Ty and I sing at a Latin high mass

My leaving the formal Catholic fold was a long, slow process, with hours of prayer, personal introspection, and my share of suffering. However, I can pinpoint the moment I knew I was done to an exact day and hour.

For most of the time I lived in San Francisco, I was a member of the Museum of Modern Art. On November 4, 2003, their special exhibition of Marc Chagall’s work was closing. It was a fabulous exhibition; I had already seen it twice, maybe even three times. On that last Sunday morning, the Museum was going to open to members from 6 AM, before the huge crowd expected at 9:30. I had a plus-one ticket. I asked Ty Cashman, a friend and former Jesuit. Ty and I worked with the same Zen teacher; we’d done several seven-day meditation retreats together; he was super-educated with a PhD in philosophy from Columbia; he’d been a student of Gregory Bateson; he taught a class on Spiritual Exercises at a small private university on the Presidio. 

We met at 6 AM at Mission and 3rd Street and spent a full three and a half hours with the 153 paintings and other works by Chagall, carefully displayed over two floors of the wonderful building. We spent most of the morning just contemplating. It was not the first time we’d shared the early hours of the day in silent meditation. A few comments here and there, but mostly just deep appreciation for the astounding images of a poor Jew from the shtetl who’d transcended any sectarian feel in his work. Seamlessly incorporating the imagery, even iconography of his adopted country, he’d carved out a spiritual, almost magical world that had actually contributed to healing France after the brutality of Nazi occupation. I can describe it as a spiritual experience.

 

At 9:30, as we left, I thought that we’d go to breakfast and say goodbye, but Ty said, “We just have enough time to get to the 10 AM Mass at Saint Patrick’s. Let’s go.” I was surprised, but said sure, and we quickly crossed the Park to the high Latin Mass at the predominantly Filipino parish. Right from "Introibo ad altare Dei," Ty and I were leading the whole left side of a large congregation through familiar tunes. His seminary had been in the Midwest, mine in New England, but our Jesuit choir training was shared. The chubby Monsignor noticed us with a broad smile. The emotional participation at mass in a Filipino church is exuberant compared to their Irish co-religionists. Singing our hearts out, Ty and I shared that high. 

It came time to receive communion, and we approached the altar. It was something that I don’t usually do. I still believed in the sacrament of Penance, and I had not been to confession, but it felt appropriate. Standing before a rather stern-looking woman, the minister of Holy Communion, she said, “The body of Christ,” and I responded spontaneously, “Praise Lord Jesus Christ.”  She stopped, looked at me angrily, and said, “The proper response is 'Amen.’” She wasn’t going to allow any ecstatic response in her line. I followed instructions and said Amen, but in that instant, something changed. It felt irrevocable. I didn’t know it at the time, but it would be years before I again set foot in a Roman Catholic Church to receive the Eucharist. 

Was that too extreme? Of course. I could always find a church that was less insistent on the correct formulation. The narrative of Jesus is carefully, thoughtfully, reverently transmitted through words and ritual practices that have been handed down to us over the centuries. I’d been a real part of that transmission; I’d even been to Saint Patrick’s before, when I stood as the ninong for the granddaughter of one of my workers. Over many years of study and prayer, I’d added my own personal, even mystical understanding of those teachings. Now standing humbly at the table of the Lord, I was met with a burst of anger and told that my response was not acceptable, or it felt that way. Of course, there are a thousand mitigating circumstances; there was no right and wrong, but in that moment, the spell had been broken. 

I allowed this experience of the Eucharist to devolve  into a series of sharp exchanges with many former Jesuit friends about whether one had to have his or her feet firmly in the neoplationist camp before one could talk about the “Real Presence.” And I wasn’t buying it.

And why? And what next? 

Do I even want to talk about this moment? I mentioned that both Ty and I had done the seemingly endless hours of Zazen retreats, just sitting from dawn to dusk in a completely still room, usually with a handful of others or, when the leader had a reputation for insight, integrity, or depth (there are a few of those left), crowds. The work in these Zen retreats was the koans. Detractors talk about impossible riddles designed to throw a wrench into the ordinary, expected inner works; proponents speak of craftily designed word games that might provide a startling insight. I’ve had both experiences and many others over the more than 30 years I’ve been working with a teacher on the koans. You are allowed to switch the subject and the predicate. There are few rules in a logical or discursive sense. 

The feature of the retreats I want to point to here, besides the concentration and silence, is the meetings with your teacher to discuss the koan and your meditation. 

These meetings give Zen its distinctive flavour. You might present an answer to the koan; with a bit of luck and hard work, the teacher will ask a few follow-up or checking questions. Or you might be sent back to the dojo with a hint about where to focus. The length of the meeting can be seconds or hours. I will not add any fiction or wish fulfilment to the pile of idiocy about koan work, other than to say that after many years, I have a clear feeling that I am part of a vibrant conversation about awakening that Buddhists have been having for hundreds of years. And that conversation has been carefully, thoughtfully, reverently transmitted through words and ritual practices that have been handed down to us. The content is different, but the mechanism of transmission shares a lot with the Jesus narratives. 

But what is different was more important for me. My koan responses that felt right, where the opening went deep; they were part of a meditation practice; they were spontaneous, without a lot of thinking about what I should say or what would be clever; they came from a place that I can only describe as intimate. A far cry from “The proper response is ‘Amen.’” 

I’m getting older, and maybe some of my rough edges are beginning to soften. Now and then I’ve thought about that rather stern woman. I have no idea why she responded the way she did, and it’s none of my business. But I owe her a debt of gratitude. I began to meditate on the Real Presence as a koan rather than rigid dogma from the Council of Trent 500 years ago, a mystery I could enter with a sense of wonder and intimacy. 

“Praise Lord Jesus Christ.”

Marc Chagall, The Good Samaritan (1963–64). Collection of the Rockefeller Archive Center. Photo: © Mick Hale.

Of Course Marriage Makes a Difference for Gays!

Originally posted Sunday, July 24, 2011

To celebrate the first day that same sex couples can marry in New York, I am going to republish a piece I did when we were fighting against Prop 8 here in California. Next year, San Francisco! It's a red-letter day!

Among my Canadian gay friends, 100% are in stable, loving relationships; among my States-side gay friends, I used to be able to say somewhere in the range of 4-5% were married, but now, sadly, that figure is more like 2% as I recently heard of the divorce of some dear friends after 25 years as a couple.

As soon as marriage becomes a real possibility, apparently gay men—at least in greater numbers than one might have supposed—have simply said, "Of course. There is no reason to deny us any of the fundamental rights given to most other men and women."

Instead, here in "the land of the free," burdened—perhaps I should say cursed by the myth of humankind’s fallen state, we are left to throw stones at one another for being more or less sinful, for being hypocrites, for having an “essentially disoriented” nature. Living as an underclass, we are susceptible to all the ills of having to make do, to prove ourselves, to justify our loves and our emotions.

Thanks to my friends Bruno and Josetxu from Spain for the great photograph. They will soon be married in a civil ceremony in that Catholic country, and have, obviously, created their own blessing for their relationship from On-High. We can and will create our own blessings. Please join me in sending this couple our best wishes. May the Blessings of All the Universe shower on them!

Gratias á Lulu, Esta Noche y Monica Naranjo

In 2010, I began to exchange emails with several men about Latin music and gay Madrid. I’d hoped to learn a lot about Latin music, and my new correspondents were great resources. But there is one Latina star I already admire enormously

When I took visiting friends out for a night on the town in San Francisco, I tended to end the festivities at Esta Noche on 16th St.

This Latin gay club had been in that once-seedy neighborhood for more than 20 years. Now it’s gone. It closed its doors in 2014. The neighborhood became hip, and the new neighbors are not the kind to patronize Latin drag shows, but Esta Noche was welcoming and lively.

But I’ve seen more than a few very memorable moments at Esta Noche during my San Francisco days: it was there that my Canadian friend Ken MacDonald was kissed in the bathroom by the most handsome man within miles—a high compliment—this is San Francisco after all. It was there—at the bar, not the bathroom—that Miguel Pou taught me to distinguish between the popular music of Spain, Mexico, Central America, plus Colombia and Argentina, and a few other countries in the Southern Hemisphere. I can pick up that distinctive Brazilian samba-like beat, and of course, the lyrics are in a different language, though that is not easy to distinguish when you know only a few words in Spanish and Portuguese, fiesta, siesta, libertad, y “Et tu mama tambien”—just because I saw the movie and loved it.

But it was “Lulu” who introduced me to Monica Naranjo. Lulu was definitely not a gorgeous drag queen (by design), but she was one hell of a performer and knew her divas. During her show, I heard this voice that felt like a combination of Madonna, Bette Midler, and Janis Joplin, with a touch of Maria Callas. “Who’s that?” I asked the bartender. “Monica,” he said, “THE star of gay Madrid.” I have since learned that she is much more than that. Monica moved to Miami, so I won’t be able to hear her live, though I still plan a Madrid expedition as soon as I’ve socked away enough dinero.

OK, OK, here is her iconic Sobrevivire. Sometimes her staging and orchestration is a bit cheesy, but listen to the quality and strength of that voice! Music unleashes the animal!

I am planning that trip to Spain and hope to hear some great music. Monica is still performing. Hope to find some other great Spanish divas!

I’m on the lookout! Suggestions?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xErS7G3-tCQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYvqf2ws_cU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1Oc3oZv_QA

Christology, Science Fiction, and Nicaea

Pope Leo will travel to Iznik (ancient Nicaea) in Turkey as part of his first Apostolic Journey from November 27–30, 2025. This trip commemorates the 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea. Before my recent illness, I still had dreams of traveling and thought Nicaea, now a laid-back Turkish beach town, would be a great Fall getaway. This Council has always fascinated me.

In 325 C.E., a relatively modest number of bishops, mainly from the East, met for three months, from May until the end of July, on the shores of Lake Ascanius, near Constantinople. It was a backwater on the main East-West trade corridor. One source says that Constantine invited all 1800 bishops of the Christian church (about 1000 in the east and 800 in the west), but only 318 — the traditional number — attended; more realistically, the number was probably about 250. And only five from the West, or Roman churches. In any case, that rounds out to about 15% of active bishops. Notably absent was Pope Sylvester I, whom the Emperor had appointed to the See of Rome. They spoke, wrote, and decreed in Greek.

Constantine called the Council to quash Arianism, which was tearing up his quest for unity and power. It is almost universally accepted that the early church widely accepted Jesus as a divine being, but the notions of what constitutes divinity were diverse and fluid. Constantine was undoubtedly aware that 32 of his immediate predecessors had been declared gods by apotheosis. The presbyter Arius preached that Jesus was divine but also created, that is, He had a beginning. For either the convert Constantine or his domineering mother, that wasn’t going to fly. I think it is entirely likely that before the Council was called, the fix was in. The only question was how the assembled bishops would declare Jesus coequal with God the Father.

Arius was present at Nicea to defend his position that Jesus, although God, was a created being. Approximately 22 bishops supported Arius when the Council opened, but this number dwindled to just two at the end. The two remaining supporters, Secundus of Ptolemais and Theonus of Marmarica, were exiled along with Arius. Constantine lifted the sentence on Arius 11 years later, but he was conveniently murdered in a public latrine just before his official rehabilitation. This I found in footnotes labeled facts about the Council of Nicaea that got buried.

What this handful of churchmen argued about, agreed on, and finally decreed over three short months formally introduced the concept of Being from Neoplatonism into the conversation about God. The statement that Jesus was “begotten not made” moved Christian theology firmly into the camp of Greek philosophy, and Jesus, the eternal Son of God, within the general definition of anthropomorphism.

That formulation dominated Western theology and argument for nearly two millennia, that is, until the Fall of 1963 in a classroom on North Benson Road in Fairfield, Connecticut. 

Father Harold O’Connor SJ, affectionately known as “Crazy Harry” at Fairfield Prep, taught Latin, Math, and Religion to Sophomores, or sof-o-mores, and proudly coached his winning debate team. In religion class, the most memorable anecdotes were a toss-up between his personal technique for curbing profuse sneezing while saying mass — so he wouldn’t look like he was picking his nose, but performing a sacred ritual gesture. In 1958, the first spacecraft, Sputnik, crashed back to Earth, and Harry had a very profound observation about the Person of Jesus declared at Nicaea: he said, “No matter what kind of life we discover in the wide universe, never forget the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost came to save us.” Yes, Crazy Harry, that statement has been wedged into my inner theological questioning for more than half a century.

All the inner contradictions of the debate at Nicaea resurfaced recently when a former Jesuit described writing poems based on the hard-fought doctrinal declarations of the Nicene fathers, and JD Vance’s publicly expressed hope that his Hindu wife follow him into the one, holy and apostolic Church. My former Jesuit confrere was getting carried off by words and language, while JD was looking for a seat with more leverage at the debating table. I should remind JD that although he has drawn Pope Leo into the debate, his wife’s Krisha is supported by Modi and the BJP. And India has nukes. But I digress.

How is it that Jesus, coequal with the Father, looked like a human from the beginningless beginning? Not only physical resemblance, but also shared human emotional responses of love, forgiveness, anger, and compassion, to name just a few.

Am I forced to revise Pascal’s bet to include a non-humanoid form of Divine Person? You think I’m kidding? Pascal's Law of Probability strongly favors the discovery of non-human life forms. If, for example, intelligent life were discovered on Proxima Centauri b, located about 4.24 light-years away from Earth, what is the probability that Jesus was born, died, and resurrected there to save its inhabitants? Less than zero.

But science fiction has been exploring these possibilities since way before George Lucas. 

Anselm said, “id quo nihil maius cogitari potest.” The reality of God exists because at the farthest edge of human understanding, the mind can go no further. We can move almost seamlessly into science fiction by allowing Anselm an imagination and, as part of thinking (distinct from brain function to satisfy all you materialists), he uses human beings’ proclivity to the phantasmagorical as a worthy vehicle to arrive at the reality of God, especially with regard to the Second Person, “id quo nihil maius imāginari potest.”

And so, in honor of Crazy Harry O’Connor, I will outline a course in science fiction leading up to the 1700th Anniversary of Nicaea.

Doris Lessing’s The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 describes the death of a small, prosperous planet in the Canopean Empire. Its happy, content people become victims of an unforeseen Ice Age. The storyline involves the building of a wall around the entire “girth” of the planet, the attempts of the once harmonious species to accommodate their dire circumstances, the arrival of Johor, an emissary from Canopus, who stays with the doomed inhabitants and helps them form a consciousness that allows the essence of their being and their civilization to survive its death. 

There were enough similarities with the esoteric teaching of the half-mad Armenian mystic and cult leader G.I. Gurdjieff to convince Bob Ochs that Lessing was a member of the Fourth Way whose storytelling did not devolve into Mr. G.'s unintelligible gibberish. Philip Glass was commissioned to write the music for Lessing’s opera, but it was never recorded, and the only known bootleg recording has been lost. Lessing did not win the Nobel Prize in literature for gibberish. It’s a wonderfully told story. The arrival of Johor fulfills my criteria for creating a Superior Being in science fiction. Though they share many humanoid characteristics, the Canopeans are a distinct species. In post-Ice Age theology, Johor might become the Second Person of the Trinity.

Philip Zenshin Whalen loved a cracking good yarn, and he loved Walter M. Miller Jr.’s 1959 A Canticle for Lebowitz. It all takes place on Earth after a devastating nuclear holocaust. Mary Doria Russell’s 1996 novel The Sparrow follows the psychological breakdown of Jesuit Father Emilio Sandoz after his encounter with alien life. 

Nothing is certain or without risk. This includes our belief in the Trinity. My approach to theology is anthropological. This adds a level of ambiguity to most dogma. I am certain that the early Church held that Jesus was divine, but the fathers at Nicaea did not irrevocably tie us to a Neo-Platonic notion of Divine Being. Look to the Emperor Constantine and his mother.

Science fiction opens a window to thousands of other possibilities. Let the imagination fly as far as it can go. Otherwise, we are forced to constrain our Christology to a vague cosmological Unitarianism in which the inhabitants of any world system we discover have an incarnate Deity that comes from whichever species on the planet is most evolved. Even within our own world, that eliminates far too many possibilities.

Crazy Harry sneezed, an intriguingly lovely conundrum appeared, and the Son of God was “born, not made.”

 “Id quo nihil maius imāginari potest.”

______________

Some Footnotes and Comments regarding the Council of Nicaea.

I did not do any formal study about Nicaea with a renowned Jesuit scholar, or even an unrenowned one, when I was at Woodstock or JSTB. Over the years in my own inquiry, I have become increasingly fascinated by how these three months 1700 years ago were so pivotal to the church we know today. So much so that today I’m devoting a huge amount of time and energy to finding out as much as I can.

It’s presented, like most recognized Church Councils, as the work of the Holy Spirit, “proceeding from the Father and the Son” to guide and enlighten us. In my view, this Spirit needs to be sent back to the seminary for some remedial work. Opps, I’m getting confused again. I mean me.

I currently do all my study in the equivalent of a friendly Motel 6 in Bangkok. My research library is subject to the vagaries of the WiFi in a developing country’s online economy. I can count the number of Jesuits I know in Asia on one hand. There’s a large Jesuit seminary in New Delhi and several others in India, given the language diversity. Thai Jesuits run one small parish in Bangkok. There is a small retreat house in the northern mountains near Chiang Mai. All this feels quite remote from Nicaea, and frankly, the work of Nicaea is light-years removed from the pastoral concerns of most Asian Catholic priests, even Jesuits.

I am free to follow my own discoveries and hunches. I am not preparing for a licentiate exam. That is an advantage. But not having access to a community of scholars and a huge library limits the scope of my inquiry. I found a story that Arius was murdered in a latrine after the Emperor Constantine lifted his exile, 11 years after Nicaea, but I cannot confirm it. And the evidence from Constantinople police records 1700 years ago would be sketchy at best. But it makes a hell of a good story, so it's in my account.

I can explore other scholarly work, but much of it is behind paywalls, and my budget is limited, although through my Zen connections, I have some workarounds. For example, I found a few short sentences in the agenda for Nicaea, references to special considerations for the Christian congregation in Jerusalem. I am almost sure that this refers to the Community of James the Lesser or James the Just, but I cannot be certain. But what piques my curiosity is the question of anti-Semitism. I do know that by the second century in the Gentile Christian communities, the story that Pontius Pilate washed his hands on Good Friday and handed Jesus over to the Sanhedrin for execution was emphasized. Did Nicaea try to deal with this? Inquiring minds.

Slavery. One of my ongoing interests is the huge presence of slaves in the early communities. Almost a third of the population of the Roman Empire was enslaved. The early church was a refuge for the lower class, and I think that probably translates to a disproportionate number of slaves among the faithful. It could be more than a third. In the first and second centuries and the persecutions, slaves who were also Christians made up a huge number of the early martyrs.

https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-christian-church-and-slavery.html

Undoubtedly, there were slaves participating at Nicaea. They were scribes, accountants, porters, and cooks. I am unsure whether any slaves were ordained. I am always looking for ways that the presence of slaves colored the conversation about freedom.

At Nicaea in 325, the New Testament canon was not settled. How many churches, bishops, scholars, preachers, and catechists used what we call gnostic texts? Did Arius use any? It’s a persuasive argument to highlight the titles and honorifics used to describe Jesus in early texts, and their connection with the case for His divinity. But I am not going to buy in until I see some evidence of how they were used, and in which communities.

One of the most startling facts about Nicaea is that it was short, with only a tiny number of participants, yet had such a far-reaching effect. These were working bishops who met outside the political hotbed of the new capital, close to their transportation back home when their work was done. They’d been summoned by the Emperor, not the Pope or a committee of Patriarchs. I don’t think that they spent any time lolling around on the beach or kibbittzing in a Turkish coffee bar. Constantine wanted help to consolidate his rule, so let’s get on with it. And they changed the face of the Church.