The Dish

Bert Thelen, a Jesuit priest who is almost 80 years old, recently renounced his vows, leaving the order and ordained ministry. In a remarkable letter to colleagues and friends, he explained his decision, citing a desire “to be my best self as a disciple of Jesus, to proclaim boldly His Gospel of Love, and to widen the horizons of my heart to embrace the One New World we are called to serve in partnership with each other and our Triune God”:

It is the Risen Christ Who beckons me now toward a more universal connection with the Cosmos, the infinitely large eco-system we are all part of, the abundance and vastness of what Jesus called “the Reign of God.”

Why does this “YES” to embrace the call of our cosmic inter-connectedness mean saying “NO” to ordained ministry? My answer is simple but true. All mystical traditions, as well as modern science, teach us that we humans cannot be fully ourselves without being in communion with all that exists. Lasting justice for Earth and all her inhabitants is only possible within this sacred communion of being. We need conversion – conversion from the prevailing consciousness that views reality in terms of separateness, dualism, and even hierarchy, to a new awareness of ourselves as inter-dependent partners , sharing in one Earth-Human community. In plainer words, we need to end the world view that structures reality into higher and lower, superior and inferior, dominant and subordinate, which puts God over Humanity, humans over the rest of the world, men over women, the ordained over the laity. As Jesus commanded so succinctly, “Don’t Lord it over anyone … serve one another in love.”

As an institution, the Church is not even close to that idea; its leadership works through domination, control, and punishment. So, following my call to serve this One World requires me to stop benefiting from the privilege, security, and prestige ordination has given me. I am doing this primarily out of the necessity and consequence of my new call, but, secondarily, as a protest against the social injustices and sinful exclusions perpetrated by a patriarchal church that refuses to consider ordination for women and marriage for same- sex couples. I have become convinced that the Catholic Church will never give up its clerical privilege until and unless we priests (and bishops) willingly step down from our pedestals.

Dreher predictably snarks:

In the United States, the Jesuit order has lost 70 percent of its membership since the Second Vatican Council. But be of good cheer, Catholics! Ceasing to believe the things Jesuits are supposed to believe, at least Bert Thelen finally left, instead of using the authority of his collar and his position to deceive and mislead others.

Paul Kowalewski, on the other hand, applauds the apostate:

In these few brief sentences, Bert Thelen wonderfully captures what is perhaps the greatest flaw of not only the the established church,  but the inherent weakness of any institution that is intrinsically hierarchical. We human beings are indeed “interdependent partners.” The entire creation “is” an “Earth-Human community.”  Any social system “designed” to place a chosen few in positions of power over others on lower rungs of the ladder is inherently flawed because that system is inconsistent with the flow and design of all creation.

When Jesus came among us, his life and teaching offered an alternative way of living in contrast to the prevailing culture of his day;  a culture that exalted the mighty, and oppressed the lowly.  Jesus leveled the playing field of life by exalting the humble and casting the mighty from their thrones – “Do not lord it over anyone…serve one another in love.” And he invited his disciples of every age to follow in his footsteps.

Robert P. Imbelli recalls this storied detail from the life of Thomas Aquinas:

It is well-known that Thomas Aquinas ceased writing his Summa Theologiae before completing it. When asked why, a long tradition recounts that he told his secretary, Reginald of Piperno: “After what I have seen today I can write no more: for all that I have written is but straw.”

He pivots from the anecdote to cite this passage from Denys Turner’s new biography, Thomas Aquinas: a Portrait:

Theology matters only because – and when – there is more to life than theology, and when that “more” shows its presence within the theology that is done. So Thomas fails to finish, thereby exhibiting the presence of this “more” in the most dramatic way possible – by leaving space for it. His final sentence is not an empty and disappointing failure to finish. It is an apotheosis. By his silence Thomas does not stop teaching theology. He does not stop doing theology. On the contrary, by his silence he teaches something about doing theology that he could not have taught by any other means.

It brings to mind this description of the great medieval theologian’s final months from Josef Pieper’s classic book, The Silence of St. Thomas:

The last word of St. Thomas is not communication but silence. And it is not death which takes the pen out of his hand. His tongue is stilled by the super-abundance of life in the mystery of God. He is silent, not because he has nothing further to say; he is silent because he has been allowed a glimpse into the expressible depths of that mystery which is not reached by any human thought or speech…

The mind of the dying man found its voice once more, in an explanation of the Canticle of Canticles for the monks of Fossanova. The last teaching of St. Thomas concerns, therefore, that mystical book of nuptial love for God, of which the Fathers of the Church say: the meaning of its figurative speech is that God exceeds all our capabilities of possessing Him, that all our knowledge can only be the cause of new questions, and every finding only the start of a new search.

(Image: “Saint Thomas Aquinas” by Diego Velázquez, 1632, via Wikimedia Commons)

Jillian Keenan explores Singapore’s repressed sexuality and spots increased signs of openness:

For decades, the tiny island nation nursed an international reputation of being serious, conservative, and–well, unsexy. In 2003, a survey found that Singaporeans had the least sex of people all the countries surveyed (granted, the study was sponsored by Durex, the condom company), and the more prudish aspects of Singapore’s criminal code, such as the legal bans on homosexuality, pornography, and oral sex (unless part of foreplay), haven’t helped dispel that stodgy reputation. It’s even technically illegal for Singaporeans to walk around naked in their own homes.

But times are changing.

With its military and economic stability relatively secured, Singapore’s sexual identity is blossoming in ways that are creative, compelling, and even risky. In the past year, Singaporean theater companies have staged sexually provocative productions such as Spring Awakening, a musical that describes homosexuality and masturbation, and Venus in Fur, a Tony-award nominated off-Broadway play about sexual masochism and domination. In April, Singapore’s first gay magazine debuted. And although homosexuality is still officially illegal, many Singaporean gay clubs are as popular and public as anything you’d find in Chelsea or the Castro.

More Dish on the progress of sexual mores in East Asia here and here.

JW McCormack reviews the second book of Karl Ove Knausgård’s six-volume autobiographical novel, My Struggle:

If it is death, and the knowledge of death, that renders us undifferentiated and eventually indifferent, love is what sets us apart and individualizes—to a point, at least. Linda and Karl Ove’s early days trace often destructive highs and lows. Early on, he slashes his face with a broken glass after she briefly rejects him; in Stockholm, Linda threatens to leave over small matters while Karl Ove navigates his separation from his first wife. They behave, in other words, like children. And still, the world is a changed place that lives again with the intensity of childhood:

If someone had spoken to me then about a lack of meaning, I would have laughed out loud, for I was free and the world lay at my feet, open, packed with meaning, from the gleaming, futuristic trains that streaked across Slussen beneath my flat, to the sun coloring the church spires in Riddarholmen red in the nineteenth-century-style, sinisterly beautiful sunsets I witnessed every evening for all those months, from the aroma of freshly picked basil and the taste of ripe tomatoes to the sound of clacking heels on the cobbled slope down to the Hilton Hotel late one night when we sat on a bench holding hands and knowing that it would be us two now and forever …

Of course, love too can be a matter of pragmatic routines—it too is subject to the sublimating undertones of modern life. But the love that surrounds even the most debasing rituals of family life in Book Two (I’m thinking of a “Rhythm Time” class Karl Ove is obliged to participate in with his daughter) makes this volume more uplifting than the first, where the realities of death were the main concern. In love, Karl Ove is “cast back to the time when my feelings swung from wild elation to a wild fury … and the intensity was so great that sometimes life felt almost unlivable, and when nothing could give me any peace of mind except books with their different places, different times and different people, where I was no one and no one was me. That was when I was young and had no options.” Knausgård argues that we are most unalike as children and most similar when dead. In the middle, love restores the madness we are born with and gradually cured of.

That’s how Nigel Godrich described his decision to pull his music off Spotify, the streaming music platform, tweeting, “The reason is that new artists get paid fuck all with this model.. It’s an equation that just doesn’t work.” Godrich’s Atoms for Peace collaborator, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, also removed his solo material from the service, adding, “Make no mistake new artists you discover on #Spotify will no[t] get paid. meanwhile shareholders will shortly being rolling in it. Simples.”  Spotify responded with a statement:

Right now we’re still in the early stages of a long-term project that’s already having a hugely positive effect on artists and new music. We’ve already paid US$500M to rightsholders so far and by the end of 2013 this number will reach US$1bn. Much of this money is being invested in nurturing new talent and producing great new music. We’re 100% committed to making Spotify the most artist-friendly music service possible…

Spencer Kornhaber characterizes the protest as “annoying, not that effective, and still important”:

Yorke and Godrich’s rejection of Spotify matters … for the simple reason that it screws with the service’s appeal.

I’m a big Spotify user, and I pay $9.99 a month for a premium subscription. (People can listen for free on their home computers as long as they’re willing to sit through ads). I like feeling as though all of recorded music is at my beckon, anytime and anywhere. Of course, all of recorded music isn’t actually at my beckon, and there are annoying gaps in Spotify’s catalog–like, uh, The Beatles. But weirdly, almost insidiously, you adapt. The awesome electronic artist Four Tet tweeted yesterday that he’s withheld his label’s music from the service for a long time. Which reminded me–I haven’t listened to Four Tet in a while… and that’s probably because most of his stuff isn’t on Spotify.

Radiohead’s manager Brian Message maintains his support for Spotify.  But Sam Duckworth sides with Yorke and Godrich:

4,685 Spotify plays of my last solo album equated to £19.22 (that’s 0.004p per album stream). The equivalent to me selling two albums at a show. I think it’s fair to say that at least two of those almost 5,000 listeners would have bought the album from me if they knew the financial disparity from streaming. At the same time, many record labels are reaping the rewards of online streaming, whether it be through potential share dividends when a company gets sold or the “money for old rope” practice of repackaging music.

Meanwhile, Benji Rogers, the co-founder of PledgeMusic, believes his direct-to-fan platform creates an equitable music economy:

The average pledger, based on the past six months, spends $57 per transaction on the site, and for that money they don’t just get the album and/or merchandise – they get exclusive, immediate video updates from the artist, as the record is being created. … [Rogers is] at pains to clarify that Pledge is not a crowdfunding platform, or a direct-to-consumer service. “Crowdfunding is ‘please give money, then I will do’,” he elaborates. “Direct-to-consumer is ‘I’ve done it, here’s five ways to buy it.’ We’re in the middle with ‘be a part of the making of it’ – it truly is direct-to-fan.”

In an interview for her debut collection of short stories, This Is Paradise, Kristiana Kahakauwila explains why she tells a number of them from multiple perspectives:

In many ways fiction is more truthful than textbook history. Textbook history pretends to be objective, but it isn’t. Fiction admits to its subjective nature; moreover, it takes into account the emotional and psychological effect of an event. In many ways, only narrative can fairly engage both historical record and the humanity behind that record. The stories in this collection are ones that not only suit me personally—as someone fascinated with multiple versions and personal perspectives—but also ethically, as the stories bring to light viewpoints perhaps previously ignored or unknown.

The literary technique also connects to her distinctive background:

In Hawaiian, the word “hapa” loosely translates to “part” or “half.” I’m ethnically hapa—half Native Hawaiian and half Caucasian. Moreover, I grew up in California but spent holidays and summers on Maui with my paternal family, so I’m also geographically hapa. I wouldn’t have considered myself local until I moved to Honolulu. Now maybe I’m hapa-local.

I explain all this because my experience of Hawai’i has occurred in parts and on multiple levels: as a native and as a foreigner, as a local and as a visitor, as a Hawaiian and as a Caucasian.

My characters reflect this multiplicity of experience. “The Road to Hana” probably offers the most explicit discussion of this theme, but elsewhere characters such as Sarah in “Portrait of a Good Father” and Pili in “The Old Paniolo Way” struggle to find their place in Hawai’i. And I think they realize, as I have, that they don’t need to be restricted to one place, one relationship with the islands. They can occupy multiple spaces, have multiple relationships with their homes and their own histories. In one way or another, each of the characters is reflecting a part of me.