Harry’s Place

Cardinal Newman was “gay”: possibly in the former meaning of the word, but not in the sense you mean.

(He took a vow of lifelong celebacy, amongst other things)

Have you read any Newman, Brett? “Apologia pro vita sua” and “Grammar of Ascent”, and probably “Gain and Loss”, if you can find a copy, would be a good place to start.

This isn’t Peter Tatchell’s finest moment.

I despise the over-sexualisation of culture (that concomitantly deprecates friendship)

Just as it is often difficult to tell racists and self-styled anti-racists apart, so here Tatchell sounds indistinguishable from a common or garden homophobe

The cardinal was not exactly macho. His soft, gentle, effeminate demeanour is typical of what we often associate with gay men. There were allegations during his lifetime about his circle of young homosexual friends.

Really, this is embarrassing

Perhaps we should also look to Newman’s memorial stone at Birmingham Oratory for clues. It has an inscription that could be read as a posthumous coming-out concerning their relationship:

“Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem” (From shadow and images into truth)

Not bloody likely I’d have thought.

“Cardinal Newman was “gay”: possibly in the former meaning of the word, but not in the sense you mean.

(He took a vow of lifelong celebacy, amongst other things)

Why can’t you be gay and celibate?

Venichka, do think it is right that this man’s dying wish be ignored?

Why can’t you be gay and celibate?

You can. Except you and Peter appear to be implying that he was a hypocrite, despite adhering to the principle of celibacy.

Not that I care very much but what is the legal background to all this? How come the Catholic church has a special permission to dig out people, even former cardinals? If I die tomorrow I’m pretty sure my boss won’t own my bones.

Right?

Jr, I don’t know.

Some useful background here

and
here

and (in his own words) here

Jr, I don’t know.

Some useful background the-hermeneutic-of-continuity.blogspot.com/2006/08/grave-of-john-henry-newman.html

and
the-hermeneutic-of-continuity.blogspot.com/2008/07/slur-on-newmans-friendship.html

and (in his own words) (add w) ww.newmanreader.org/works/sermonnotes/file1.htmlhere

The Catholic Church does NOT have special permission to dig up people: it has to be approved by the Govt

To quote Fr Tim Finigan on one of those links

I have never believed this: apart from any other consideration, the gay culture is a recent phenomenon. It is anachronistic to attribute that way of thinking to Victorians, even if they had affectionate friendships which seem a little sentimental to us today. Nevertheless, I did always think Newman’s quite firm request to be buried in the same grave as his friend was a little odd. Fr Guy Nicholls solved this mystery for me when I was visiting Rednal earlier this week.

On the left is the grave of Edward Caswall who died in 1878: on the right is John Joseph Gordon who died in 1853; Ambrose St John died in 1875. All three of these men worked very closely with Newman and he felt that they had died relatively young in helping to carry forward his own projects. His instruction for his own burial was not a gesture of affection for St John alone but a desire for the mortal remains of the four of them to imitate the cross.

Venichka, I generally agree with you, but with this one you,re setting up straw men.

For sure the Victorians didn’t have ‘gay’ the way our sexualised culture understands gay.

What was once understated homoeroticism coupled with common philosophical/theological interests is now full blown carnal homosexuality with no accompanying intellectual dimension.

However, that’s beside the point here.

Respecting an individual’s last wishes is something ALL consider sacrosanct, and so on this one The Vatican is WRONG.

But Peter and Brett will no doubt milk this latest catholic ‘outrage’ for all the anti-Vatican mileage it’s worth.

It’s a question of respecting an individual’s last wish, something that ALL consider sacrosanct.

The Vatican is WRONG.

Of course, Peter and Brett will milk this lastest Catholic ‘outrage’ for all the anti-Vatican mileage it’s worth

Venichka

The man’s sexuality in one sense is utterly irrelevant so there is no need to either see in him a pre-cursor of a ‘gay man’ nor is there any point in denying that he may have had intense male attachments of a homerotic character.

Whether his desires were latent, repressed or simply acknowledged and not acted on through adherence to a vow of celibacy, places him at least for a Catholic in a situation equal to that of any other practicising celibacy.

However we would have to be particularly and wilfully sexuality blind to the history of Anglo-Catholicism and particularly the ‘Oxbridge movement’ to pretend that there was not a homo-eortic current in that high Anglican flirting with Rome tendency in the Church of England.

That the Sun newspaper in its 10 ways to spot a Gay vicar might list a fondness for the ceremonies of high-church ritual and a liking for dinner parties as give away signs is as homophobic in intent as it was humorously on target.

I once went to a High Church Christmas eve Service that consisted of a very camp Vicar and Deacon a few old women Parishoners and a number of men in Levis and leather.

I would take a more classically Freudian view of the pscyho-social consequences of the repression of homosexuality to argue that its trend in Anglicanism, such as it is, is associated with reactionary, pre and anti-modernist pseudo mysticism, paranoia in relationship to science and rationality, and a fetishising of power and authority.

Rome can Cannonise Newman for all they like it would be predictable to choose such a reactionary anti-modern.

I would choose Cardinal Manning over Newman any day, but that would reveal my suspect concerns for social justice over tradition.

“You can. Except you and Peter appear to be implying that he was a hypocrite, despite adhering to the principle of celibacy.”

Huh? Where?

In Victorian times it was of course possible to be the “ideal” bourgeois family man whilst consorting with prostitutes in another part of twon where decent people never set foot so no doubt it was quite possible for someone in the position of a cardinal to also lead a double life.

I find the idea of that: “it is anachronistic to attribute that (presumably gay) way of thinking to Victorians” astonishing. Even going beyond the obvious Wilde there is John Addington Symonds, Charles John Vaughn (also a churchman) and certainly some of the writings of Walter Pater harking back to gay hellenism. Of course there is little about lower-class gays but this is undoubtedly more to do with an inability/disinclination to talk or write about sex than proof such people did not exist.

“now the Catholics want a gay Saint” - accept the Catholic hierarchy don’t accept that he was gay. For them, gay is a only physical sexual act. To be gay, surely, is also about who you love, and how you love them (and physical love is only one small aspect of that). To live in a deeply loving relationship with another man for years and years is a gay relationship. Of course you can be celibate and gay.

Cardinal Newman was “gay”: possibly in the former meaning of the word, but not in the sense you mean.
(He took a vow of lifelong celebacy, amongst other things)

And Lord knows, no member of the Catholic Church has ever broken his or her vows.

This isn’t Peter Tatchell’s finest moment.

Well it certainly isn’t the Catholic Church’s. It is they who wish to move the body, is it not? For why?

Metta - I think you are getting Newman and Manning mixed up, no?

twas Manning who was the ultramontane, and Newman the [relative] liberal (eg who was not supportive of the declaration of papal infallibility at the 1870 Vatican Council, I think?

And Newman (having earlier - ie 1840s Oxford Movement - been a prominent Anglo-Catholic) made quite clear his (essentially, in a word, disapproving) opinions of that movement later in his life, both before and after his conversion to Rome.

He was also (as compared with, say, Faber) at the “liberal” (to use an entirely inappropriate, but it will have to suffice for now) end of the Oratorian orders in England: and to this day the Birmingham Oratory (that Newman founded and led) remains much less ultramontane than does its London counterpart

But venichka that is the problem I allways have with liberal in this anglo-catholic context.

In anglicanism Newman started off an evangelical then, in that seductive reactionary way that those liberal dreaming spires ‘convert’ people of quite humble origins into believing that they are the natural heirs of a grand tradition, before seeking to exclude the influence of the low church before ascending up the chain of pomp and mystery on his way to Rome.

Manning on the other hand in many ways a traditionalist did so much to rescue Catholicism from obscurantist irrelevance to the lives of working class catholics and through his emphasis on social justice reinvigorated the faith by accepting a social reform agenda.

The Pope has succeeded in pressuring the Ministry of Justice to waive the law and allow the exhumation and reburial of Cardinal Newman in a new tomb in Birmingham Oratory church.

The license for disinterment and reburial is rarely granted, apart from criminal investigations. The Vatican has strong-armed Jack Straw into waiving the law. That surely is wrong?

The motive is indisputable: The Vatican is embarrassed that Newman is currently buried in the same grave as the man he shared much of his life with, Father Ambrose St John. I have been told this by a senior Catholic insider who is unhappy with what is happening and why.

Under a nineteenth century law it is forbidden to transfer bodies from graves to church tombs. It is this law that the Vatican has pressured the government to waive by granting a special reburial license for Newman’s remains.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of making an exception to this particular law, it is highly doubtful that the Ministry of Justice has any legal right to grant a reburial license that over-rides Cardinal Newman’s wishes to be buried for eternity with his beloved, Ambrose St John, with whom he lived and loved for over 30 years.

I will be challenging the legality of the Ministry of Justice’s decision to waive the law against Newman’s wishes. While I hold no brief for Newman or faith, it is a basic principle of human decency that a deceased person’s lawful wishes be granted and respected.

Yes, I agree in principle.

However Newman might have been rather more thrilled by the prospect of becoming a saint and flying around in heaven with angels and stuff.

So, it is certainly arguable that digging him up and carting his bones around is what he would have wanted: what with him being a religious catholic.

(In reality, he’s dead. And as neither you nor I believe in the immortality of the soul, we’re in bad places to make these arguments, but still…)

Hmm. I take your general point Metta, but I don’t think that it’s fairly applied to Newman: I think it’s fairly clear that his religious path was not about “climbing a hierarchy” or c”ascending up the chain of pomp and mystery”, as it was one of following through his beliefs with integrity [it was a fairly obscure point of, I think, 4th century theology, that was the major contributory factor of his to leave the Anglican Church for Rome, in his rejection of the notion of a “via media”].

And moreover - his social standing suffered on several occasions because of this integrity: as an Anglo-Catholic the authorities in Oxford (college as well as religious) did their utmost to sideline him because of their preferences (Colleges moving Sunday mealtimes to concide with the services at which he preached in order to discourage attendance thereat, for example): while later, as a Catholic his attempts to found a university at Dublin (which eventually became we now call UCD) largely failed precisely because, unlike a substantial part of the Roman Catholic church powers in Ireland, he wanted it to be a holistic, full educational establishment, not something narrowly religious or theological i n nature.

And his opposition to ultramontanism also was to his detriment to his standing in the Roman Catholic church in England: his views were not those that the hierarchies (in England, nor in the Vatican) favoured; but rather, to a large extent, regarded with suspicion.

(He had similar disputes within the Oratory, too, later still)

So no, I don’t think “reactionary” is a fair label to apply to Newman. Especially not later in life.

” I think it’s fairly clear that his religious path was not about “climbing a hierarchy” or c”ascending up the chain of pomp and mystery”

In which case I assume you support his expressed desire to stay where he is, rather than climbing further up the heirarchy to sainthood!

And for goodness sake, being exiled from Oxford to Birmingham! Would you wish that on any man!

In which case I assume you support his expressed desire to stay where he is, rather than climbing further up the heirarchy to sainthood!

I don’t see that the two things are necessarily contradictory.

Most Catholics in England (and not only Oratory types) I have talked to about the matter are absolutely delighted at the notion of thought of Newman’s beatification.

Given the precedents of SS Scholastica and Benedict of Nursia, or of SS Cosmos and Damian (both of whom were buried together), (amongst others) perhaps the solution is for Ambrose St John also to be beatified. We must clearly pray for a miracle from his intercession

I prayed to Ambrose St John and and ingrown hair I had on my chin miraculously got better.

WILL THIS DO???

“Given the precedents of SS Scholastica and Benedict of Nursia, or of SS Cosmos and Damian “

When did we start talking about the navy?

“…the gay culture is a recent phenomenon. It is anachronistic to attribute that way of thinking to Victorians, even if they had affectionate friendships which seem a little sentimental to us today. ”

This deluded idiot clearly didn’t have a classical education.

The rarely granted special licence for the exhumation and reburial of Cardinal Newman was approved in July by the Ministry of Justice burials department, headed by Catholic MP, Bridget Prentice.

It is, I think, quite inappropriate that a Catholic Minister should have overseen the granting of this exceptional legal dispensation. It will inevitably lead to queries as to whether the Minister has, as a loyal Catholic, shown favouritism towards the Vatican’s request for reburial.

When did we start talking about the navy?

It must be an ecumenical matter.

I’ve rapidly come to the conclusion that next to Venichka, I’m a raging radical liberal. Fuck it, I’m more “liberal” than most of the people on this board.

The solution, Peter, is simply to get rid of religious nuts (all of them) from the Guvmint. Too many sky-fairy worshippers and not enough adherents of the reality-based community.

Hard for me to get worked up about old bones. The council here exhumed a disused church graveyard to make a carpark against the wishes of several of the people with their ancestors in there.

Venichka:
I despise the over-sexualisation of culture (that concomitantly deprecates friendship): What a ludicrous thing to say.

If only we could all abstain, like the Catholic priesthood, and lead perfectly sexless lives: and concomitantly befriend and abuse young boys, safe in the knowledge that the Vatcian will turn a blind eye. What is it with Catholics and their unhealthy fear of consensual, adult sexual relationships?

If you want a story about living gay people claiming exclusion you could run with a story about the protests at this years Manchester Pride. Might make a nice ‘Pride going wrong’ theme with your report on the thuggish stewarding at london pride.

Och, and I’d refrained from making “Hail Mary” jokes.

Stephen Pollard - I really can’t be bothered making a polite response to the comment you just made, which completely misrepresents my position before degenerating into standard anti-Catholic bigotry.

You are free to imagine the rude one I am making mentally. But it would have less than three words

You are free to imagine the rude one I am making mentally. But it would have less than three words

So much for turning the other cheek.

You’ve just left this thread on rather a bum note.

The Classical concept of friendship that we still call “Platonic” to this day (but which is just as much Biblical - Ruth and Naomi, David and Jonathan, Jesus and John, Paul and Timothy), recapitulated in Christ so as to include women and preclude pederasty, is something of which our debauched, de-Christianised, rootless excuse for a culture has completely lost sight.

Hence the decision to move Cardinal Newman from the grave of Father Ambrose St John in time for the former’s beatification. Regarded as a knock-down argument by the utterly, utterly filthy-minded.

Step forward, Peter Tatchell.

Who, I am told, does not after all wish to to make legal almost every act that has brought scandal on the Catholic Church, by lowering the age of consent to 14 (funny how I have heard him in the flesh propose a motion to that very effect). He merely wishes to legalise sex between under-14s who differ in age by not more than three years. So that’s all right, then. Isn’t it?

Les is very concerned about “the infiltration of antisemites and holocaust deniers into the solidarity movement”, and presented a motion to that effect, along with Tony Greenstein to the AGM of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign: which was defeated.

“Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas”. They could no more dispense with Antisemitism than the local golf club can give up golf. Its hatred that brings them together. If they didn’t have PSC some of them might have to work just to meet people.

Bloody hell, the Paleocons are out in force today…

And for goodness sake, being exiled from Oxford to Birmingham! Would you wish that on any man!

Tough one this (given that only a small part of Oxford is south of the Thames.)

Too many sky-fairy worshippers and not enough adherents of the reality-based community.

I thought you followed Crowley (who caused an enormous fuss in Brighton when he died?)

On Newman Does anyone else feel it is a delicious irony that God botherers should have chosen “Out of shadows and phantasms into the truth” (in latin) as the inscription on their shared grave?

Damn right, Morgoth.

It is a scientifically baseless and historically illiterate idea that the inclination towards homosexual acts (and it is acts, not persons, that are homosexual or heterosexual) is any basis for personal or collective identity.

The whole notion (invented in, by and for the same pederastic subculture in urban America that inflitrated the Catholic Church) is barely two generations old. It post-dates by several years our own humane and necessary decriminalisation of male homosexual acts between consenting adults in private.

In some historical or contemporary societies, all men, or all women, or everyone, engaged or engages in both homosexual and heterosexual acts. In others, there was or is no word for homosexuality.

There is simply no comparison whatever between a homosexual (or heterosexual) inclination and sex, or ethnicity, or even social class. The first two cannot be changed, whatever cosmetic procedures one might undergo. And even class is very hard to alter. At least arguably, while a family can change class over two or more generations, a single individual can never really do so.

Whereas many people go through an adolescent phase of same-sex attraction. And almost everyone who identifies with homosexuality has had some opposite-sex experience, again especially in adolescence.

There is no evidence whatever that Newman ever engaged in a homosexual act in his life. And it is acts, not persons, that are homosexual or heterosexual.

“I thought you followed Crowley”

Alfred C Kinsey, the father of the entire “sex education” industry and the originator of the “one in 10 is homosexual” fantasy (among others, all based on his heavy use of prostitutes and former prisoners in his vice-funded “research”), was also a follower of Crowley’s.

Which accounts for a very great deal.

Although inseparable in life and buried together for 118 years, the Catholic Church wants to now tear them apart.

Newman and St John have been buried side-by-side in a simple grave since Newman’s death in 1890. It was what Newman wanted.

Christ, a secularist getting all doe-eyed about the immortal soul?

Whether or not Newman was celibate is partially relevant. If Newman and Ambrose had a been sexually active, not only would they not have been allowed to be buried together, they would have been excommunicated. In other words, assuming they did feel that way about each other, their love was “pure” in the eyes of the Chruch. It sounds absurd, but the point is that the Church wouldn’t countenance letting Newman be buried with his lifelong companion today for reasons too obvious to mention. So the fact they buried together at all is directly attributal to their sexual abstinence.

Of course, what should happen is that both Newman and Ambrose should be disinterred and reburied together.

I will be challenging the legality of the Ministry of Justice’s decision to waive the law against Newman’s wishes. While I hold no brief for Newman or faith, it is a basic principle of human decency that a deceased person’s lawful wishes be granted and respected.

Yes it IS a basic principle of human decency, and I agree with you here….but only as long as you refrain from Vatican-bashing.

…by lowering the age of consent to 14 (funny how I have heard him in the flesh propose a motion to that very effect).

That’s another issue altogether, and in no way undermines or negates Peter T’s views on Cardinal Newman’s burial ‘arrangements’.

I thought you followed Crowley (who caused an enormous fuss in Brighton when he died?)

Crowley died in Hastings, old bean. 1947 in fact.

Alfred C Kinsey…was also a follower of Crowley’s.

The Prospective Parlimentary Candidate for Wantage is misinformed. Kinsey only visited the (then) defunct Thelema Abbey in 1955 (shortly before his death) and is on record as thinking that Crowley was “the most prominent fraud that ever lived”.

Crowley died in Hastings, old bean. 1947 in fact.

Yes but I think you will find it was Brighton crematorium where the old soak was cremated - the “service” being described as a “black mass” and Brighton council taking stern fifties steps to make sure nothing so debauched could ever happen again.

According to a report in The Catholic Herald on 15 August 2008:

“Officials from the Ministry of Justice have also given the go-ahead for Catholic experts in holy objects to fly in from Italy and retrieve “major relics” from the corpse after the coffin is opened for the first time. These will most likely be bones from his hands which will be shared out between key churches in Britain - as well as one being sent to the Vatican. They will be placed in shrines so Catholic pilgrims can venerate Cardinal Newman and pray for his intercession when he is made a saint. A selection of minor relics - small fragments of bone and cloth - will also be collected.”
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/articles/a0000350.shtml

These intentions were also confirmed by Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor’s former spokesperson, Austen Ivereigh. He admitted on BBC Radio Four’s Sunday Programme on 24 August that the Church is planning to destroy the integrity of Cardinal Newman’s bodily remains and distribute his bones as “holy relics.”

This planned dismemberment and exploitation of the Cardinal’s body is ghoulish, sordid and distasteful. Some might say it is downright indecent, disrespectful and definitely incompatible with contemporary notions of respect for the dead – and their wishes.

Yeah don’t ask of to explain the continuing Catholic bone fetish. His remains will probably get treated more respectfully than the stiffs getting in the way of my council’s new pay & display though Peter… They dug them out with mini-diggers.

david T

—’However Newman might have been rather more thrilled by the prospect of becoming a saint and flying around in heaven with angels and stuff.

So, it is certainly arguable that digging him up and carting his bones around is what he would have wanted: what with him being a religious catholic.’……

Indeed!

One thing we can be fairly sure of however is that he would be far from thrilled by Peter Thatchell’s unwarranted intrusion into the delicate matter of the exact nature of his friendship with Ambrose St John.

Not only does such speculation encourage an unwholesome speculation upon base carnality of a reprehensible kind it positively seeks to shout from the rooftops the abomination not to be mentioned among Christians.

I can hear poor Cardinal Newman’s scream echoing down the ages for all time;

‘HOW…HOW VERY DARE YOU!’

Morgoth, if anyone really wants to expose scientific fraud on an enormous and world-changing scale, then they should write something about Alfred C Kinsey.

Sexual psychopaths, among whom Kinsey was pre-eminent, avowedly set up the sexology industry in order to supplant the Judaeo-Christian sexual ethic. They fabricated research, and relied heavily on current and former prostitutes, and on convicts.

Thence the oft-quoted figure of ten per cent as the number of men who have had a homosexual experience, usually exaggerated further into the notion that one tenth of the population is homosexual. On the same figures, one man in twelve has committed bestiality. Is one twelfth of the population zoosexual, or zoophile, or whatever the word is? And even if they are, then so what?

Kinsey held that children in the earliest stages of infancy could experience orgasm. How, exactly, was such “research” conducted? He taught child sexual abuse techniques to the Gestapo. He filmed himself raping his wife and the wives of his staff. He circumcised himself without anaesthesia, and hung himself by the testicles from a pole. He was a devotee of the Satanist Aleister Crowley, acting out Crowley’s teaching that pederasty was a laudable form of human sacrifice. Kinsey and his followers were largely funded by the pornography racket and other organised vice.

So there you are. Practically the only views any longer permitted to be expressed about sex are based on fraudulent research and extreme criminality carried out by a clique of sexual psychopaths. Unsurprisingly, adherence to a model designed by and for sexual psychopaths has resulted in a massive increase in sexual psychopathology. Yet that is the only model for the training of anyone who needs a certain number of credits in “sex education” in order to qualify as anything.

Given this enormous amount of medical malpractice, consumer fraud and other offences, class actions need to be filed against the Keepers of the Kinsey Flame: Johns Hopkins University, the Kinsey Institute at the University of Indiana, the San Francisco-based Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, AASECT (American Association of Sex Educators, Counsellors and Therapists), SIECUS (Sex Information and Education Council of the United States) the SSS (Society for the Scientific Study of Sex), Planned Parenthood, the ever-generous Rockefeller Foundation, and numerous subordinates around the world. Just for starters.

Those interested should contact Dr Judith Reisman (an ethnic Jew who describes her own perspective as “non-religious”): jareisman@surewest.net

Well I guess we know the Catholic stance on buggery.

But what about holding hands…kissing…a hand job.

Could he technically have kept his vow of celibacy somewhere along the line?

Not expert in this area of RC ideology.

There are lots of interesting angles to this story but the essence of it is this:

The Vatican chose to violate Cardinal Newman’s wishes. That’s what this issue is all about - and the homophobic motive for this violation.

I hope there are people who will protest if my funeral and cremation wishes are violated. If I would want someone to defend my wishes on my death, surely I should also defend the rights of others whose wishes are being violated?

I hope there are people who will protest if my funeral and cremation wishes are violated. If I would want someone to defend my wishes on my death, surely I should also defend the rights of others whose wishes are being violated?

The problem is Peter, you’re gay. You don’t count as a person to the likes of the Vatican. Unless that fundamental problem is dealt with, nothing will change.

I completely disagree with the practice of disinterring, I think the display of remains is ghoulish, and I love a good chance at a crack at the Catholic Church (where it’s richly deserved), but I think you’re wrong here Brett, and trying to impose a 21st century worldview on a man who would be profoundly out of step with the sort of ideas ascribed to him.

More than anything, Cardinal Henry was a committed Catholic. I think it’s extremely likely that he’d have been very taken the notion of being made a saint, and agreed with the process by which that comes about. I don’t think he’d have understood or accepted an identity such as ‘homosexual’.

Though he obviously chose to be buried alongside his partner, I doubt he’d have any objections to this process.

We’re in a very different world now than we were back then, and that’s a wonderful thing. But I think it’s unfair to the man to describe him in terms of a modern morality and character to which he’d be unfamiliar and probably reject. The foremost consideration should be what he’d want were he still alive, and in this case I don’t think it’s treating him as though he was a modern-day gay man.

‘Purchase’ a municipal grave in my borough and you’ve only got a guarantee of occupy it for 100 years. If never being moved about is important to you pete you better look into making special arrangements, Cos moving bodies about isn’t taboo to church or

… Secular authorities.

Come to think of it St Swithun (as any Billy Bragg fan kno) asked for nothing more than to be buried outside where the sweet rain of heaven could fall on his grave, yet having his remains dug out and interned indoors regardless.

Interred… Anyway there’s nothing new or unusual about it, as a top Catholic intellectual he’ll have known the score.

Well, quite, this campaign is clearly a bit of axe-grinding and grudge-bearing (along with conspirital ye olde papishe plotte mutterings about ye evile Vaticane from the 17th century) rather than a sign of concern for Newman.

As I say, It’s not Tatchell’s finest moment: and it’s a real pity to see someone who I reckon worthy of great respect (for standing - often in a very brave and determined manner - up to real tyrannies inflicting real suffering on those bodily alive) in what I take to be a kind of score-settling (which is underlined by the gratitutious and ridiculous claims that these actions are “homophobic”).

Let me put it this way: Newman is deeply loved (and, perhaps, even, venerated) by very many Catholics in this country, whereas I suspect that frankly many people concerned with homophobia had never even heard of him until last week: frankly expressions of concern would be better placed coming from the former than from groups or individuals who might (rightly or wrongly) be presumed to be actively hostile to the Church.

Because, otherwise, unfortunately (and I don’t intend to make this comparison TOO literal or specific - because I know that Tatchell, unlike some others I could name - is more honourable than that) - the appearance of something similar to, say, a BNP activist campaigning against ritual halal or kosher slaughter on the pretext of animal rights is unfortuantely, and perhaps unintentionally generated: it all seems rather too much a matter of taking sides in “cultural wars” to me - using the body of Newman in a rather cynical way that is far far worse than anything associated with the process of beatification. And the notion that it is “homophobic” is absurd: do you really think that had he been buried with a woman that the situation would be any different?

Venichka, can you not imagine that gay people themselves feel an afinity with history and an empathy with those whose wishes were to be buried with the person they loved. If this has been the National Heritage wanting to move the body of a poet under similar circumstances, the reaction would be the same. The fact that the Catholic Church is the main actor here is incidental, but also notable because of their long history of homophobia that continues to this day. What I see here is a great disrespect for the wishes of a man who loved another man - an interference that the Catholic Church makes as much among the living as the dead.

Ven. Not every conversation involving the Catholic church is an attack on ye olde Popery. But exhumation (in this country anyway) does not have a pleasant history or connotations.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?GRid=6164&page=gr

What Brett said.

Brett, I no more believe or accept that the world is divided into “gay” and “straight” (or “bisexual”, whatever) people than I do believe it is divided into different “races” or “classes”: maybe these terms are not entirely meaningless or devoid of practical purpose…but they are a transient cultural construct, that it is rather impertinent to presume that everyone shares, or or presume that temporary secular mindsets of this age will still be meaningful in 100 years, or were even conceivable 100 years ago.

In particular, the notion that Newman (or Ambrose St John) could meaningfully be categorised by the post-1960s meaning of the word “gay” (not least by people whom I suspect, had never heard of him or Newman even this time a year ago) is misguided and deluded.

Trying to claim Newman was gay reminds me somewhat of people who use the adjective “Christian” to mean something like “good, decent, proper” (and that as such, can be inappropriately applied to people who were or are not Christians at all, even if superficially they might appear to share some similarities - or indeed are “good, decent and proper”: the fact remains that they are or were not Christian, just as the fact remains that it is dishonest for gay rights agitators to claim Newman matches their definition of “a man who loved another man”.

(Seventy years ago - I suppose the battle ground in the culture wars would have been “class”, with the “progressives” trying to claim those dead as “working class” hero”: today “progressives” operate on a different field of battle with different weapons)

One of the reasons why I suspect this proposal is motivated not only, or principally, by concern “about disrespect for the wishes of a man who loved another man” (meaning what? he loved lots of men, and women, too) as by atavistic prejudice (and one that chimes very well with popular English attitudes is the following

It is, I think, quite inappropriate that a Catholic Minister should have overseen the granting of this exceptional legal dispensation. It will inevitably lead to queries as to whether the Minister has, as a loyal Catholic, shown favouritism towards the Vatican’s request for reburial.

Can you imagine any circumstance whatsoever where it would be regarded as appropriate to refer to the social allegiances (whether they be religious, or philosophical, or ethnic, or sexual) of someone in an office of state? Given all the hysteria that is risen when someone dares to use such obviously un-prejudice laden adjectives as “well-funded” around here…I was surprised to see that here, and especially from someone whom I respect and don’t generally regard as motivated by bigotry. In the English context, it struck me as being peculiarily pre-1829 language, or the sort of thing one might hear from Donald Findlay, not someone concerned and actively involved in promoting human rights. Ah, but Catholics do have dual loyalties, you see…

(Actually: thinking about the correspondence between Kingsley and Newman that brought about the latter’s “Apologia pro Vita Sua”, I see nothing has changed. This great, deeply loving man is being defamed in his death just as he was in his life, being wilfully misrepresented by those with their specific agendas and who are completely uninterested in giving Newman himself all but a superficial hearing)

It appears that today (and the precedents of Ruth Kelly and Rocco Buttiglione spring immediately to mind) only orthodox Catholicism is perceived to be unacceptable in public life in Britain and in Europe.

That is intolerable.

And it is the great mercy of the freedom and liberty of the USA that it is not so there.

The culture of, say, San Francisco, is also a tribute to that great freedom and liberty.

I think it is right for the conservative and the radical to coexist (and indeed to learn off one another).

I certainly don’t approve of the persecution of sexual minorities.

I certainly don’t object to single-sex civil partnerships: in fact far from it.

I DO NOT look forward to seeing Peter Tatchell, abandoning the good and great human rights work for which he has been long known, to instead campaign against every instance in which graves are disinterred to build roadways or housing estates or whatever.

In fact I don’t look forward to that at all

“In particular, the notion that Newman (or Ambrose St John) could meaningfully be categorised by the post-1960s meaning of the word “gay” (not least by people whom I suspect, had never heard of him or Newman even this time a year ago) is misguided and deluded.”

Venichaka, whether you want to believe it or not, throughout time there have been people who have been exclusively or primarily attracted to peopl of the same sex. That’s just a fact. I’m sure the idea that sexuality is a cultural construct fits nicely with the Catholic preference for seeing sex as “acts” and “behaviour”, but that goes against the life-experience of the vast majority of gay people. What you see as a modern formulation (or “sexualisation”) is merely down to the fact that it is only in the last decade or two that gay people have been allowed to express themselves in an open and honest way.

Brett,
throughout time there have been people who have been exclusively or primarily attracted to people of the same sex,

I don’t deny that at all- I just don’t think that dividing people into categories on the basis of who they are sexually (or emotionally) attracted to is helpful or meaningful, any more than is dividing people on grounds of “class” or “race”, both of which could also be said to have objective criteria.

I’m sure the idea that sexuality is a cultural construct fits nicely with the Catholic preference for seeing sex as “acts” and “behaviour”, but that goes against the life-experience of the vast majority of gay people.

One could say exactly the same thing about “the life-experience of the vast majority of ’straight’ people”: it has nothing to with whether one is attracted to people of the same or opposite sex

What you see as a modern formulation (or “sexualisation”) is merely down to the fact that it is only in the last decade or two that gay people have been allowed to express themselves in an open and honest way.

In fact, it has very little whatsoever to do with “gay” (as opposed to any other kind of people) at all.

In fact , most of the crass and crude sexualisation that afflicts and degrades our society, is strictly, and aggressively (and in fact often mysogynistically) heterosexual.

“In fact , most of the crass and crude sexualisation that afflicts and degrades our society, is strictly, and aggressively (and in fact often mysogynistically) heterosexual”

Not to denigrade homosexuals as a group or as individuals in any way, but ‘in fact’ far more gay people of both sexes declare their sexual preferences in a public way, using ear-rings for example, than heteros do.

If this wasn’t a conversation conducted on the web, it could easily be mistaken for taking place in the 1950s:

“In fact , most of the crass and crude sexualisation that afflicts and degrades our society.” That has to be uttered by somebody who isn’t getting any.

and…

“…more gay people of both sexes declare their sexual preferences in a public way, using ear-rings for example, than heteros do.”

Which century are you in, Nearly Oxfordian? Did you know that homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967, along with abortion? Most gay people in the UK can come out without much fuss today: it isn&#