“Disengage from the Church as an institution”, this is the underlying message of John McNeill’s book-length interview.
Born in 1925, he fought in the Second World War, became a Jesuit novice and was consequently ordained. He taught theology and specialized in psychotherapy.
In 1976 he publicly declared his homosexuality and the following year the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith banned him from writing and publishing his work. Ten years later he was expelled from the Jesuit order.
His work and activity gave life to “Dignity”, the homosexual Catholic movement in the USA.
McNeill is well known even though his writings are hard to come by in Italy and his main book ‘Church and Homosexuality’ (Mondadori 1979) can only be found if carefully searching through second hand book-stalls and websites.
The great merit of this new book-length interview, written by the journalist Valerio Gigante and published by Edizioni Piagge, is to give us a clear picture of McNeill’s achievements.
In the book, the theologian, calmly and without resentment, but with great logic and care, criticizes a system of power which has become deeply rooted over the centuries and uses homosexuals as “scapegoats”.
This is, in practice, an attack on a faith built on inflexible dogmas, which doesn’t allow for the free growth of people’s souls. According to McNeill we need to gain back a mature sense of religion, in harmony with one’s ripening and growing character.
To be aware that our parents, and therefore also the Church, can make mistakes means that we need to live a self-regulating life, independent from our parents, relatives and religious authorities, we need to do this in order to make honest choices and be responsible of our own actions.
The tools to achieve such independence are psychology, the Vatican II where it stresses the role of non-clerics and those theological writings that give the utmost importance to the freedom of every man and woman.
From this book-length interview, which is only a few pages long, we get the impression that the Church ought to embrace dialogue as its primary rule. After all dialogue is at the root of the modern research in Christian ethics which is abandoning dogmas and untouchable positions in order to reach past ‘objective realism’, in other words conforming to a system of dogmas and beliefs based on ‘ nature’s law’.
According to the most progressive Christian ethical studies promoted by, among others, Dalmazio Mongillo (a Dominican who passed away in 2005) and his pupils like sister Antonietta Potente, who recently published Un bene fragile (A delicate good), Mondadori, dialogue is the path that the Church must follow.
But, unfortunately, McNeill is the very example of how the Church chosen path is still that of censure and judgement.
McNeill J. (interviewed by V. Gigante), Cercare se stessi…per trovare Dio (Selfdiscovery ...to find God) , Edizioni Piagge, Florence 2011; pp. 50, €5.
Edizioni Piagge was formed in order to share the stories and experiences of the homonymous community near Florence.