The Danger of Respectable Christianity

As Oscar Wilde (a British convert to Roman Catholicism) once quipped, “the Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone — for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do.” The sacramental ethos tends to place more emphasis on the “abnormal” reality of the God-made-man — who lived in the messiness of the human flesh — was ostracized, beaten, and bled to death. The doctrine and liturgy — the natural consequences of the paradoxical event of the Incarnation — drew in gay men like Dazzle and emotionally complicated, existentially hungry black sheep like Princess Margaret. It appealed to their temperaments and aesthetic sensibility, as well as their need to affirm a moral good beyond the flimsy promises of either carnal indulgence or royal “respectability” and a “pure” public image.