Detailed Table of Contents
- Editorial
- Abstract: The attitude of the Roman Catholic Church towards sexuality continues to be a controversial subject followed with great interest by the public, particularly since several recent cases of child abuse and sexual transgressions within religious communities have highlighted and sensationalised the apparent double standards regarding propaganda and practice. The Roman Catholic theologian David Berger, former R.E. teacher as well as former editor (2003-2010) of the rather conservative and prestigious journal Theologisches. Katholische Monatszeitschrift has added fuel to the fire with a book called Der heilige Schein: Als schwuler Theologe in der katholischen Kirche. Published at the end of last year (2010) it had three reprints within six weeks after its first release and since has received much media attention. Its repercussions only have begun to become palpable.
- Author's Bio: Dirk Schulz is a postdoctoral researcher at the English Department of the University of Cologne. He has a Master’s degree in English/American Studies, Philosophy, and German Studies (2000) and completed his Ph.D. in 2008. His book Setting the Record Queer. Rethinking Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray" and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway was published 2011. He teaches courses in anglophone literature and culture as well as critical theory. More recent publications deal with popular culture, semiotics and gender theory.
- David Berger and Dirk Schulz in Conversation: Where Two Worlds Coincide. On Repression, Transgression, and the Roman Catholic Church
- Abstract: Der heilige Schein is not so much a continuation of an ongoing and - some may say – muted debate, in which a conservative Catholicism is set off against an enlightened way of thinking. Berger’s book in fact undermines reiterated concepts of power and discrimination as well as clear-cut positionings of perpetrator and victim. On the one hand homosexuality generally figures as the repressed and marginalised desire in oppressive, heteronormative cultural systems. But the apparent fear of its disruptive potential and its assumed opposition to “the norm” on the other hand has endowed it with a highly mythologised status. Within the realms of the Roman Catholic Church, the power mechanisms in relation to same sex desire are even more complex. Because while as an institution the Church strongly promotes the repression of homosexuality since it “hates the sin and not the sinner”, it is built upon the support of gay men and even provides a welcome setting for its pursuit. It is the transgression and blurring of boundaries in terms of communities and obligations, its foregrounding of the ambiguous interplay of repression and oppression which renders the text so uncanny.
- Author's Bio: David Berger is a Roman Catholic theologian and philosopher as well as teacher of German and formerly R. E. He has published widely, particularly on Thomism. His bestselling publication Der Heilige Schein. Als Schwuler Theologe in der katholischen Kirche has turned him into a highly controversial media figure and led to the revocation of his mission canonica.