The Monk and the Skeptic
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Through his provocative and influential work, most notably The Culture of Desire and A Queer Geography, Frank Browning has proven himself to be an erudite and intellectual writer with deep insights into the fusion of culture and identity.In his new book The Monk and the Skeptic, Browning examines the intersection of sexuality and religion through the framework of conversations between the author and a gay priest to discuss the nature of secular and spiritual friendship; religious thought on same-sex marriage; the relation of the body to God; the mission of charity enacted by the drag troop Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence; the biblical prohibitions on improper pleasures of the body; and the history of how the church has viewed the body and desire. Browning manages to bring in a host of influences to his discussion: Descartes, Locke, Greek Myth, Christian Myth, Buddhist myth, Harry Potter, St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as modern writers like Jeanette Winterson, John Boswell, and Daniel Mendelsohn. The result is an engaging, timely, and very modern discourse on how the self and sexuality has been interpreted throughout the ages.
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AND THE
If I saw no signs of a divinity, I would fix myself in denial. If I saw everywhere the marks of a Creator, I would repose peacefully in faith. But seeing too much to deny Him, and too little to assure me, I am in a pitiful state, and I would wish a hundred times that if a god sustains nature it would reveal Him without ambiguity.
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Brother Peter has never been so candid with the members of his order. He supposes they do not know of the friendships and adventures he has shared with me and others. He does not know whether other Dominicans with whom he shares prayers and silent meals also have their own adventures with men, or with women. It would not bother him if they do, but if so, he doesn’t want to know—not because he doesn’t care about their affective lives, but because he believes sharing such intimate knowledge would threaten the security of the monastic family. That “family” is the rock of his emotional and spiritual stability. Ordinary parish priests cast into the crosscurrents of faith and displacement find other solutions. Some have discovered in the hierarchical order of the church a salvation from the disorder of desire. Others, like the Irish child abusers, clearly failed to find adequate solace in the Doctrine of the Faith, and the hierarchy provided them neither charity nor counsel. As Marie Keenan put it, they blew up and took their victims with them. A doubtless larger proportion of those dwindling numbers of Euro-Americans who continue to prostrate themselves for the rites of ordination have successfully negotiated a working balance between their biological compulsions and the real communities of faith to which they have given themselves. In France and Italy, there seems to be a ready wink of the eye when the matter of priestly celibacy comes up in conversation. An old friend from Rome once told me, with only limited irony, that priests, like prostitutes, perform a vital role for adolescent males who want to test out their erotic yearnings so they can decide which gender they prefer. But that was Italy.
“In Europe, when people saw the nun’s outfits and headdresses in the nineteenth century, it was a sign of a caregiver, someone who visited the poor, someone who pricked your conscience, overall a positive image that drew people’s attention to the plight of the poor. [The Sisters’] presentation . . . oh, maybe it’s a bit silly, maybe even a little extreme . . .”
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