NOONAN, J: A Church That Can and Cannot Change

The Development of Catholic Moral Teaching
Univ of Notre Dame Press, 2005

312 pages

Catholic, Moral Theology, Church History

Using concrete examples, John T. Noonan, Jr., demonstrates that the moral teaching of the Catholic Church has changed and continues to change without abandoning its foundational commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Specifically, Noonan looks at the profound changes that have occurred over the centuries in Catholic moral teaching on freedom of conscience, lending for a profit, and slavery. He also offers a close examination of the change now in progress concerning divorce.

History Booklist

BOSWELL: Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homose

BOSWELL: Same-sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe

BROOTEN: Love Between Women

BRAY: The Friend

BOISVERT: Sanctity and Male Desire

CARROL, James: Constantine's Sword

FABER: The Oxford Apostles

JORDAN: The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology

JORDAN: The Silence of Sodom

KUNG Hans: The Catholic Church

KRAMER & D'ANGELO: Women & Christian origins

MACY, GARY: The Hidden History of Women's Ordination

MADIGAN & OSIEK: Ordained Women in the Early Church

NISSINEN: Homoeroticism in the Biblical World

PUTERBAUGH, DYNES (eds): The Crucifixion of Hyacinth

BOSWELL: Same-sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe

Boswell, John

Same Sex unions in Pre-Modern Europe

Harper-Collins, 1994

412 Pages

Christianity, History, Same Sex Unions, Lesbian & Gay

Strongly Recommended by QTC

If "Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality" created an academic revolution in the still unfolding story of LGBT history in the church, this was the book that really threw the cat among the pigeons. With scrupulous academic rigour, Boswell collected strong evidence that not only was 'gay marriage' legal and commonplace in classical civilization, but that the Christian church recognised and blessed some kind of same-sex union in a formal liturgical rite. The reaction has been fierce, with counter-arguments that these rites were not about 'marriage', but simply about 'friendship'. To make sense of the debate, one has to recognise that in classical times the very concept olf 'marriage' as we now understand it, simply did not exist. If the rite Boswell describes was not "gay marriage", nor was any other form of marriage comparable to what we now know as "straight marriage".

However you choose to interpret the institution, it seems that two things are now clear: It is now widely accepted that whatever the precise significance, some form of "same-sex union" existed and was recognised by liturgical blessing within the church; and that academics might disagree with Boswell's interpretation, but can no longer ignore it.

This book should be compulsory reading for anyone with a serious interest in same- gender relationships in church history.

From Google Books:

"Boswell convincingly establishes that, from ancient times to the 18th century, throughout Christian Europe, same-sex union rituals honored a form of ""gay marriage."" Working from church manuscripts, mainly in ancient Greek, that describe the ceremonies, Boswell carefully traces the historical context in which these practices occurred, exploring premodern beliefs about love and marriage, both gay and heterosexual."

-Editorial Review - Kirkus Reviews

"JOHN BOSWELL'S Same-Sex Unions in Pre-modern Europe, .. is both a virtuoso display of learned ingenuity and the same old mixture much as before. Readers familiar with Mr. Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (1980) will find here, if anything, an even more dazzling tableau of linguistic versatility, apparently exhaustive investigation, flashing insight, and relentless inventiveness. ......

Yet as in the earlier book, Mr. Boswell's extraordinary skills and industry are deployed with such tendentiousness, exaggeration, special pleading, and occasional banality that the work deserves, at very best, the distinctive verdict of the Scottish courts: not proven."

- David Wright in National Review, 1994

BOSWELL: Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality

Boswell, John

Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality

Gay People in Western Europe from the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century
(University of Chicago Press, 1980)

Christian, History, Theology, Scripture, Lesbian and Gay

Strongly recommended

Absolutely the most important book in any LGBT faith library, this can be thought of as the text that started it all: gay church history, queer theology, scriptural analysis of LGBT sexuality: all trace either their beginning or fundamental early shaping to this book. Highly academic and bristling with footnotes, Greek & Latin quotations, and copious appendices, it is intimidating to a non-academic, but well worth the effort. Even if you do not think of yourself as a scholarly type, read it (then re-read it later.)

BRAY: The Friend

Bray, Alan

The Friend

1994

380 pages

Catholic, History, Same-sex Unions, Lesbian & Gay.

Recommended, but academic in tone: not always easy reading.

From Google Books:

"In the chapel of Christ's College, Cambridge, some twenty years ago, historian Alan Bray made an astonishing discovery: a tomb shared by two men, John Finch and Thomas Baines. The monument featured eloquent imagery dedicated to their friendship: portraits of the two friends linked by a knotted cloth. And Bray would soon learn that Finch commonly described his friendship with Baines as a connubium or marriage.

There was a time, as made clear by this monument, when the English church not only revered such relations between men, but also blessed them. Taking this remarkable idea as its cue, The Friend explores the long and storied relationship between friendship and the traditional family of the church in England. This magisterial work extends from the year 1000, when Europe acquired a shape that became its enduring form, and pursues its account up to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. ......

Finely nuanced and elegantly conceived, The Friend is a book rich in suggestive propositions as well as eye-opening details. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of England and the importance of friendship in everyday life. "

— History Today’s "Book of the Year, 2004"

“Bray’s loving coupledom is something with a proper historical backbone, with substance and form, something you can trace over time, visible and archeologicable. . . . Bray made a great contribution in helping to bring this long history to light.”

James Davidson, London Review of Books

Contents:

Editor’s note

Introduction

1. Wedded Brother
2. Friend to Sir Philip Sidney
3. Families and Friends
4. The Body of the Friend
5. Friends and Enemies
6. Friendship and Modernity
7. Coda: the Lickey Hills, August 1890

Afterword: Historians and Friendship

BOISVERT: Sanctity and Male Desire

Boisvert, Donald

Sanctity and Male Desire

A Gay Reading of Saints

Reviewing this book, Toby Johnson notes that atlhough it might appar to of interest only to Catholics, in fact it should be recommended also to others.

"The stories of the saints are teaching mechanisms by which particular virtues, talents, life-situations, and manifestations of zeal are personalized. The various traits and powers of God as healer, miracle-worker, and wish-granter are personified in the stories of flesh and blood human beings. Especially for children learning Christian doctrine, the saints are symbols and demonstrations of theological propositions and religious concepts much easier to understand and identify with than the abstractions they represent. They are role models of the good Christian life."

Full review bu Toby Johnson at White Crane

From Google Books:

"Human desire is a path to spiritual wholeness," says author Donald Boisvert, in this unusual look at how saints--and one's devotion to them--can be sites for the confirmation and celebration of homoerotic desire. The author comes to the topic as a gay scholar of religion and draws upon his own experience of saints including his years in seminary beginning at age 13. Saints can inspire desire and, through eclectic readings of their lives and imagery, the author suggests meanings and strategies attached to the emergence of same-sex attraction. The book contains 12 chapters that focus on saints, including: Michael the Archangel; Sebastian and Tarcisius; John the Baptist; Joseph; Paul and Augustine; the Ugandan and North American martyrs; Francis of Assisi; Dominic Savio and other boy saints; Damien and the missionary saints; Peter Julian Eymard and the Eucharist; and gay saints.

CARROL, James: Constantine's Sword

The Church and the Jews: A History

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2002 (Reprint)

768 pages

Church History, Catholic - Jewish relations, Anti-Semitism

In this "rare book that combines searing passion . . . with a subject that has affected all of our lives" (Chicago Tribune), the novelist and cultural critic James Carroll maps the two-thousand-year course of the Church's battle against Judaism and faces the crisis of faith it has sparked in his own life as a Catholic. "Fascinating, brave and sometimes infuriating" (Time), this dark history is more than a chronicle of religion. It is the central tragedy of Western civilization, its fault lines reaching deep into our culture. Drawing on his well-known talents as a storyteller and memoirist, Carroll has created "a deeply felt work, a book that measures the 'sweep of history' against [his] experience as a man of the church" (San Francisco Chronicle). A courageous and affecting reckoning with difficult truths that will touch every reader, "CONSTANTINE'S SWORD is a history written to change the way people live" (Talk).

DUFFY, Eamonn: Saints and Sinners.

A History of the Popes Yale University Press, 2006 (3 ed) 474 pages Church History, Papacy. This engrossing book encompasses the extraordinary history of the papacy, from its beginnings nearly two thousand years ago to the present day. In this new edition, the final chapter has been expanded to cover the last years of John Paul II and the election of Benedict XVI. nbsp; Praise for the earlier editions: nbsp; “[A] minor masterpiece which is everything good, popular history ought to be. . . . The most comprehensive single-volume history of the popes in print.”—John Adamson,Sunday Telegraph nbsp; “Duffy enlivens the long march through church history with anecdotes that bring the different pontiffs to life. . . .nbsp;Saints and Sinnersis a remarkable achievement.”—Piers Paul Read,The Times(London) nbsp; “Will fascinate anyone wishing to better understand the history of the Catholic Church and the forces that have shaped the role of the papacy.”—Gloria J. Tysl,Christian Centurynbsp; nbsp; "The best One Volume History of the Papacy ever written", T.F. X. Noble.

FABER: The Oxford Apostles

Faber, Geoffrey

The Oxford Apostles

Faber & Faber, 1933

Published a long time ago, but still of interest to those with an antiquarian bent, as it is said to be

"The first book to take seriously the hom oeroticism of the Catholic movement in the 19th century - pp. 32-35 presents Newman as a sublimated homosexual." (LGBT Catholic Handbook, Calendar of Lesbian Gay and Transgendered Saints.")

JENNINGS: Plato or Paul?

The Origins of Western Homophobia

KUNG Hans: The Catholic Church

A Short History

The renowned theologian and historian presents a landmark history of the Roman Catholic Church, from its origins to the present day, that discusses the role of the papacy, the schisms that split the church, and the role of the Catholic Church in the twenty-first century as it confronts issues of women's rights, scientific development, and more. Reprint. 40,000 first printing.

MACY, GARY: The Hidden History of Women's Ordination

Female Clergy in the Medieval West

"The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West offers valuable historical background for the ongoing debate about women’s ordination. Theologian and historian Gary Macy documents and explains references to the ordination of women that exist in papal and church documents in the first millennium of Christianity.

As a radical church reform that occurred during the 11th and 12th centuries took hold, it changed the concept of ordination, leaving women behind. But prior to that, sufficient evidence exists to warrant the claim that women were considered to be ordained ministers in the Western church.

Macy writes that women were not ordained as ordination would come to be understood from the 12th century on, “that is, as receiving a personal irrevocable power to serve at the altar.” Rather, he writes, “They were commissioned for particular roles in particular communities.” The important point to be made, however, is that so were men."

- National Catholic Reporter

MADIGAN & OSIEK: Ordained Women in the Early Church

A Documentary History

JHU Press, 2005

220 pages

Church History, Early Church, Women, Women's Ordination

"In a time when the ordination of women is an ongoing and passionate debate, the study of women's ministry in the early church is a timely and significant one. There is much evidence from documents, doctrine, and artifacts that supports the acceptance of women as presbyters and deacons in the early church. While this evidence has been published previously, it has never before appeared in one complete English-language collection. With this book, church historians Kevin Madigan and Carolyn Osiek present fully translated literary, epigraphical, and canonical references to women in early church offices. Through these documents, Madigan and Osiek seek to understand who these women were and how they related to and were received by, the church through the sixth century. They chart women's participation in church office and their eventual exclusion from its leadership roles. The editors introduce each document with a detailed headnote that contextualizes the text and discusses specific issues of interpretation and meaning. They also provide bibliographical notes and cross-reference original texts. Madigan and Osiek assemble relevant material from both Western and Eastern Christendom."

NISSINEN: Homoeroticism in the Biblical World

Marti Nissinen

Homoeroticism in the Biblical World

Nissinen's award-winning book surveys attitudes in the ancient world toward homoeroticism, that is, erotic same-sex relations. Focusing on the Bible and its cultural environment-Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Israel-Nissinen concisely and readably introduces the relevant sources and their historical contexts in a readable way. Homoeroticism is examined as a part of gender identity, i.e., the interplay of sexual orientation, gender identification, gender roles, and sexual practice. In the patriarchal cultures of the biblical world, Nissinen shows, homoerotic practices were regarded as a role construction between the active and passive partners rather than as expressions of an orientation moderns call "homosexuality." Nissinen shows how this applies to the limited acceptance of homoerotic relationships in Greek and Roman culture, as well as to Israel's and the early church's condemnation of any same-sex erotic activity. For readers interested in the ancient world or contemporary debates, Nissinen's fascinating study shows why the ancient texts - both biblical and nonbiblical - are not appropriate for use as sources of direct analogy or argument in today's discussion.

Reviews:

From "Evangelicals Concerned"

This is the work of an Old Testament scholar at the University of Helsinki. Published by a major Lutheran press, it is comprehensive and succinct in surveying the primary texts on homoeroticism from the world in which the Bible was written. In his Preface, Nissinen says that, as he undertook his research, he “soon had to face the problem that sources that go back two or three millennia do not fit modern categories. Whether the texts I studied were biblical or Jewish, Assyrian, Greek, or Roman, the term ‘homosexuality’ was absent from them and the concept alien.” This early and sustained finding is precisely what those who use the Bible to wage a “culture war” against gay men and lesbians today do not take seriously – if they even understand it at all. (Ironically, lesbigayt apologists who take their own homosexuality back to the Bible make the same mistake.) He argues that any attempt to mechanically apply a few Bible verses on same-sex behavior to the phenomena of contemporary homosexual orientation and peer-relations fails in its hermeneutics. He is convinced – and convincing – that today’s discourse on homosexuality must not confuse modern phenomena with the various forms and perceptions of homoeroticism in the ancient Mediterranean world. Chapter by chapter, Nissinen illustrates the contemporary observation that sexual categories and interpreted sexual experiences are socially constructed and are not the same from culture to culture and from age to age.

.......

Nissinen explains that in Romans 1 and 2, “What matters is the theology of justification by faith, not homoeroticsm as such.  Paul’s rhetorical strategy … seems to be to stimulate his readers’ moral indignation by listing sins traditionally associated with Gentiles, in conventional Jewish wordings – but this is a rhetorical trap: Paul turns the force of his criticism against” self-righteous Jews.  According to Nissinen and other scholars, the meaning of Paul’s terms in I Corinthians 6:9, often automatically applied today to homosexuals, “remains obscure.”  He says: “The modern concept of ‘homosexuality’ should by no means be read into Paul’s text.”   Indeed, he concludes: “No single passage in the Bible actually offers a specifically formulated statement about same-sex eroticism.”

   Thus, with no correspondence between the ancient texts and phenomena and our own responsibilities around contemporary homosexual orientation and behavior, Nissinen calls  his readers to “love [as] the central hermeneutical principle when applying biblical commands, advice, and ideals to the lives of people today.”