[1] I have been dialoguing off-blog with my new Catholic friend Sarah about this “evangelical catholic” thing and the dynamics of Lutherans and Catholics finding a home somewhere. She is wonderfully respectful of her Lutheran friends, and especially of a dear gay friend, who is exploring what it means to leave the Roman priesthood behind and enter the Lutheran ministry as a member of the [2] Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries roster.

Sarah writes for other blogs and web sites with insight and power. This entry, for example, is from [3] Street Prophets “A C/catholic Response to Prop 8″ (but her article actually tackles questions far beyond that):

“In the Catholic tradition, the priest . . . is acting not as the person of Christ, but as the representative of the community itself. We are an intensely communal people. We are Catholic - universal. Or, in the words of James Joyce, ‘Here comes everybody!’

“Except, it seems, for the queers. [Emphasis added] The Church has never been able to figure out quite what to do with us, other than to engage in more and more contorted explanations that defy logic or common sense about who we ‘homosexuals’ are, and what pastoral responses are appropriate if one might show up in your Church. ‘Please join us, but don’t tell anyone you are here!’ is the current party line. It makes sense to no one, of course.”

It made no sense either to [4] Father Geoff Farrow, who outed himself and resigned his pastorate in Fresno last September over the Catholic Church’s support of Proposition 8. And I think this is where my “un-met” new Catholic friend was coming from in the phone call the other day. He is pained enough by the “don’t tell anyone you are here” contorted view of his life, his existence, his faith-reality, that he feels he cannot go home to the church in which he was raised unless he buys into the pretense.

Clearly, I feel like I am nudging up against questions too big for me to resolve. For a very long time, I have agonized about how best to be pastorally open to, and walk with, wounded Christians from non-Lutheran traditions who even now are wakening to their longing for something deeply spiritual, deeply experiential, deeply personal, yet because of life circumstances have felt (or actually are) cut off from their roots.

Do we remember [5] Steven Fales, author and protagonist of “Confessions of a Mormon Boy” who was excommunicated? And “recovering” Catholics, Baptists-in-exile, and [6] disfellowshipped Jehovah’s Witnesses?

Or, for that matter, [7] poor Ted Haggard, who seems to have turned denial into a new career path?

There is undeniable evidence that the rigidity of our spiritual systems continues to wound, harm, and abuse sisters and brothers in Christ who as a result may never return to any “fold” but bitterly denounce all spiritual insight. Yet even with a body of such evidence, the fix, the solution, the way out, the path to walk with them in their pain, often remains clouded and unclear. “Absolutism means never having to say you’re sorry” was the tag line of Rosa Brooks’ article “The Dark Side of Faith” (Zion’s Herald in 2006).

Yet reckoning will come, and I don’t mean the final Day of Judgment. I mean the day when a critical mass of people decide they must move on from the wounded condition of their faithfulness and badly-eroded integrity, and search for a spirituality which genuinely nourishes them. Hopefully, I will be invited to walk with some of them.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles