Farm Street & The Gays

Today’s Guardian, under the headline  ‘Church that turned away Wilde opens door to gay flock” may exaggerate a little  by suggesting that something akin to a theological revolution is under way at the Jesuit London HQ, Farm Street Church.

We are told that the church that 116 years ago refused the disgraced Oscar Wilde –post-trial on charges of sodomy  and indecent assault-a request for a six-month retreat, will on an evening two Sundays from now  welcome members of London’s Catholic gay community who will no longer be allowed to gather at Our Lady of Assumption in Soho.

The article omits to mention another Jesuit connection to the Wilde story. The fact that some time after Oscar’s trial, his beloved younger son Vivvyan Holland (Oscar’s wife Constance changed the family name after taking the children aboard) was given a place at my old Jesuit school Stonyhurst College.

One of the organisers of the Soho masses, Mark Dowd, a fellow OS (Old Stonyhurst boy) is quoted in the Guardian as being sympathetic towards Vincent Nichols, the archbishop of Westminster who in January announced, allegedly under pressure from the Vatican,  that the Soho masses for the gay flock were to be stopped, but who has not raised objections to the Farm Street move.  “Poor old archbishops have always got to play these games where they’ve got a certain number of chess pieces to move round, “Dowd is quoting as saying.

Personally I can’t see what all the fuss is about. Some years back I attended a memorable requiem mass at Farm Street for another OS, Edward Duke which was packed with gays and non-gays. Edward was a born extrovert and a rebel who found the discipline of school difficult to take and ended up breaking every rule in the book in order to get himself expelled. He then embarked on a relatively successful if somewhat decadent acting career which was tragically cut short when he died of AIDS.

The mass to bid farewell to him was concelebrated by a Franciscan, who had been a contemporary of Edward’s and mine at school, and by some Jesuit fathers who had tried to teach him. One of the Jesuits  collared me after the service and whispered in my ear that Edward had found Faith in God in his final hours. “You know, Jimmy, Edward came round in the end.”

By the above I am not suggesting that the Jesuits are about to turn Farm Street into a gay church nor take to the pulpit to challenge the Church’s teaching on same-sex marriage. It remains to be seen at what point Catholic  gays,  simply and without fuss, join representatives  of the Catholic great and good  and lesser mortals at the main 11 o’clock mass on Sundays without finding the need to form a separate group gathering, or have one organised for them. But for now the Jesuits of Farm Street’s  gesture towards the Soho Diaspora is loving and inclusive and human and deserves recognition as such.