World AIDS Day 2011: One Catholic's Musings on Hope

I was working for a legal advocacy program run by Presbyterians in a food pantry run by Roman Catholics when I first noticed what seemed at the time some big differences between the social justice ministry styles of Protestants and Catholics. The woman in charge, a natural minister but lawyer by trade, made a stack of bibles (in Spanish and English) available to clients, set up a semi private area for prayer, and initiated a brief prayer for staff at the end of our shift after clients had gone. It was her custom to fashion beautiful, personalized prayers on behalf of the people we had sought to support that morning. ('Dear Lord, we ask you to give Mrs. Clark strength as she prepares to appear in Housing Court. May You in Your goodness soften the heart of her landlord ...') My own Roman Catholic approach would more likely have taken the form of a warp-speed, sotto voce Hail Mary. The whole thing felt foreign, so I limited my evangelizing to using my 'Pigeon Spanish' expertise to fill out intake forms and seventh grade computational acumen to help clients with supplementary food worksheets.

One morning, when the legal minds were busy being legal minds, I caught a Spanish-speaking client. (Despite my lack of foreign language knowledge, I was the closest thing we had to a Spanish language speaker.) To my dismay, she was not seeking help with the food stamps tabulations. She wanted someone to pray with her.

"Can you pray with her?" asked one of the Protestant Juris Doctors.

"Christ," I thought, "How the hell am I gonna get out of this?"

"She's a Catholic."

Shortly thereafter I found myself stuck in what I had come to think of as the dread oramus bullpen, face-to-face with this lovely woman. I had made the common mistake of having too good an accent in a language I didn't know, thus giving her the false impression that I could understand her Spanish, but we quickly learned that we could fold her weak English into my bad Spanish and thus communicate.

She was living with HIV. One of her adult children had HIV. Another, who had given up, was appearing poised to take the whole family down with him; he had full-blown AIDS, was abusing street drugs, stealing from family and refusing medical treatment. I suggested a secular, practical, governmental modes of support. She handed me the Spanish Bible. She wanted to pray los Salmos. I gestured as if to say, 'you first.' She said something like "No tengo gusto de leer en voz alta." Not for nothing had I been a teacher for 15 years. I knew that "I don't like to read aloud" in any language often means "I can't read aloud."

So, for the first time ever, I prayed the Salmos in Espanol. I felt as ridiculous as I did unworthy. But thanks to this lovely lady who was so rich in hope, I've been turning to the Psalms ever since.

As we headed to our Thanksgiving destination last week, my husband and I found ourselves fielding our three teenagers' questions about AIDS. Their questions rose out of discussion of the Brooklyn museum exhibit "Hide/Seek," which our adolescent children (who all study at the museum) have seen or will soon see. For them HIV and AIDS has always had a human face - some charming human faces, actually; they work in AIDS ministry. "How did it start?" one of the kids asked. We told them about "Patient Zero," the very sexually active man who was thought to have kicked off the epidemic among gay men, adding that we now know that the there was "much more to it" (than some lone, queer Typhoid Mary).

We described the New York City we knew in the 80's. Several of our friends were New York painters. I was a young poet giving readings in galleries, art spaces, cafes and clubs. Two months short of 30 years ago, my husband and I danced our first dance at the Pyramid Club, an East Village club frequented by gay men and drag queens. I noted how "Hide/Seek" reminded me anew of what it was to see New York City's gay population thinned out, and an art world on whose periphery I was, savaged.

One of the painters I came to know and love during the 1980s in NYC was Maureen Mullen. Two years ago a group of her paintings "Preparation Series" her work was exhibited as part of the World AIDS Day event at St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn. "Preparation Series" chronicled her brother-in-law's journey through the last stages of AIDS. She loved him very much and accompanied him bravely, in a spiritual, visceral and fully present way as he made his way toward death.

Maureen was on a similar journey herself when she exhibited these paintings in the back of St. Augustine Church two years ago. It was the last exhibit this immensely gifted artist and teacher, who was like a beloved sister to me, would have -- before dying herself of cancer at the age of 48. She, another of our friends and I helped her install the show during the last days of November in 2009. I remember haranguing her, drill-sergeant-style, to get materials to me on time. (She had asked me to write something about the work.) I remember alternating between "Are you sure you're up to it?" and verbal kicks in the ass. I knew how sick she was, and she knew I knew. A little over three months later, she was gone.

Maureen was deeply delighted about the opportunity to exhibit "Preparation Series" in a Roman Catholic church she loved. The paintings celebrate the healing love makes possible. Watching people see her paintings fortified and delighted her. I visited those paintings it each day for a week following the event, and was walloped every time, by her angel messenger wattage. Maureen had been incarnating the very truth her paintings radiated. Her World AIDS Day contribution emerged from her own hope, even as she was living suffering similar to that she depicted through paint. If that was not the Holy Spirit at work, I don't know what might be.

I think of it now as a World AIDS Day blessing -- maybe even a miracle -- one that makes me hunger and hope for more.

I believe the Roman Catholic Church has done tremendous good for many individuals with AIDS. I also believe that the Roman Catholic doctrinal prohibitions against the use of condoms have caused AIDS to spread. Yes, it is with sorrow I say that I am one of those who believes that the current pope and his predecessor have the blood of many victims of AIDS on their hands.

But Ratzinger might be changing his tune on condoms and AIDS; he has already come half-way around on the matter. Many of his bishops have long been pressuring the Vatican to revise its doctrine on the use of condoms to prevent the spread of disease. Many Roman Catholic clerics working among the poor in the developing regions disregard the Magisterium's teaching on condoms for reasons of conscience, for the greater good of saving lives. I may be dreaming -- but I believe there is reason to hope that the Vatican will finally do the right thing for the hundreds of thousands of people at risk for contracting HIV.

People in the industrialized world who are living with HIV are now more likely to live healthful lives. That is indeed a blessing, but throughout the world medications that arrest the damage the virus does and inhibit the spread of the HIV and AIDS are unavailable or unaffordable to far too many people. In 2010, about approximately 34 million people were living with HIV worldwide. By most estimates about 390,000 children contracted the virus within the past two years and as of 2009, 16 million children have been orphaned by AIDS. Approximately 1.7 million people did of AIDS-related causes last year. The World Health Organization reports that 10 million patients in need of ART (antiretroviral therapy) are not able to receive it. In the past year, the rate of infection has risen in Eastern Europe, parts of Asia and among teenage girls.

Educational programs, voluntary male circumcision, protocols targeting pregnant women and children with HIV and AIDS, and programs which both promote and facilitate the use of condoms are needed in order that the war on AIDS be won, in order that we, the world might come full circle, from "Patient Zero" - to zero cases of the disease.

As a Roman Catholic, I'm not proud of the Vatican's policies on condoms, but the Vatican is not the church. There is much in and of the church that does make me proud. Two Catholic churches I sometimes attend -- Immaculate Heart of Mary and St. Augustine -- will join to commemorate World AIDS Day 2011 at 7 pm on December 1st at St. Augustine Church in Brooklyn. I take pride in any Roman Catholic effort infused enough with Christ to support such holy action; and the overriding love of those who show up, despite the hierarchy's scorn for them, so as to hear the names of the dead, the dead who continue to shed light, and to celebrate those living with the virus, inspires me.

If you are in New York City on December 1st, consider attending the World AIDS Day Interfaith Prayer Service Immaculate Heart of Mary and St. Augustine Churches are hosting in Brooklyn. Hear the names, the music. Behold the art. St. Augustine Church is, itself, a masterpiece, wherein one can "dwell" a spell, as the psalmist says, "in the house of the Lord" -- or, if you prefer, rest, in a house hope built.

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The Truth Behind the Godawful New (Old) Roman Catholic Missal

Today on the first Sunday in Advent, a new English translation of the Roman Catholic is being implemented (by mandate) in Catholic churches throughout United States. These changes of the are small, dramatic and disruptive -- especially for the priests celebrating the masses.

Why have these changes been written into the mass?

The Vatican claims that a translation more faithful to the original Latin is needed. Is this the real reason for this disruption? I don't think so.

The nostalgia for the more Latin-faithful mass is an outgrowth of a desire for the church that used the Latin mass. This is nostalgia for the church in which less preaching took place, the priest presided with his back toward the congregation, only the hands of the priest touched the Eucharist, and wherein women -- who were prohibited from setting foot on the altar -- were required to cover their heads.

The Second Vatican Council did not merely change the mass from Latin to vernacular in 1963; it rendered the Latin mass (depending upon whom one asks) improper or forbidden entirely. Between 1962 and 1988 Latin masses were often celebrated under the radar -- somewhat in the "upper room" manner and spirit, ironically enough, of Dignity's masses and those said by woman priests.

I happen to find the the Latin mass beautiful, and at first I seemed to object less to the new changes than most Catholics I know. I attend Spanish language mass in from time to time -- In that liturgy, we already use phrasing similar to that the New Old Missal introduces. The Vatican is not nearly so interested, however, in the accuracy of the translation of the mass as it is in dragging today's vernacular mass back in time. They want the 1962 mass with all the trimmings. This new translation business is a tasty treat for the lockstep sheep and papist throwbacks.

Though I seem to be alone in it, I don't mind having to use (the new) "consubstantial" in the Nicene Creed. "Consubstantial -- it's so ... so Latin, I almost like it. There is however, good reason not to like this kind of change. Daunting Latinate terms like "consubstantial" are tools in the grift. When the boys in the Vatican want our money, they remind us that all are welcome -- no theology knowledge needed. But when people in the pews challenge man-made doctrine, the men in miters are all too quick to remind us that our lack of advanced degrees from the Pontifical Gregorian University might leave us less than qualified to challenge the Holy See on any Catholic matter.

The average Catholic is too busy living a life to familiarize him or herself with the specifics of each papal encyclical, each tenet of dogma, and the many voluminous, seminal Roman Catholic theological texts -- and the Magisterium likes it that way. Ecclesiastical jargon makes the bishops look like they have the inside line on God. Hence the current pope's fervor for evangelization in the developing world; hungry, illiterate people make good converts.

The New Old Missal matter works well as a diversionary tactic; its well-timed fanfare shifts attention away from a pontificate mired in perversion. It is easier to sit at the long table in a gown parsing the filioquethan it is to sit at that same table and discuss the ordination of women, the Vatican's culpability in spreading HIV and AIDS in the developing world, and its own spiritual cancer in the form of bishop-facilitated child rape.

Reminding Catholics that salvation does not extend to all is one of the chief aims of these changes in the text of the mass.

The Eucharistic Prayer, the most solemn and critical prayer in the mass, through which the bread and wine are transubstantiated, has undergone radical change. 

Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlastingcovenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me.

has become this:

Take this, all of you, and drink from it: for this is the chalice of my Blood, the Blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me.

In this prayer "cup" has become "chalice." While "chalice" may more accurately render a strict construction translation of the Latin. it is hard to imagine that "chalice" best describes the vessel Jesus might have called some version of His "Kiddush cup," somehow imperial "chalice" seems benign when seen alongside the following godawful change:
"it will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins."
If the language is to be believed -- last Sunday. the blood of Christ saved everyone. This week -- not so much.

Thus the English-speaking United States is reminded that the universal, transcendent, Catholic savior now pours out his blood for some and not others. This stipulation may appear in the original Latin, but even if it's a technically accurate translation of the original phrase, it's inconsistent with what Catholics have been expressing in our Creed for fifty years. Now, we are asked to pray to the the Christ who saves many of us and not all of us. The focus of the prayer shifts onto the excluded. Who are they? Atheists, agnostics, and non-Catholic believers and -- the real targets -- Roman Catholic self-excommunicants.

This Christ who saves many is the Christ Joseph Ratzinger wants (perhaps as his second in command) in his smaller, darker, more ancient church made up of that new "many."

It was interesting to watch, at the Saturday night vigil, my exemplary priest muddle through these changes with his usual open heart, and interesting to see the highly sophisticated reader, homilist and teacher struggle through the stiff and unwieldy and language of 'corrected' sections of the mass.

When I first started to study Latin in college, I began to try to translate the lyric poems of Catullus. Catullus was a contemporary of Caesar Augustine, so the Latin vernacular in which he wrote would have been about the same as that used by Romans during the time Jesus lived on earth. The grammar and Latin in many of Catullus's poems are straightforward, and often the verse is bawdy, so young poets who can manage a little Latin are often drawn to translating it. It was through translating Catullus that I learned the little Latin I know, and through reading bad translations of Catullus that I first began to observe that a good translation of any text finesses a compromise between sense and literal meaning. In the case of a poem, some measure of "melopoeia" (Ezra Pound's word for the melodious aspect of verse) must enter in and infuse the text in question.

The Eucharistic Prayer may not be a poem in a technical sense, but it functions as one. Besides its obvious purpose -- to catalyze the consecration -- its rhythms reach into the heart like a song with its "word made flesh" message pertaining to hope.

Those who don't care about poems probably think it does not matter that the Eucharistic Prayer, as of last night, is no longer a poem (in English), but poetry is powerful and one of its strengths is its ability to sneak up on one -- and evoke strong response from the unsuspecting. The pope didn't do himself any favors when he had the scholars siphon the poetry out of the English Eucharistic prayer, and the translation team's failure to achieve a compromise between certain of the larger truths of our faith and the literal meaning of the words reflects the Vatican's readiness (nothing new) to sacrifice the glory for the power. People will feel the power of the lost poem through its absence.

I came away from mass last night feeling that these new changes are designed to stick it to priests at the parish level. The implementation of the new procedures makes marionettes of priests. It has every Catholic in the U.S. dutifully holding "pew cards" (in my parish they took the form of laminated "cheat sheets") so that all could follow the new, old, unwieldy script.
It has congregations doing an obedience dance.

I attended a meeting about a year ago in which these changes in the liturgy were introduced. At one point in the discussion, a friend seated behind me tapped my shoulder. "Psst," he said, pointing to the new translation of the Nicene Creed, "looks like they missed something." He pointed to this:

 

For us men
and our salvation ...

As Vatican scholars in search of a more faithful translation of this prayer labored over every syllable seeking to bring each into line with the original Latin and the true message of the mass, they failed to make some significant corrections.

Maybe the boys in lace and their scholars were absent the day the Latin class learned that"homines" is a form of the noun "homo, hominis" which means "man" as in "human being" or "person." (There's an alternative word for "man" that would have been used to refer to those with Y chromosomes.)

Or maybe the boys in lace just forgot that women are included in the salvation.

The Vatican's choice to revisit the text of the Nicene Creed with the aim of perfecting the English translation from Latin is understandable. When it comes to translating our unified profession of faith (which, in going from "we believe" back to "I believe," would seem to make the prayer less unified.) precision should matter. What is less easy to understand is why the painstaking revision did not include a second look at "for us men/ and our salvation."
Every Magisterium-sanctioned text we have tells us that women are included in salvation, yet the translators of the "New" (old) Missal thought it unnecessary to pause, in the course their painstaking parsing, to notice what is essentially erroneous about "for us men and our salvation."

This non-oversight says all one needs to know about the spirit of this translation. One should expect nothing better from this pontificate. Why did they not correct this inaccurate language when the Vatican experts were in there fixing everything else? Why does the Credo retain this inaccurate and misogynist language?

You know why. The He-man Woman Haters are sending a message. Swinging their censers. This show of power is Ratzinger's billet doux to lockstep Catholics; he's tossing the sheep a bone. Even the smallest evidence of devolution thrills them. So, why did they boys in lace change the words to the mass?

Because they can.

But do we have to say those words? No. One doesn't get kicked out of mass for not saying the words right. Not yet, at least. I have always love the words of the mass, but I've been tweaking my whole life, correcting sexist language in my own prayers at will.

I'll say some of those new old words when they make sense and decline to say others. Catholics don't need no stinking "pew card."Roman Catholics don't an imprimatur to pray.

While Joseph Ratzinger longs for an older, darker, smaller church, he seems yet to wish for even those whom his old new mass excludes (and whom salvation eludes!) to continue to drop greenbacks into the basket on a stick on Sunday.

The Vatican message as it pertains to women and girls is clear. Perhaps it is time that those Catholics who are, by whatever defect (whether it be gender or excommunication-worthy offense) excluded from Christ's salvation, respond in a language the hierarchs do understand.

Ave legal tender.

What if all the women in the church were to redirect their Advent weekly collection dollars to purchasing gifts for the needy, provisions for food pantries, charitable organizations or Catholic groups which challenge the tyranny of the Ratzinger pontificate? It would be interesting to see what would happen if every Catholic whom the New Old Missal now freshly excludes from salvation, were to boycott the collection basket for the duration of the season of Advent.

I know I'd rather help to put a meal on the table for the ladies and gentleman at my local soup kitchen than a $300.00 bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape for Bernard Law's table for Christmas dinner?

Click here to read "The Museum Exhibit No Catholic Should Miss: 'Hide/Seek' at the Brooklyn Museum."  

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The Art Exhibit No Catholic Should Miss: "Hide/Seek" at the Brooklyn Museum

PART 1

November  17

When I see "Hide/Seek:Difference and Desire in American Portraiture" tomorrow night at the Brooklyn Museum, I'll see it at preview for museum members. As I consider the controversy surrounding the show -- particularly the local Roman Catholic bishop's objection to David Wojnarowicz's film "Fire in My Belly" -- I'll bear in mind all I learned during my two years studying with a poet/professor, Allen Ginsberg,  whose first book, Howl, spurred an obscenity trial and is now widely regarded as an American masterpiece. I will see Hide/Seek as a working artist -- I'm a poet. I'll see the show as an amateur painter; I'm a painting student at the Brooklyn Museum. I expect I shall walk through that exhibit a few times, and on each occasion I will bear in mind the truest thing about art that I know: art at its best tends to be ahead of its time.

All one needs to do is read the Brooklyn Museum's press release to know why some Roman Catholics whiners are quietly protesting this show. This show is not for the "god hates fags" set:

Hide/Seek includes works in a wide range of media created over the course of one hundred years that reflect a variety of sexual identities and the stories of several generations. The exhibition also highlights the influence of gay and lesbian artists who often developed new visual strategies to code and disguise their subjects' sexual identities, as well as their own.

The local Roman Catholic bishop, Nicholas DiMarzio, has been rather restrained in criticizing the show current U.S. Speaker of the House John Boehner and conservative Roman Catholics .strenuously protested a little over a year ago when it opened at the Smithsonian Institute. (Theiruse of a crucifix in David Wojnarowicz’s video, “Fire in My Belly.”  Boehner et al managed to have the video pulled from the show on the grounds that it was “hate speech.”) The local (Brooklyn) bishop tried to persuade the Brooklyn Museum not to include Wojnarowicz’s “Fire in the Belly” in the show, but was unsuccessful in this.  Bishop DiMarzio has called the video it “sacrilege” but has stopped short, in this condemnation, of demanding that Roman Catholics not see “Hide/Seek.” This soft attack is due in great part to concern that excessive fervor on their part might boost attendance. David Wojnarowicz's "Fire in My Belly," the film a contingent of “Christians” managed to have pulled from the Smithsonian Institute almost a year ago, is the focus of the Roman Catholic whinging at hand. The Brooklyn Museum has been down his road before and is unlikely to surrender to any latter-day fig leaf campaigns.

Wojnarowicz uses a crucifix in the "Fire in My Belly," and lthose who feel the show is somehow anti-Christian view this as a clear example of sacrilege. They are is wrong. this show -- that's his right.

It is certainly the locak bishop’s right to pronounce Hide/Seek sacrilegious. Certainly some of his flock will heed him -- but those are the sheep who wouldn't have seen "Hide/Seek" anyway.

Half of DiMarzio's own priests will leave their Roman collars at home and flock to see this show. Any sophisticated Catholic who has the slightest interest in art will shrug off the bishop's recommendation.

Every time the discussion of Roman Catholic sacrilege in art comes up, I'm astonished by the cognitive dissonance involved. Even the most traditional Catholics readily acknowledge that the same Sistine Chapel angels most Catholics now view as the work of divinely-inspired genius were once deemed sacrilegious by Catholic bishops. Despite this, we continue to see Catholic clerics with no background in art making the same mistake over and over again.

In Brooklyn, Nicholas DiMarzio's mouthpiece, Monsignor Kieran Harrington provided a case in point:

Certainly we don't think this would be tolerated if this was the image of the Prophet Muhammed or any other religious symbol," Msg. Kieran Harrington, a diocese spokesman, told the paper.

We have no way to know whether this would be tolerated if "this" were the image of the Prophet Mohammed." Therefore, it is not reasonable to claim that the refusal to tolerate it is a 'certainty.' Mohammed is not a symbol. To compare the crucifix, a ubiquitous symbol belonging to a religion that is deeply attached to the use of symbols, with a prophet in a religion that, for the most part, views the use of religious symbols as idolatry, is inane. Furthermore, there is something unseemly about a man of the cloth trafficking in such facile and not very subtle anti-Islamic sentiments especially when his St. Joseph Church in Brooklyn, is located in a part of town heavily populated with Islamic believers.

This anti-Islamic "if it were Mohammed" refrain reminds me of children squabbling at the table! ("Don't say 'shut up!' to your sister!" "What about her? She said it to me!'' "Are you going to punish her?") No artist should ever have to work in fear of the kind of violence to which the monsignor alludes. We do not know whether an image of Mohammed covered with ants would be "tolerated." To assume the worst is disrespectful to many of

Harrington's own Islamic neighbors. Would the monsignor be more satisfied if the Knights of Columbus were threatening gay artists with intifadas?

That Catholics have an imperfect but solid track record of bringing expansiveness and imagination to the appreciation of art is a good thing. I should think this strength would be cherished by any Catholic cleric in a contemporary church so compromised by weakness run amok. Regardless of whether a Mohammed overrun with ants would be tolerated, it is fundamentally illogical to compare the crucifix with any image associated with Islam. Roman Catholics have been meditating and reinventing the crucifixion for 2000 years. The cross is of interest to the American artist, in great part, because it is everywhere.

Do the Catholics who would put the kibosh on all art that offends their Catholic sensibilities wish to turn back the clock and erase, retroactively, all the art Roman Catholic hierarchs have deemed blasphemous? Do Catholics really want to default to an "I-don't-know-anything-about art-but-I-know-what-I-like" disposition toward the arts? I don't think so.

In an interview with a Catholic online media outfit, Nicholas DiMarzio notes that Wojnarowicz's work is "offensive... because it "is done in a sacrilegious way." I confess I was surprised by the bishop's overall restraint in this interview. (DiMarzio is, after all, the man who used the public airways not long ago to remind us all seeking to marry one's same-sex lover was akin to seeking to pledge one's troth to one's dog.) In this interview, the Roman Catholic bishop simultaneously condemns and defends "Fire in My Belly," conceding that although that that the artist's aim to express his own suffering through an association with the suffering of Christ's might   be worthy and well-intended, Wojnarowicz failed to execute the art in a respectful enough way. To DiMarzio's credit - he has not advised Catholics to boycott the show his office quietly and unsuccessfully aimed to prevent from opening (He sent a letter the museum shortly before the show opened.) Rather he is advising Catholics to "use judgment" in deciding whether to attend.

Is the crucifixion imagery in Wojnarowicz's film profane? Yes.

As well it should be. The crucifixion is obscenity incarnate. It should always be disturbing to behold. Is Wojnarowicz's cross nearly so obscene as the

the diamond encrusted one that hangs around the neck of a big-tithing church lady in chinchilla in the front pew at St. James Cathedral at the Christmas vigil? I think not.

But it's not really the ceramic crucifix crawling with ants that Catholic critics of the show (most of whom haven't even seen any of it) don't like. It's that the crucifix appears in a film made by a gay man in a show that will project LGBT identity as blessed. Gay activist artists -- men like Wojnarowicz – helped to get the gay revolution ball rolling, and the Roman Catholic hierarchy is losing its war against gay people. It is the LGBT focus of the show, not Wojnarowicz's sacrilege, to which the bishops and their small lockstep contingent really object.

David Wojnarowicz was an orphan who worked as a prostitute in his youth and died of AIDS at the age of 37. There is a lot of Christ in a life like his; even Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio seems to grasp that much. But the AIDS theme hits a little too close to home for some in a church whose pontificate stands credibly accused of helping to spread AIDS in the developing world by refusing to adjust its teaching on the use of condoms. (Fortunately Joseph Ratzinger appears to be coming around on this critical matter.)

DiMarzio is smart to proceed with caution. He's a reasonably well-educated man who knows that histrionics in response to "Hide/Seek" are not in his best interest. He's rebuilding St. Joseph's Church, a cathedral-sized church (The aforementioned Harrington is its pastor.) a half-mile away from the museum. This extravagant restoration is very costly, and all around it dozens of neighboring parishes, upon which poor and elderly Catholics depend for worship, solace and community, are folding. Being seen as an "I-don't-know-much-about-art-but-I-know what-I-like" bishop as he parlays the tithes of Brooklyn and Queens Catholics to build an adorn in high style a gargantuan church the diocese doesn't need -- would be bad for business. DiMarzio will not be Brooklyn's bishop for much longer. The last thing he wants is a another blot on his already highly tarnished legacy.

But good on DiMarzio, for recognizing, even in the small ways he does, in this instance at least, that Catholics have a long and rich tradition of not merely tolerating but supporting artists who take up the cross in art. All but the most ignorant of Roman Catholics recognize that Pope Paul III's Master of Ceremonies was wrong when claimed that Michelangelo's fresco "The Last Judgment" (currently in the Sistine Chapel) belonged in a barroom. No thoughtful, intelligent Catholic today would support the

painting of shorts on Michelangelo's nude angels because those angels bishops once called "sacrilegious" are now held, by Catholics, as holy.

The great irony in the matter of Catholic opposition to "Fire in My Belly" is that (at least the version of the footage currently available to the public) it is not blasphemous. To the contrary. "Fire in My Belly" is an intensely spiritual and ritualistic meditation of suffering and the quest for hope.

The image of Jesus on the cross is aggressively carnal. Any child who grows up in a home with a crucifix on the wall knows that the traditional, mass-produced, papally-sanctioned Jesus on the cross is disturbing. Why? Because the figure is anguished, humiliated, nearly naked, dying and murdered. Wojnarowicz lays the sum of all that profanity at his audience's feet, demanding that we not look away. Catholics reiterate the ideal of the resurrection of the body every week through recitation of the Creed. Catholic churches are filled with depictions of Jesus bloodied, whipped, weeping and crippled with agony. Catholics eat God's body and drink His blood at every mass. The psalmist's undraped genitals in the Uffizi are now acceptable to Roman Catholics who claim the sculptor as one of their Catholic own. Catholics love that part of John 20 (19-31) when "doubting Thomas" thrusts his hand into the side of the risen Jesus so as to ascertain (by the tell-tale gash) that the unrecognizable person before him is truly Jesus risen.

Yet ants crawling on Jesus is sacrilege?

Wojnarowicz's Jesus covered with ants is a Christ hijacked, Christ prostituted, Christ overrun with battalions of tiny, hard-working, strategic pests. I can see why this image would vex a Roman Catholic bishop. I can see why the libidinous creativity of a queer tormented orphan who turned to prostitution and then made his mark as a prodigious artist might vex a bunch of men in gowns who lack healthy sex lives.

Wojnarowicz offers us a perfect image of systematic, well-orchestrated appropriation of Christ on the cross. Does Wojnarowicz hit a nerve? Does he ever. Wojnaricz's crucifixion scene does not profane Christ -- it profanes His profaners.

What is the cross for if not to give women and men a path to marrying the light of heaven with the crap of earth? What is art for if not to push us past where we sit. It is proper that artistic investigations of Christ touch upon

the obscene.

In 1999, (then) Mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to shut down "Sensation," another Brooklyn Museum show the bishops didn't like. Ironically, the show opened just a few months after the married, Roman Catholic mayor had begun sneaking around with the mistress he'd later marry. Perhaps Giuliani hoped his fervent crusade to shut down the show he called "disgusting" (while himself engaging in disgusting behavior) might win him some kind of plenary indulgence.

I saw "Sensation" alone before seeing it a second time with my three young children. The older children liked looking at the works; they were frequent visitors to the museum. Being four years old, they were, of course, unaware of the controversy. I knew, nonetheless, that I wanted to be able to tell them that they had been to that show. When I visited the second time with the baby strapped to my chest and a pair of toddlers in tow, I avoided works I knew might frighten or upset them. Chris Ofili's painting "The Holy  Virgin Mary" was not one of them. Finding reverence in Ofili's "Virgin Mary" doesn't require much of a stretch. A glance is enough.

Then as now, the Roman Catholic histrionics had more to do with politics than with Ofili's painting. The religious indignation spearheaded by Giuliani et al steered attention away from actual sin. "Virgin Mary" became the totem.

In protesting "Hide/Seek" now, the Catholic hierarchs and their chauvinistic minions are looking outside for the purification that is wanting within.

Perhaps it is difficult for those who do not work as artists to get their heads around the idea that often artists discover and rediscover God in the making of art, that is a labor of love. That sometimes it is prayer. Rare is the Christian artist who does not take on the cross in some fashion. For a Catholic artist, it is ever the first order of business. We grow up in the difficult, passionate, sensual cathedral of this - I'll say it --"agony and ecstasy."

I'll watch "Fire in My Belly" tomorrow, and later on this month with my husband and children. I'll see it as an amateur painter, with my classmates. I'll see it as Ginsberg's student. I'll see it as a poet who has translated the poems of Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross and and Saint Francis of Assisi.

But when I finally see that crucifixion segment in a museum, I'll see it as a Roman Catholic who never misses mass on Sunday. I'll see it for what it really is.

PART 2 

November 20, 2011

On Friday morning, the day the Brooklyn Museum exhibit opened to the public, I listened to a Catholic guy on the radio who called "Hide/Seek" which I, a practicing Catholic, working artist and Brooklyn Museum art student had seen the night before, "garbage." He likened the newly opened show to "Sensation," the Brooklyn Museum exhibit which aroused the ire of certain Roman Catholic in 1999.

The Catholic guy reminded listeners that Ofili had used elephant dung as a medium on his painting, "The Holy Virgin Mary." The 'hold-on-to-your-seats!' inflection in the Catholic guy's voice as he noted with surplus indignation that Ofili had also incorporated "women's genitalia!" left me feeling that Catholic guy could not imagine a more offensive image (than that of "women's genitalia!") to affix to a Madonna.

Poor fellow, how it must torment him to know that Jesus Himself came into the material world through one of those things.

As I listened to the Catholic guy rant about the "garbage" produced by Jasper Johns, Georgia O'Keefe, Thomas Eakins and George Bellows, I wondered whether he had even seen any of the art in "Hide/Seek." I wondered whether he thought, for example, all of George Bellows's work was "garbage." The Irish Catholic granddaughter of a pug, I found it hard to imagine any Catholic guy in over 50 in New York thinking George Bellows's most famous painting ("Dempsey and Firpo" which is not in "Hide/Seek") an example of "garbage."

I had to assume that the Catholic guy had never seen reproductions of any of the several Medieval and early Renaissance lactating Madonnas one finds in the world's greatest Museums. Prostitutes sat as models for the painters of these works and very often the nipples of the Virgin are quite

precisely rendered. In some, the Virgin is seen lactating into the mouth of St. Bernard. Would the Catholic guy exhort Catholics to boycott that and other "garbage" hanging in the Prado? Some of these highly eroticized, bare-breasted Virgins were painted in Portugal and Spain during the Inquisitions! How far have some Catholics failed to come in 500 years?

But the truth is that those who objected to "Sensation" were not reacting nearly so much to elephant crap on paintings as to the libidinousness of the show as a whole. The same applies to to "Hide/Seek." It's the personal politics and erotic expression people like Catholic guy don't like. The crucifix crawling with ants is just an object to which they can pin their larger discomfort. These holy crusaders are not nearly so muchfor Christ as they are against sex.

I don't believe the local bishop who objects to David Wojnarowicz's "Fire in My Belly" truly finds the ceramic body on the crucifix overrun with ants "sacrilegious." What he finds distasteful is the presence of Jesus in a visual litany of images, some of which are erotic.

The Catholics who criticize shows like "Hide/Seek" think homosexuality is perversion (They also view much heterosexuality as sinful.) A significant number of the men who set this homophobic agenda of the church are closeted gay men, many of whom detest the out, gay artist because he has what they covet.

The Vatican and their sheep see the erotic self as the opposite of the divine self, when the truth is that the erotic self and the divine self are often intertwined. (See Dante.)

Ironically enough, one could see that white ceramic ant-covered crucifix we've heard so much about as the church itself overrun by industrious, pin-prick vermin, who conspire to drape its pristine beauty with a creepy-crawly shroud.

About ten or eleven years ago I became friendly with a Roman Catholic priest who was interested in poetry ('m a poet.) One of the first gifts he gave me was a first-person magazine piece by a young, Catholic, poetry-writing undergraduate written in response to her mother's concern that her daughter had stopped making it to mass on Sundays. Indeed the young woman had stopped attending mass - but she had taken up poetry writing, and had come to view her writing as a Sabbath devotion for her. After The

reading the piece, I joked with the priest who had given it to me. "Why give this to me? You know I write poetry and always get to mass on Sunday!"

A few years later, I sent him some verse I'd written, which would, by the standards favored by Catholics protesting "Hide/Seek," this week, easily constitute "sacrilege." His response: "You're the best Catholic I know!" He was exaggerating for effect, but his point was a serious one; it appeared to him that I was getting at what Christ is. Artists have always been good at shedding light on the matter of the Incarnation.

One of the first things one sees as one enters is Thomas Eakins photograph of the high priest of American poetry, the queer patriot after whom many a mall and high school is are named. How we (as a nation) have lauded this man for what he communicated while failing to apprehend the coded truth it was not permissible for him to utter.

Standing before Glenn Ligon's "Mirror #12," in which an over-sized printed page of a text by James Baldwin serves as an underdrawing, made me feel the way I felt when I (recently) saw a Torah for the first time. The first word on the page - and the clearest one -- is "see."

As a poet who descends from a tradition shaped by some of the poets whose words, faces and bodies appear in "Hide/Seek" I was especially moved by what I might characterize as the poetry ("word made flesh") aspects of the exhibit. Wojnarowicz incorporates a mask of the face of Rimbaud (who influenced everybody) into a series of photographs. There are a few portraits of poet Frank O'Hara, including the famous over-sized, full-body one by Larry Rivers of O'Hara clad only in boots.

"Memory of My Feelings" is the title of the Jasper Johns's painting about his heartbreak in the aftermath of the end of his love affair with Robert Rauschenberg. Its title comes from O'Hara's beautiful poem by the same name. ("My quietness has a number of naked selves...") Marsden Hartley's elegy in paint, "Eight Bells Folly: Memorial to Hart Crane," reminded me of the extent to which suicide has been a solution for those whose sexuality has been viewed by their world as perverse - and catapulted me toward a long overdue rereading of his famous long poem, "The Bridge."

No piece in "Hide/Seek" so directly asks one to think about God as does "Fire in My Belly."

The ant-covered crucifix is one of the least disturbing images in a film that

consists of a frenetic catalog of disturbing images somehow haloed by a brightness that defies the suffering at hand. Wojnarowicz's camera delivers poverty, junkyards, physical deformity, death masks and circus freaks. His soundtracks are built of whispers, static and the wonderful chanting of Diamanda Galas. The sequence in which a man (Wojnarowicz? His undershirt bears the Roman numeral 37 - the age the artist was at the time of his death) disrobes.

My guess is the brief "beating the bishop" scene (which functions as a ‘coming to life’ in the context of suffering and death) juxtaposed as it is with flashes of Christ's head and cross - is probably what most vexes Catholic critics of the film. The concert of images in "Fire in My Belly” is meticulously shaped. Nothing is gratuitous. Nothing is wasted. Any intelligent thoughtful viewer watching Wojnarowicz's film easily and quickly sees that Jesus covered in ants is a more reverent than not image of Jesus profaned.

The fleshy aspect of God (Christ) - that Jesus thirsted, hungered, respired, secreted, excreted, and desired is essential to Christian worship. Absent the meat of that matter, the passion of Christ is an airbrushed, neutralized event no one can truly feel. There's a lot of meat in "Fire in My Belly." Through the vehicle of flesh that the physical pain of Christ's suffering registers. There's a lot of hell in "Fire in My Belly" but there's also a hell of a lot of hell in the passion of Christ. Wojnarowicz's use in "Fire in My Belly," of the head of Christ, the sides of beef and elements of Diá del Muerto indicates hi determination to meditate the Incarnation of Christ. This, as his own death neared.  

I had a hunch I would I not find "Hide/Seek" sacrilegious, but I was not prepared for how rich with what I can only describe as – innocence – it would be. My 17 year-old daughter, who studies at the Brooklyn museum, was awake when I came home from the members' preview on Thursday night. "How was it?" she asked. I urged her to see it. I felt obliged to warn her about the "several penises" in the show. Maria is a young but sophisticated 17. She laughed it off as I reminded her we'd see plenty more of them when we finally made our trip to the Vatican. 

Two days after the show, Maria visited the show with her class. This past year, she and her super-smart girlfriends all read Patti Smith's National Book Award-winning Just Kids, Smith’s memoir about her loving odyssey with Robert Mapplethorpe; my daughter was excited to see Mapplethorpe's photos in the show.

There are three Mapplethorpes. Two (both self-portraits) are intensely pure and angelic. The third is obscene.

It's the face of Roy Cohn staged to look like the death mask it is.  It's the face of a self-loathing homophobe bully whose hatred for what he is defines him. 

So why has the local bishop called this show "sacrilegious?"  Why does the Catholic guy think it's "garbage?" 

One reason doctrinally adherent Roman Catholics don't like "Hide/Seek" is that many of the works focus upon the scourge and specter of AIDS. Gay male artists were not the only community "cut off at the knees" (an image of which Wojnarowicz makes perfect use in "Fire in My Belly") by AIDS in the 1980's. Large numbers of Roman Catholic priests began to present with the virus at that time. Some feel that the AIDS crisis contributed to the outing of the Roman Catholic priesthood. If ever there were a genie the bishops would love to stuff back into a bottle, the gay priest genie is it. There is the aforementioned sensitivity relative to the perception of many that the Vatican policies on condom use are accusing AIDS to spread in the developing world.  

"Hide/Seek" advances the idea that all sexuality is both spiritual and bodily. That message is simply not compatible with the current teaching of the Magisterium.  Even the more orgiastic content in "Hide/Seek" radiates an ethos of fellowship, yet that message is very much at odds with the doctrinal insistence that same-sex attraction is disordered, a moral hop, skip and a jump away from fornication with one’s pet.

It's not the perversion of "Hide/Seek" from which the bishop would shield Catholics -- but the erotic salubriousness the work radiates. The light-seeking bravery of artists who document living and dying with AIDS doesn't sit well with the current pontificate's "hate the sin love the sinner" message.

Even if "Hide/Seek" were sacrilegious, I would support the museum's choice to exhibit it. All taxpayers support programs and services they do not like. Many who object to "Hide/Seek" show would rather not fund art of any kind, but even most of them would admit that if we are to support

museums at all, an "I-don't-know- much-about-art-but-I-know-what-I-like" approach is not optimal.

Art is always ahead of its time. There is value to letting the test of time work its magic, in the hope that time will tells us which works created today might be tomorrow's masterpieces. Most people who care at all about art agree on that. 

But "Hide/Seek" happens not to be sacrilegious. It happens to be the opposite of sacrilegious. It happens to take as its subject matter the premise that Eros can no more be distilled out of the soul than it can be banished from the flesh. "Hide/Seek" takes to heart the notion that the flame of the (Holy?) Spirit resides in the flesh ("Fire in My Belly"). Its subject is the tendency of the divine body and the divine soul to intertwine -- in both directions. The word made flesh motif in "Hide/Seek" reflects the Catholic Incarnation. Desire engulfs and incorporates the soul -- and the other way around.

There are a hell angels in Hide/Seek. The word "angel" comes from the Greek word for "messenger." We shouldn't silence the angel messengers of "Hide/Seek." We shouldn't hide from the plain truth they've had to hide, for so long, in plain sight. We should be awakened by the agony that accompanies the hiding, celebrate the ecstatic process of the seeking, and be warmed by the new light the works in "Hide/Seek" shed.

Click here to read "Should Susan Sarandon Apologize for Calling the Pope a "Nazi?"