Authors: Susan Howatch
“Where’s Stacy?” I said vaguely to Alice as I concluded this meditation.
“Upstairs, I suppose. He came in here a while ago and wanted to know what was for dinner.”
“Was Rosalind with him?”
“No, but she’s back. I heard her come in.”
“That’s odd. I wonder where she is. She’s not in the flat.”
“Oh, she’s probably with Stacy—maybe he’s finally had the chance to show her the pictures of Aisling’s wedding.”
I started to brood on Stacy’s child-like naivety in relating to the opposite sex.
Lewis was sure Stacy was a homosexual, but Lewis saw the issue of homosexuality as clear-cut, like a black-and-white pattern which was incapable of ambiguity. This attitude was not, as the Gay Christians thought, because he was a bigot, incapable of sympathising with them. Nor was it, as they also thought, because he was a repressed homosexual who could only keep self-doubt at bay by condemning homosexuality in others. His main problem was that he viewed homosexuals through glasses fashioned in a previous era and he resolutely refused to acquire a modern pair of spectacles. This previous era wasn’t the thirties, when he had been an adolescent, or the twenties, the decade into which he’d been born. It wasn’t even Edwardian. It was Victorian, the era which had fashioned his mentor Cuthbert Darcy, who had rescued Lewis in his hour of need, dusted him down and reprogrammed him.
Great-Uncle Cuthbert had had some very Victorian views on all forms of sexual activity. Good women, he had believed, were for marriage and motherhood. The sex-drive, he had been convinced, was a considerable nuisance, interfering as it did with a man’s concentration on more important matters, but if one really couldn’t function adequately without coitus, then one was obliged to marry a woman of one’s own class and procreate. Marriage was, of course, for ever. Fornication was not just sinful but at best time-consuming and at worst life-threatening. Those who indulged in such a fundamentally trivial activity were clearly disturbed individuals who needed to rearrange their priorities in order to lead happier, more rewarding lives. The
fallen women who lured men from the path to fulfilment could only be described as the dregs of humanity, but even such dregs could be redeemed; one should never forget that because God had made each one of us in his own image, each one of us was precious in his sight; nor should one ever forget that because of the Incarnation, God was present in the world and calling us to care for our fellow men, whatever their rank or condition, as if they were Jesus Christ himself. Homosexuals—perverts, as Great-Uncle Cuthbert would have called them—were also the dregs of humanity, cursed with a handicap for which there was no cure, but again one had to remember that Christ cared for everyone: the poor, the handicapped, the outcasts—even women. So if the perverts chose to renounce their unnatural sexual activity and embrace celibacy, they were capable, by the grace of God, of leading just as good a life as their more fortunate brothers. Happy ending.
Lewis had swallowed whole at the age of fifteen this gospel according to Father Darcy, and he had never quite recovered from it. The basic theology—the idea that one should care for all people, regardless of who they were, since each individual was precious in God’s sight—was as true today as it was yesterday; it was the Darcy interpretation, wedded to the sociology of his youth, which now looked like a museum-piece. To be fair to Lewis, he did accept that much more was known in the late twentieth century about sexuality than had been known in the nineteenth, and he also accepted that the Church, reflecting this new knowledge, had become more wary of uttering simplistic judgements on this most complex of subjects, but although he was capable of being both modern and imaginative in his pastoral care of people in trouble, no matter what they got up to in bed, the diverse nature of homosexuality was hidden from him behind a monolith marked SIN. In his view people were either homosexual or heterosexual. Homosexuality was a handicap. Bisexuality was either immature behavior by heterosexuals or else homosexuals pretending to be what they weren’t. Either way it indicated an unintegrated personality which needed help. All forms of homosexual activity were wrong—but of course one should never fail to treat these handicapped people with as much care and compassion as if they were Christ himself in order to help them lead rewarding celibate lives.
As I always said to the Gay Christians, it wasn’t that Lewis ever intended to be unkind, patronising or just plain unchristian. He was as firmly convinced as any of us that we were all of equal value in
God’s sight. But on the subjects which preoccupied the gays, he was a heterosexual Victorian male and there was no changing him.
That was why I failed to take Lewis as seriously as I might otherwise have done when he diagnosed that Stacy was a homosexual. My unwillingness to support this diagnosis was also influenced by the fact that Stacy showed no interest in other men and every interest in getting a steady girlfriend. I did note that he was so nervous while trying to gain this status symbol that every date was an ordeal achieved only by a major effort of the will, but I decided this was just a symptom of immaturity. I also rejected Lewis’s view that Stacy was only trying to acquire a girlfriend in order to please me, but since I saw sexuality as a complex spectrum encompassing an enormous variety of behavior, I was inevitably going to shy away from such an unsubtle opinion. What I had to remember, even as every liberal instinct urged me to discard Lewis’s judgement on this subject, was that he might be right. Not all psycho-sexual puzzles are wreathed in complexity. But I was fairly sure this one was.
Stacy had ben seduced in his teens by an older man who was well educated, well respected and even, I’m sorry to say, a pillar of his local church. Despite my liberal views I don’t approve of seducing minors. Nor do I approve of promiscuity, and those who persist in such behaviour have no business turning up in church and pretending they’re trying to lead Christian lives. Both during and after this clandestine affair Stacy had never been to bed with anyone else so he at least could hardly be rated promiscuous, but I was prepared to bet the older man had notched up a colourful past while compensating himself for the strain of staying in the closet in order to preserve his respectable facade.
Yet life’s never so simple as it seems. This man apparently came to love Stacy and was without doubt very good to him. He encouraged Stacy to read and study. He took him on cultural expeditions. He even fostered Stacy’s interest in becoming a priest. So although I can only disapprove of the way this man wound up muddling and maiming Stacy’s sexual development, I have to admit he must have been not only a good man in many ways but probably interesting and delightful as well. The story’s a sharp illustration of how reluctant one should be to rush to judgement. Who was I anyway to act as a judge? I’d rattled around too in my time. In my own way. With girls and psychic parlour-tricks.
Stacy’s ordination certainly represented some sort of redemption of
the mess, but it seemed clear that the redemption was by no means complete and that Lewis and I were being called to help Stacy finish his delayed journey to maturity. Unfortunately, as neither of us could agree on the exact nature of the problem we had to solve, this was easier said than done. If Lewis was right, then our task would be to help Stacy come to terms with the homosexuality he was now busy denying. But supposing
I
was right? I thought the inevitable guilt and shame resulting from the secret love affair had turned him off sex—all sex—and that his genuine desire to live as a heterosexual was being hampered by this deep-seated revulsion. I also thought he was currently trapped in the bisexuality which is so common among teenagers with the result that he was unable to move on in the sexual spectrum to a place which would more accurately reflect his adult self. I saw the correct place as being at the heterosexual end of the bisexual middle of the spectrum; or in other words, I thought it likely that although in maturity he might experience the occasional homosexual attraction, he was not fundamentally homosexual. In which case any effort to help him to maturity by urging him to see himself as gay would do almost as much harm as the seducer who had imprisoned him in adolescence.
I did suggest the obvious: that Stacy should talk through his homosexual past with an expert counsellor so that it could be properly explored and finally transcended. But Stacy said he didn’t want to talk about the past. It was done, finished, he didn’t want to think about it any more. I explained that there were different ways of not thinking about the past and that some were more helpful than others. If one merely repressed painful memories they didn’t go away but instead burrowed into the unconscious mind and resurfaced in some other form. On the other hand, if one faced the memories and examined them, instead of splitting them off and denying them, there was more chance of the past being successfully integrated with the present, and then all the energy wasted on repression would be set free for a more productive use.
But Stacy stood his ground and refused further help.
There are certain practitioners of the ministry of healing, notably those from the ranks of the Charismatic Evangelicals, who would no doubt at that point have tried to “deliver” Stacy by means of a traditional ritual from the malign spirit which was impairing him, but I’m a mainstream Church of England priest in the Catholic tradition and my ministry tends to be much more low-key and much more
interwoven with modern medicine. I don’t mean to disassociate myself from my Charismatic brethren, Protestant or Catholic, many of whom are dedicated, honourable people, and I don’t mean to imply that their direct dealings with the unconscious mind are necessarily either misguided or ineffective; statistics wouldn’t support such a statement. But generally speaking, I prefer to damp religious emotions down rather than rev them up, so I take care to operate within a highly conventional structure which leaves the minimum of room for histrionics. Mass hysteria is a very real danger at a healing service of any kind, and uncontrollable behaviour which has nothing to do with the Spirit of God can give religion a bad name.
I say all this to explain why I didn’t play the exorcist with Stacy and, as my Charismatic brethren would have put it, attempt to “deliver him from the spirit of sexual confusion which was infesting him.” I prayed for him, of course. That went without saying. I counselled him as his Rector. That too went without saying. But finally I decided that my prayers and counselling needed to be complemented by the healing skills of someone with a medical background who had specific training in this area. Rightly or wrongly I believed that this course would be more likely to produce an effective and lasting healing in Stacy’s case than to deal directly, in Charismatic fashion, with the unconscious mind by using the ritual of deliverance.
One of the great maxims of the ministry of healing is expressed in the quotation: “One may lead a horse to water, Twenty cannot make him drink.” When Stacy refused further help I knew I couldn’t force him to take my advice and for a time I tried to convince myself that my decision to get him into therapy was wrong. But I didn’t think it was. I foresaw he would go on being blocked from further spiritual and emotional development, and I couldn’t work out how to break the impasse.
I consulted Lewis again, but we still couldn’t agree either on the nature of the problem or on the way forward. So I decided the only thing to do was to back off and wait. I didn’t like doing this. It felt too much like failure. Failure is one of the most difficult things for a healer to accept. I knew the difficulty, I recognised it, but still I found it hard to acknowledge my powerlessness and trust God to approach the problem in some other way. When I discussed the failure with Clare I admitted I felt angry with Stacy for refusing the help. It was good to admit this. But even though I tried not to be angry, I found I was steadily losing interest in him, and this made me feel so guilty that I worked harder than ever to conceal my emotional withdrawal.
I was well aware that Stacy hero-worshipped me, but I’d always felt this was just a symptom of his continuing immaturity so it had never bothered me much. Yet now, aware of my changing feelings towards him, it began to bother me very much indeed. Guilt made me desperate not to behave in any way which he could have construed as a rejection, and because by this time I was so worried about the problem he presented, my failure to help him seemed all the more difficult to bear.
Finally I decided I had to act. Merely to wait had become intolerable, and in the hope that another clerical opinion might be of use I confided in Gilbert Tucker, the vicar of St. Eadred’s Fleetside. I picked Gil because he fancied himself as an expert on the sexual problems of the clergy, but I should have realised that as a gay activist he would bring his own agenda to the discussion. He said at once that Stacy was obviously as gay as a pink daffodil and that he was only pretending to be straight in order to please me. I then realised I’d come full circle. The liberal-radical (Gil) and his conservative archenemy (Lewis) were united in seeing homosexuality as a black-and-white issue, while I, caught between these two extremists, had wound up being even more bemused than I was before.
And now, to exacerbate my bemusement, the information had been presented to me by Lewis that last Monday night he and Stacy had been locked in a confidential discussion. What was going on? Stacy would normally come to me if he had a problem—unless, of course, I was the problem. Even so it was odd that he should confide in Lewis, whom he usually found intimidating. Could Stacy have finally sensed my ambivalent feelings towards him and confided in Lewis because he was so upset? Maybe. And if he was upset he might have exaggerated his hero-worship of me with the result that Lewis would have thought … Yes, I could see Lewis jumping to all the wrong conclusions, just as I could see Stacy blurting out a lot of passionate Irish nonsense about not wanting to let me down because he adored me so much. Lewis, blinkered as ever on the subject of homosexuality, would immediately think to himself: Stacy adores Nicholas; Nicholas is male; therefore Stacy is without doubt a homosexual. QED.