Well, I think this is pretty sad. I was reading Called Out of Darkness in May and I loved the first part because she described her upbringing in and her love of the Catholic Church in her childhood and it was, in many ways, like reading about my own childhood in the Church. She captured something about the Church that's hard, I think, for people who were not there to understand.

As I got a bit further in the book, though, I got a little irritated with some of the things she said and I could tell there was going to be more to come and eventually I just started reading something else.

You could see that which led to her leaving almost from the beginning, but I have to wonder if it had to be that way. Because her son (her only other child died at the age of 6 from leukemia) is a homosexual, she had trouble accepting the Church's teaching about homosexuality. Well, sometimes it takes time to come to terms with things like this. I know that after my re-conversion, there was a lot of junk in my life and the Lord was very merciful in showing me my errors in small doses. Being in the public eye, she probably did not have that luxury. I'm sure she came in for a lot of flack from "good Catholics" who tried to straighten her out in less than charitable ways. So, I don't know, but I'm going to pray for her.

AMDG

I've tried to read a couple of her "dark" books, but they were pretty unreadable. Not so much for what she was writing about (I've managed to get through worse) as for the way she wrote it - prose so clunky that you'd really have to *want* to read the book to struggle through it. Then I tried to read one of her Life of Christ books, and found that was pretty unreadable too. It was in any case so closely based on apocryphal writings that you'd get the same content with more style by reading M. R. James's The New Testament Apocrypha. So no, I wouldn't recommend giving her writings another shot. I certainly won't be.

The difference between her and Groucho is that she's saying something more like "I won't belong to any Church that will have *him* as a member."

The phrase "get over yourself" comes to mind.

I've read loads of supernatural fiction (I used to do book reviews for a couple small press journals dedicated to the subject) and must say I was never much impressed by Rice's work. I got about 100 pages or so into two of her books, Interview With The Vampire and one other, and gave up on both. I found her very overrated.

I meant, 'about his life' - Freudian slip, some will say!

It's funny how different one person's view of what constitutes a page-turner can be from another's. Not having read Rice's life of Christ books, and very little else, I don't have an opinion there, but this puts me in mind of Michael O'Brien's books. Lots of people find them very gripping, but I had to force my way through the one (or was it two?) I read. I'm totally in sympathy with the views that animate his work, but for me they just don't have the spark of narrative life in them. Likewise for...oh heck, I'm not going to be able to remember the name...very very long Italian book set in WWII...The Red Horse, maybe? What a trudge that was! Nothing in it ever came to life for me. I only pushed through because I was supposed to be reviewing it, which in the end I didn't do, because I couldn't think of anything good to say about it and didn't want to trash it. Yet some people find it a page-turner.

Rice does come across as acting purely on emotional impulses. Her gripes about Christians are somewhat understandable, but anyone who calls the Church "anti-life" and "anti-science" is not being very rational.

Somewhere on the net some months ago I read a bit of someone's memoir about coming/returning to the Church. There's no way I could find it again, of course, but I think she was a new convert, not a revert, but I'm not sure. And apparently she'd had a pretty crazy alcoholic life, and she talked about how excited she was that they, the Church, would let her in. I wonder if that was Mary Carr, come to think of it.

Yes, Mac, I read 11 pages or so of a Michael O'Brien book and could not bring myself to go on. I'd met him, not so long before the attempt, and knew he is a very nice, kind chap. In this case, it was because the dialogue was, for me, laughably unbelievable. Liking him as I did, I couldn't read his book, because it couldn't be read (by me) in a spirit of charity. And yet, as you say, I've met people who find his books to be page turners.

I don't present this as a piece in defence of my view of Rice's 'life of Christ' books, but it is interesting, as an historical note, that Richard Neuhaus liked them. He observed that she is (as I recall the phrase), 'not in competition with Dostoievsky' (ie, as I put it, 'no literary merit), but he thought they were vividly written and could make valuable devotional reading. I often disagreed with Neuhaus (eg, about von Balthasar, and about Maciel), so I don't present our concordance on this as any evidence for anything.

I had a colleague and friend who is gay and a cradle RC, and struggled with the combination. Someone said, 'he is trying to staple a Catholic identity onto an already given gay identity, and it doesn't work'. To me, Ann Rice's comments indicate a similar kind of struggle, and I have nothing but sympathy, since for me it has only been only 'good luck' (like having known intelligent practising Christians) which pushed me beyond that stage. Especially in the atmosphere of the Church in this country of the past 30 years (and it's probably worse in California), I could easily have come and gone.

I remember reading about that autobiography of a alcoholic convert, and intending to read it, and not getting there.

I thought "Carr" might be wrong, but I wasn't sure enough to change it, since it's the more conventional spelling. And I always go for the more conventional response.

The reason RJN's admiration for Maciel became offensive was that, he defended him for several years, implying that the attacks were motivated by liberalism (meaning in the American context lack of faith), and then, when the truth began coming out, he backtracked and tried to deny he'd been a staunch defender of the guy. He had made an (honest) mistake, and it would have been better to say so, not to go into 'we never make mistakes' mode.

I wonder if anyone has clearly told Ann Rice that, for a Catholic, 'having faith' is holding the faith of the Church. I was received into the Church in LA in the early 1980s (I was there doing an MA in philosophy, as it happens, Paul!), and I somewhat received the impression that the faith of the Church was optional. I got that impression even from the book we used (which has since been banned, due to the efforts of something called Catholics United for the Faith). She will be surrounded both by pro-gay Catholics and hearing from conservative Catholics, and will think these are the two sides of the Church, and will probably have hoped that, eventually, her side of the Church would 'win out.' It is perfectly probable, if the people in her church are anything like the ones who ran my catechism classes, that she's never really grasped that the teachings of the Church are intended as 'objectively true'.

She certainly wouldn't be the only one of her generation to think all that had been abolished by Vatican II, or science, or something. I had the same experience as you, Francesca, as have many others. For a while I fought and argued, then eventually it just became a sort of weather that one had to put up with.

Yes, she may be being quite irrational: a friend of mine parodied her view on FB, writing, 'I refuse to be anti-gay, I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be rational. I refuse to abandon secular humanism'.

I find this hilarious!

I also find her lapse to be very sad and will certainly pray for her. We're all just a bunch of poor sinners, me especially - which is not just "pious talk" but something I have come up hard against on many occasions, but especially right now.

I loved your title for this post, btw, Maclin.

A. N. Wilson immediately came to my mind reading the Anne Rice piece. He wrote a remarkably similar rant in one of the newspapers to proclaim his decision to be an atheist. That would be twenty years ago now, and more recently he's been writing things like this.

I'd forgotten the preVatican II education. But, even so, the woman is a novelist, ie, impressed more by imagination and empathy than by reason per se, and if she knows very many dissidents but also knows there's 'conservatives,' she probably imagines the issue as two sides, one of which she is/was on. That's probably the way most American Catholics think, no? She will have been increasingly disappointed, over time, that her 'side' was losing ground.

I hope no one thinks I'm being pious (God forbid). My dissent here is quite strong, simply because I know that I'd have retained that mind set (albeit on the 'conservative' side) if it hadn't been that my job is being a theologian, and I had to think about these things, and read, and discuss them with inquisitive students. I remember my very first year teaching, at Manchester University in 1989, the students asking me precisely which doctrines the Church or Catholics have enunciated in the past 2000 years Catholics have to believe. I did not have a clue how to answer that question.

Thank you for that link, Paul.

When that great saint Thomas More, Chancellor of England, was on trial for his life for daring to defy Henry VIII, one of his prosecutors asked him if it did not worry him that he was standing out against all the bishops of England.

He replied: 'My lord, for one bishop of your opinion, I have a hundred saints of mine.'

Hmmm. Maybe Mr. Wilson ought to think a bit about who he's quoting and what the matter at hand was. ;-)

AMDG

"she probably imagines the issue as two sides, one of which she is/was on. That's probably the way most American Catholics think, no?"

Yes, except that it isn't really "most". Most probably aren't really even much aware of these controversies. But yes, those who are aware often see it that way. I note with pleasure, on reading your comment, that I've pretty much stopped seeing it that way. I still use the terms "liberal Catholic" and "conservative Catholic" sometimes, as a convenient abbreviation, but I don't really see the Church as divided clearly along those lines or feel the need to engage in polemics about it, as I once did. This is partly a change in me, I suppose, but partly also a change in the climate within the Church, with the extreme "liberal" (i.e. truly heretical and heterodox) party losing ground and influence. It becomes possible to have a reasonable debate on some controversial point if you don't suspect the other side of having at bottom an agenda of dismantling the Church.

No Paul, I don't agree, because, to him, the gay identity is fouundational, regardless of whether it was chronologically first.

Yes I have lost my cat. This evening, the priest said the 6 pm mass for his return.

I went on holiday 10 July - 22 July. When I got back, he was gone. He often goes to people who used to be our neighbours before we moved when I go on holiday. So I was not worried for 2 or 3 days. But I kept visiting the place, and he wasn't there, and none of them had seen him. By Monday I was very worried. At 9 am Monday morning I called Scottish Society for the Provention of Cruelty to Animals. I said he was lost, and I sent them photos of him by email within a few minutes (which they said they'd received immediately). On Tuesday and Wednesday I leafletted my street and the adjoining ones. On Wednesday night I got a text from a 9 year old girl saying she'd seen him at her day care centre (a nursery). I went there at once, but he was not there. I went back the next day, and showed the picture, and the women said he'd been there Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday down to 4 pm. On Monday afternoon, they said, they'd called the SSPCA, who had come and given the cat a pencillen injection, and then *released him*.

I've been back there nearly every day since, leafletting the neighbourhood. There are colour photos in the pub, the shop, etc.

Its a very bad neighbourhood. Lots of towerblocks and guys with nasty looking dogs. Lots of people on drugs. It's about 20 minutes from where I live. I think the positive identifications are probably accurate, though of course I can't know that.

It is not just the stupidity of the SSPCA which is torturing me, it is the fact that we came so near - he was there on Wednesday afternoon, and I learned of it on Wednesday evening.

I put an add with his picture in the local papers yesterday, and had one phone call, from someone who thought she'd seen him on other side of the river, which I think is very unlikely. Tomorrow I am going for a call out on the two local radio stations.

Incidentally, I had not given any money to the Grampian Diocese since what could loosely be called a disagreement with our Bp 18 months ago. I had some cash with me when I went to ask the priest to say a mass - I was expecting he'd do it some time next week (you know it usually takes a while to get a mass intention said). But he said he'd do it at that mass. I offered him the cash, but he wouldn't take it. So I put it in the basket. So, unlikely poor Ann Rice (who I hope gets over it soon), I'm in.

I'm not saying anything about 'gay identity' being intrinsic or not. I'm just saying, the guy gives it primacy, so it has primacy, for him.

Yes, very sorry about the cat. I will pray. My sister's cat was lost once for a very long time--months, I think--and then came home one day and never left again, so there's definitely hope.

AMDG

We had one stay gone for...I don't know, at least two years, and when we had long given her up, she just walked out of the woods one day and made herself at home again. Only thing was, for the rest of her life she was obsessed with getting up, as high as she could, which made her a real pest inside--always climbing the bookshelves. One can only imagine how she learned that lesson.

I just realized I had failed to notice an important part of this debate: that the topic is a Catholic baptized as an infant. I see now, that does make the idea of the gay identity being somehow prior to the Catholic identity more of a problem. Still, I understand Francesca to be talking mainly about the person's subjective sense of himself.

I had never heard of Gerard Reve or Judith Butler till now, and am not sure what your reference to them means--I mean, I don't have much of an idea what they would think about...anything, really.

So a fair paraphrase be "he wants to remain a Catholic, but only in so far as it doesn't compromise his gay identity"? As I think I said, I'm not arguing the facts, only that your student's way of wording them struck me as bizarrely back-to-front.

The thing that most struck me about Anne Rice's declaration (rather than Francesca's student's) was not the "anti-gay" issue (which is to some extent an issue anywhere, and something I'm somewhat acquainted with from personal experience) so much as "anti-Democrat" (Joe Biden clearly doesn't feel that his religious convictions oblige him to be anti-Democrat, so why would Anne Rice?) and "anti-science" (which just seems a depressingly superficial repetition of 19th-century canards). Or are there things going on in American Catholicism that I have no inkling of?

The attitude "I'm a follower of Christ, but I refuse to be associated with all those sinners who follow Him" is such a familiar one in these parts that it barely raises an eyebrow.

Thanks!

I don't know if this is true in Europe, but a lot of American Catholics really get off on the idea of having each other excommunicated. The "liberals" have most often been on the receiving end of that for the past 30-40 years, so they've
enjoyed getting a bit of their own back over the Iraq war etc.

Oh, sorry. Well, I'll just bow out of this now...(I mean the gay Catholic discussion, not the Anne Rice one).

I can only guess at that. She's more thin-skinned than Biden, perhaps? I don't think this indicates so much that she feels bound in conscience as that she is angry at people who say she should be. And those would mostly be laypeople. I doubt she has had any clergyman tell her she's obligated to be anti-Democrat. I take the burden of her complaint to be that she hates right-wing Christians.

Thanks, Francesca.

AMDG

Here's a very interesting new interview in which she elaborates a bit on her decision:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-beliefs-anne-rice-20100807,0,5152082.story

Also interesting: this remark by Hunter Baker, who I'm pretty sure is Protestant, at Mere Comments:

http://merecomments.typepad.com/merecomments/2010/08/anne-rices-catholic-anticatholicism.html

I'm not sure exactly when or how it happened, but it wasn't long after I entered the Church that I ceased to separate it conceptually from Christ. So Rice's stance seems hopelessly contradictory to me.

Janet's reference to Karr made me google her. I really must read her autobio.

Francesa, You should and there are 3. If you don't read the first one,Liars' Club, you probably don't see how grace-filled the third one, Lit, is.

AMDG

And I'm pretty sure he said "in Europe" (where slavery and genocide are not, just now, so much of a problem anyway). When the Pope tells the Portuguese what he thinks the problems in Europe are, why does Ms Rice have to jump up and down about him not mentioning the Sudan?

That's a good point. Her remarks do sound like those of one who's just reacting to superficial newspaper reports, and perhaps the general left-wing climate of opinion.