Seminary boy is an autobiography of a boy whose father is somewhat dysfunctional who, at age 13, is "called" to the priesthood and endures "arcane masochisms and bizarre prostrations that only a Catholic can fully appreciate". At minor seminary he discovers class mates who are homosexual (though is not himself) and one priest-teacher even tries to seduce him. Graduating to senior seminary it all becomes too much and he renounces his faith, settles down to married life, only to later return to Catholicism. I was surprised at this return after all he had suffered, but he elegantly notes that
What we are escaping is not God at all, but false representations, the 'trash and tinsel', as Yeats once put it, that pass for him. So, 'hatred of God may bring the soul to God'.
I well know this "trash and tinsel". Maybe I am becoming too cynical, too judgmental in finding more and more difficulty in singing certain Christian songs with any conviction. The Jesus I read about in the gospels seems distant from some of the slush that we sing.
There has been much and well deserved exposé recently of the sexual abuse of children, examples being made of Catholic priests. A side-effect is that we have become paranoid: youth workers now needing police clearance, parents nervous about ever leaving their children unattended in public places. Characters like
Rupert Bear, who has free and often solitary reign of the whole of Nutwood, are clearly no longer PC.
The second is that old favourite,
Kim which begins evocatively
He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam Zammah on her brick platform... Later Kim, an orphan, is described as a
young man, evidently a neophyte, of singular, though unwashen, beauty. And the book ends likewise evocatively with the lama who
crossed his hands on his lap and smiled, as a man may who has won salvation for himself and his beloved.
And along the way the horse dealer Mahbub Ali tells:
'Thou art beyond question an unbeliever, and therefore thou wilt be damned. So says my Law--or I think it does. But thou art also my Little Friend of all the World, and I love thee. So says my heart;
and the lama:
'A blessing on thee... I have known many men in my so long life, and disciples not a few. But to none among men, if so be thou art woman-born, has my heart gone out as it has to thee--thoughtful, wise, and courteous; but something of a small imp.';
and Kim himself,
who had loved him [the lama]
without reason, now loved him for fifty good reasons. So they enjoyed themselves in high felicity, abstaining, as the Rule demands, from evil words, covetous desires; not over-eating, not lying on high beds, nor wearing rich clothes.
Of course, you say, Kipling lived in a different age so would not have written anything sexually explicit. Some say that Kipling was gay. I say that he was an honest man and would have written no differently today.
A man's sexuality cannot be isolated from the rest of him and,
so they say, men think about sex once every 7 seconds. I do not mean to imply that Kipling's characters had no feelings but rather that they were very human, just as I am. And that is what endears the book to me. Can it not be that the lama and Mahbub Ali loved Kim, period? As a father loves his son, if you will? A friend of mine, when I suggested that his daughter was dressing provocatively, told me that it was I who had the problem. Is that the only solution to the equation? What marks a "gay" man is that he has chosen to let his sexual feelings manifest in a particular way. I cannot say whether some men may be more inclined in that way or not, but I do know there is at least a degree of personal choice involved.
The third book, which I have not yet finished, is also about a boy whose father is dysfunctional, and it is written from the perspective of a family friend who recognises the boy's plight, loves him and tries to get involved but is met with rejection at every turn and is even accused of homosexuality. And, forever after, he is left wondering who was right.
