My non-USan lj friends may not be familiar with the story of Jim McGreevey. The Honourable James E. McGreevey, former Governor of the state of New Jersey, came out as a gay man a few years ago. He left office (somewhat under a cloud because of his extracurricular activities while Governor with a “security consultant”), filed for divorce from his wife, and dropped out of politics.
He has now re-emerged as a convert to the Episcopal Church and has been accepted into General Theological Seminary, on 23rd Street and Ninth Avenue in Chelsea (the new Greenwich Village of Manhattan, repository for all things gay male). He intends to study theology with a view toward being ordained an Episcopal priest.
And thus we inevitably turn to Groucho Marx, who used to tell this story:
A priest came up to Groucho, shook his hand and said, “Mr. Marx, I’d like to thank you for all the joy you’ve brought into the world.” Smiling, Groucho responded, “And I’d like to thank you for all the joy you’ve taken out of it!”
Religion, like politics, seems to be (in modern times, at least) an exercise in removing the joy from life. Where some organised religion says, “You mustn’t bear false witness if you want to go to heaven,” or “Don’t use artificial means of contraception as it’s unnatural and against the will of God,” politics says, “Teachers: you mustn’t take children on a field trip unless you’ve had a risk assessment done by your school of the destination as our insurance company won’t cover us for damages if (God forbid!) one of the children is hurt,” or “You are in such danger from terrorism that we will take away your privacy and your civil liberties in favour of trying to protect you from terrorist acts (but of course, we can’t absolutely guarantee that some crazed terrorist won’t kill you, so do watch out please…)”. The joy of taking a trip on an airplane when you could just check in and walk to your plane has gone for almost 40 years now. Children end up staying in their classrooms (where they might be protected unless some mentally-ill alienated kid has been able to buy a gun), people end up fearful and nervous, and the joys of life are slowly sapped away from us.
Mr. McGreevey is said to have been attracted to the Episcopal Church for a while. Indeed, how could he not be? The Roman Catholic church, not content with covering up its own priestly misdeeds over the years, wants to make sure that no one else has fun either. Appropriate genitalia are the key to having fun; any loving relationship where the genitalia aren’t appropriately matched becomes sinful. The Episcopal Church, by contrast, has on the whole decided that loving relationships are worthy of being celebrated and supported on their own merits. This hasn’t extended to general willingness to perform marriages where that is legal (Massachusetts) or bless same-sex unions (anywhere), but they’re getting there. Gay and lesbian clergy and bishops are (mostly) accepted and celebrated.
So Mr. McGreevey is about to go from one joy-sapping vocation to another. My question is this: will his path to ordination be smoothed over because he is a celebrity? I have known postulants for ordination in the past whose path to ordination was blocked by things such as fibbing about their past, being divorced, or having extramarital sexual relations. These people, however, were not celebrities, just ordinary people seeking to answer a call that they heard in their lives. I hope that Mr McGreevey’s days of joy-sapping are over. If he does have a genuine call, it’s not up to me, to GTS, or to the Church to negate it: he’ll persevere and, I hope, triumph. If he does not have a genuine call, it will become clear soon enough. Back to joy-sapping, then.
Six degrees of separation note: The Rev’d Kevin Bean, the Vicar of St. Bartholomew’s Church in Manhattan, where Mr. McGreevey was received into the Episcopal Church, was previously the Rector of St. Andrew’s Church in Marblehead, where my grandmother was (long ago, of course) a communicant.