Ecumenism and queerness: believing beyond divisions
Reflections by Paolo Spina*
Every year, from 18 to 25 January, the week of prayer for Christian unity is celebrated. Today it appears to be an almost obvious intention, to be placed alongside - if not in the queue - of others, so necessary as to be obvious: peace, the progress of peoples, the protection of creation.
It wasn't always like this; the dream of a single faith for all believers in Christ, without fragmented confessions, was probably born long ago, with the schisms following the first councils (like every family, we Christians too have always been black belts of quarrelsomeness).
However, a more concrete desire was born only a little more than a century ago and, as often happens, it comes from the peripheries: it is in mission lands that the scandal of the division between Christians emerges more clearly, pitting churches which, despite all preaching the evangelical message of brotherly love, they live their relationships with each other with mutual distance and distrust.
We would expect that the emergence of this need would lead to a prompt resolution of the problem, combining human reasonableness with common faith in Christ. And yet, no.
The past, marked by centuries of claimed supremacy of one confession over another, with excommunications and theological declarations on which church had transmitted the message of Jesus in the most faithful way to the Gospel, had such a decisive weight as to put the brakes on time and again attempts now timid, now courageous.
Complex issues, as experts, well above the heads of the majority of believers in Christ - validity of the sacraments, nature of the divine persons of the Trinity, role of Mary in the history of salvation, problems of a moral nature, and many others - have space has been removed from the essential: how credible is the love preached by those who cannot even agree on the date of Easter?
The question is deliberately hyperbolic but, at the same time, it gives an idea of how much the cause of ecumenism - now widely accepted in the Catholic Church, especially after the Second Vatican Council and its official pronouncements, such as Gaudium et spes, Lumen gentium and Unitatis redintegratio – actually cost effort and pain to many who, with prophetic intuition, believed in it far beyond the short-sightedness of their contemporary theologians and pastors.
Thus it is clear why this theme also speaks a lot to the queer community which, on different ridges, however lives the same perspective, with common desires: full communion and acceptance on the part of the hierarchy, not only in pastoral terms, but also in magisterial terms; complete participation in the sacramental life of the Church; greater coherence between an invitation proclaimed for "everyone, everyone, everyone" and the response to a reality full of "buts", "ifs", "rules of the game" that are anything but fraternal.
Small and large signs dot the colorful garden of the different Christian Churches, both on a pastoral level - mutual hospitality in places of worship, as for the Orthodox faithful in Italy, often officiating in Catholic churches - and dogmatic.
For this reason I like to remember that last November, on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the common Christological Declaration between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church (a numerically very small community, which arose from the failure to recognize the Council of Ephesus in 431), Pope Francis inserted in the Roman Martyrology, i.e. the list of Catholic saints, one of the most venerated saints in the Assyrian tradition, Isaac of Nineveh.
Born in present-day Qatar, he was elected bishop of Nineveh (near present-day Mosul, Iraq) but, after a few months, he returned to monastic life, dedicating himself to prayer and the compilation of ascetic and spiritual writings which were soon translated and disseminated everywhere, up to today, even in Christian churches other than the Assyrian one.
This is how an act that may seem very formal takes on a much greater value: holiness does not allow itself to be stopped by ecclesial divisions or barriers that have nothing to do with the Gospel.
What Isaac of Nineveh and many others have left not only through their writings, but also with the testimony of their lives, speaks with a louder and clearer voice than the pronouncements that separate and hinder full communion between sisters and brothers.
"One of the main temptations to face is that of confusing unity with uniformity. Jesus does not ask his Father that everyone be equal, identical; because unity does not and will not arise from neutralizing or silencing differences. Unity is reconciled diversity” (from a homily by Pope Francis in Temuco, Chile, 01/17/2018).
*Paolo Spina is a doctor, passionate about Sacred Scripture and feminist and queer theology, who collaborates with the LGBT+ Christian Project and with Jonathan's Tent, writing on current affairs and Christianity.
