F ifth Avenue can seem — particularly to New Yorkers — the center of the universe. There are commuters and tourists, the highest-end stores, and yet, at the same time, St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Even there, silence is possible. Unless it is the early morning, there are always people walking about the church — some of them with selfie sticks, some of them lighting candles. There is also a chapel dedicated to Mary deep within that is kept as a sacred space for prayer even with all the shopping bags coming in and out. It honestly sometimes — especially when counterterrorism police are patrolling (which is unfortunately routine) — seems a bit of a miracle.
St. Patrick’s was not silent for the funeral of transgender activist Cecilia Gentili. Born a man and baptized Catholic, friends wanted Gentili to have a send-off at St. Patrick’s. Reports are that there were 1,000 people at the congregation, many of them dressed not as people might tend to for Mass — visible thongs and such. Part of the controversy over the funeral involves, for some, that it ever happened and, for others, that the full celebration of a Mass was nixed in real time as cathedral staff assessed what seemed to be going on. (It became clear later that the intention was to make the funeral an activist celebration so as to force the Church into appearing to be in support of gender-transitioning and a whole host of other matters it is not in support of and cannot be.) And that was even before there was real blasphemy.
The cathedral live-streams Masses on YouTube, and so we could continue to watch as Gentili was eulogized as “great whore, Saint Cecilia, the mother of all whores.” As you may have already read or seen, while the traditional “Ave Maria” to the mother of Jesus was sung by one of the regular cathedral cantors — common at Catholic funerals — someone tried to drown out the “Maria” with “Cecilia” and danced down the aisle.
It is fitting that this happened at St. Patrick’s. New York is, in many ways, a clash of values. A melting pot, sure. For a dramatic example, you see the struggle at prayer vigils outside Planned Parenthood’s flagship clinic in Lower Manhattan — which get protested in the most obscene and graphic ways.
As I write, the latest in the funeral drama is that friends of Cecilia Gentili are insisting on an apology from the Archdiocese of New York. The accusation is that the cathedral didn’t do what was right and just because it wasn’t an actual Mass. But the Mass involves the most profound prayer that is possible in the Catholic Church. We believe that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus. Not everyone believes that can be so, needless to say. And as has become clear, for some in attendance, the funeral of Gentili wasn’t merely about commending her soul to God but celebrating her activism in the most prominent Catholic Church in New York. The cathedral was respecting the real change in a soul that happens in the sacrament of baptism. We pray for souls when they die. Some homilies and eulogies don’t capture this, but we are all sinners — daily Mass-goers and transgender activists, all. We pray for the purification of the soul so it may enter Heaven. And so, while the cathedral could have been more prepared for what was about to happen, it respected the power of baptism. Many of those who were welcomed into the cathedral weren’t reciprocal in respect. And so it was right and just not to have the holy sacrifice of the Mass.
The whole incident points to the standstill or — I hate the word — the war we seem to be in the midst or on the verge of. Do we believe in anything like pluralism anymore? Our politics certainly suggests we don’t. There are no incentives for actual collaboration for the common good. Your compromise is seen as selling out when it could be a little principled leadership, gradually getting to your goals, working within the reality of culture as it is.
At times, we can’t even sit beside one another in a church without being ideological.
I’m a firm believer in that God works with everything. And I think I might be grateful that this incident happened. I wouldn’t know who Gentili was if it weren’t for the scene at the cathedral. And Gentili lived a difficult life in a confusing world. Every day, people who are hurting in various ways walk in and walk out of the cathedral. That had to be the case for so many if not all the 1,000 there that day — most of whom, it may be safe to assume, aren’t usually at Sunday Mass.
The scandal isn’t that transgender people and their allied advocates were in the church but that a person was being praised rather than God (and in crude ways, ignoring or abusing the sacred space).
Rather than being angry about the incident at the cathedral — whatever your position on whether it should have happened — you can take it as a Lenten catalyst for reflection. How can we live together during these divisive and chaotic — especially when it comes to the very truth of the human person — times?
This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.