Unfriendly suspicions
It is unfortunate that the transfer of the relics of Cardinal John Henry Newman should have produced a slanging match over whether the English 19th theologian was homosexual or not.
It cannot suffice to refer to Cardinal Newman’s close friendship with another man as evidence of a homosexual love, celibate or not. Without harder evidence, such as a recorded acknowledgment by Cardinal Newman or his friend Fr Ambrose St John, the English gay activist Peter Thatchell is not entitled to characterise their relationship as homosexual.
By offering conclusions based merely on conjecture, Mr Thatchell is as mistaken as those who presume to know what happens in the private lives of cohabitating same-sex couples, even among those who have entered into a civil partnership. It is not possible for others to know what is not explicit and manifest, and therefore it is inappropriate to make public what one merely believes to be a fact. The Newman expert Fr Ian Ker correctly points out that today “you no longer can say you love your friend” because the public expression of a close, caring friendship between two men runs risk of being presumed to be homosexual in nature.
The mindset which almost invariably associates love between two men with homosexuality diminishes the notion of friendship — as does the often instinctive suspicion that a close friendship between a man and a woman inevitably has its source in romantic attraction.
In today’s highly sexualised social context — in which there is a broadening openness towards homosexuality but in which the bigotry of homophobia has not vanished — friendships such as that between Cardinal Newman and Fr St John will always be liable to speculation.
Fr Ker is acknowledged as the foremost expert on Cardinal Newman. There is no cause for doubting his conclusion that the relationship between the cardinal and the priest was one of a close friendship, perhaps deepened by a longing for companionship by two celibate men. And if these two men were celibate, their sexual orientation should not be an issue anyhow — not to Mr Thatchell nor to the public — unless this was academically pertinent in an analysis of Cardinal Newman’s theological tracts.
One may well question whether it was necessary at all for Fr Ker to launch into what he appears to see as a defence of Cardinal Newman’s good reputation. Should our admiration for the cardinal as a man or a cleric be diminished by the idea that he might have been a celibate homosexual? Would his erudite writings and thoroughly admirable character be compromised if Mr Thatchell’s suggestions were proven to be accurate?
Fr Ker, as an authority on Cardinal Newman, is entitled to set the record straight. In doing so, however, he employs a regrettable tone. His suggestion in the Vatican newspaper that “Newman, as every normal man, wanted to get married”, precluded from doing so only by his vow of celibacy, is thoughtless — particularly in a public debate with a leading gay activist, whom by implication he labels not normal.
By describing homosexuals as not normal, Fr Ker adds to a stigmatisation of same-sex orientation which in turn feeds the contemporary prejudices against devoted friendships between men — the very narrow-mindedness he censures in Mr Thatchell’s claims.
One may imagine that even Cardinal Newman would not regard that as helpful.
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