Thursday, October 15, 2015

Gay theology

I was doing an online search for something involving Cardinal Ratzinger's Principles of Catholic Theology, and for whatever reason I found a link to (Fr.) Joseph S. O'Leary's Homepage: Essays on literary and theological themes. It seems O'Leary has dropped identifying himself as an ordained Catholic prelate and taken to "wearing his civvies," as it were.

Moreover, he's apparently moved more openly in the direction he was trending back when he was a regular commenter on our blog, back when "Dreadnought," the gay-oriented Catholic still opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage, a subject that already drew a great deal of O'Leary's attention.

Here's what O'Leary posted just two years ago: "Gay Theology - Dreadnought Comes In From the Cold" (July 22, 2013):
Years ago I tried to reason with John Heard, aka Dreadnought, a young Australian lawyer, who used his terrific eloquence influentially to block the progress of legislation tending to gay marriage in Australia. http://josephsoleary.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/02/fisking-dreadno.html I am happy that he has now changed his mind, and even thanks those who disagreed with him in the past. He has issued the following remarkable statement: http://ymlp.com/zr0KSh
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3 comments:

  1. Rondo Hattan11:33 AM

    The very act of coming out of the closet disqualifies a man from being a priest. It is a statement of "gaiety" as a valid descriptor. The supposed Catholic teaching is the opposite, of course, so something has to give. But nothing ever does. Why not? Because the subtext of the above is that Catholic teaching as a whole is frivolous, a descriptor of dubious value. Certainly most Catholic teachers approach it that way, even if in doing so they condemn their vocations, even their lives, as of similarly dubious value -- something useless which they go through the motions of doing because they are remunerated with money, comfort, the adulation of their students, etc (especially those "young men of style and verve", right O'Leary?? nod wink!!). Hey, it beats woikin'!

    Is "gaiety" a worse sin than acedia? As El Caudillo Grande once said, who are we to judge? And why judge, since both sins can be so easily combined in a single lovely package? Ooh la la.

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  2. JM10:43 AM

    O'Leary's tone always leaves one unsettled. And I imagine the tone here may on him have the same effect. All of which is to suggest there may be no middle ground. One side or the other would have to convert.

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  3. Anonymous9:42 PM


    And then there is this sad example of where rejection of the Bible's most obvious meaning ends up unraveling... I guess this might be called progressive.

    http://www.worldmag.com/2015/10/bart_campolo_on_life_after_faith

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