The Silence of Sodom Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr
- Publish date: 05/01/2000
The Silence of Sodom is devoted, first, to teasing out the Church's complex bureaucratic language about sexual morality. Rather than trying to point out that official Catholic documents are simply wrong in their discussions and directives regarding homosexuality, Jordan examines the rhetorical devices used by the Church throughout its history to actively produce silence around the topic of male homoeroticism. Arguing that we cannot find the Church's knowledge of homosexuality in its documents, Jordan looks to the unspoken but widely known features of clerical culture to illuminate the striking analogies between clerical institutions and contemporary gay culture, particularly in the mechanisms of discipline, the training of seminarians, and the ambiguities of liturgical celebration.
The Catholic Church's long experiment with masculine desire cannot be discovered through sensationalist trials of priest-pedophiles or surveys of gay clergy. The Silence of Sodom looks deeply into the intertwining, in words and deeds, of Catholicism with homoeroticism; it is a profound reflection on both "being gay" and "being Catholic".