uninterested in the forecast, by a dangerous quality to Ratzinger’s natal pattern. It was in examining this that it struck me this person might actually be gay (even if he was pronouncing in ways more associated with internalized homophobia). While of course one can’t be 100% sure about such things with experience it’s often possible to tell with reasonable certainty.

Hesitatingly I mentioned my thoughts to a well connected priestly friend. He astonished me by laughing and exclaiming “but of course the Pope’s gay”. It seemed to me he could hardly hope to know for certain any more than I did myself. However he assured me that a friend, a top religion reporter, had drawn the conclusion from years of observation. I asked, if such was the friend’s conclusion, why he didn’t reveal it to the world since people’s lives and beliefs are being affected by someone whose approach to gay issues could be considered interested. Well, the reporter didn’t consider it discreet.

"Discretion” is what quite a few people and leaders of opinion seem to want to keep. Gay circles in Rome were soon expressing controversial opinions about the new Pope and a few statements appeared on the Net accordingly but curiously all such report, liable to be dismissed as gossip and rumour only, never got or gets beyond the smallest notice. The bearers of tales could report the likes of Reuters didn’t want to know. Nor seemingly did the gay media. While gossip for its own sake is unpleasant in this case it was almost as though:

a) Whatever the truth a Pope must be protected at all costs from the stain of being considered, in essence, gay, although today we are not supposed to consider it is this, and
b) while overt behaviour would make for interesting scandal a Pope couldn’t hope to escape, the more vital issue of a gay/queer disposition or spirituality at work remains forbidden territory. Do we really now consider sex such a be-all and end-all it’s more important than the mind it merely expresses?

REFUSING “DISCRETION”

The following is not a “discreet” article. It contains its own species of facts for consideration because, whether Pope Benedict is rightly deemed homosexual or not, what’s certain is that before and after papal election he has spoken against gay rights, acts, culture, and marriage etc as sin, folly, a threat to western society and considers the homosexual condition “objectively disordered”. So, whatever the personal truth, arguably his orientation should be more public property than it is.

Even so, I would emphasize I’m not trying to prove that Pope Benedict, if gay, is the conscious hypocrite some might like to make him, though I think in view of what’s proposed here he could be lacking in self awareness and understanding including about how "gay" and "queer" can be defined. (One assumes that the understanding from which Benedict – usually - pronounces on same sex issues is the “existential” one that certain acts alone are what make the gay person truly gay as opposed to the “essentialist” position that one has a disposition with psychological consequences no matter what one’s “acts” or lack of them. On the other hand if an innate disposition can be assumed in people – this is always disputed - Ratzinger would prefer none of it in holy orders, even if celibate, as being something too dangerous. Thus he would seem to be more extreme than many catholic clerics in this area).

It is possible for a person to hate and deny their inclinations rather than work with them as gay spirituality would recommend can usefully and successfully be done. While avoidance of self can be misguided in many cases (if one were a thief it obviously wouldn’t be) in fairness it is not necessarily hypocritical if the person is making efforts as they understand it.

AN ACADEMIC SURPRISES ME

In favour of a theory of a gay Ratzinger in denial I do have one troubling story come to me through academic associates and someone I have met, a former pupil of Ratzinger many years ago. This (straight male ) person dislikes Ratzinger to this day because the latter doggedly refused to address or even look at him the whole time he was his pupil. This remains inexplicable to the person concerned, but is it so unreadable ? This could represent a tale of a younger, perhaps more fanatic Ratzinger who today has got beyond such asceticism/custody of the eyes(?) behaviour. Someone who was actually a co-student of the young Ratzinger, maverick theologian, Uta Ranke-Heinemann, says somewhere that her classmate seemed to lack “all eros”. But perhaps he would do so only in the eyes of a heterosexual woman like herself? How might others perceive the enigmatic style with which Ratzinger has long puzzled at any rate male and female heterosexuals?

Since unlike these people I haven’t met Ratzinger and so can’t make personal judgements I shall expound here on all that I can know. This is some very striking data from the new style astrology which speaks in ways that even a layperson can understand and in this instance strangely, descriptively and almost amusingly seems determined against all statistical probability to make a gay point. The data (16.4.1927, Marktl, Germany, 4.15am CET) may even persuade you there’s more to astrology than modern skepticism had permitted you to think.

READING GAY SKIES

Ask the average astrologer if he can read gay orientation in a horoscope and he’ll probably tell you, no, though he/she may concede there are some pointers. The position of the planet Uranus is nonetheless deemed important and it’s long been known that certain aspects frequently crop up like the moon to this separative and gay linked planet. Moon/Uranus neatly reflects how gay males dissociate from the opposite sex. Even so, your astrologer probably won’t be using, and may not know of, a mathematically determined Part of Homosexuality (this writer has it conjunct his natal sun) and a collection of gay asteroids that help fix and describe matters more exactly with higher levels of probability.

And let’s be clear that however improbable the matter may seem, asteroids really work and very clearly so and not just for gays. For example, there’s an asteroid, Bali. Australia's Schapelle Corby, famously imprisoned in Bali, has Bali conjunct her natal Saturn, principle of restriction and sorrow. The pessimistic philosopher, Schopenhauer, whose name is a byword for pessimism, has his name exactly on the cusp of his ninth house of religion and philosophy. Innumerable meaningful coincidences of this sort regularly occur. They happen for Ratzinger too. Suggestive of his huge influence and powers of communication in the world, his urbi et orbi voice, the asteroid, Ratzinger (there actually is one!) conjuncts his Mercury (communication) from his first house of personal image. Also Benedix (his real latin name as Pope) conjuncts his Midheaven of destiny, reputation and career from within – of course ! - his ninth house of religion.

So asteroids work and they make for greater accuracy in navigating the still little charted area of gay astrology. So far the main gay/queer asteroids are Sappho, Ganymede, Antinous, Gaily, OscarWilde, Leatherman, Barney (relevant to a type of lesbianism through association with Natalie Barney, “Pope of the Lesbians”) and Fruits. Yes, even Fruits works. I have found it has something to do with strong camp/drag tendencies - the late radical activist, Harry Hay, who founded the Radical Faeries had it closely conjunct his Venus (where else?) and trashy film actor, Divine, had it rising in his natus (i.e. linked to his body image) and aspected to aggressive Mars besides, so he really pushed camp trash!

Objections that non gays may likewise show these asteroids significantly placed can be explained and dismissed. We aren’t surprised to find the likes of Radclyffe Hall (pioneer of modern lesbian fiction) with Sappho conjunct her Venus but straights can have Sappho prominent too. In that case they are likely to have gay friends or siblings or some life situation that makes homosexuality important for them.

Gaily, perhaps the preeminent gay asteroid (combining as it does English and French Gay/Gai with the gay letter L or Greek Lambda, the symbol of gay) can play double in the way just indicated. Australian gay activist and film maker, Tony Pitman, has Gaily suitably conjunct his sun. However, born the same day so too does his near time twin, American film star, “sexiest man alive” and noted lady’s man, Matthew McConaughey. The latter has nonetheless managed to be dogged by gay rumours for reasons we needn’t consider. But we would have to consider, since given the large array of asteroids evidence will always be certified by extreme accuracy of application and cumulatively, that at the earlier time of Pitman’s birth additionally the gay asteroid, Antinous (a form besides of Pitman’s true birth name, Anthony) was exactly rising on the horizon. So one might say Pope Benedict had enough evidence “cumulatively” to support alternative pictures.

POPE BENEDICT’S FATED HEAVENS

The first thing an astrologer would note is that Pope Benedict has controversy and gay associated Uranus rising in his first house of persona and temperament. More on this position presently but as to other planetary factors astrologers might take into account I shall ignore them for the more readable asteroid data.

• Pope Benedict’s sun at 23 Aries is conjunct the most gay of gay asteroids, Gaily at 25 Aries

• Sappho and OscarWilde, making close conjunction at 26 of Cancer, set up what’s called a square, a difficulty and tension aspect, to Benedict’s sun at 25 Aries reflecting his grave difficulties with and dislike of any gay outness and overt gay “culture” these being precisely the two chief gay culture asteroids.

• Fruits is in Benedict’s fourth sector of the home base within conjunction of its cusp. The Vatican (along with seminaries he has been linked with) is doubtless home to quite a few “men in drag” whom Benedict must meet on a daily basis.

• Benedict’s Ganymede, an asteroid much connected to gay spirituality, is in Virgo in the same degree as his sun, 23. This means it sets up a 150 degree quincunx aspect implying “adjustments must be made” which one would imagine they are! Ganymede is retrograding back towards Benedict’s descendant angle (i.e his chart’s relationship point) at 19 of Virgo – spiritual and ideal relationship is favoured!

• Gossip originally focused on a long time private secretary, the handsome Josef Clemens. Jose (Joseph) conjuncts Pope Benedict’s sun. Granted the pope may have a private cult of St Joseph. However….. though there’s no asteroid called Clemens, asteroids very much work by sense and sound-vibe (since the heavens aren’t English!) and there is an asteroid Clemence which when pronounced sounds like German Clemens. It falls in the seventh house of relationships and exactly opposite gay planet, Uranus, which can thus symbolize both some attraction and separation to someone called Clemens. And if there had been some element of separation it could have occurred when Clemens was raised to bishop.

• More recently even the Italian press has drawn attention to the good looking men around the pope and the ubiquitous presence of George Gaenswein, the current private secretary. Perhaps George should be called the Pope’s other face since asteroid, George is within minutes of a degree exactly on Ratzinger’s ascendant (personal image/face/ body ). Anyway, to see the Pope these days can often be to see George, who from his prominent position (determined by the birth time which fixes an ascension point ) ought to possess a degree of influence. This comment incidentally requires me to note that the Pope’s chart is super accurate time-wise and if one applies traditional (i.e. planetary) astrology, was suitably and dramatically aspected at the time of papal election.

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

Pope Benedict’s Uranus, the gay planet, stands in extremis. At 0 Aries, a cardinal sign, it’s very initiating in its potential and it’s on a world point (potential international influence and controversy for things Uranian). It makes difficulty square to Mars, the sex planet not to mention “ruler” of the Pope’s sun, itself conjunct the other world point at 0 Cancer. At ground level in the average chart any Mars square Uranus aspect could betoken a quirky person, accident prone or possibly even an out-of-control, “in your face” gay person which Benedict isn’t. He’s just a bit of-control and “in your face” in some opinions about gays. He certainly has some of the brilliance and quirkiness of prominent Uranus as it affects his academic record and views on a whole range of topics on which he can be an interesting and insightful thinker.

In my experience no sign has more dramatic problems with homosexuality - their own or other people’s - than the ultra patriarchal Aries whether it’s someone like singer Elton John who was years in denial or a writer like the Russian novelist, Gogol, who is believed to have had religious reasons to suicide over it. Benedict if he were gay could have more than one view and feeling about the condition he considers “intrinsically disordered”. His natal Part of Homosexuality, a Part which seems to have quite a lot to do with how gay people regard their orientation, falls in Gemini, sign of the double. It is in tension aspect to Benedict’s ascendant angle (self image in the world) which carries the dreamy, elusive Pisces (itself a sign at variance with the qualities of Aries and hence the basis of the quiet mystic with aggressive rottweiler personality combination that puzzles everyone about Ratzinger). If Pope Benedict had alternative orientation there could indeed be tensions and more than one opinion about what really constitutes “homosexuality” and how its acceptance or rejection would affect his already contested personal image…..

Or so it seems looking at this pattern of the heavens….But of course I’m not a journalist or academic who has met the Pope. And then there are people who would deny a Pope could ever be gay, just as there as there are also people who assert that astrology could not possibly be true despite the most obvious signs. We must all make up our minds on some things if we are not to be denied the option to do so in the way this site emphasizes too often still occurs today even and especially to those of us whose task as writers is supposed to be the questioning of common views.

Still, I should want to insist that I am not in the business of perceiving alternative orientations everywhere and attributing them to every cleric, still less to popes. And I don’t write with malice as I don’t personally think it matters if Pope Benedict is gay (though if he is he should deal with gay issues better). When I was asked back in ‘03 on Irish radio would I as an authority on gay spirituality be saying next I believed Pope John Paul was gay I was emphatic I didn’t believe so, and I didn’t. I do however believe Ratzinger is an interesting, even strange person….and the heavens endorse me for that idea at least. He even has asteroid Wunderlich (German, for strange or possibly queer and this Pope is, after all, German) conjunct the horizon at birth. It’s enough to make one exclaim with Alice in Wonderland “curiouser and curiouser”.

SEX (AND GENDER) IN HEAVEN

A NOT QUITE ETERNAL PROBLEM

It is widely believed that sex in heaven doesn’t occur and that angels are male or else sexless. After all, doesn’t Jesus state that in heaven the righteous will be like the angels in heaven who don’t marry (Matt.22.30)? The tendency to think that spirituality is bodiless plus horrified incredulity at the thought (the substance of occasional vulgar jokes) that with a heaven full of male angels there could only be what there couldn’t be – sex unmentionable – has all added up to a frigidly no eros paradise. But is this really true to Bible, spirituality and common sense?

I had always had doubts about the sexless, genderless (or mono-gendered) heaven as it doesn't make sense within the larger biblical pattern despite the words of Jesus as commonly understood. After all, why the Genesis story of the fallen angels who desire and mate with human females? (Gen 6:2) These are angels who plainly have gender and genitalia and surely they wouldn’t have the latter to no purpose or acquired them solely as a result of the fall? And although it sounds suspiciously like a projection onto women of existing popular rabbinic superstitions (along with purely Semitic notions of what sexual attraction entails), St Paul wants women to cover their heads “because of the angels” (1 Cor.11.10). Perhaps he wasn’t thinking of rabbinic notions of mortal women seducing angels by their long locks (we can never know now and he could have been influenced more by the fact that Corinthian prostitutes went about head uncovered) but quite likely he had in mind a biblical/rabbinic tradition of sexed angels that Jesus would have to have been aware of.

Whatever….various significant experiences hitting me in late ‘06 and recorded in my Thunder Perfect Minds diary – which heaven forbid won’t suffer more publishing house snafus because I'll manage to seem out of some category for originality, in this case visionary – left me unwilling to take stock spiritual answers for granted. I had become pretty sure there was a bit more for me and everyone to know about sex and spirit than was currently acknowledged in churches.

ARE THERE FEMALE ANGELS?

First let’s sort out of the gender issue. Especially feminists inside and outside the churches have become off-put by the all male heaven of angels, tiresome copies of the male God it is thought. The assumption here is that because vision portrays certain classes of angels as messengers or warriors and males to their task that no female angels exist nor perhaps were even intended to. Remember that in the NT there is really no quite specific word for “angel” (it means messenger in Greek) but it is plain from sense and context that heavenly/spiritual messenger is meant. On the same basis this means, (albeit in the OT whose Hebrew does have words for such as cherubim) we should assume that a reference like that of Zechariah 5:9 is to what we understand angels to be.

“Then I lifted up my eyes and saw, and behold, two women coming forward! And the wind was in their wings like the wings of a stork and they lifted up the ephah between earth and heaven”.

These “women” are plainly quite as much angels as the “men” which angels in the resurrection and ascension narratives are taken to be. What would these “women” be doing flying between earth and heaven to do the divine will if they were not to be understood as angelic beings? If we hear less about female angels it’s perhaps because they are otherwise occupied than upfront biblical angels of whom we do hear. Modern NDEs sometimes report angelic singing in very high register female voices, so female angels are choiring. Also there is occasional report of mother type angels welcoming and instructing children who have died young. This would certainly make sense if one believes in angels and heaven at all.

A DIVERSE HEAVEN

So much for deduction. What about experience?. While I have no personal experiences of heaven, just before leaving Australia and shortly after I had fallen over the Zechariah reference I also chanced to be introduced to a pastor who had undergone a fairly prolonged NDE experience. He was considered by his doctors (though not quite by himself!) lucky to be here and alive…he would have preferred to remain in the Beyond. This is the only person I have met who had notably undergone otherworldly experience and could lucidly describe it.

Points I absorbed before posing the questions about angels were: that unless and until you have a body of resurrection heaven is too much of everything, including noise, to be able to bear easily despite the bliss. Angels praise and the voice of God thunders and mighty waters rush. Much of heaven, even the simpler things like its innumerable colours and textures cannot even begin to be described and as in the vision of Ezekiel there are beings that defy description. Angels however are more “human” than other heavenly beings. Even so their light and power can be quite terrifying as it was for the women at the tomb at Easter and they need to assume a more human form, (dim down one might say), for mortals or even visitors to the Beyond to be able to cope at all.

However, this same witness said you just sort of know angels have gender and that there’s not an all male heaven. And he maintains (in line with what one does read of the odd Semitic euphemisms that the Bible sometimes applies in which the genitals can be the thigh or the feet) that the wings of Isaiah’s seraphim that cover their faces and their feet (Is 6:2) should be understood as covering their face and genitals.

This doesn’t make too much sense to me since the still perfect Adam has no desire to cover his genitals when God walks with him. But then neither did he cover his face. It seems one would just have to accept that things are different for angels and mortals. The more important point if the cited witness is to be believed is that, covered or uncovered, angelic beings should be sexed at all. And even from persons who have not “visited” heaven but who claim to have seen or felt angels I have heard of sensing a vibe, strongly male in such as the class of warrior type angels, milder and more feminine in others.

HEAVENLY EROS

If one affirms angelic gender then one raises the problem, for some people, of sex in heaven. A classic reason to spiritualize the idea of sex out of heaven is precisely Jesus’ words (in a question about levirate marriage custom of his society) that there is no marriage in heaven. To literalists the alternative to a no sex heaven would have to be the impossibility of “sex outside marriage” - i.e."fornication". This was a term which biblically started out meaning most essentially sex with prostitutes but which over church history would evolve into meaning just about anything apart from missionary position marital sex and perhaps especially the gay sex which believers would then additionally decide must remain at the "fornication" level unallowed any forms of union that might sacralize it. So, as heaven couldn’t possibly be promiscuous/hedonistic (given to "fornication") there simply couldn't be any sex. This way the literalistic moralist follows a circular logic that banishes sex from spiritual worlds entirely.

I think the point is that yes, there’s sex in heaven but as with everything in paradise it’s not exactly like the things of earth. Earthly sex is reflective of, but not identical with, whatever heavenly sex might be. And it is only commonsense to assert that earthly sex, whatever other purposes and meanings it may have, is most essentially about procreation and this most essentially entails such as marriage and family.

Though angels are sometimes loosely referred to as “sons of God”, we don’t hear of “families” and marriages of angels or angels reproducing unless the fallen angels on earth. And then, as opposed to the mortal spans within which family operates, eternity is a very long time to be linked to only one person even if one’s behaviour were to be very far from riotously promiscuous and orgiastic! Perhaps those who have passed some of the tests of marriage on earth might be better qualified to negotiate the discretionary behaviour of heaven and the merging of light which Yeats imagined the loves of the angels to be? So I think no marriage in heaven simply means exactly that and nothing more. There’s no marriage in heaven but that can’t be taken to mean there’s nothing at all that corresponds to the sexual.

IS HEAVEN ALL HETEROSEXUAL?

If this is good news for some what might this seemingly heterosexual heaven have to offer those gays who don’t quite fit the picture once we have seemingly got rid of that seminary-like all male heaven of angels? Let those whom Jesus referred to as born “eunuchs from their mother’s womb” (which by his times could mean not attracted to the opposite sex, not castrates) fear not. Their identities are supposedly so little wiped out that if they make it to the heaven of Isaiah (he of the seraphim) that prophet has already declared they have a chance of being more honoured than those who married and made dynasties (i.e. the heteros) (Is 56:5).

But this begs the question, if you’re born gay and might even finish with a better place in Isaiah’s heaven for having got through life being so, of just what are you archetypally derivative? No matter how imperfect the earthly models, sex and gender can only be modelled on something else and higher – the Judaean Christian worldview is nothing if not Platonic for archetypal design and thought modes.

The answer hasn’t been revealed to me, and I didn’t ask and it wasn’t told me by the NDE visitor to heaven but I deduce it…..There are said to be messenger angels, warrior angels, praise angels, healing angels and others. However visionaries and NDEers do keep on seeing the dancing angels. From report they seem to be male. Their purposes may be rather more spiritual but I am much inclined to think they are the distant archetype of sleepless disco gays whose life would, if they could, be turned into endless ecstatic celebration. I feel like saying shhh, it’s a secret, but you can be pretty sure some or all of them are, sort of, gay.

(The article "If the Holy Spirit has been Seen" includes perspective on certain sex/gender dimensions of the heavenly.

NEITHER THE PROTECTION NOR THE BULLYING, PLEASE!

GAY BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA

Problems are looming in the world of gay rights and perhaps everyone’s rights. I scarcely know which of the two developments around same sex issues treated in the articles at the addresses below troubles me more: the political correctness around homosexuality which Brazil is coming to represent, or the chronic homophobia that Nigeria displays. Both mark the exaggeration of disturbing trends that the world and gays would be better free of and everyone should be more aware of before it’s too late. That the relevant trends exist at all seems to prove that homosexuality is a subject that regularly invokes extreme responses of every kind and that sweet reason directed upon the subject is still very hard to come by.

http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/mar/07031904.html

http://thewickedwoman.com/2007/03/19/gay-anxiety-in-nigeria/


INDECENT OBSCENITY LIBERAL STYLE

In Brazil the so-called Homophobia Law, already passed in the lower house, awaits Senate approval (admittedly against much protest) to legislate that anyone calling homosexuality objectionable/ immoral be imprisoned anywhere from 3 to 5 years. Imprisoned? And for so long? Politicians are nevertheless so serious about this that they want to prohibit even seminaries from refusing anybody on the basis of their sexual orientation….In short, the secular state will tell the churches and ordinary citizens what they will do and think and no one will be permitted their opinions about moral and immoral.

What if the gay applicant to a Brazilian seminary believed it was OK for him to be cruising for boys every night of the week (as the more radical queer theologians might accept)? What if like theologian Michael. J. Clark the gay person wanted to be ordained despite teaching that the resurrection is an “evil” doctrine and the doctrine of the Trinity oppressive? Under the new regime anyone trying to protect the spirituality and beliefs of their organization risks imprisonment as a criminal bigot for merely raising objection to the now super protected gay person!

Increasingly, as in Sweden, where a rather silly elderly rural pastor who should have been ignored was dragged before the courts and declared guilty on account of a sermon, gays are everywhere becoming the pretext for so-called liberals, to put in place a machinery that in the long run risks suppressing free speech and conscience itself. Similar situations to those of Sweden could soon occur in such as England under the SOR (Sexual Orientation Regulations) bill (it comes into force on April 20th but allows 21 months of adjustment) with its sweeping changes. These include regulations to dismiss, fine and perhaps jail church school teachers that would teach homosexuality is immoral or teach any moral law as being “objectively” true. Charities and Catholic adoption agencies which will not be allowed to refuse adoption to gay couples already feel so compromised many may close.

Of course, in a world of too many bad and even abusive parents, doubtless many gay couples make far better parents than many straight ones, but is that really the point? And is it worth having whole well established charities and agencies closed or curtailed in their work because the occasional gay couple who could apply elsewhere might feel offended by a refusal from them? Concern with "equality" here is going well beyond pragmatic social considerations.

DON'T BOWDERLIZE!

No matter how much we may disapprove homophobic attitudes, policies and statements it is surely essential - up to a point – to allow members of the public some eccentricities, bigotries and exclusions and where life and limb are not manifestly at risk we should all refuse to become unduly sensitive. Gay or not, we nearly all suffer discrimination for something, sometimes and must learn to live with it. We may even be better persons for managing to do so. Also, in teaching Shakespeare we don’t approve bowdlerization for some his more questionable attitudes. Nor should we do so for the Bible which should be taught more or less as it is, albeit with a suitable critical eye. In the case of religiously sensitive gay issues we might well hope, as has happened in relation to the biblically semi-sanctioned institution of slavery, they would be something that time and education would alter without the need to round people up for jail to speed the process.

A SECULARIST EXPLOITATION OF GAY AGENDAS

It’s rather clear what’s happening. Cynical secularists have rightly seen that homosexuality is a chink in Christianity’s armour. They are now happy to work to exploit this by creating trouble for churches and religion generally (not just Christians are worried by the new laws) by “defending” gays to a degree almost as absurd as that of their forebears who opposed them.. But punishing the likes of charitable workers so that a section of society rightly or wrongly much associated with partying won’t ever feel offended, is the latest form of indecent obscenity.

Though we want gay rights and protections and I am keenly aware how subtle forms of homophobia still silence and exclude gays in especially religion (I could here and now accuse well known names in religious media and theological circles of deliberate neglect or active obstruction), yet still I must defend the broader principle of free speech. I must also trust in the process of education. Personally I hate that my liberal views in this area should be associated with politically correct policies ultimately threatening to democratic principles in religious and social life alike. I am also unhappy with those gays in the West who currently go along with what is done on their behalf without sufficient concern for the greater social good.

But that’s one side of the picture…..

INDECENT OBSCENITY CONSERVATIVE STYLE

We now see the polar opposite in Nigeria. There we realize how far unacceptable prejudice will go among some authorities in religion and why secularists and radical gay activists feel no compunction about wanting to control such people. The Nigerian church group, "Changing Attitudes", is warning there could be an exodus of gays from Nigeria because of the daily violence against LGBT people and the new oppressions. These are as good as advocated by the now notoriously homophobic Archbishop Akinola, himself controversially aligned with Muslims to oppose homosexuality to the extent the aim appears to be to legislate alternative persons and ideas out of existence. The so-called Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act of 2006 doesn’t only prohibit marriages or unions. It forbids anyone celebrating or attending them on threat of years in jail something also to be visited upon anyone assembling in public or private to support or celebrate gay rights in any form – one should not even write about them!

The behaviour and statements of Archbishop Akinola over recent years have been such that if he had been almost anyone else he would have invoked much greater criticism from the international community. This hasn’t happened partly because of the inherited guilt people still feel today around the treatment of blacks so that they don’t like to condemn them even when their behaviour is plainly “over the top” (like physically throwing a representative of gay affairs to the floor at the 1998 Lambeth Conference).. Today what is arbitrarily assumed to be orthodox doctrine in relation to gays in Africa (where the opinions of experts in and out of religion count for nothing against the most narrow literalisms) is being employed with almost inquisitorial force and reckless unconcern for the damage to the wider church it doesn’t care if it splits.

Among the rank falsehoods Akinola proclaims, and is allowed to get away with among most other African prelates, is a) that homosexuality is not indigenous to Africa but western imported and b) that it is unknown to nature whereas science shows it is very much known to the natural world. Akinola might be better occupied protesting the rights of the seriously persecuted Nigerian Christians instead of aligning with their persecutors, even somewhat appeasing them, by willing to punish a gay minority. It’s an unpleasant picture.

SEEKING THE SANE MIDDLE

If there is any solution it is to find a safe space, a middle ground from which to speak to increasingly extreme and extremely divided parties today. In my Thunder Perfect Minds I have something to say about the rapid growth of a new Out of Church Movement, an informal fellowship of people who meet together, some believing God has told them to leave the institutional church, others who have left it because they cannot stomach any longer what the churches are doing and saying.

I think if gays are not to finish contributing to underhand secularist agendas or unnecessary, damaging church splits and if they want to speak out freely then to retain integrity they might need to go in similar direction to the Out of Church Movement. They need to speak from something like a Post Gay Lib Movement. Indeed, if they are to avoid being guilty of helping to make society like atheist China where everybody is vetted for whatever they say, especially religious belief, there will have to be some such movement. Whatever happens the situation is becoming grave but where there’s a will there’s a way. And enough is now at stake for a way to need to be found.

IF THE HOLY SPIRIT CAN BE "SEEN"

GOD NOT SO INVISIBLE

Around last Christmas the Holy Spirit was in the news because film maker Brian Flemming and the highly irrational Rational Response Squad tried to establish an atheists’ campaign, The Blasphemy Challenge, to commit the unpardonable sin of blaspheming the Spirit. Strictly speaking this would only be feasible if you recognized the Spirit exists and wanted to call the goodness and miracles associated with this person of the Christian Trinity, something evil. Atheists don’t even acknowledge the Spirit exists, so mouthing “I deny the Holy Spirit” to You Tube couldn’t really achieve this blasphemy as believers understand it.

Ironically, though, quite a few Christians might as well be saying “I deny the Holy Spirit” for the amount they firmly believe in the Spirit’s existence, while among those who do believe almost nobody claims to have “seen” the Spirit. Apart from charismatics claiming to be overshadowed or possessed by the Spirit the widespread Christian disbelief, or half belief, is perhaps influenced by lack of an imagery to attach to - apart from the dove and the abstract wind and fire.

Yet despite the ancient association of doves with the feminine and Venus, according to Jesus the Spirit is both a person and He, ekeinos (not neuter in line with pneuma in the Greek). In which case what does the Spirit look like and should we have more human images ?

Readers may correct me but I think the modern witness of Sister Prema Pelletier is unique in Christian writing.
http://www.spiritlessons.com/dreams_and_visions/Visitation_of_the_HolySpirit_by_Sister_Prema_Pelletier.htm
A convert to Christianity from Hinduism and now living in Canada she maintains that in the early morning of Nov 22nd 1995 she was shown the Holy Spirit from whom she has moreover received various giftings of a kind one would more usually associate with the saints. I can’t judge the validity of the reported experiences but I do regard the vision as making unexpected sense of sorts. It opens up avenues of thought which I find meaningful in relation to complex ideas and speculations I struggled to convey in my Signs for a Messiah with its symbolic grammar. It also raises anew important questions about the feminine within the divine.

THE SPIRIT APPEARS LIKE...

According to Sister Prema , the Holy Spirit appeared in the figure of a tall imposing man who was followed by a small “angel” perhaps four feet in height. (The angel should surely be described as a cherub and one wonders about an identification of this being with the fiery cherub of St Teresa’s vision where she regards him, though small, as one of the high cherubim). The Holy Spirit as a man however looks quite like Jesus (whom Sister Prema had seen in other visions).

To the extent the Trinity is “one” it would make sense that there should be such similarity. To the surprised Sister Prema, the Spirit appeared like Jesus’ “twin” - though of course it wasn’t a case of identical twins. Their style is different and according to this visionary (if one can summarize in so many words) the Spirit looks less obviously human than Jesus. He is more aerial and “electric”, (almost one might say the spaceman counterpart of Jesus). His eyes open onto infinity; his touch is electric and burning and whereas Jesus has hair that flows down to his shoulders the Spirit has short hair that stands out from his head like short rays or electric sparks.

The latter detail isn’t a minor one if you work a la Jung with archetypal symbolism. I wrote in Signs for a Messiah about Jesus and long hair and mysticism and the accepted symbolism of Neptune that is associated with these. I also wrote about shaved heads and short hair, and also the electrical quality and lightning shock realizations of Spirit in relation to accepted symbolism of Uranus maintaining as I do that the Christian Trinity can equate symbolically/archetypally with the three outer, transpersonal planets, Neptune/Uranus/Pluto. I also wrote of Jesus and Spirit and of Neptune and Uranus as a twin-like pair, to be seen as proceeding from the Ultimate, the Zero/All of God imaged by the Plutonic. And I described Christ as representing the essentially yin, feminine energy of the divine , (even though appearing masculine) over against the yang masculine energy of the Spirit (though identified with the androgynous qualities of Uranus). This ying/yang of Spirit upon the waters is what creates the world in Genesis.

So, obviously I am sympathetic towards what Sister Prema’s vision of the Spirit reveals as it confirms my speculations and symbolic equations. Yet I admit to some difficulties here and almost more for her visionary declarations than my more fluid symbolisms.

THE SPIRIT’S LOVE IS LIKE..

If one maintains in line with the Bible that there is a love of Father and Son, between God and Jesus, then in our emerging picture will we also say there is a love of…..twins….between Jesus and the Spirit and it’s creative for the world? Is one verging here on pseudo- homosexual imagery and claims, especially if one insists upon the electric and frequently androgynous/gay associations of anything Uranian at the more mundane level?

Much could be said on this thorny, complex issue. Here I would simply draw attention to a major thesis of Rictor Norton I cited and summarized in my A Special Illumination/. This teaches that within the history of culture a non biological same sex love in early societies can be considered source and model for later romantic heterosexual love and not vice versa. Certainly the earliest images of woman are less Venusian, sister bride-like and romantic than biologically based, as perhaps they were for the biblical Eve called “the mother of all living”. The earliest, strongest notions of love for heterosexuals were less of the companionate male to female kind than the mother to child kind. Twins, themselves so often an archetype of the homosexual consciousness, contribute hugely to shape love and relationship as we know it. So whatever one’s precise beliefs about God and creation a savour of the homosexual could be associated with the divine archetypally if we take the divine as archetypal for human impulse. But is this right?

WHERE IS THE DIVINE FEMININE LOCATED?


If the historical Jesus is male for all to see while the invisible Spirit is declared by Jesus himself to be male, what hope do we then have of discovering the feminine in God that we are surely meant to find somewhere, even without feminist motivation to do so? After all, though it’s something of a biblical riddle, Wisdom is God’s companion and coworker in creation and She is female. So where is this She who was from the beginning (Prov 8:22-31)? Is She always there, hiding behind or beside God, a sort of potential like Michelangelo’s Eve in his Creation of Adam fresco? Or does She exist in her own right?

Some Jewish and early Christian/Gnostic traditions had it that the Holy Spirit was feminine. It is just possible to read the Hebrew Bible that way, though not strictly the New Testament where Jesus’ words are explicit against the grain of the grammatical to make the point of maleness (and inevitably so if he and the disciples believed the Spirit had engendered him). Recently the American Kittredge Cherry’s novel, Jesus in Love, controversially revives and develops images of the Spirit as feminine. While one may understand the desire today for renewal of such emphasis I myself had never seen the necessity for this particular imaginative/visionary leap because I was prepared to affirm (as in my Signs for a Messiah) that since Jesus is both described and self described as the Sophia (the Wisdom) we could perhaps say that towards the finite Jesus is male but towards the infinite he is somehow female.

This is a bit like making (archetypally speaking) Jesus akin to Plato’s Aphrodite Urania, who paradoxically is, or appears, male. In any case, at least one of the medieval Catholic mystics, Blessed Henry Suso, reported a heavenly vision of Jesus first as male then as a beautiful woman. So maybe Suso saw what God sees, namely Jesus as the Sophia, and “this is my beloved Son” is a concession only to what we necessarily see as earth bound mortals…

ANDROGYNY WITH A GENDER BIAS

However, I am coming round to the idea that what may be involved is something more like an androgyny with bias than the either/or of different faces set towards the finite and the infinite that I have so far hypothesized. I am now thinking more in terms of Jesus and the Spirit being or appearing (and Spirit can take any form as when the Spirit is a dove) essentially androgynous yet predominantly one gender while hiding or implying the other gender which lurks beside or within. Undeniably the historical Jesus appears physically male yet he and his gospel hides a remarkably strong feminine component. Likewise the Spirit is said by Jesus to be, and can be imaged (to Sister Prema at least) as male, yet can hide a feminine “bridal” side that Hebrew tradition has attributed to him.

The reason I incline to this more subtle, fluid view is the result of recent dramatic personal experiences I cannot hope to detail here but which are recorded in my Thunder Perfect Minds book. (I hope this won’t take too long to reach publication given my record for being blocked for the more absurd, irrational kind of excuses that could in certain instances be linked to spiritual blindness and opposition itself ). In the course of the diary I recount extraordinary and shocking moments when I become as aware as it is humanly possible to be so that a barrier is broken and I am having direct contact and communication with God the Father as Father (proof it has to be the biblical God and not the super talkative, distinctly heretical God of Neale Walsch’s Conversations with God is supplied). On one occasion the communication dramatically shifts and something is conveyed that doesn’t fit unless by implication I am being deliberately shown something of the character of God as Mother. Yet this sensed feminine somehow lurks behind, beside, or is temporarily superimposed upon the Father image. You sense it, you don’t see it - unless perhaps you’re Sister Prema permitted to “see” such things and if we can safely assume her vision is valid.

Whatever, I do believe Sister Prema’s vision deserves consideration. It may provide long lost or till now unavailable clues.

BEHIND AND BEYOND THE LATEST JESUS MYSTERY

PREDICTING JESUS EVENTS: IT CAN BE DONE

Controversies around Jesus are becoming common to the point they’re almost booming, not to say big business. The fact that the latest mystery around an alleged Jesus tomb has the support of a noted film maker, James Cameron, has assured its publicity no matter how weak the claims. And those claims were quickly given 10 reasons for dismissal by a noted theologian on his Blog.

However, what’s almost more significant is how and why we have been hearing about this story at this time. Also why we aren’t hearing about other things that we should know about Jesus. Who owns and distributes the facts here?

Back in early ‘02 when I discussed with a publisher in New Zealand when a book of mine about Jesus might be launched I suggested as one possibility a weekend in late October because I believed Jesus could be in the news then. And Jesus was… because on 21st October it was announced that possibly the first archaeological witness to his existence had been discovered through an ossuary box (whose authenticity remains much disputed ), that named him as son of Joseph and brother of James.

Since ‘04 I have been forecasting, and beyond one specialized magazine almost no one has published or listened, that ‘06 and especially ‘07 would be a season of extreme and mounting lies about Jesus. ‘06 produced everything from the film of the The Da Vinci Code about a Jesus dynasty to publication of Kathleen McGowan's novel The Expected One about a Jesus dynasty through the Magdalene who marries Jesus after becoming the widow of an abusive John the Baptist. Now late February ‘07 has produced the announcement through New York of the evidence for a Jerusalem tomb of Jesus allegedly containing the remains of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Mary Magdalene and a supposed son of Jesus called Judah. A book, The Jesus Tomb by Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino is then published a few days after by Thorson’s/Element (Harper Collins). A TV feature film to be shown eventually in all of USA, Canada, UK and Israel has its first release through America’s Discovery Channel on March 5th. All this comes right when I would have expected. But how could I tell the period was a sensitive one for what I would call deception?...

INFORMATION AND ASTROLOGY EXACT AS A FINGERPRINT AND IGNORED

…..It’s because I know exactly when Christ was born and exactly what the Magi knew and a lot more besides. Accordingly Jesus linked events can be read across history to this day. Guided by reputable historical scholarship in the line and the work of noted astronomers I have cracked the Magian code and obtained data for Jesus exact as a fingerprint. It can be seen to be precise because it goes far beyond the conventional, specialized forms of astrology in which I first certified the find while living in Hong Kong in ’87 and is something which, despite the detail, any layperson can grasp. Having been able since 2004 finally to use data from such as the modern new named asteroids for remote dates, of which I have applied well over 300 to the data, defying all statistical probability and retrospectively at that the Jesus pattern produces names, words and virtual sentences to the point one has a working Fifth Gospel. For example:

• Jesus was compared by his contemporaries to specifically Elijah and Jeremiah. Suitably his birth data reveals Elias and Jeremias in close conjunction aspecting the part of a birth pattern regularly associated with a person’s image.
• At the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, (whose date and timing I can exactly pinpoint by innumerable signs resolving all traditional and academic problems around this subject) one suitably finds the asteroids for Lucifer and Peter in exact opposition reflecting a situation everyone recognizes if they know Bible.
• The data is so exact the sector of the chart that naturally relates to family and origins against all chance even turns up the names of Jesus’ leading ancestors.
• The data also turns up a super conjunction “signature” of Jesus’ name with his biblical titles
• Factoring in the so-called Arabic Parts (based on mathematical equations linked to the birth time) the picture becomes still more remarkable. The Part of Brothers impossibly conjuncts the asteroid James, The Part of Redemption conjuncts the identity giving natal sun reflecting Jesus’ self understanding as Messiah. And yes there are Parts of the Mother, of the Father, of Marriage, of Love , of Profession and many more.

The amount of meaningful information that emerges is remarkable and presents a portrait of Jesus’ life and mind unparalleled in Christian history and the history of astrology. It’s so compelling that those who should pay attention don’t do so, perhaps feeling, like the “all Jerusalem” troubled by the original Magi (Matt 2:3), more than anything threatened by the challenge and enormity of this solution to a two thousand year old mystery.

INFORMATION TOO HOT TO HANDLE AND THERE’S NO ROOM AT THE INN

• Influential Christians appear to think they have nothing to discover here or that astrology, despite its role in Jesus’ story, is too inadequate or even verboten to consider. Typically, when I suggested a feature with The Church Times I was dismissed with “we know all there is to know about Jesus we don’t need to know about the Magi”. American reviews like Christianity Today can be expected not to reply.

• Not even with the Australian Society of Authors appealing to him or more recently an editor of one of my books mentioning me to him as a friend has an astronomer, an inspiration for the researches, risked (I presume) to compromise himself as a scientist by contacting me about these researches. He has thus never answered any questions during the years I have carried this informational grail.

• Media has not shown helpful in getting any piece of information on this subject to the public, even at Christmas when it might be expected to prove more open to such issues. Recently a TV production company in UK who said they would take on a feature proposal I’d outlined if they hadn’t just switched to solely current affairs recommended that to help fast track matters I should contact someone involved with religious programming in England in a major way. I have on and off tried since New Year without success to get in touch by email or phone. There may be many reasons for this non connection but one is left to wonder whether the suggested contact would see value at this time in giving room to alternative views while assisting to promote broadcast of such as Jesus tomb material.

• Publishing, so keen to promote everyone from Dan Brown to Barbara Thiering on alternative Christs and Gnostic theories, has been mostly indifferent even to consider the proposal, let alone read, the ms whether of my earlier more specialized treatment of this subject or today’s more popularized, accessible material. Evidently running out of reasons for rejection I have even suffered such nonsense as that it’s not possible to publish work of someone for whom English is their second language! (This to a published author with a doctorate in religion!) Last year a religion editor of one of the major publishing houses did describe the recent, popularizing work as fascinating, groundbreaking and publishable. He recommended it specifically for Harper Collins deeming them most geared to edit and promote in the line (religion with esoteric). Helped by this recommendation the material did reach there where eventually a religion editor apologized for the, as he agreed, inexplicable omission of persons in a subcompany, (to which the book went for reading), to give any grounds for refusal. It is an open question whether the omission could have been involved with concerns to promote their forthcoming The Jesus Tomb, whose publicity would run counter to very different perspectives like my own.

In the course of this too long saga it’s hard to say who or what are being more rejected : myself as published author and doctor of religious studies who at least deserves to be heard; the public which has an absolute right to be aware of and judge such exceptional information; or Jesus himself about whom balanced views and the facts are getting increasingly suppressed in favour of whatever makes for the next sensation and profit.

TOMB MISREADINGS

Regarding the recent tomb discovery for numbers of reasons it is patently false and if a noted film maker wasn't making the claims and popular media backing him we might not have heard of the theory. Normally these sort of claims run through academic reviews for debate first before reaching the public and they would have been squashed if they had done so. For example, Jesus’ relatives were not wealthy, how would they all be buried in such a rich tomb so far away from where they are reported to have lived since custom would always required local burial? In exceptional cases where a person was buried far from their home the ossuary box would describe the person not as being just their name but from somewhere, hence a Jesus ossuary would need to be that of “Jesus of Nazareth”.

In effect this “discovery” merely replays past issues like the case of Donovan Joyce’s The Jesus Scroll in 1970, or even the more recent arguments around the Jerusalem James/Jesus ossuary box, where the mere discovery of names like Jesus, or Mary or Joseph, all very common names – Jesus equals Joshua – can cause sensations. Since my interest, and even duty, is to see my material reaches the public by formal publication I have no wish to enlarge on my own ideas and evidence, but as regards conventional astrology as it links to the immediate controversy this much can be said for those who want a touch of traditional detail.

THE FATAL OPPOSITION PATTERN

Proofs of the new discovery have been announced to the world at the time that for the first time this year Neptune exactly conjuncts the angle that would denote reputation and destiny for Jesus as for anyone. Such Neptune contacts by transit are rather notorious for creating scandal and deception around people, but the planet does this at the time it is also directly opposed in the heavens by traditionally restrictive, undermining Saturn. While Saturn is forming this opposition it is also directly conjuncting the point which in any birth pattern refers to the last resting place, one’s grave/tomb. Which is what all this latest “mystery” around Jesus is about. In terms of a conventional astrology the indications for an undermining falsehood around Jesus could hardly be stronger. However the event belongs to a whole wider trend in the debunking of Christianity which will increase and cause real crisis in society some of which is quite likely to be seen in events of ‘08 and ‘09 which could even change the face of much in religion as we know it, but not positively. “What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” as the poet Yeats would put it.

WHAT'S MISSING IN THE CHURCH GAY DEBATE

[The following article was posted to the Anglican Communion Website which may issue it in several weeks. Since the matter is topical I'm placing it here on this resumed Blog. I'm starting again from Hong Kong, not Australia where I began last year and left off partly because I began to write a book/diary currently with a publisher and partly because I wrongly assumed people weren't reading me. I learned I was missed when I stopped. So here's a new beginning and I think there will be some particularly controversial articles coming up this time]


WHAT’S MISSING IN THE CHURCH GAY DEBATE.

IGNORANCE AND AVOIDANCE OF CENTRAL ISSUES

In his address to the General Synod on the 26th February the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said there is little by way of real theological debate in the impassioned debate raging around same sex issues in the church. All we tend to see and hear is one group pushing for certain changes in practice and discipline and another group repeating tradition as authority. This lamentably is too true. It is also unnecessary.

One of the reasons the situation exists is because so few people in the church know for discussion purposes what even the basics of gay/queer theology actually teach. Nor are they aware what at the more visionary/charismatic end of Christian experience, some gays have been claiming is revealed to them. So we perhaps don’t hear “what the Spirit says to the churches”. Yet how much do Anglican and other Christians even want to know these things? I am writing the following in genuine concern over current dilemmas and not just to push, however justifiably so, my own barrow as a writer in the strange circumstances in which I find myself.

If anyone liberal or conservative wants an objective crash course guide to virtually all the main sources, voices and issues involved in current debates inside (and even outside the churches in neo-paganism) they need only read my uniquely wide ranging assessment, A Special Illumination: Authority, Inspiration and Heresy in Gay Spirituality. It was published in London at the end of ‘04 by Equinox Press. A real mystery, which however I now see as linked to what’s going wrong in church debates, attaches to the strange fate of this book.

WHEN CONTROVERSY LACKS PURPOSE OR VALUE

It happens that my study was based on a doctorate, a world first of its kind from any Religious Studies department and the first real survey cum assessment of gay religion as opposed to the more familiar offerings of polemic, apologetic, autobiography or select historical/biblical commentary the field abounds in. As such the project could well have been news. And for the wrong reasons (serious disinformation from the Australian press to the effect I’d been paid to research Jesus’ sexuality!) at the time I was awarded the doctorate it did make news, even internationally. Only the updated published version of my researches would justify my ignored protests against the distortions suffered, but no one in church or journalism in Australia would bother to review the book, admit that mistakes harmful to me had been made about the nature of the project or that the real item was unusually relevant to ongoing controversies. One member (actually gay) of Australia's ABC religious service pompously assured me that as I hadn't written about "religion" I couldn't be interviewed. Who indeed was being more insulted, myself as writer or gays assumed to have no "religion"?

The book is about precisely what its title states and very relevantly so despite the neglect. Only last week one of America’s leading gay fiction writers emailed to call the study “landmark” for gay writing. He also said he was “sad” not to have heard of it long ago and found it troubling the book it is still not distributed in America. One can well ask why it isn’t and why there’s been such neglect in England where it’s published and Australia where it was written. In Latin America gay leaders would like such a source book translated but it isn’t yet, if it ever will be, because it has neither sold enough nor raised sufficient debate in English speaking circles to justify translation. Indifference has in fact been so extreme that if I write to higher clergy suggesting they might look at the book I’m unlikely to receive response while gay Christians who have promised review or interview or website listing haven’t troubled to follow up. Beyond matters like Christian obligation to considerate treatment what’s going on here? Unfortunately I do have some notion and it seems relevant to the larger gay issues crisis in Anglicanism and beyond.

FACT IN THE FACE OF IDEOLOGY AND IN-GROUP LOYALTIES

From the beginning of liberation some gay circles had the idea one must not criticize one’s friends lest it give ammunition to the ubiquitous enemy. This has meant merely shabby ideas and behaviour have often been allowed to escape comment. The principle has affected some gay Christian self presentation and the attitude towards gays by those who defend them within the churches. Broadly academic though my approach was - the study aimed to put gay spirituality on the map like women’s studies - its objectivity, my will to critique in normal fashion, means I inevitably blow some covers and shed light where it’s not normally shed both in favour of revisionists and against them. This politically incorrect academic honesty cannot please everyone but it’s high time some facts were known and faced.

Thus if a noted gay/queer theologian like J. Michael Clark claims that the doctrine of resurrection is evil and the doctrine of the Trinity an oppressive mythology then I record that. (I’m in fact appalled gays let this post Christian thinker contribute the poison of his cynicism and unbelief to the last pages of the recently published Queer Bible Commentary where he writes on Revelation). In effect, then, I as good as expose some leading gay/queer Christians as heretics (I supply an original definition of heresy and heretic in Part Three) which would imply their influence is disruptive. At the same time I also challenge conservative views citing gays too rarely heard who for example claim that Christ has spoken to them and I set out a quite serious and hard to answer case against St Paul as any biblical authority on same sex relations today.

I think a largely unforeseen effect of my approach in A Special Illumination is to shift the question away from specific practices and morality (which though not irrelevant have so far been primary for churches outside the Catholic), to questions more of faith, theology and spirituality. Before inquiring into, say, whether clergy or laity should be allowed gay unions, one could well ask the more vital question whether those promoting the innovations even subscribe to the faith they claim to belong to. Is their homosexuality a workable, meaningful aspect of their faith (which in examples I cite it may actually be) or just one more pretext to ditch creed, prayer, meditation and the whole spiritual life in favour of rationalized socio-political gospels which embrace alternative lifestyles and claims almost automatically? Do gay Christians subscribe to “Jesus as Lord” or like some lesbians protest against the concept as sexist oppression?

Spiritual integrity and an integrity of belief should precede even moral integrity for Christians. Traditionally in Christianity sins against faith were deemed more important than against morality and reasonably enough so because even saints can fall short whereas everyone can keep some essential loyalty to the faith. When the current debate becomes both more theological and spiritual I believe it has more hope of being resolved for the good not just of gays but the whole church community to which gays belong and whose good they should be seeking along with their own. Again, one must agree with the Archbishop it’s a pity that vital issues like poverty and hunger in the world are getting lost to what’s becoming an almost obsessive sex debate. But as I say, there’s no necessity. Just let’s try to be more informed and change the emphasis.

Rollan R McCleary (Dr)