Thursday, June 5, 2025:  We need a new theology of the Holy Spirit, and perhaps the more abnormal it is the better!

Today we continue with the reflections of our friendly theologian Diarmuid O'Murchu.

For the past few days we've explored something called "queer theology" a thought movement which seeks to understand the good news in a new way based on a profound theological re-evaluation of scripture, it's language and the social and political environment in which it was written. What happened to women, their voices and their contributions to the early Christian communities? What happened to that wind of Pentecost and the imagination of the people thirsting for the good news that allowed them to hear it proclaimed in their own langusges.

According to The British theologian, Chris Greenough queering sacred texts seeks to move beyond the rigidity of dogma, and to understand that, over the centuries we have narrowed our understanding of the truth and missed the liberating impact of the Holy Spirit - reducing our beliefs to a single, narrow understanding of the truth. Centuries of hierarchs have chosen the kindly, domesticated white dove as the symbol of the Holy Spirit instead of the firecely independent and powerful Wild Goose which the Celts adopted as their version of the Holy Spirit.

Remember the poem by Mary Oliver:

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Spirit as the Eagle with liberating wings...

And He will raise you up on eagles' wings

Bear you on the breath of dawn

Make you to shine like the sun

And hold you in the palm of His hand

Theologian, Chris Greenough outlines five dimensions of this process: 

• Queer resists ideas of categorization; 
• Queer challenges the idea of essentialism; (Definition: Essentialism is an approach that assumes people and things have natural and unchanging characteristics.

• Queer challenges ‘normal’; 
• Queer removes binary thinking and assumptions; 
• Queer exposes and disrupts power relations and hierarchies. (Greenough, 26).

Spirit in queer theology

Queer theologians, Colby Dickinson and Meghan Toomey, writing in 2017, state: “A theology that is queer calls us to go beyond what is known, to move past what is established, and to relinquish control over such structures totally.”

Along similar lines, Queer theorist, David Halperin, writing in 1995, asserts “Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence.”

Both quotations illuminate what I (Diarmuid) have been attempting in these reflections, feeling a call to “go beyond what is known,” “move past what is established,” “there is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers,” “an identity without an essence.” To some that will sound like a scathing deconstruction, and some will rightly ask: “What is left?”

And this is what attracts me to the wisdom of queering. In the very process of deconstructing, we are also involved in reconstruction. Remember that in quantum physics, the vacuum is a fertile emptiness, seething with possibility. The mystics knew that long ahead of the physicists. So, I am not getting rid of Pentecost (at least not yet!). It strikes me that the event described in Acts 2:1-4, never actually happened (“an identity without an essence – Halperin). But the experience, Acts 2:5-11, never ceases to happen! And in Halperin’s words, that is the essence!

It is the essence, that incredible cosmic empowering Spirit that we need to celebrate on Pentecost Sunday! The homily should be on Acts 2:5-11, the deep recognition of the Spirit who blows where she wills, demolishing every ecclesiastical lockdown! We need the wisdom and guidance of that empowering Spirit. As we face the “new normal” more than anything else, I suggest we need a new theology of the Holy Spirit, and perhaps the more abnormal it is the better!