Conflicted love within the Catholic community

Can you truly love someone who hates you? To understand that we have to first conceive of the many ways in which love is expressed and experienced. For some, it is an intrinsic emotion that compels us forward for better, for worse, in sickness and in health. For others, it is an active choice to commit yourself day after day till death do you part. Some people love people, other people love things.

All in all, to love something, truly love something: it must be good and it must be relentless. But how can that something love you back? For most people, love is like a mirror: you expect reciprocation, to get what you give; and depending on what you give, this love heals. Others are stuck loving someone who gives them nothing in return; this love eats slowly. But for very few people, they are tied to loving the very thing that hates them; this love destroys.

It is not uncommon for people, especially college students, to find themselves in small cycles of self-destruction. On a day-to-day basis, you may find yourself wasting away doomscrolling, texting that blocked contact or drinking unhealthy amounts of caffeine. All of these things either damage you physically or spiritually, yet you return to them day after day because they make you feel good. None of these things involve true love, but instead some form of addiction. So what happens when we truly love something or someone that hurts us? Is that really love, or is it just addiction?

As I mentioned earlier, I believe that love must be good and relentless; so, let me elaborate. First, love must be good: you must believe that your relationship is, at its core, positive and heartfelt. No matter how many times you are hurt, if you believe your relationship to be good, then you are halfway to some semblance of love. Secondly: your actions, attitudes and emotions must be relentless. This could be commonly confused with passion, but the intensity of your love does not matter, as long as it pervades all opposition placed in its way.

If you hold these two emotions in your heart, you hold a very crude love. Now, whether or not this love is an obsession, an addiction or any plethora of other emotions is a topic for another time. But regardless, the combination of these two emotions is powerful, and most importantly, it keeps you committed. To love someone, you must again and again mutually return to each other. But what happens when you return and no one is there to welcome you?

And what if the recipient of your love, the one who does not welcome you, is not your partner or parent, but a collective culture? It is at this point that I must make an admission, I am not talking about one person, but the collective peoples of the Church. I was raised and confirmed Catholic, and I love my faith very dearly; but as a man who loves a man, it feels increasingly that the Church does not authentically love me back. That is not to say I have not found community in my faith and in my sexuality. And that is not to say I do not understand the Agape held between Divinity and me. But when I look at the Church as an institution, as a place I have always been told I am welcome, I cannot in good faith say I feel welcomed.

I love Catholicism– its people and its traditions– but does Catholicism truly love me for me? I do not have an answer. I doubt I will ever have an answer. I know what Her people will say: some will welcome me while others condemn me. It is in the Church that I will receive some love, some hate, and a whole lot of apathy.

In my experience, the Church is so much more than Her people and Her doctrine, and She holds space for all people from all walks of life; yet if Her doors find themselves closed to something as universal as love, can I truly be confident in my Answer?

Whether or not I will lose Agape is not a question in my mind. As the great author, bell hooks, puts it in her book “All About Love,” “A commitment to spiritual life necessarily means we embrace the eternal principle that love is all, everything, our true destiny. Despite overwhelming pressure to conform to the culture of lovelessness, we still seek to know love. That seeking is itself a manifestation of divine spirit.”

Love is divine, that is indisputable, but where we find it lies the conflict. If love truly is the Divine Spirit, should we not welcome love in all of its shapes and forms? I will continue to pursue love. I love love. But whether or not I pursue that Divine Spirit in the Catholic Church remains a constant debate in my mind.