Same Sex Friendships Are Blessed

Friendship is a grace

As you know, I set up this publication to focus on issues here outside of the saccharine, political or angry point of view of other Catholic publications. I addressed things like Conversion Therapy, Catholics on Twitter and the Trayvon Martin Case. Recently, another controversy popped up. Pope Francis canonized one man and four women to be saints. This means that we as Catholics believe they are in Heaven. The one man was Cardinal John Henry Newman.

A former Anglican, Newman not only converted to Catholicism but actually became a Cardinal in the Catholic Church.

NPR raised concerns about him because had a deeply close friendship with a man named Ambrose St. John and many interpret this to be that he was homosexually oriented.

Obviously, this raises serious questions among some Catholics who call the idea scandalous. However, there is no scandal there at all. The scandal may be the opposite and may indeed be a sign of literal homophobia.

The fact is that the two men had a deep, intimate, platonic friendship rooted in their love for each other, their faith in Christ and the Church.

The reason why this should never be scandalous is that whether the men were homosexual or not is actually irrelevant. Such deep friendships are a beautiful thing to behold even though they are rare to experience. They are not unique to the homosexual community nor are they uncommon in the history of humanity and in the Jewish and Christian communities. The thought that one must be gay to have such a friendship or that such a friendship means that the person is gay is a cultural aberration that distorts human relationships. It is not a Catholic value and it would do a disservice to both the heterosexual and homosexual communities to consider it otherwise.

The belief this proves any form of homosexual orientation may come from our American ideal of rugged individualism. Many of the cultural heroes that we follow such as the archetype toughs of the lone wolf cowhand or hardened city cop are usually solitary men or women with no significant human relationships. You may want to model the western protagonists who save the town from the villain, but you would not want to be their friend. You notice they rarely have them and when they do, they are at best superficial relationships.

James Bond — the macho archetype — has a woman in every port, but he never married and never known to have an intimate friend.

Those real people with a reputation for being mavericks in our culture often are admittedly men or women who discover they are alone in their life and world when their work is done. Mavericks, by default, have the courage to speak up when others do not but their strong personalities prevent them from being vulnerable enough to the level that friendly intimacy requires.

True friendship, including between Christian men, is not a display of machismo but of the mutual love of Christ in their own love for each other.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches:

The virtue of chastity blossoms in friendship. It shows the disciple how to follow and imitate him who has chosen us as his friends, who has given himself totally to us and allows us to participate in his divine estate. Chastity is a promise of immortality.

Chastity is expressed notably in friendship with one’s neighbor. Whether it develops between persons of the same or opposite sex, friendship represents a great good for all. It leads to spiritual communion. (CCC 2347)

St. Aelred Riveaulx the Twelfth Century Cistercian abbot, in the book Spiritual Friendship, (Cistercian Publications; 2010) actually defines friendship as the embodiment of Christ. He alters the famous passage from 1 John 4:16 to “The one who remains in friendship, remains in God and God in Him,” interchanging the word with love. He also changes ‘God is love’ to ‘God is friendship’. Therefore, the love we define to be God can be found in the profound levels of good friendship, even if they are same-sex. This he explains is a Catholic value.

It is the true friend who will lead one to Christ for Christ is in every true friendship according to St. Aelred.

It is the true friend who will lead one to Christ for Christ is in every true friendship according to St. Aelred.

The model of the intimate same-sex friend that we see in such people as John Henry Cardinal Newman and Ambrose St. John and for that matter David and Jonathon is not to be avoided or feared because “People will think they are gay.” Rather it better demonstrates the level of friendship to which Christ is calling us. He is not calling us to an aberration but is the norm of platonic love to the level of the soul in union with Christ.

Those who chastise and discourage such friendships out of fear that they are symptoms of being gay embody the literal definition of homophobia. The fear that one may become gay or is gay because of fostering such a relationship is more a cultural pressure than a Catholic belief. Like all fear, it is rooted in ignorance.

The truth about homosexuality is that, in Catholic terms, it refers exclusively to sexual intercourse between those of the same sex. However, our faith also forbids any form of sexual activity that is not open to life in a sacramental marriage. So it is not the friendship that is forbidden, it is the sexual expression of it. The intense same sex relationship albeit platonic is not a sin but is a blessing provided it leads to Christ.

This may be unknown even in the Catholic Church. The Catholic editor who rejected my article on Conversion Therapy did not agree with what I wrote about friendship in that piece as a blessed path of chastity, even though that is what the Church actually teaches. He described living that Church teaching as using friendship to overcome same-sex attraction. However, the Church teaches that all are encouraged to such Christ centered friendship.

I always quote St. Alphonsus Liguori on prayer who taught that we should speak to the Lord as we would a good friend. Maybe the question could be do we define as a good friend the way John Henry Newman would speak to Ambrose St. John, David would speak to Jonathon, Jesus would speak to John the Apostle, Ruth would speak to Naomi. We should not take Blondie, Clint Eastwood’s character in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly as a model in his relationship to his closest companion if there even was one.

It is also unfortunate that some believe that those of homosexual orientation cannot be canonized as saints, which is also not Church teaching. It is the friend of Jesus who seeks to do His will who is the saint. The one who chooses Christ over any worldly pleasures is the one who is a saint regardless of what those inclinations and temptations are.

Maybe it is time to eliminate the American cultural influence from our Catholic relationships especially those from mythical parts of the Old West, the South and Hollywood.