Frank J. Tipler, in his enlightening book, The Physics of Immortality, reports (pg 370):
At the Council of Florence 1442, the Catholic Church laid it out forcefully: ‘The Holy Roman Church, firmly believes, professes and proclaims that none of those outside the Church (Extra Ecclesium nulla salus), not Jews, not heretics, can participate in eternal life, but will go into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they are brought back into the Catholic Church before the end of life."
This doctrine clearly makes the Roman Catholic Church the most extreme fundamentalist church of them all.
Today Jews and heretics have been replaced by gays and lesbians. We go to the fire, unless we go (back) into the Church before our life ends. No option for eternal life for us.
In the 15th century the Church sold the notion that heaven is only for the select few. Kept its priests at the door of the big Disco in the sky. Tempted all queens who wanted a VIP pass to the stairway to heaven. Admit One Selected Soul-a lucky person to get in.
Even at the time, this doctrine of selectivity was challenged. If the Church happened to be wrong, then it meant the Church falsified itself and stood between a loving God and Jesus, who admitted everyone and humankind. It meant the Church shut off the electrifying flow of love between God and her people. God left heaven’s gate open to all.
For our tribe, I like the word HOMOKIND. HOMO from Latin refers to the universal generic man, who like gays and lesbians, “are everywhere.” Tiny in numerical size, but universal in application. That’s why a church which calls itself “universal and whole” should be the first to include us all as equal members, equal to the body of Christ.
Pope comes from the word pontifex, which means “bridge builder.” Hardly. Instead Popes use their bully pulpit to brand us “molokai,” softies, sissies, the no accounts. Tragically, because of our soft, kind and gentle nature (the KIND in HOMOKIND) we seem to stir up and provoke their brutal atoms. So they harass and keep us outside the Church and try to keep us away from eternal life. This harsh punishment hits gay sons and lesbian daughters hard, puts fear instead of the love of God in our older members.
For 27 centuries the Church has been wacky and out of balance. In the beginning all it talks about is HOMOGENITALITY. As Rick Garcia has remarked: they keep sticking their noses into our genitals. They are one rigid kind of unkind church that concentrates all its fire in condemning one kind of homo/sex. They particularly refuse to acknowledge over the years how we have evolved a loving kind of domestic partners.
The Church has a deliberate stand against domestic partners at City Hall and in Oak Park, as recently signaled by Archbishop George. Chicago aldermen have and make better sense than the pack of bishops.
It took them half a millennium to seek forgiveness for standing between God and Galileo, between God and the Jews. Will it take them another 500 for the church to reach the apology and realization stage with us? YES. Meanwhile they themselves, because they deal in an ethic that is dark, closed and closeted, suffer a horrendous perception problem. Many if not most who stand outside the Church believe these men in fine silks and dress are gay.
Believe that homo priests and pedophile clergy run the shop.
If in the next millennium they want to live up to their name “universal,” they will have to incorporate outsider gays and lesbians with the folks inside the Church, decent folk who do not like their mind trapped in such deception. Ironically the Church’s salvation hinges on their outreach, love and acceptance of gays and lesbians, not our obedience to a cabal of secretive repressed homos, men who exhibit too much genital expression in their talk about us, and not enough kindness in actually dealing with us.
[Publisher’s Note(s): Along with “The Field of God,” this makes up the last essays Damski wrote and edited in 1997. It was reprinted as Schizo-File No. 32, under the title “By the time you read this I’ll be a dead queer, but I was always homokind to you.” in dead/queer/proud (Firetrap Press, 2002)--John Vore]
Sunday, October 19, 1997
The Field Of God
I am hesitant to enter the field of God. Reluctant to talk about God. She does not need my talk. Etymologically speaking the primary Indo-European and Teutonic roots of the word “God” are “invoked,” “the invoked one,” “the called on Being.” She does not need me to call on Her, if She is all-knowing and all-powerful.
The Greek root for the word “God” from the same family is kauchaomai, which means “I boast.” To presume to call on God is to boast.
That’s what I find so unappealing about all God talk from street corner to coffee shop. It causes us to boast and imagine that because we are having a conversation with the All-Knowing that somehow we are all knowing too.
In all God talk from the bible on, there is a viral overload of distasteful sexism. God is assumed to be a He/Him. Only in the last century have we broken the old iron code and realized that God is both a He and She, Him and Her. Those who cannot handle the pronoun shift, I cannot handle.
For me:
God is
God is love
God’s love will take care of us queers,,for God is the original loving He/She. And He/She is more concerned with love and forgiveness than sin and condemnation, more concerned with saving you and your neighborhood of domestic partners than in keeping anyone away from the Field of God and the stairway to heaven.
The Church and its bully pulpits, with their overly gooey and false interpretations of the Bible are even more virulently anti-gay today, hurling more vile doctrines at us. This is because we are the last to become the first, and because we offer the most serious threat to the monarchical rule of the Church.
When Paul picked out the sin of homosexuality to condemn, he chose it because it was the “safe sin” in his day. If he had picked circumcision or dietary law he would have spoken against sins his audience of Jew, Gentile Christians and Romans. Then as now, because of our long-standing denial mechanism, few if any believed or would say they were homosexual. Paul picked the safe sin to condemn, the one many felt was not serious and and the one they didn’t take personally.
In the daytime, Jesus threw out the Book of the Laws of the Jews. Love God as God loves you. Love your neighbor as you want your neighbor to love you. At night Jesus kept company and ate with some very queer types: whores, tax collectors, street people and us queers too. He loved us queers, and forgave our sins.
The Bible is so overpoweringly sexist: it continually disrespects women and gay men. We are no-accounts both on earth and in heaven. No voice - no rights nor say. The Men of Sodom ask Lot to send out the ambassadors of God “so we can know them” (causing most biblical scholars to twist the verb “know,” like an eight, to mean “have intercourse with” (ha,ha)). Instead, Job offers as compensation his two daughters “who have not yet known a man” (another sick joke). He can do this because the women are property, his property!
Strange, only God does not think you have sinned when you commit a queer act. Your mother does. Your lover does because you have betrayed him/her. Your brother and neighbor, but only She, who like us is everywhere, does not think you have sinned.
The only way to lord it over someone is to love the sin as well as forgive the sinner. Preachers and pastoral letters proclaim that you love your son for being gay, but not for doing gay (sex), sawing your son in half. The essence of being gay is gay sexuality.
Gays and lesbians have progressed like evolution, while the Church inches its way historically. They still refuses to see us for who we are.
HOMOSEXUAL IS NOT GAY.
DOMESTIC PARTNERS DO NOT LIVE IN SIN.
UNLESS THE CHURCH IS WILLING TO
REACH OUT AND OFFER US TOTAL SALVATION,
THE CHURCH IS DOOMED.
A wise theologian once said “To think you can teach and preach this stuff, makes you an ass. But to stay out of the Field of God and the eternally joyous and gay rewards of eternal life, makes you an ox.” We are still a threat to the Church after all these centuries because we challenge–to its face–monarchical and patriarchal ownership. God does not look kindly on people who want to keep us out of Her Church and Field. For by Her love and leave we are either all saved, included, or the Church is doomed.
HER LOVE GUARANTEES
WE ALL HAVE EQUAL ACCESS TO
THE FIELD OF GOD.
[Publisher’s Note: Along with “Homokind,” this makes up the last essays Damski wrote and edited in late October 1997. It was reprinted as Schizo-File No. 57, under the title “Final Scene: Academic odd ball lands in Chicago for mid-life Crisis, ends up writing columns for 20 years - and his last one has to be about the fucking Catholic Church and I’m not even Catholic. (I am out of here.).” in dead/queer/proud (Firetrap Press, 2002)--jmv.]
The Greek root for the word “God” from the same family is kauchaomai, which means “I boast.” To presume to call on God is to boast.
That’s what I find so unappealing about all God talk from street corner to coffee shop. It causes us to boast and imagine that because we are having a conversation with the All-Knowing that somehow we are all knowing too.
In all God talk from the bible on, there is a viral overload of distasteful sexism. God is assumed to be a He/Him. Only in the last century have we broken the old iron code and realized that God is both a He and She, Him and Her. Those who cannot handle the pronoun shift, I cannot handle.
For me:
God is
God is love
God’s love will take care of us queers,,for God is the original loving He/She. And He/She is more concerned with love and forgiveness than sin and condemnation, more concerned with saving you and your neighborhood of domestic partners than in keeping anyone away from the Field of God and the stairway to heaven.
The Church and its bully pulpits, with their overly gooey and false interpretations of the Bible are even more virulently anti-gay today, hurling more vile doctrines at us. This is because we are the last to become the first, and because we offer the most serious threat to the monarchical rule of the Church.
When Paul picked out the sin of homosexuality to condemn, he chose it because it was the “safe sin” in his day. If he had picked circumcision or dietary law he would have spoken against sins his audience of Jew, Gentile Christians and Romans. Then as now, because of our long-standing denial mechanism, few if any believed or would say they were homosexual. Paul picked the safe sin to condemn, the one many felt was not serious and and the one they didn’t take personally.
In the daytime, Jesus threw out the Book of the Laws of the Jews. Love God as God loves you. Love your neighbor as you want your neighbor to love you. At night Jesus kept company and ate with some very queer types: whores, tax collectors, street people and us queers too. He loved us queers, and forgave our sins.
The Bible is so overpoweringly sexist: it continually disrespects women and gay men. We are no-accounts both on earth and in heaven. No voice - no rights nor say. The Men of Sodom ask Lot to send out the ambassadors of God “so we can know them” (causing most biblical scholars to twist the verb “know,” like an eight, to mean “have intercourse with” (ha,ha)). Instead, Job offers as compensation his two daughters “who have not yet known a man” (another sick joke). He can do this because the women are property, his property!
Strange, only God does not think you have sinned when you commit a queer act. Your mother does. Your lover does because you have betrayed him/her. Your brother and neighbor, but only She, who like us is everywhere, does not think you have sinned.
The only way to lord it over someone is to love the sin as well as forgive the sinner. Preachers and pastoral letters proclaim that you love your son for being gay, but not for doing gay (sex), sawing your son in half. The essence of being gay is gay sexuality.
Gays and lesbians have progressed like evolution, while the Church inches its way historically. They still refuses to see us for who we are.
HOMOSEXUAL IS NOT GAY.
DOMESTIC PARTNERS DO NOT LIVE IN SIN.
UNLESS THE CHURCH IS WILLING TO
REACH OUT AND OFFER US TOTAL SALVATION,
THE CHURCH IS DOOMED.
A wise theologian once said “To think you can teach and preach this stuff, makes you an ass. But to stay out of the Field of God and the eternally joyous and gay rewards of eternal life, makes you an ox.” We are still a threat to the Church after all these centuries because we challenge–to its face–monarchical and patriarchal ownership. God does not look kindly on people who want to keep us out of Her Church and Field. For by Her love and leave we are either all saved, included, or the Church is doomed.
HER LOVE GUARANTEES
WE ALL HAVE EQUAL ACCESS TO
THE FIELD OF GOD.
[Publisher’s Note: Along with “Homokind,” this makes up the last essays Damski wrote and edited in late October 1997. It was reprinted as Schizo-File No. 57, under the title “Final Scene: Academic odd ball lands in Chicago for mid-life Crisis, ends up writing columns for 20 years - and his last one has to be about the fucking Catholic Church and I’m not even Catholic. (I am out of here.).” in dead/queer/proud (Firetrap Press, 2002)--jmv.]
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