Understanding Cardinal Fernandez: A Reading List
Plus some thoughts on the current controversy
Last week, I published a very irreverent piece about Fiducia Supplicans titled “Notes From a Divorce”. I’m happy with how it turned out, but it was, without question, the most polarizing piece I've ever run on G.O.T.H.S.. I can’t really be surprised by that, because Fiducia Supplicans has led to polarized responses everywhere, and whatever responses I got to my piece are nothing compared to the backlash facing Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, who issued Fiducia Supplicans in the first place.
For many conservative Catholics, Fernandez has become the face of this imagined sexually libertine, modernist church that is intent on destroying tradition in the name of gayness, or whatever. Many of the attacks to Fernandez's credibility and authority, however, are not being made in good faith. One of the recent and more bizarre talking points lobbed against Fernandez concerns a now out-of-print book he wrote in 1998, titled Mystical Passion: Spirituality and Sensuality. The book was recently unearthed, and reporting at Crux and NCR and RNS details the graphic and sometimes jarring descriptions of orgasms that Fernandez uses in his discussion of Catholic mysticism. Combined with an earlier controversy over a different Fernandez book titled Heal Me with Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing, critics of Francis, Fernandez, the DDF, and their vision for a more pastoral, synodal church have painted all of the above as deviant and sex-obsessed, and have pointed to these weird books as proof.
There is a version of me that would have had a field day with these books. The head of the Catholic doctrine office once wrote a book for young adult Catholics literally titled “Heal Me With Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing”? I would have titled my essay with some dumb gross pun and made a crack about how that book sounds like an old B-side from (you guessed it) My Chemical Romance, and then lost my mind that this was somehow not his horniest book. I would have never stopped laughing at this man, who has clearly never had sex, doing detailed interviews and research for a different book where chapter 8 is really titled “The Road to Orgasm”. I would have made a crack about how this real passage from Mystical Passion, in which Fernandez directly addresses Jesus Christ, sounds like the original lyrics of “Nightman”:
“Now, surrounded by your arms, caressed by your skin, letting me bathe in your breath, it seems to me that you are doing something new, Jesus. You are not leaving my side, your arms, your skin, your heat, your shoulder that supports me are still there. But now you are entering me, you are taking over my intimacy, the deepest center of my heart. Without forcing me, without forcing me, with infinite delicacy.”
Look, you know what all of the jokes would be here. But this is not a time for joking. The attacks against Fiducia Supplicans, against Fernandez, and against the Magisterium, are real, are often in bad faith, and require the utmost seriousness to address. I don't want to minimize this through my own irreverence: to just make a bunch of sophomoric jokes is very tempting, but it's not what this situation calls for. This is not the time for me to rush in with a bunch of stupid puns. As someone who cares about the future of this church, I need to step back, to read Cardinal Fernandez's work from over the years, and to understand his vision for a more compassionate church, so I can defend him against the critics who assume he is some sex-obsessed weirdo. To that end, I have compiled a reading list of over two dozen articles and books from across Cardinal Fernandez's career, that I plan to tackle throughout 2024. I invite you all to join me in reading this diverse selection of Fernandez’s most serious and meaningful theological analysis, as we continue to passionately defend the holy Magisterium with the reverence that it demands of us.
It is Right and Bust: Continued Reflections on Orgasms and Catholic Spirituality
May We Find Richness in the Harvest of Bust-ice: Even More Reflections on Orgasms and Catholic Spirituality
Whatever is True, Whatever is Honorable, Whatever is Bust: Reflections on Saint Paul's Letter to the Fill-Up-ians
Litany of the Taints: Human Anatomy and the Universal Call to Holiness
Taintum Ergo Sacramentum: Continued Reflections on Human Anatomy and the Universal Call to Holiness
Tantum Ergo Sack-ramentum: Another Volume of Reflections on Human Anatomy and the Universal Call to Holiness
Tantum Ergo Sacramentum Veneremur Cernui Et Antiquum Dick-umentum: Final Reflections on Human Anatomy and the Universal Call to Holiness
To You O Lord I Lift Up My Hole: Genitalia in the Psalms of Praise
Lord I Lift Your Name On Hymen: The Glory Of Mary's Perpetual Virginity
Notes on the Book of Ecclesi-Ass-Titties
The Angels of Revelation: What Else Did They Blow Besides the Seven Trumpets?
Exodus More Like Sexodus
The Burning Bush: Further Reflections on Sexodus
Spasyeniye Hole-delal Yesi: Vaginal Imagery in the Sacred Music of Pavel Chesnokov
Frottagi Tutti: Non-Penetrative Sex in Retellings of the Good Samaritan
Octobri Menses: Period Sex in the Writings of Pope Leo XIII
Suck-It Dudum: A Review of Fifteenth-Century Magisterial Documents and their Implications for Communication in Sadomasochistic Relationships
Vultum Gay Queer-ay-re: Self-Stimulation in the Contemplative Life
Never Conquered, Rarely Came: Priestly Celibacy During the Reign of Diocletian
Make of Our Hands a Throne for that Dick: Mutual Masturbation in the Early Church as Described in the Didache
Dare We Grope: Passion References in the Later Works of von Balthasar
Balaam, the Book of Numbers, and the Clapping Ass
Boobie Caritas: Plainsong and the Female Form
Ooh Baby It's Mouth Time: On the Proper Reception of the Eucharist
Ite Pissa Est: Watersports in Church Life Before the Great Schism
Cumming is So Awesome: A Spiritual Autobiography