{"id":1222,"date":"2007-01-06T13:16:17","date_gmt":"2007-01-06T13:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=1222"},"modified":"2008-07-21T20:34:33","modified_gmt":"2008-07-21T19:34:33","slug":"the-poet-and-the-pope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2007\/01\/06\/the-poet-and-the-pope\/","title":{"rendered":"The Poet and the Pope"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"oscar.jpg\"Irony never rests in the world of religion these days. I suspect Oscar would be pleased by this attention, he had an audience with Pius IX when he was a young man and wrote a poem, Urbs Sacra Aeterna<\/a><\/em>, to celebrate the occasion. As noted earlier, a recent Out.com article<\/a> explored rumours that the Vatican may be more friendly with Dorothy than is usually supposed.<\/p>\n

Vatican comes out of the closet and embraces Oscar<\/strong>
\nAlthough Oscar Wilde had a gay relationship, the Vatican is championing his razor-sharp moral maxims, not his lifestyle.<\/em><\/p>\n

Richard Owen
\nFriday, January 5th, 2007
\nThe Times<\/a><\/p>\n

Oscar Wilde, poet, playwright, gay icon and deathbed convert to Catholicism, has been paid a rare tribute by the Vatican. His aphorisms are quoted in a collection of maxims and witticisms for Christians that has been published by one of the Pope\u2019s closest aides.<\/p>\n

Wilde (1854-1900) had long been regarded with distaste by the Vatican \u2014 a dissolute and disgraced homosexual who was sentenced for acts of gross indecency over his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas.<\/p>\n

The book, compiled by Father Leonardo Sapienza, head of protocol at the Vatican, includes such Wildean gems as \u201cI can resist everything except temptation\u201d and \u201cThe only way to get rid of a temptation is yield to it\u201d \u2014 hardly orthodox Catholic teaching.<\/p>\n

Father Sapienza said that he had devoted the lion\u2019s share of Provocations: Aphorisms for an Anti-conformist Christianity<\/em> to Wilde because he was a \u201cwriter who lived perilously and somewhat scandalously but who has left us some razor-sharp maxims with a moral\u201d. The book also includes contributions from the Colombian philosopher Nicol\u00e1s G\u00f3mez D\u00e1vila.<\/p>\n

Father Sapienza said that Wilde had been a great writer of powerful force and dazzling intelligence who was now chiefly remembered not for his promiscuity but for plays such as The Importance of Being Earnest<\/em> and An Ideal Husband<\/em> as well as moral tales such as The Picture of Dorian Gray<\/em>, in which a vain young man pays a terrible price for selling his soul to gain eternal youth.<\/p>\n

Father Sapienza said that he wanted to \u201cstimulate a reawakening in certain Catholic circles\u201d. Christianity was intended to be a radical cure, not a humdrum remedy for the common cold: \u201cOur role is to be a thorn in the flesh, to move people\u2019s consciences and to tackle what today is the No 1 enemy of religion \u2014 indifference.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a surprise!\u201d La Repubblica<\/em>\u2019s said. \u201cA homosexual icon has been accepted by the Vatican.\u201d Orazio La Rocca, a Vatican watcher, described the book as a bombshell.<\/p>\n

Pope Benedict XVI is a stern opponent of gay marriage and has reinforced Catholic teaching that homosexuality is a disorder. On the other hand he has belied his reputation as a hardliner since his election, reserving most of his fire for apathy and relativism in an attempt to revive Christian faith in Europe.<\/p>\n

Wilde, who was married and had two children, was arrested and tried in 1895 over his relationship with Lord Douglas (known as Bosie), son of the Marquess of Queensberry, who had accused Wilde of sodomy. The writer sued Queensberry but lost and was sentenced to two years\u2019 hard labour.<\/p>\n

He displayed a long fascination with Catholicism, once remarking: \u201cI am not a Catholic \u2014 I am simply a violent Papist.\u201d He was born in Dublin to a Protestant family but fell under the spell of Catholicism at Oxford. He even made a journey for an audience with the Pope, but declared: \u201cTo go over to Rome would be to sacrifice and give up my two great Gods: Money and Ambition.\u201d The way for Wilde\u2019s rehabilitation was paved six years ago by a Jesuit theologian, Father Antonio Spadaro. On the centenary of Wilde\u2019s death, he raised eyebrows by praising the \u201cunderstanding of God\u2019s love\u201d that had followed Wilde\u2019s imprisonment in Reading.<\/p>\n

Father Spadaro said that at the end of his life Wilde had seen into the depths of his own soul and in his last works, such as De Profundis<\/em>, had made \u201can implicit journey of faith\u201d. He said that Wilde had come to see that God was capable of \u201cbreaking hearts of stone and entering into them with mercy and forgiveness\u201d.<\/p>\n

The wit and wisdom of Wilde<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither.
\n\u2022 I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage.
\n\u2022 One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead. I see an intimate connection between the life of Christ and the life of the artist. Christ’s place indeed is with the poets.
\n\u2022 I can resist everything except temptation.
\n\u2022 We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
\n\u2022 It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
\n\u2022 The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
\n\u2022 There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
\n\u2022 Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
\n\u2022 Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
\n\u2022 In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
\n\u2022 What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
\n\u2022 Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
\n\u2022 What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.<\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Gay for god<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Picture of Dorian Gray I<\/a> & II<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Irony never rests in the world of religion these days. I suspect Oscar would be pleased by this attention, he had an audience with Pius IX when he was a young man and wrote a poem, Urbs Sacra Aeterna, to celebrate the occasion. As noted earlier, a recent Out.com article explored rumours that the Vatican … Continue reading “The Poet and the Pope”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,5,31],"tags":[117,814,116],"class_list":["post-1222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-gay","category-religion","tag-dorian-gray","tag-lord-alfred-douglas","tag-oscar-wilde"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-jI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}