(From the August Issue of the Quack!)
1. At its most simple, the term qatholic describes someone who identifies as both queer and Catholic.
But being qatholic also transcends any particular marginalized sexual or gender identity; in a deeper sense, it describes a person who is committed to envisioning and building a world that is fundamentally unfamiliar – queer – to how we experience it now. In the gospel, Jesus proclaims a radically queer vision for our world: it is a world of paradox, of inversion, a world where the first are made last, where the humble and meek inherit the earth, where the most high identifies with those deemed “least of these,” where the distinctions between Jew and Greek, enslaved and free, woman and man are no more. Simply put, Jesus’ vision for the world is fundamentally at odds with – queer to – the workings and interests of the current systems of oppression and injustice we have built and continue to maintain. Being qatholic then, is not only a matter of bringing our full, queer selves to our Catholic faith but also a commitment to this radical gospel vision: a commitment to the common good, to the preferential option for the poor and vulnerable, to works of mercy, to radical non-violence, to solidarity with all of the members of our queer community, especially our trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming siblings, and a commitment to dismantling all systems of oppression and building the kingdom of God from their ruins.
“Queer not as being about who you have sex with, that can be a dimension of it, but being queer as about being a self that is at odds with with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live” - bell hooks
2. To be qatholic is to be grounded in joy – a gorgeous, shimmering, extravagant queer joy – that (un)expectantly leaps within us as we approach the promise of a new world where the proud are humbled, the powerful are made low, the low made high, where the hungry are filled and the rich are left empty-handed. It is to be filled with laughter – Sarah’s laughter – which erupts from having once been deemed dormant, barren, unnatural, “intrinsically disordered,” now fully aware of our (pro)creative potential – “an awakening to unimagined life,” as Avivah Zorenburg describes it. This unimagined life, once imagined, challenges our mangled, concrete systems of hatred and bigotry and breathes life to new worlds of joyful possibility!
3. To be qatholic is to affirm the deep, biblical foundations of found family. While not all may feel called to marriage, all people are entitled to finding fulfilling, life-affirming, freely-chosen ways of living in community with others. As scripture demonstrates over and over again – through Ruth and Naomi, Jesus and his disciples, early Christian communities – family is so much more than a biological bond or mechanism for progeny; it is a sacred act of community-building through which God, Themself a communion of three persons, invites us to be co-creators. To be qatholic then is to affirm equally the sacramentality of both romantic and platonic relationships and as well as other means of building support networks.
"We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community" - The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day
4. Qatholic Imagination. To be qatholic is to fully imagine new ways of living in community with others, beyond the institution of marriage and the nuclear family. This goes far beyond simply striving for marriage equality in Catholicism, but instead calls on each one of us to bring the gift of our qatholic imagination in order to expand the Catholic understanding of vocation beyond marriage. This qatholic imagination is deeply rooted in our lived experiences which have forced many of us to create our own life-affirming versions of community. Indeed, in living within these non-normative (at least, from a Western lens) family structures, whether it be through communal living, single life, chaste life, found family, cohabitation, or yet-unimagined pathways of community-building, we qatholics become embodied testaments to the sacramentality of queer ways of life and family.
5. Qatholic Gay-ze Part 1. To be qatholic is to see the world with a queer vision, or gay-ze, if you will. It is to constantly strive to bridge the world of now with the would of the ever-shall-be: to sow faith where there is doubt; love where there is hatred; hope where there is despair; light where there is darkness.
6. Qatholic Gay-ze Part 2. But to be qatholic is also to define ourselves and our embodied experience beyond that imposed by the narrow field of the straight gaze. Discourse surrounding our queer identities in Catholicism is often about us, but rarely by or for us. And while this obviously applies to blatantly bigoted rhetoric, here I’m specifically addressing progressive, queer-affirming corners of the church who, though well-intentioned, routinely create material which imagines a non-queer audience. These progressive platforms discuss how to minister to us, publish biblical interpretations that legitimize us, and promote testimonies that humanize us. The goal of such discourse is almost always to convince, to convert, to explain, to rationalize, to theologize, to justify our value and goodness to the non-queer faithful. This work is no doubt necessary, but as the only outlet for positive queer expression in the Church, it leaves little room for our gaiety (pun intended), little room for us to dream a new world into being. To be qatholic, then, is to recast ourselves as the author and audience of our work; it is to commit ourselves to building spaces where our value is not contingent, where our dignity is a foregone conclusion, where our experiences are shared and not displayed, where sharing our traumas serves as more than a means to an end; it is to establish a gay-ze from within.
7. To be qatholic is to affirm the dignity, sacredness, and beauty of trans, non-binary, genderqueer, and gender-nonconforming members of the queer community. It is to ensure that the terms gay, queer, and LGBTQ+ encompass all sexual and gender identities and experiences, not just gay, white, cisgender men as is often the case. At a time of increasing discrimination and violence towards trans lives, cisgender qatholics must listen to and stand in unwavering solidarity with our trans siblings.
8. To be qatholic is to be committed to a theology that is life-affirming, one that both recognizes and advocates for the inherent dignity of all members of God’s kin-dom and rejects all systems of oppression. A theology which does not do either of these things isn’t worth a damn!
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