{"id":67834,"date":"2014-12-09T09:00:32","date_gmt":"2014-12-09T15:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.austincnm.com\/?p=67834"},"modified":"2014-12-09T11:29:59","modified_gmt":"2014-12-09T17:29:59","slug":"called-love-review-gay-catholic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atxcatholic.com\/index.php\/2014\/12\/called-love-review-gay-catholic\/","title":{"rendered":"Called to Love (Review: Gay & Catholic)"},"content":{"rendered":"

If not for my particular faith journey, I might never have read this book. I started going to<\/em> church at the age many people first stop<\/em>. Campus ministry is how I met Gabriel, who blogs at Mudblood Catholic<\/a>. His writing is highly philosophical and remarkably eloquent. I enjoy his writing because he is honest, faithful, a convert to Catholicism, and gay.<\/p>\n

There are not a lot of celibate gay Catholic voices out there. Scant few have published their writing in any outlet. Gathering thoughts previously expressed primarily online, Eve Tushnet offers Gay & Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith<\/a>, a book that is part memoir, part theory, and part self-help manual. The parts of Eve that are gay, celibate, Catholic, erudite, alcoholic, and hopeful converge into a book that is encouraging and rational.<\/p>\n

\"black<\/p>\n

I found much to identify with. Tushnet speaks openly and realistically about the challenges of celibacy, and clearly she think it\u2019s worth the struggle. I appreciate that as a fellow celibate woman (albeit a straight one). It\u2019s good to have an ally who recognizes the temptations toward despair, lust, and jealousy and the lessened accountability<\/strong>. It\u2019s humbling to acknowledge that this particular ally cannot ever give up celibacy without giving up her faith.<\/p>\n

Having underscored her journey toward coming out and her decision to remain celibate, Tushnet turns to our universal calling to love<\/strong> as she explores spiritual friendship in depth. Those were the chapters I found myself reading and re-reading. I still can\u2019t quite wrap my head around it, to be honest. I can absolutely understand relationships between friends where they become honorary relatives. Those relationships seem to have been quite different in medieval times than close friendships are today, though. You\u2019d be hard-pressed to find even the closest married friends who would put each other before their spouses and children.<\/p>\n

Yet most people do marry. Thus, for people who are celibate and intend to remain so all their lives (for any reason), there is a big void of love to fill<\/strong>. There\u2019s a huge chasm between a modern, friendship, \u201cI desire your good\u201d kind of love and a modern, marriage, \u201cI promise to sacrifice for you until death to the exclusion of all others\u201d kind of love. Tushnet considers various ways to approach filling this void of love while celibate:<\/p>\n