Want To Get Angry? Really Angry?

I enjoy listening to the interviews on WILL Focus 580. This afternoon I noticed an archived interview from yesterday (9/20) with the Chaplain of Planned Parenthood. So I took a deep breath, tried to relax and maintain a calm, open demeanor. It didn't work. So I typed out the transcript of the first 20 minutes including some extra gems so that you can read it and come to your own conclusions. As for me, I had to resort to nervously eating Cheez-Its during the last 10 minutes, just to get me through. Still angry!

Jack Brighton for WILL: During this hour of the show, we are pleased to have with us the Rev. Ignacio Castuera, he is the National Chaplain for Planned Parenthood of America, he is visiting Central Illinois to give several talks in front of several groups, and the general topic that we will be discussing during this hour of the show is religion's role in human sexuality, and we'll see where that leads during the conversation and I'm sure we'll talk about his role with Planned Parenthood etc. [...]
Well, thanks so much for being here.

Ignacio Castuera: It's good to be here. I'm glad to see a copy of the book that I helped put together several years ago.

WILL: And I should have mentioned that. The book is entitled "Dreams on Fire: Embers of Hope From the Pulpits of Los Angeles after the Riots" and I also failed to mention your role as a pastor in that area. At the time, at St. John's United Methodist Church in the Wads [?] area of Los Angeles and currently in the Trinity United Methodist Church in Pomona, California.

C: That's right. Well, it's really great to be here and it helps correct misconceptions about religion and specifically Planned Parenthood family planning and measures like that. We have a very vocal minority that is trying to give religion a really bad name as far as I'm concerned, as an oppressive force in relationship to sexuality and to family planning. Protestantism in particular has been very supportive of family planning and Protestant leaders as well as Jewish rabbis were very helpful to Margaret Sanger as she started a movement that would strengthen the possibilities for women to be empowered. She understood very well that women with a lot of children just have very few other opportunities to do something in society and so if they were going to fulfill themselves, they had to go beyond just being mothers. Not that being a mother is a negative thing or a trivial matter, it is absolutely essential of course, but children do grow up and then what do these former mothers or still mothers but not mothering anymore, what do they do? And she understood that. And that's why she tried to help women by educating them and also by letting them know that there were means through which they could space the birth of the children as well as limit the number of children they would have. And so she reached out to Jewish and Protestant pastors so that we could help to balance the power, because she was primarily at that time against Roman Catholics who do not believe - or some of whom, many of whom at the official level do not believe in family planning. Although at the practical level we know the majority of Catholics do use some method of birth control so the churches themselves, and even those churches that appear to have some restrictive role, are not successful in reaching their own members and convincing them not to use birth control. So I am here primarily and I go around the country trying to help people understand that there are many nuances that they need to make themselves aware of in relation of how religion and sexuality in general, how religion and family planning relate to each other and how people of faith and Planned Parenthood have been partners for a long, long time, and not the enemies that they appear at this time.

WILL: We talk about religion and human sexuality and family planning and reproduction. Obviously there are a lot of different religions with a lot of different viewpoints.

C: Exactly, exactly. And that is why I like to talk about spirituality or religion rather than specifically Christianity or Judaism. I'm glad you pointed out that religions have various points of views, one that informs me at least in terms of a more enlightened understanding of sexuality is Hinduism for instance, where one of the religious practices very much relates to sexuality and that's condaleeneoga [sp?]? It's not something that is outside of the sphere of religion in Hinduism; it is part and parcel of what it means to be a practicing Hindu. And also I think they have a much healthier view towards sexuality and they talk about their chakras and the base chakra is the one that is located in that part of the body where our sexual organs are located also. And that is the base chakra. And then from there they look at the rest of the body. But they do not ignore the sexual organs and they do not simply call them reproductive organs, they are also sexual organs which then helps us see that it is not just for reproduction here. And then you move to other religions which are unfortunately, because of some historical reason, began repressing sexuality and what might have been valuable at a certain time because of other religious practices that included sexuality was not respectful of human beings, that included temple prostitution for instance that Christians then of course began to pronounce themselves against and then eventually it appears as THE teaching, the repression of the body and of sexuality, that's THE teaching for the centuries and it is just not the case. I think we need to look at all the body of literature of the Christian and Jewish faith to discover the fact that there are all kinds of interesting and powerful (from my perspective) texts that deal with human sexuality.

WILL: Yeah, I think some of the biblical scholars have gone back and others scripturists as well have gone back to original sources, [they] would argue that other interpretation would be made. A lot of the things that seemed to be strict, women in particular and their role in society.

C: Absolutely. Yeah I believe, firmly, that any religion that does not strengthen the role of women, that does not support equality for women is a religion that needs to be opposed. And fortunately the majority of the major religions of the world support women. A colleague of mine, a very good friend, a Jesuit who teaches at Marquette University (he's no longer a priest but he's a Jesuit forever in many ways) Dan McGuire, wrote a wonderful book called "Sacred Choices" and he points out that in 10 of the world's primary religions there are these wonderful statements about supporting a woman's right to choose. And that's what we really need to emphasize, that extreme groups may select just a little portion and then elevate that to ultimacy, and say "women therefore have to be restrained and constrained and controlled" while in fact, if we start out with the idea that we are created in God's image, then not only males are created in God's image but women are created in God's image and they need to have the same capacity for fulfillment and possibility for fulfillment that men have.

WILL: It seems that we are, at least in the Christian tradition... I'm thinking of the reaction to the DaVinci Code for example. So many people feel so threatened by the idea in the DaVinci Code - which I thought was an O.K. novel, I mean it was kind of entertaining. My own reaction as one person, I didn't think it was earth-shaking - it was a novel, folks. It's fiction. But the reaction was amazing because churches discussed it and we had a lot of people arguing about it, you know, this almost blasphemous idea. And maybe I shouldn't say what the idea is in case you haven't read the book yet, but you get what I'm saying.

C: [laughs] Well I think we ought to mention that, because I think it's absolutely essential, to suggest that Jesus engaged in sexual activity. That's really the bottom line for the reason for the opposition, to say "oh, what blasphemy." What does it really say if you think it's blasphemous to imagine that Jesus might have had sexual relationships with a woman? There have been other more blasphemous suggestions in other parts of the world that didn't make it into a book but made it into a film, and that is the suggestion that Jesus is a sexual being but his sexuality was homosexual. I mean that happened in other parts of the world, right? I can see why people might get a little bent out of shape about that, but what does it say to women if you think that the fact that Christ might have had sexual relationships with a woman is a blasphemy? It says, "women are horrible, they shouldn't be touched, the Son of God would not touch a woman, would not be intimate with a woman." I think that's ridiculous. And one of the things that was very interesting in reaction to the DaVinci Code was an interview that ABC did with a professor at Notre Dame of all places, a Catholic priest, and she asked "what do you think about the possibility that Jesus might have been married?" And he said "we cannot prove it and we cannot disprove it. It wouldn't surprise me and it wouldn't hurt my faith." But then he went on to say, and I think the most important thing I think he went on to say is "but how different would the history of the Church have been if he had had a sexual relationship with a woman." [laughs] I think that's really the key. By the way I really liked The Davinci Code - if people haven't read it, go out and get it. I couldn't put it down. It's a mystery and like you said, it's a novel, and I liked it! Yeah! And it doesn't mean that everything that was suggested there is true. But what has happened now as more and more people keep on digging, is that a lot of the suggestions that are made throughout the book, not specifically the suggestion that Jesus might have been married or might have had sexual relations, but other kinds of things like the history of religion, are verified by good scholarship. So that to me anything that can send people back to read the Bible and to read history, acquaint themselves with the wonderfully nuanced history of religions - that's good! So I thank good God for The Davinci Code, both the book and the movie. [...]

WILL: Let me ask you a question that is one of these broad (maybe dumb-guy) questions, where did we get this idea, especially in the Christian tradition (I come from the Christian tradition, so I'm more familiar with that) and other traditions may see this differently, but there does seem to be the idea within the Christian tradition that sex is not something we talk about. It's a very private thing even though it has very public implications.

C: Very good question. I believe that what happened is what I began hinting at the beginning, that Christianity originated in the beginning of religious cults that included temple prostitution and also encouraged other kinds of sexual activities. And so, the first thing we must remember about the origins of Christianity is that the early Christians did not expect the world to last very long. That's almost axiomatic when you look at the work of the Apostle Paul, he expected Jesus to return during his own lifetime. So he really didn't worry too much about teaching anything about sexual purity or impurity forever, but only for his own particular time. And chances are he was conflicted about his own sexuality and he thought that we shouldn't even worry about sexuality, let's just prepare ourselves for the return of the Lord. Interestingly enough, nineteen centuries later the Shakers did the same thing. Now the Shakers at least were smart enough or consistent enough to say "since the Lord is coming we're not going to have sex" and they disappeared. [laughs] Which, you know, they solved every problem right there, right? But what happened is indeed the Lord did not return and in fact a lot of the literature in the New Testament begins to correct that impression that the Lord is going to return very soon and to make sure people understand that Paul wasn't that wrong, that God has a different sense of time than humans have and all of these other kinds of things. And then what began appearing as a temporary kind of thing begins to be seen as an eternal kind of thing. And then you have Augustine, who... talk about someone who was conflicted about his own sexuality. First he was an absolutely depraved guy, I mean anything that moves kind of a guy almost. His poor mother Monica praying for him to be converted and all that; he was with the Manicheans for a long time and then comes into Christianity. And then he has spent all of his libido, and then he wants to impose on everybody else the rules that he's imposing on himself... And I think the ball keeps on rolling and it snowballs and gets bigger and bigger and then of course we get into the institutionalization of the Church which then has clergy and eventually celibate clergy. The requirement for celibacy was not there from the very beginning, it's something that creeps in later on in history. And so all of that begins to say "sex is dirty." Essentially the message of Christianity has been, you can distill it as a friend of mine says, "sex is dirty, save it for someone you love." [laughs] Wow! That's what we're really saying. But you look at the scriptures and you look at the beginning of our documents and we have this wonderful Song of Solomon, for instance. Praising the human body and praising the human sexuality. So wherever it started... and of course then it was connected with original sin and other kinds of things which, it isn't. I mean when you really look at the text carefully, it is just not there.

[Other snippets with jaw-dropping qualities]

[...] I think that we should have sex education in the churches, and I invite the religious right to also speak about sexuality in their own pulpits and in their own churches, teach their own kids their values and then Planned Parenthood will take care of their strays. Because I know most people stray from the teachings of their own religion.

[...] The United States and Europe, when a child is born in any of those countries, that child is going to impact the environment far more than 10 children that are born in the 3rd world. That's not to say the 3rd world should be having 10 children.

[...] [Abortion] doesn't destroy a person. Certainly if it happens within the first 3 months. If you read a book like Dombrowski's [sp?] who's a Roman Catholic, teaches at a Jesuit university, "A Brief Liberal Catholic Defense of Abortion" you will see that within Catholic teachings there are strong differentiations between a fetus in the early stages and a fetus at the time of what is called "awakening." I would have a difficult time, obviously, if I were a woman myself, thank God I don't have to face that, so that why I leave the agency in the hands of moral human beings.

[...] The religious right's real target is contraception. It's not just abortion. And then one really unmasks the real issue. The real issue is that the religious right is afraid of strong women. And women who can control their own sexuality and their own reproductivity are strong women, and they are deadly afraid of them.