Where Two Worlds Coincide. David Berger 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.