Disclosures

(Ed.) Michael Ford

DartonŸLongman+Todd

ISBN 0-232-52561-7

This is a series of interviews with (mostly male) Gays about their relationships with each other and various Christian churches.  The churches are mostly the Anglican and the Roman Catholic.  The striking cover is supplied by Christiaan Snyman (Christiannsnyman@yahoo.com ) a former member of the Dutch Reformed Church.  The latter is described as “the state religion” in Apartheid South Africa, which isn’t quite accurate.  England’s colonies may have had (Anglican) Established churches the Dutch Republics did not.  Apartheid was also backed by the Most Reformed Church.  The anti-Apartheid jibe was ‘Deformed’ and ‘Most Deformed’.  Christiaan is now what Michael Ford describes as a “mystical” Christian, as opposed to a member of a formal church body.  Being a member of such a body means many things.

Michael Harank is interviewed.  Belfast people may recall he was a speaker at our first Pride ‘ethical’ discussion.  He described himself then as “an American queer Catholic”.  Someone phoned BBC Radio Ulster’s Talk Back to say he didn’t want to hear Michael.  He hated all three items in the self-description.  Michael’s contribution is up beat – a ‘must read’ – he is a long time member of the Catholic Worker Movement.

Belfast comes into Disclosures by way of PA MagLochlainn, President of NIGRA (the NI Gay Rights Association).  PA comes across as rather dry and cerebral.  He isn’t.  As those of us who’ve been at the receiving end of his excruciating puns well know.  But he has made up his mind.  At the other end of the scale – in terms of age, if not belief – is ‘Julian’.  He is a music student and interested in Roman Catholicism.  This book was published in 2004.

Advice is probably now redundant.  He should ‘suck it and see’ to coin a phrase.  He will find the average ‘Papist in the pew’ usually has a radically different attitude to Gay women and men than do the bureaucrats in the Vat.  There are a number of stories here about Catholic priests (‘secular’ and ‘regular’ – meaning ordinary parochial priests and members of Orders) who have had very bad experiences, with the Church as a bureaucracy.  Woytola (John Paul II) great man though he was, imported aspects of the Kremlin’s outlook into the Vatican.  He wanted to look out and see a Church like a machine in the hands of man at the top.

He provoked Catholics in the Rhineland by directly appointing bishops.  There had been a centuries (nearly a millennium)-old input from the faithful.  He refused to shake the hands of a Cabinet Minister in Nicaragua (a priest and adherent of Liberation theology).  The current incumbent of the Throne of Peter is pursuing the same policies, without his predecessor’s great charisma, which made some of his sins against the virtue of charity forgivable.

The date of publication may account for the (somewhat, somewhat – it appears to me) smug attitude of (some) Anglicans.  They may have been made aware of the fact that many in their ranks are like the more obviously Evangelical sects.  They tend to know that queers are destined for Hell fire.  Roman Catholicism, (traditionally anyway), is rarely as prescriptive — ‘twixt the stirrup and the ground something lost and something found’ and all that — (a reference to Saint Paul).

Michael Ford found a lot of his interviewees (a cold word for what in some cases must have been intense encounters — as well as some heartening ones like those with Michael Harank and Patrick Mulcahey in San Francisco) in London.  They include the one representation of Orthodoxy in the book.  One lesbian couple – living in Macclesfield – are Evangelicals.  They have had problems with other Evangelicals, and with the local press, which enjoys sensationalising homosexuality.

The latter seems to be the case nearly everywhere — Northern Ireland’s Sunday World and Sunday Life, are cases in point.  The pompous Belfast Telegraph pontificates, mostly negatively, and takes Cara-Friend’s money for regular advertisements.  It has some columnists who are pretty homophobic.  Admittedly the Irish News and the NewsLetter have always taken a reasonable line on matters Gay.  And the younger generation of journalists have no problems reporting said matters positively.

On this subject, Michael Ford writes, “conservative views are… deeply embedded in… Protestant and Catholic communities” in Northern Ireland.  This is demonstrably not accurate.  It is true to say that in opinion poll after opinion poll locals claimed they are not fond of fairy folk.  (In the 1970s nobody admitted that they would vote for Sinn Féin.  When they got a chance to vote SF they did so in increasing numbers).  Recently, the percentage of persons responding to an opinion poll who took a dim view of queers, increased dramatically.  But so did the crowds coming out to view the Pride Dander.  As does the number of local politicians who want to be seen walking with the queers.  (And, the May Day demonstration has Pape, Prod, Jew and “Turk”, and non-believers on it.  It’s as well not to get too precious about our Dander.)

Practically any Gay woman or man would benefit from reading this book.  I am an atheist (but probably better described as agnostic – not that it matters) and was fascinated by it.  I was particularly fascinated by the intense cultural hold religion has over people.  Noisy ‘secularists’ would probably describe such people as, — in effect, childish, — or as suffering from a psychological need, due to a failure to be as adult as they are.  Most of the people of this book are not from a ‘hard science’ background.  Patrick Mulcahey, mentioned above, has won Emmy awards for is television scripts, young ‘Julian’ is a musician, Christiaan is a professional singer as well as painter.

A person with a specifically scientific background would have been interesting.  The ‘two cultures’ business is not endemic to the whole ‘Anglosphere’, Ireland seems to have avoided it.  Father Austin Eustace, a parochial priest in deepest Tyrone (and not Gay, so far as one knows) has a doctorate in physics from MIT.  He founded Tyrone Crystal a co-operative enterprise.  He was moved from a lectureship in Coleraine to Tyrone.

Seán McGouran