The Price of Hate and Compromise

Tonight I sat down to check messages on my computer and I found myself overwhelmed with incredible sorrow as I read the following post, “CA Teen Filmmaker Commits Suicide After Making ‘It Gets Better’ Video.”



The article goes on to say that Eric James Borges a 19-year-old resident of Visalia, CA was, “Not accepted by his birth family, Eric James was striking out on his own, trying to deal with his personal situation, but also wanting to help others. Sadly even involvement with the Trevor Project was not enough to help him navigate the turbulent waters of young adulthood.”

Eric grew up in Visalia, California, a town I know very well because I lived there for 15 years. One year 1989 as associate pastor at St. Mary’s (the wealthy White parish) and 14 years as pastor of Holy Family Church (the poor Latino parish) located at 1908 North Court Street in Visalia.

The website for the City of Visalia speaks of the pro-South culture of Visalia during the Civil War that alarmed the Federal government enough to build a military installation in 1862 to prevent an uprising, centered in Visalia, in favor of the Confederacy.

Visalia, like most rural communities in the USA, is socially conservative. I recall walking down Main Street about ten years ago; a new shop had opened up called, “Prim and Proper.” Another priest, also assigned to Visalia quipped, “That’s Visalia.”

There is much that I loved and still love about Visalia, but there exists a dark side to most conservative rural towns in America. They are very wonderful places to live IF you happen to belong to the majority and conform to conservative ideas/values, or at least appear to conform. Eric’s story is chillingly familiar because it is the story of far too many of us.

Most of us become aware of our sexuality at puberty. Our physical attraction (sexual orientation) slowly “dawns” upon us uninvited, it simply emerges as we grow from children into adolescents. The greatest fear for a young LGBT person at this point in their life, is that they would be rejected by the very people that they love the most in this world, their family and their friends. As survival mechanism LGBT children adapt by denying who they are, they learn to lie about themselves to their parents, siblings, friends and classmates.

The price of all of this is ultimately self-hatred. The Center for Disease Control’s 1999 Youth at Risk Behavior Study, found that one-third of gay adolescents attempt suicide. One-Third! Not reflected in those statistics are the abuse of alcohol and drugs by LGBT youth. Not reflected in those statistics are the large numbers of gay teens that are driven from their homes, or emotionally alienated by parents practicing “tough love.” Parents attempting to force their children to be something they are not, heterosexual. All too often parents have been misled into adopting this tough “love” by clergy.

The fact that the hierarchy of many religions, including Catholicism, promote these attitudes towards LGBT people and makes them accomplices to this moral evil. The prejudice, emotional and physical violence, alienation of affection between parents and their children, the resulting despair and tragic suicides can all be traced back to religious authorities who willfully disregard the insights of psychology.

Pope Benedict XVI, just this week, made the absurd and unsubstantiated statement that; gay marriage was one of several threats to the traditional family that undermined "the future of humanity itself".


In the USA those states that have Marriage Equality laws have substantially lower divorce rates that those that prohibit Same-sex marriage.



Consider the following report from the BBC,

“A UK HIV charity said there was a clear link between happiness and health.
Research has already suggested that gay men are more likely to suffer from depression and suicidal thoughts than heterosexual men, and that social exclusion may be partly responsible.


Same-sex marriages are legal in six US states, with Massachusetts the first to allow them in 2003.”

And,

“Researchers from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health surveyed the demand for medical and mental health care from 1,211 gay men registered with a particular health clinic in the 12 months prior to the change, and the 12 months afterwards.
They found a 13% drop in healthcare visits after the law was enacted.
There was a reduction in blood pressure problems, depression and "adjustment disorders", which the authors claimed could be the result of reduced stress.”

And,

“A spokesman for the Terrence Higgins Trust, a UK-based sexual health and HIV charity, said: "There is a known link between health and happiness.
"It's no surprise that people who are treated as second class citizens tend to have low self esteem, which in turn makes them more likely to take risks.
"Whether this is drugs, alcohol abuse, or unsafe sex, treating gay men unequally has lasting repercussions for their health."

Tragically, society (like our President) is “evolving” too slowly to have saved the life of Eric James Borges, 19, of Visalia, California. Hopefully, his death will outrage us to speak louder, work harder and fight more uncompromisingly for full federal equality and protection. For the human dignity that is every person’s birthright.

Mass Deception

You may say, “Why should I care about the new English translation of the Mass, I’m not a Catholic!” Regardless of your personal beliefs the spiritual and social significance of this translation cannot be brushed aside. Regardless of how you “feel” about this translation, the Mass, Catholicism, or religion in general, 25% of the U.S. population is Catholic.


Those numbers are augmented by the numbers of Catholics in other English speaking countries worldwide (e.g. Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, etc). Prayers that people recite every week seep into the depths of their psyche. They affect how they think, how they act, and how they vote; therefore, this new translation will affect you personally and our society as well.


“Out of the mouths of babes” is an old adage that aptly describes the insights of a young Latinist and his comments on the new English translation of the Roman Missal. Erik Baker is a sixteen-year-old child prodigy who, having taken every Latin course offered at the high school level, is currently doing course work at Northwestern University. Erik also happens to be Catholic and so, when the new translation of the Roman Missal, that is much more faithful to the original Latin, became public he was eager to read it.


Erik’s astutely captures the “Why” of these uniform changes throughout the English-speaking world. Here are some of his insights in a nutshell; the new translation will slowly and subtly effectively reprograms churchgoers in the following ways:



• It destroys the communal and egalitarian nature of the Mass.
• Rather than an act of communion through which the churchgoer relates to God, it becomes an individualistic act through which the churchgoer relates to "experts" in Rome.
• The notion that only “moral” (as defined by those experts in Rome) or Christian people deserve peace and our prayers.
• Faith becomes something of the individual, by the individual, for the individual -- ironically, a very Protestant idea. Catholicism is supposed to value unity and togetherness.
• It might aim to promote humility, but inevitably it fosters guilt instead. It promotes a vision of human nature as overwhelmingly and inexorably sinful-- a vision more in line with the heretical Janesenist doctrine of centuries past than Catholic dogma.


Here is a full reprint from an article by Erik in the National Catholic Reporter



On the revised Roman missal

By Erik Baker


It's definitely a better translation. That's probably the biggest misconception that critics of the recent revision of the General Roman Missal have. They perceive the new translation as some sort of conservative formalization of the text that is only ostensibly more faithful to the Latin. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Though there are some changes that really are no better, and certainly tend towards archaic jargon, the vast majority of the dramatic shifts -- especially to the Confiteor, the Gloria, and the Nicene Creed -- are certainly far more accurate.

In fact, looking over the Latin, it’s quite clear that the former translation didn't even attempt to be literal. So the question clearly isn't "is it a better translation," if "better" is defined in terms of accuracy vis-à-vis the Latin. The question is "is a more accurate translation desirable?" For many that question will seem like a no-brainer. Of course we want to stay as close to the Latin as possible. And yet, I think it's valuable to use these changes as an opportunity to examine the value of the Latin Mass and ultimately the nature of the Mass itself. I think that the conclusions might be startling.

Let's start at the beginning. The first major change is to the Confiteor, the prayer used in most forms of the Penitential Rite. The new translation translates the adverb "nimis" as "greatly", so that it now reads "I have greatly sinned." It's certainly a dramatic change, but one that's grounded in the Latin. In fact, the word "nimis" means something more than "greatly"; it actually connotes the idea of "excessiveness". The other change is that the Latin "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa" is now translated "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault." This is pretty much a literal translation. So the Latin is solid.

The problem, though, is that the Latin itself seems to be hyperbolically critical of humanity. It might aim to promote humility, but inevitably it fosters guilt instead. It promotes a vision of human nature as overwhelmingly and inexorably sinful-- a vision more in line with the heretical Janesenist doctrine of centuries past than Catholic dogma.

An apologist of the translation reminds us that "the guiding principle of the new translation is a closer adherence to the Latin--not a sharper critique of our virtue." But this makes absolutely no sense. Who cares what the "guiding principle" was? The end result is that the Latin is more condemnatory for no discernible reason. And there is no scriptural grounding for this “sharper critique” either-- the first appearance of the prayer is in 1100 AD, over a millennium after Christ.

The next major change is to the Gloria. Most of the changes are innocuous enough, but there's one at the beginning of the prayer that seems bizarre to me. The familiar "and peace to his people on earth" is changed to "on earth peace to people of good will." Not only is the latter far more awkward in English, but there's also a problematic sentiment implicit in the new phrase. Why are we only praying that people "of good will" receive peace? This seems to say that people who are without "good will" are not deserving of peace.
But what is "good will"? It seems to me that it could either mean "good" in the virtuous sense of the word, or, more specifically, Catholic. In either case, it expresses a profoundly anti-Christian sentiment. The notion that only moral or Christian people deserve peace and our prayers is anathema to everything Jesus ever taught. There is simply no sound reason for abandoning "love your enemies" simply because it’s closer to the Latin. The original Greek text recognizes this, and expresses "goodwill to all people." Ironically, the Latin is then actually a mistranslation of the Greek. This just highlights the fact that the possibility of human error doesn’t disappear when writing church texts. It’s hard to see what inherent reason we have for respecting this highly fallible process.

Finally, I think the changes to the Nicene Creed merit some discussion. As before, all of them have good grounding in the Latin, but it's the Latin that's problematic. The first is the fact that all of the "believe"s are in the first person. This destroys the sense of communal vision found in the "we believe" of the previous translation. Faith becomes something of the individual, by the individual, for the individual -- ironically, a very Protestant idea. Catholicism is supposed to value unity and togetherness.

Furthermore, there are two bizarre translations of particular words in the Latin that sound awkward and even obscure: "consubstantial" and "was incarnate." The former is a translation of the word "consubstantialem" in the Latin, so it certainly resembles the Latin the most. But does that make it a better translation? Surely not. The first rule that every Latin translator learns is that often Latin words may look like certain long, rare English words -- but comprehensibility matters more. The same applies to "was incarnate." The whole reason why an English translation is used in the first place is so people can actually understand the Mass. For the average churchgoer "consubstantial" is no more comprehensible than "consubstantialem.” Ridiculous words defeat the point of a translation in the first place.

Ultimately, the whole affair just begs the question of why the Latin Mass has any particular spiritual significance. It's certainly not Scripture, and it's often just an amalgamation of various communal prayers used throughout Europe for several centuries. In fact, many early bishops would write their own Masses or translations to best fit their community's needs. And that's the essence of Mass. The reason why we come to Mass in the first place rather than just praying by ourselves is the interaction with others that has spiritual importance. In the Mass the people become the Body of Christ, conceived as the organic whole Paul writes about in the famous passage from 1 Corinthians: “for the body is not one member, but many.”

The problem with the new translation and indeed the notion of a codified Latin Mass at all is that it destroys the communal and egalitarian nature of the act. Rather than an act of communion through which the churchgoer relates to God, it becomes an individualistic act through which the churchgoer relates to "experts" in Rome. It sets certain people above others in terms of their knowledge of a dead language and of dogma -- concerns that clearly distract from the message of God. If the Mass has any meaning, it must be grounded in communal concerns and vision-- not an effort to include as many four-syllable words as possible.



Some of my own observations:


The two things that I find most striking about this article are the brilliance and passion of Erik. Beyond his technical knowledge of Latin, his theological insights are both profound and exceptional for someone of his young age and experience.


Let me say that many years ago I heard about the new English translation of the Roman Missal. Frankly, I thought it was long overdue. Every Sunday I celebrated Mass in both English and Spanish language. The Spanish translation of the Mass is far more poetic, natural and beautiful than the English translation that has just been discarded. No one, at least from a literary point of view, will mourn the passing of the previous translation. However, while what replaces it may be more polished it reminds me of a quip from a poisoner, “You put the arsenic in the cake, not in the brussel sprouts, after all it doesn’t work if the victim doesn’t eat it.”



Having come from Cuba I had relatives who lived and died under a totalitarian regime, I grew up very attuned to the impact of ideology in people’s daily lives. One of the distinguishing characteristics of Stalinist era movies, for example, is that the protagonists all tend to die. What remains is “The State, The Revolution.” Stalin couldn’t have done a better job re-writing the Mass than Benedict XVI. The re-written Mass makes the churchgoer feel that he/she is part of something greater than him/herself, something to which he/she should be completely submissive and that will be here, long after he/she is gone and forgotten. Utopias, atheist or theist, are bigger than lives. Apparently that the Gospel is lost in the translation is a small price to pay for all that power and glory.

Humor & Truth

Bill Maher’s video clip is exemplary of his biting sarcastic humor, that frankly I find entertaining. I especially enjoyed his movie, Religulous; however, what is disturbing about this particular video clip is that while it does a wonderful job of attacking symptoms it fails to expose the cause of the problem of sex-abuse in the Catholic Church.


Pedophilia is an inexcusable violence and crime against children. Despite the most determined efforts of law enforcement agencies and the judicial system, such crimes will continue to occur. Just as murders, rapes, and assaults still occur despite the fact that these are criminal acts and prosecuted as such. According to the John Jay School of Law in New York City, “The 4,392 priests who were accused amount to approximately four percent of the 109,694 priests in active ministry during that time.” Logically, that means that ninety-six percent (96%) are not pedophiles. Another stereotype is that pedophiles are predominantly gay. The reality is that most pedophiles self-identify as straight (heterosexuals). A pedophile is an adult who violates children and this has nothing to do with sexual orientation; rather it is a psychological disorder.


Perhaps the reason why such false stereotypes are attractive is because, disturbingly most acts of pedophilia are incestuous. By characterizing pedophiles as Catholic priests and/or gay men, attention is drawn away from two things. First, that it is most probably a heterosexual family member, or relative who will violate your children. There is a false comfort and security in believing that pedophiles are “one of those people” and not someone seated at my family’s Thanksgiving meal. Secondly, the real scandal in the Catholic Church is not that there are pedophile priests. The real scandal is their superiors had knowledge of such crimes and failed to report them to law enforcement and District Attorneys.


Imagine if a Superintendent of a School District knowingly transferred a pedophile teacher from one school to another in the School District. Further imagine that Superintendent paying parents/guardians money to remain silent and requiring the student to sign a statement that he/she would never divulge what happened. What would happen to that School Superintendent if all of this became public?


Can you name one (1) Cardinal, Archbishop or Bishop who has faced criminal prosecution for their role, not merely in obstructing justice, but thereby actually causing new incidents of pedophilia? Visit www.BishopAccountablity.com for a detail listing of such incidents and documentation. Even more disturbing is the fact that documentation exists that links the current Pope Benedict XVI with the Cover-Up Scandal.


Focusing exclusively on the small percentage of priests who are pedophiles and alluding to pedophilia as a gay crime reinforce false stereotypes. Not only does this cause many innocent people to suffer unjustly, but these stereotypes also serve to draw attention away from the real criminals. It may sound counter-intuitive; however, I’ll bet that the Pope and Catholic bishops are very happy that comedians and the public think that the problem is bad gay priests. It is not, the problems are bad bishops and American District Attorneys who lack the political guts to go after them. One of the reasons that politicians lack the guts to do their job is because of false public (voter) perceptions regarding this issue. Bill, please do a show on the Bishops role in all of this and since you are in LA, perhaps you could invite Cardinal Roger Mahony to be your guest.

PS: Since I wrote this post, I ran across this letter from LA Times columnist Steve Lopez to the new Archbishop of LA, Jose Gomez. The letter is posted on www.BishopAccountablity.org.