Desecration

On February 15, a large crowd gathered for the funeral of Cecilia Gentili, a former male prostitute who had refashioned himself as a woman and transgender activist. The ceremony took place in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. More spectacle than funeral, it was not a somber event. One eulogy pronounced the deceased “Saint Cecilia, the mother of all whores,” evoking cheers and rapturous applause. The atmosphere was that of a triumphant rally celebrating a progressive victory.

Gentili was known to declare: “I don’t believe in God, but God wanted me to be always, always, the star of the show.” No doubt he would have approved of the raucous event, which used the sacred setting of St. Patrick’s to put a stick in the eye of any who object to the LGBTQ agenda of limitless liberation.

One wonders why the clerical authorities in New York accommodated what amounted to a deliberate mockery of the Church’s teaching. Beforehand, the ever-predictable Fr. James Martin pronounced the ceremony “wonderful.” Out of town and unable to attend, he told a reporter, “To celebrate the funeral Mass of a transgender woman at St. Patrick’s is a powerful reminder, during Lent, that L.G.B.T.Q. people are as much a part of the church as anyone else.” Ah, playing the “radical inclusion” card. One wonders what Fr. Martin’s views (which he half-retracted the next day) would have been if the funeral had been for a noted white supremacist during which the crowd celebrated with loud, shameless cheering of his views.

No doubt the Archdiocese of New York was caught off guard. The funeral’s organizer reported that Gentili’s family kept the activist’s gender-bending, role-playing identity “under wraps.” The priest conducting the funeral cut it short. After the spectacle, the Archdiocese of New York put out a press release saying that the authorities had “no idea our welcome and prayer would be degraded in such a sacrilegious and deceptive way.” I’m sure that’s true. Nonetheless, I have the impression that a funeral at St. Patrick’s is not like making a reservation at the local Olive Garden. It takes pull, which suggests that the lavender mafia in the central bureaucracy that administers the Archdiocese of New York knew exactly who Cecilia Gentili was, were complicit with the family’s subterfuge, and ensured that the funeral got scheduled.

Gentili’s family defended the event, saying that it “brought precious life and radical joy to the cathedral in historic defiance of the church’s hypocrisy and anti-trans hatred.” Against the notion that there was prevarication, they announced, “The only deception present at St. Patrick’s Cathedral is that it claims to be a welcoming place for all.” The family’s bravado clarifies nicely the intent of the entire affair. New York Times writer Liam Stack gets it exactly right: The funeral was “an exuberant piece of political theater.”

Our own Carl Trueman provides the best analysis of the cultural and spiritual meaning of the sacrilege staged in St. Patrick’s Cathedral (“Desecration at St. Patrick’s Cathedral”):

One obvious question is why an atheist man convinced that he is a woman and committed to a life of prostitution would wish to have a funeral in a church. One answer is that the struggle for the heart of a culture always takes place in two areas: time and space. As the Christian transformation of the Roman Empire was marked by the emergence of the liturgical calendar and the turning of pagan temples into churches, so we can expect the reverse to take place when a culture paganizes. The pagans will respond in kind. And so we have a month dedicated to Pride and church buildings used for the mockery of Christianity. Time and space are reimagined in ways that directly confront and annihilate that once deemed sacred. A funeral in a Catholic cathedral for an atheist culture warrior is a first-class way of doing this.

This goes to a point I have made before: Our age is not marked so much by disenchantment as by desecration. The culture’s officer class is committed not merely to marginalizing that which previous generations considered sacred. It is committed to its destruction. Disenchantment has passive connotations, a dull, impersonal, somewhat tedious but inevitable process. But desecration speaks to the exultation that active destruction of the holy involves. When Gentili is celebrated as a “great whore” in Spanish by trans rights advocate Liaam Winslet in a eulogy greeted with wild applause, then “desecration” seems the only word that captures both the blasphemy and the exhilaration of the moment.

We are foolish to downplay the spiritual exhilaration of breaking taboos and tearing down structures of authority. Do not underestimate the dark appeal of spiritual demolition. After all, angels founded hell.