Homosexuality and The Divine Comedy

Posted on November 26, 2002 in Morals & Ethics

Lynn pointed me to a blog by David Morrison, a gay Catholic who mentors the group known as COURAGE for gay and lesbian Catholics who nonetheless strive to be celibate and live by the Church’s teachings. Today he published a letter that a friend received from a so-called Catholic who lambasted COURAGE as:

a forum to air their sick perversion in the name of “recovery.” In many cases these groups degenerate into “dating pools.” Homosexuals tend to destroy everything when let into any kind of organization. Look at the priesthood.
The Church did not see the need for such organizations before the advent of Vatican II. That is because there was no need and there is still no need. There are confessionals where homosexuals may, if they must, describe in salacious detail how they spend their evenings. At least then they may receive the type of rebuke they deserve instead of some New Age group hug ministered by a Voice of the Faithful reject.

For the record, I support same sex marriage and discourage homosexual promiscuity in the same spirit that I discourage heterosexual promiscuity. (As a backup, because people will now and then forget themselves, I also promote safe sex.) I see homosexuality as an appetite which should be channeled as carefully and as thoughtfully as any other. If one chooses to indulge one’s desires, one should be responsible and mindful of the other partner in the relationship. I would rather see my gay Catholic friends join Dignity.

Still one has to feel for David Morrison and other members of Courage. They’re trying to live according to the church’s teachings on homosexuality, which accepts that some may be predisposed to the temperament while asking that they not act on their feelings. Courage is hardly an organization promoting licentiousness (see David’s article for as eloquent a defense of Courage as one can muster). What David rebuts are the views of a soul who has disordered and distorted his principles so badly that he hardly resembles a Christian at all. Courage’s critic is, himself, a sinner and of a worse magnitude than David is, if his only “sin” is indeed feelings of attraction towards his own gender.

As you may have gathered from my reentry article, I’ve been re-reading The Divine Comedy. Hell and Purgatory are both arranged so that those who have committed the most severe sins against God reside in the bottom of the pit or at the foot of the mountain. They mirror one another: the less serious and more repentant sinners go to Purgatory where, starting from their worst sin, they begin to climb the mountain towards Paradise.

The venom with which this neo-Catholic (as well as certain members of the Vatican curia) attacks Morrison is out of proportion to the gravity of the sin as measured by Dante. Carnality, Dante feels, is a lesser sin: those who committed such sins in life exist near the lip of the Inferno or just below Purgatory’s Garden of Eden. If I am wrong about God’s feelings and Dante is right, I suspect most of my gay and lesbian friends — being good people otherwise — will do time in Purgatory and eventually advance towards Heaven. (The Inferno is for the wreckless and unrepentant. Any gay or lesbian person who has taken up with a life partner would not qualify, IMHO.) Those who hate, on the other hand, exist far lower in the pit and near the bottom of the mountain. They have the longest climb.

So guess who will suffer more in the afterlife according to the Catholic teachings espoused by Dante? Homophobes and similar sexual jingoists commit a far worse sin by wanting another person’s destruction or ostracization than those “weak” spirits who indulge in sensual pleasures. The wrathful occupy a bolgia in a deeper pit of hell and must make the longest climb if a merciful God grants them a stint in Purgatory, instead.

Those who claim to be Christian should consider this. There’s a matter of splinters and boards here. If you preach hatred against any part of God’s struggling community of believers, you have sinned far worse than those you criticize. I suggest that the writer place his conscience before God, get it well cleansed, and then set about the important business of not engaging in this sin any more.

A good penance would be several months service as a volunteer in an AIDS clinic, cleaning bedpans and washing the patients.