The Big Tent

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Nov 01, 2003

Those who monitor trends in Catholic journalism will remember the exuberantly gay-friendly Jesuit Father James Martin of America magazine -- the reviewer who heatedly defended the play Corpus Christi on the grounds that "all the sex was offstage." He's back -- this time pleading "don't jump!" to Andrew Sullivan:

A few weeks ago, Andrew Sullivan, a senior editor of The New Republic, wrote an impassioned article that appeared in the op-ed section of The New York Times, entitled "Losing a Church, Keeping the Faith." In his article, Mr. Sullivan discussed his ardent desire to reconcile his homosexuality with his Catholicism. In the end, however, he finds himself unable to reconcile the two and also finds himself, for the first time in his life, unable to attend Mass. ... His article manifests the intense pain and anger that many gay and lesbian Catholics have expressed over the past several years.

Father Martin nuances (if you'll forgive the term) his argument by pointing out that not only Leftist dissenters are browned-off with higher ecclesiastics. We're all in this together: liberals are angry at churchmen when they adhere to Catholic doctrine, conservatives are angry at churchmen when they depart from it. We're all of us bickerers. Can't we all just get along?