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As church leaders turn up the volume on same-sex marriage, gay and lesbian Catholics find themselves wondering just where they stand in their church.
On a clear, windy Sunday in March 2010, Father William Breslin told his parishioners at Sacred Heart of Jesus in Boulder, Colorado why the parish school would not re-enroll a child of same-sex parents for the coming school year.
?I hate the fact that I had to make a choice between being loving and protecting the teachings of the church,? Breslin told Mass-goers. ?The lesbian couple is saying that their relationship is a good one that should be accepted by everyone; and the church cannot agree to that.? Breslin added that he saw ample love all around Boulder, but ?a scarcity of discipleship.?.?.?. I chose to protect the faith over doing what would have looked like the loving thing to do.?
In the pews, Shawn Reynolds, a gay parishioner, remembers that he shut down during the homily. He left at communion and hasn?t returned. ?Pastors are supposed to tend to the flock, not disperse them,? he says.
Incidents like this one lead some gay and lesbian Catholics to wonder if there?s a future for them in today?s Catholic Church. The past decade has brought a number of disappointments to these Catholics, who had hoped for greater acceptance and a greater emphasis on love.
They point to the U.S. bishops? 1997 document Always Our Children, comparing it to what has been understood as the harder line of a 2006 document, Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination. They find other evidence of the church?s harsh official position in the prohibition in 1987 of DignityUSA (the oldest advocacy organization for gay and lesbian Catholics) from meeting on church property and the 2006 Vatican decision that gay men called to the priesthood would face greater barriers.
Arthur Fitzmaurice, who has been active in gay ministry in the Los Angeles area and is on the board of the Catholic Association for Lesbian and Gay Ministry (CALGM), sees the messages from the bishops as unbalanced and unhelpful. ?Being gay has been a gift from God,? he says. ?Neither they nor I can put down what God has given me. But the bishops? silence or negative rhetoric is driving people away.?
Opposite sides of the aisle
The gulf between the bishops and gay and lesbian Catholics plays out most starkly in the battle over same-sex marriage, the most prominent gay rights issue in the United States today.
Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput has written that the church teaches that ?sexual intimacy by anyone outside marriage is wrong; that marriage is a sacramental covenant; and that marriage can only occur between a man and a woman. These beliefs are central to a Catholic understanding of human nature, family, and happiness, and the organization of society. The church cannot change these teachings because, in the faith of Catholics, they are the teachings of Jesus Christ.?
?Sexual intercourse is allowed between a husband and wife in marriage,? says Bishop William Skylstad, apostolic administrator of the Baker Diocese in Oregon. ?The rest of us are asked to be celibate. That teaching is not focusing on gay people, it?s everyone outside marriage. It?s been a long-standing teaching within the church.?
The church has in many states put itself in the political forefront against same-sex marriage. ?Marriage is now the front line in this particular battle of the culture war,? says Father James Livingston, a priest in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
But if this is a battle, the church is clearly going to need both better strategy and communications.
When Minnesota?s Catholic bishops sent out 400,000 anti-same-sex marriage DVDs to Catholics across the state in autumn 2010, coinciding with the campaign of a gubernatorial candidate opposed to same-sex marriage, the fellow lost to the candidate who was in favor of same-sex marriage rights.?
?It backfired,? says Benedictine Father Bob Pierson in Collegeville, Minnesota. ?It was seen as hurtful by a lot of people.?
Even Catholics who aren?t gay or lesbian are in profound disagreement with the hierarchy regarding the issue. A March 2011 report from the Public Religion Research Institute found Catholics to be more supportive of legal recognition of same-sex relationships than any other Christian denomination?more than the general public, even. In addition, 60 percent believe that same-sex couples should be allowed to adopt.
The report found Catholics to be more critical than other religious groups about how their church is handling the issue. Catholics are less likely to hear about homosexuality from the clergy, but when they do hear about it, more are likely to say the message was negative. And when same-sex marriage is defined as a ?civil union,? 71 percent of Catholics support it.
Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky doesn?t believe it. ?In states where people have voted, they?ve voted against it,? he says. ?That?s a truer poll.?
Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, believes the polls. She says that since the 1990s polls have shown Catholics to be in the forefront of accepting GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender) people. She points to three reasons: the social justice tradition in the church, the importance of family and community to Catholics, and the fact that Catholics are generally well educated. The higher a person?s education level, the more likely he or she is to be supportive.
Mixed messages
There is common ground between GLBT Catholics and the church. ?Every conversation should emphasize dignity,? says Kurtz, past chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops? Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage. The archbishop praises the USCCB?s Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination, which begins with general principles, the first of which is respecting human dignity, that (quoting from the Catechism) ?persons with a homosexual inclination must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.?
However, that document also advises that a person?s revelation of any ?homosexual tendencies? should be confined to certain close friends, family members, a spiritual director, confessor, or members of a church support group. It also notes ?the homosexual inclination is objectively disordered, i.e., it is an inclination that predisposes one toward what is truly not good for the human person.?
That phrasing is less bleak than a 1986 Vatican letter, which stated that while homosexuality isn?t a sin, it is a ?strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil.? It is certainly less positive than Always Our Children, which ended with this concluding word ?to our homosexual brothers and sisters?: ?Though at times you may feel discouraged, hurt, or angry, do not walk away from your families, from the Christian community, from all those who love you. In you God?s love is revealed. You are always our children.?
Not all gay Catholics are disaffected. Gay Catholic blogger Steve Gershom (a pseudonym) believes that he travels in very different circles from gays and lesbians who are angry and hurt by the church?s teachings on homosexuality and same-sex marriage. He believes that part of the difference between himself and gay Catholic activists is that he doesn?t identify primarily as gay, in the way he identifies as Catholic, or as a man or human.
Gershom doesn?t believe that the gay lifestyle is compatible with Christianity, nor does he believe that church teaching will ever change. ?If you believe as I do, that the church is infallible, then it?s simply impossible to say that she can make a mistake in dogma and that she can change,? he says. Gershom?s blog attracts many gay readers who agree with him.
Other gay and lesbian Catholics are hurt by the church?s current message.
?We still have a ?don?t ask, don?t tell? policy in the church,? says a gay teacher at a Catholic high school?who, along with several other people and parishes, requested to remain anonymous for this story.
?There is a tension in the church?s teachings on homosexuality, between condemnation of homosexual acts, and the emphasis on the dignity of homosexual people,? says Frank DeBernardo, head of New Ways Ministry, another prominent gay-positive group for Catholics. (New Ways is also rejected by the bishops; its founders, Sister Jeannine Gramick and Father Robert Nugent, were ordered by the Vatican to disassociate themselves from the group in 1999). ?It?s all going to come down to a question of emphasis. I fall on the side of believing that the dignity of all people, including gay people, is a more essential teaching than the teaching on sexual expression. But the bishops never emphasize that teaching.?
?Both are to be emphasized, the dignity and the Catholic vision for sexuality,? says Kurtz.
Gershom has heard the bishops emphasize both, but others have missed it. Fitzmaurice, for instance, faults the bishops for not taking advantage of teaching moments following several recent suicides of gay teens after being bullied over their sexual orientation. The bishops could have spoken out on bullying, says Fitzmaurice.
Kristen Hannum is a writer working from Denver and Portland, Oregon. She wrote for the Catholic Sentinel newspaper in Portland for 16 years. This article appeared in the March 2012 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 77, No. 3, pages 12-17.)
Source: http://www.uscatholic.org/church/2012/01/pride-and-prejudice-uneasy-relationship-between-gays-and-lesbians-and-their-church
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