Hipocrisy in the Harvard CSA

pic taken from here

This, on the surface, is not my issue. I am not a member of the Catholic Church, and as an outsider, I am rightfully myopic in my view of internal matters of the Church. Harvard student organizations, however, have a duty to serve students, and the Harvard Catholic Church, a duty to minister to all those who consider themselves among the faithful. This Harvard church is about to lose 1 more soul.

It is heart-breaking to see someone loses his faith in an organization where he once had so much faith and love. I see it as a slow death, a choking, stifling suffocation that rots from the core but leaves the gilded exterior unmarred. M. loves the church. He is a devout member and goes to church every Sunday. He also happens to be gay. The greater Catholic Church at the moment isn't exactly welcoming to gays. Still, M. runs a student support group within the Catholic Student Association for GBLTQ name Cornerstone, helping to fulfill a central mission of the CSA, a mission that is supposed to bring the faithful into communion, regardless of their differences, to celebrate the miracle of Christ's love. The CSA in the past has been a welcoming haven to people like M. Tiptoeing the line between loving the individual and hating the 'sin', the CSA has managed to strike a seemingly impossible pose of tolerance and doctrinal coherency in supporting an organization like Cornerstone. I once strongly respected them for this. I now realize my respect is misguided.

Recently, Cornerstone's fliers were banned from the CSA table at the Harvard Freshmen Activities Fair. There is no explanation, other than a previous lie told to M. by the President of the CSA that because no other group had advertising, Cornerstone couldn't advertise. But M. found plenty of fliers and buttons and advertisements from other CSA groups on the table at the fair. When he again inquired the President and the Priest advising the organization about whether he could put his innocuous fliers (devoid of gay pride flags or 'celebrations of the lifestyle' or 'activist/leftist propaganda'; it's a simple notice for the group's first event), at the CSA table, all he got was a stern 'no.' This maybe the first instance of direct opposition, but M. has been sensing support for his organization waning in recent years, support for an inane organization that holds weekly meetings with a chaplain of the Church, in a small room at the Catholic Student Center, to talk about current events, watch a movie, or discuss Catholic life within the greater Harvard community. In his own words, he thinks they want Cornerstone to die.

A dark pessimist would conclude that perhaps the CSA wants Cornerstone to exist in name only, to claim the title of tolerance as sword and shield with which to beat back criticism and trump dissent, without any true effort. But why this false-face hypocrisy? Is it because the trick has worked so well throughout the history of the Church? I see something deeper, more intrinsic, more sinister still. I can imagine why the current CSA would not want a group like Cornerstone to survive, to advertise to incoming Freshmen who may be grappling with issues of faith and homosexuality, to offer support and pastoral leadership to those who would seek it. In effect, the spirits of old Judeo purity laws from the times of the New Testament come into mind. From the outside looking in, it is as if those who are less than perfect need not taint the purity of the Church and the CSA, these afflicted sinners who seek fellowship, and communion, and God's grace. But if the gays are to be treated like lepers of the New Testament, then surely the CSA and its Church could remember Jesus and his lessons about purity and true compassion. At a time when Catholicism is losing its flock, at a place like Harvard and a student organization like the CSA, is there any room left for such lessons of Jesus to be truly contemplated?

What the CSA is doing is hypocritical and antithetical to the very meaning of Christian faith and fellowship. On a personally level, it is hurtful and devastating to M. I feel vicariously the silent erosion of his faith, and I refuse to let such withering go unnoticed. We shall see how this calamity progresses, but I am obliged to cry foul, if only for M. who loves the organization still, and doesn't want to see it falter in the eyes of the public. However, when so many in the Church have remained silent in the face of injustice and hypocrisy, and they themselves perpetuate the disease, sometimes it takes an outsider to act. I am that outsider.