How disagreeing with the Church gave me faith
Good God, let my obituary never read He had a blog.
I wrote that in back 2012. Some seven years later and I am still writing.
Taking a moment, I think I know what my crotchety younger self was trying to say. That a life is not lived online, not fundamentally. Not in the spaces that matter most. That if I wanted to be good person, the kind of person who makes a difference, it would have to begin and end outside of a computer screen, where it is so easy to be all talk and no action - to preach the Gospel and pretend that only words are necessary.
Still, I have learned a lot since then about the power of this space. Of words that travel around the world and find their way into the hidden searches of those too scared to ask their questions out loud. I have had Catholic priests email me along with religious brothers and sisters, spouses and divorcees, girls in high school and men with seventy years behind them. All to say those words, I found them, and they helped me.
More than once someone has said “you saved my life.” All because I had a blog.
A number of years ago, before I came out on the internet, Tim Staples emailed me wondering if I would be willing to join the Catholic Answers team and replace Jason Evert. Go to conferences, give talks, write articles and a few books - all about sexuality from a Catholic perspective and with a youth audience in mind. I was able to deflect and say I was moving to Honduras, which was true. But deep down all I could think about was how I was already the worst person for the job. Gay and thoroughly disagreeing with the Church on that subject, I just hadn’t published anything about it yet.
But I did think about his offer. Maybe I could stuff my sexuality down one more time. I had a couple years teaching high school students under my belt, plenty of writing, and had already been giving talks at retreats and conferences. Maybe God was giving me an option to upgrade and take the show on the road. My pride was piqued. All I had to do was ignore the part of me that was crying out that it couldn’t go on. Forget that my faith was falling apart and lean into the promise of being respected and celebrated by the Church.
These days there are few things I am more grateful for than my decision to turn Catholic Answers down and go wrestle with the faith myself, instead of just telling others how to believe. My time in Honduras was nothing if not a time in the spiritual desert. Innocent suffering, brutal poverty and violence, abject Church hypocrisy, my own horrific sins. It broke my faith down completely. But it didn’t leave me there. That beautiful country kept me surrounded by the most beautiful people who taught me how to love again. And love taught me hope. And hope brought me faith.
I learned to tell my story and stand with those like me. At some point I looked up and realized I was surrounded by others who were convinced God had a role to play in their sexuality. Insisting that we had a place in the Church - an invitation to love that involved far more than convincing ourselves we were incapable of romance and a family.
A blog isn’t much, not really. But it’s honest. And those who need honest words can find them. Because the Catholic Church is far more than just answers. It is a communion. It is a people. And a people can lean on each other and show even a two-thousand year old institution how to change.
Rainier Maria Rilke once wrote to a young poet, “For now you only live your questions. Perhaps simply by living them you will find yourself entering, some day, into the answers.”
That seems worth writing about to me.