{"id":10110,"date":"2010-10-08T16:02:50","date_gmt":"2010-10-08T20:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=10110"},"modified":"2010-10-08T16:02:50","modified_gmt":"2010-10-08T20:02:50","slug":"diocese-of-montreal-st-matthias-gains-new-staff-member-author-of-sanctity-and-male-desire-a-gay-reading-of-saints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/diocese-of-montreal-st-matthias-gains-new-staff-member-author-of-sanctity-and-male-desire-a-gay-reading-of-saints\/","title":{"rendered":"Diocese of Montreal gains new staff member: author of \u201cSanctity and Male Desire: A Gay Reading of Saints\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/em>From here<\/a> (page 12):<\/p>\n

A scholar who once served as dean of students at Concordia University is joined the staff of St. Matthias\u2019 Church in Westmount, effective September 19. Don Boisvert is in his final year of study at the Montreal Diocesan Theological College and is completing his \u201cin-ministry\u201d requirement for graduation. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Ottawa and two books and several scholarly articles to his credit.<\/p>\n

Born in the United States of French-Canadian parents, he studied for several years at a Roman Catholic seminary and is still on the faculty at Concordia. He specializes in the history of Christianity, religion and sexuality and religion in Canada. He was received into the Anglican Church of Canada last year and is married to Gaston Lamontagne, his partner for 34 years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cSanctity and Male Desire: A Gay Reading of Saints\u201d<\/em> is Boisvert\u2019s attempt to see the traditional saints through a haze of homoeroticism<\/a>:<\/p>\n

he constructs an image of a perfectly shaped, highly eroticized male body ascribed to each of the saints. This imagined saintly body is repeatedly described as \u201cbeautiful,\u201d \u201cerotic,\u201d \u201ctitillating,\u201d \u201chandsome,\u201d \u201cbare-chested,\u201d \u201cnaked\u201d or \u201csemi-naked,\u201d \u201cmuscular,\u201d \u201cglorious,\u201d \u201cragged\u201d and endowed with \u201cperfection,\u201d \u201cvirile masculinity,\u201d \u201cmasculine strength,\u201d etc. More often than not, the saints of old appear in a body conforming to the modern norm for gay beauty.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And we mustn\u2019t leave out his homoerotic fantasies of Jesus:<\/p>\n

Though Boisvert imagines Jesus to be a \u201chandsome man,\u201d \u201ccaring and attentive, sensitive yet principled\u201d and working \u201cbare-chested in the burning sun\u201d (p. 180), he is attracted also to the \u201cbroken body\u201d of Christ. The crucified Jesus (a \u201chandsomely glorious body of Jesus [hanging] from the cross\u201d (p. 171)) \u201celicits strong feelings of comfort and passive submission, the male docile and compliant body.\u201d Yet, this submissiveness is immediately complemented by the symbol of the \u201clion\u201d with its \u201cbrute aggressive force, the male as dominant energy and the definite top\u201d (p. 170). Not surprisingly, the \u201cfully male, genitally endowed\u201d sculpture of Michelangelo\u2019s Risen Christ<\/em>, with its \u201cmuscular arms, thighs and buttocks\u201d (p. 177), commands Boisvert\u2019s admiration.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just what the Anglican Church of Canada needs on staff: a homosexual, \u201cmarried\u201d to a man, who is so immersed in his twisted little world of gay sex that, when he writes a book about Jesus and the saints, he cannot see beyond the end of his genitals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From here (page 12): A scholar who once served as dean of students at Concordia University is joined the staff of St. Matthias\u2019 Church in Westmount, effective September 19. Don Boisvert is in his final year of study at the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[2109,689,2167],"class_list":["post-10110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diocese-of-montreal","tag-diocese-of-montreal","tag-donald-boisvert","tag-homosexuality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}