Synopses & Reviews
The past decade has seen homosexual scandals in the Catholic Church becoming ever more visible, and the Vatican's directives on homosexuality becoming ever more forceful, begging the question Mark Jordan tries to answer here: how can the Catholic Church be at once so homophobic and so homoerotic? His analysis is a keen and readable study of the tangled relationship between male homosexuality and modern Catholicism." Jordan has offered glimpses, anecdotal stories, and scholarly observations that are a whole greater than the sum of its parts. . . . If homosexuality is the guest that refuses to leave the table, Jordan has at least shed light on why that is and in the process made the whole issue, including a conflicted Catholic Church, a little more understandable."--Larry B. Stammer, Los Angeles Times" Jordan knows how to present a case, and with apparently effortless clarity he demonstrates the church's double bind and how it affects Vatican rhetoric, the training of priests, and ecclesiastical protectiveness toward an army of closet cases. . . . T his book will interest readers of every faith."--Daniel Blue, Lambda Book ReportA 2000 Lambda Literary Award Finalist
Synopsis
A 2000 Lambda Literary Award Finalist
"What Jordan accomplishes is nothing less than brilliant. . . *"
The past decade has seen homosexual scandals in the Catholic Church becoming ever more visible as the Vatican's directives on homosexuality become ever more forceful, begging the question Mark D. Jordan tries to answer here: how can the Catholic Church be at once so homophobic and so homoerotic? His analysis is a keen and readable study of the tangled relationship between male homosexuality and modern Catholicism.
Synopsis
A 2000 Lambda Literary Award FinalistThe past decade has seen homosexual scandals in the Catholic Church becoming ever more visible, and the Vatican's directives on homosexuality becoming ever more forceful, begging the question Mark Jordan tries to answer here: how can the Catholic Church be at once so homophobic and so homoerotic? His analysis is a keen and readable study of the tangled relationship between male homosexuality and modern Catholicism.
About the Author
Mark D. Jordan is the Reverend Priscilla Wood Neaves Distinguished Professor of Religion and Politics at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University. He was previously the Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Divinity and Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University and also taught at the University of Notre Dame and Emory University. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1. The Pope Converts: imafination, Bureaucracy, Silence
CHURCH WORDS
2. Teaching by Threatening
3. Bureaucratic Morals
CHURCH LIVES
4. Living Inside
5. Memoirs of Priestly Sodomy
6. Reproducing "Father"
7. Clerical Camp
CHURCH DREAMS
8. Reiteration, or The Pleasures of Obedience
9. Repentence, or Schools for New Speech
Notes
Works Cited
Index