Sanctity and Male Desire:
A Gay Reading of Saints
By Donald L. Boisvert
The Pilgrim Press, 224 pages, pb, $22.00
Reviewed by Toby Johnson

Upon first look, Donald Boisvert’s new book Sanctity and Male Desire: A Gay Reading of Saints seems of interest primarily to Roman Catholics. The introduction is about the place of the saints in Catholic religious education, and the chapters that follow are about various saints that influenced Boisvert’s own psychological and religious development. Certainly others raised Catholic will resonate with this book (I certainly did). But the discussion in the book goes far beyond parochial Catholicism, and so the main thrust of this review must be to recommend this book to non-Catholics (and ex-Catholics who’d resist anything even vaguely related positively to the religion they left behind).

Boisvert is a professor of religion at Concordia University in Montreal. He was in the seminary as a young man with the Blessed Sacrament Fathers, then went on to earn a doctorate in religious studies as a layman. His previous book was Out on Holy Ground: Meditations on Gay Men’s Spirituality (Pilgrim Press, 2000, reviewed WC #48).

The reverence of the saints in Catholic devotion is, to non-Catholics, one of the strangest things about the religion. In many ways, it’s been one of the most regressive aspects, focusing on superstitions, contrived (and often unbelievable) histories, and bizarre manifestations of zeal (including all manner of martyrdoms—some self-brought-on—and outrageous forms of human torture). Understood in the light of comparative religion, on the other hand, the reverence of the saints demonstrates the true universality—indeed, the polytheism—of Catholicity, for many of the saints represent the importing of local deities, heroes, tribal legends and myths into Christianity as the religion spread beyond being simply a sect of Judaism. In this sense, the veneration of the saints shows Catholicism as a much broader and more inclusive religion than the Bible-based versions of Christianity that have resisted change since the text was canonized at Nicaea by the Emperor Constantine. In many ways, Catholicism is more like Hinduism than it is like Christian Protestantism. While the saints, of course, aren’t incorporated into the Bible, their stories get at least as much importance in popular Catholic devotion as the words of sacred writ.

The stories of the saints are teaching mechanisms by which particular virtues, talents, life-situations, and manifestations of zeal are personalized. The various traits and powers of God as healer, miracle-worker, and wish-granter are personified in the stories of flesh and blood human beings. Especially for children learning Christian doctrine, the saints are symbols and demonstrations of theological propositions and religious concepts much easier to understand and identify with than the abstractions they represent. They are role models of the good Christian life.

Donald Boisvert describes with reverence, but also with poignancy and appropriate humor, how as a boy he created an altar and shrine to his favorites, lighting candles before their statues as part of childhood play. The themes in these saints’ lives went on then to shape his religious and personal maturation—just as they were supposed to.

The book devotes chapters to some of these favorites: Michael the Archangel, Sebastian and Tarcisius, John the Baptist, Joseph, Paul and Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Dominic Savio, and more. Except for Michael the Archangel (the Christianization of Mars, the Roman god of war), Boisvert’s saints were actual people. In each presentation, he explains not only the history or mythos of the characters, but also the spiritual and religious meaning and the life model presented. But then he goes way beyond what orthodox Catholicism would understand—and this is the exciting richness of this book—and gives what he calls the “gay reading” of the stories.

Central to all manifestations of so-called Gay spirituality is honesty and frankness about the sexual and erotic dimensions of life. And that’s exactly what Boisvert gives us with his “gay readings”: a personal–and sometimes surprisingly “frank” analysis of this secret layer of the stories of his favorite saints.

In the way that the saints represent a history of Christianity beyond the foundations in the time of Jesus, Boisvert’s analyses present the sexual layers of the religion that are generally never acknowledged. The prime example is his discussion of the various ways Jesus—and Jesus’s body—has been depicted in art. God Incarnate is shown as a beautiful man with, sometimes, a “hot body,” even (or especially) when naked under torture. The “honesty and frankness” are remarkable. This discussion of Christianity gives Gay men a reason to reconsider the richness of the religion that seems so often inimical to our concerns.

But the most important argument of the book is Boisvert’s recognition that the drive to “sanctity” is an essential part of “male desire” (hence their linking in the subtitle) and of the social activism of the gay political and cultural movement. Over and over again, Gay politics is about “saving the world,” not just getting one’s own—and one’s family’s—needs met by government. Gay lives are so frequently focused on beauty, creativity, and service. Boisvert beautifully captures the Gay compulsion to be the best little boy, the best social contributor, the most successful lover, and especially the most honest person one can be. It is the drive for sanctity and integrity that impels us to come out and be openly and idealistically Gay.

I offer this paragraph to tease you into reading this book. (What more can I say about it—except that I wish I’d written this!)

How could I possibly ever reconcile [my attraction to other boys] with some grand, altruistic life purpose?

This question, I believe, lies at the heart of the gay vocation in the world, and of gay spirituality and sanctity more specifically. It summons us to consider how and why we do what we do, and the reason that our vocation so often lies in areas of beauty, creativity, and service. Much has been written about the fertile manifestations of our marginality. I will put forth a radical proposition, though it is historically impervious to proof. I venture to say that a significant, if not a predominant, number of male saints have been homosexual, that they have struggled with the meaning of same-sex desire in their lives, most often for the person of Christ, that some succumbed to their sexual urges, while others chose quite consciously to sublimate their needs in works of heroic Christian virtue and fortitude. And, furthermore, that such needs and desires, as evil, sinful, or condemnable as they were thought to be by the saints themselves or by any number of "godly" others, have been the core, fundamental forces for good, motivating, sustaining, nourishing, and inspiring these great works. I recommend this book to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. I want to especially recommend it to those of you who are annoyed with or estranged from Catholic upbringing. I promise you, you’ll be surprised and pleased and even possibly inspired and spiritually justified by Donald Boisvert’s blending of religion and eroticism. He tells truths about our human psyches that most religionists don’t acknowledge. For that reason alone, this book adds a new dimension to Gay spirituality.