|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
A Vision of Hope for Queer Catholics I belonged to the Jesuit community in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for four years. During that time I remember meeting a young man (I will call him Mark) at some Gay Pride events in his native city of Derry. Mark later killed himself by jumping into the River Foyle, largely, it seemed to me, because he did not know how to accept himself as a gay man. Obviously one cannot say precisely what leads someone to such a tragic death. However I did find myself reflecting on his premature death, this terrible loss, knowing that he was a Catholic. I found myself wondering why, growing up in the Catholic Church in Ireland and England, I had never heard any priest in any sermon ever say even one word of hope to someone like Mark. Within my church I heard silence at best on this topic; at worst hostility. Thinking of him and others like him gave me the courage to speak out and ask for change. This desire on my part was strengthened when I came across posters plastered in some parts of Belfast that read: “God has a plan for homosexuals; AIDS is the first step.” I didn’t hear anyone in the mainstream churches say anything to counter such sentiments even if they did not agree with them. I believed that if we were a more loving, more accepting church, people like Mark might find the courage to find life and meaning in their sexual orientation, to see it as a blessing rather than a curse. And maybe too, we would also be closer to the Jesus we profess to follow. As long ago as 1976 the American Catholic bishops stated: Homosexuals like everyone else, should not suffer from prejudice against their basic human rights. They have a right to respect, friendship and justice. They should have an active role in the Christian community.1 More recently the U.S. Bishops (through their Committee on Marriage and Family), gave a pastoral message to the parents of gay children asking that church ministers and priests: Welcome homosexual persons into the faith community. Seek out those on the margins. Avoid stereotyping and condemnations. Strive first to listen… Use the words “homosexual,” “gay,” “lesbian” in honest and accurate ways, especially from the pulpit. In various and subtle ways you can give people “permission” to talk about homosexual issues among themselves and let them know that you’re also willing to talk with them… To our homosexual brothers and sisters we offer a concluding word. …We need one another if we are to “grow in every way into him who is our head, Christ…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.2 This conference is about how we can make our churches and synagogues safe places that genuinely welcome gay and lesbian Christians and Jews in ways appropriate to our particular faith tradition. In Northern Ireland I initiated and ran a series of weekend retreats for gay Catholic and Protestant men in an attempt to do just this. I wanted to create a place where gay men could be open about being spiritual and gay. In Northern Ireland gay people could be open about being gay in the gay world to some extent, but not about being spiritual. And in the church, gay people had to remain silent about being gay. The question for me, therefore, is this: How can we as Catholics begin to create an inclusive and welcoming church for Catholics who happen to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered or questioning? I will deal with the pastoral realities rather than the moral teaching which was presented earlier. As I see it, the problem is not that of homosexuality in the church but rather that of homophobia and heterosexism. I contend that even Catholics who feel very differently about the moral teachings can come to see that we need to create welcoming and inclusive space for gay people in our church. I hope that the Catholic Church is big enough to allow the conversation about the moral teaching to take place. Certainly the time has come to drop any talk of intrinsic evil in relation to homosexuality. Dropping such language will not change the teaching of the church on this issue, but will certainly help to create the space needed for dialogue and listening. These words have changed their meaning and are misunderstood these days by gay people as a condemnation of their very essence. We really need to listen to the experience of gay Catholics and grapple with the questions their experience raises. Silencing the conversation before the questions have hardly begun to be articulated short- circuits the whole process. Regardless of what you believe regarding the moral teaching, the problem is that most of our churches still dehumanize and shame gay Catholics. Gay people still suffer from deep prejudice in most of our churches. Such prejudice has nothing to do with the gospel of Jesus. I am studying the parish of Most Holy Redeemer in San Francisco for the degree of Doctor of Ministry in Berkeley. The congregation of Most Holy Redeemer is situated in the heart of the Castro, which as you probably know, was the world’s first gay neighborhood. It was a traditional, mostly Irish Catholic neighborhood. My study examines how this community became inclusive and welcoming of the gay community. It is not per se a gay parish; no such parish could exist in the Catholic Church. However every parish is reflective of its demographics and geography, and Most Holy Redeemer is no exception. MHR is affirming of its gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender parishioners, just as Catholic parishes in predominantly Philippine neighborhoods are affirming of Philippine culture and are influenced by it. I believe that, while the circumstances of Most Holy Redeemer Parish are unique, there are lessons in this story for Catholic parishes everywhere. My study indeed shows how it is possible for part of the institutional Catholic Church, a Catholic parish, to be open and affirming, and how gay and straight people together in mutual respect and openness can create a healthy and vital religious community. If such change is possible in one small corner of the Roman Catholic world, then why can it not be possible elsewhere? At Most Holy Redeemer it was when gay and straight people (at the time mostly younger gay men and older Irish women) faced the suffering and devastation that AIDS was causing in this city that the parish came together as a prophetic community. This parish has been through the crucible of fire. At one time wags called the parish the “Gays and the Grays”! One parishioner told me: I came to Most Holy Redeemer at a critical point in my life. Many gay men at a similar juncture in their lives would have looked to a counselor or a therapist, but I think that’s just a symptom of how the psychosocial category stunts us and keeps us ignorant of ourselves. We tend to experience unhappiness, even anomie, as somehow owing to our sexuality, I suppose because it is more deeply part of us than anything else we can name, so we have fostered a class of professionals with skills to adjust us… Lighting did strike me the first time I came to MHR, but not for the reasons you’d think (or maybe you would). It wasn’t being in a hall with hundreds of gay men that did it. Lord knows, that wasn’t a new experience. It was the Mass itself. It was the homily, given by Fr. Tom Hayes, who seemed to be speaking to me, just to me, to my starved and withered heart and soul. It was what any Catholic would feel after twenty-odd years away; it was the church itself, in all its majesty and mystery and ordinary goodness, in the sturdy beauty of a well-wrought liturgy. With this difference: for the first time since I was old enough to understand myself as a sexual being, it was a church that wasn’t pushing me away. That’s all. That’s it. Any Catholic who’d been on a desert island for twenty years would have felt the same thing upon walking into a church where a wise and decent priest was saying Mass. But I couldn’t have felt it in any other church. You see? People don’t understand why gay men and lesbians migrate to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, cities all around the world that have flourishing gay ghettos. Usually we don’t understand ourselves “To be with “others of our kind,” to have wild sex and go to great parties?” But the truth is mostly we come here to forget about being gay, to just drop that burden–to just be human. For us MHR is the church where you can go and just be Catholic.3 This man puts his finger on what we need desperately in every Catholic parish -- the creation of safe space so that Catholics who happen to be gay can just be Catholic. I actually am hopeful that it is beginning to happen in other parishes and Catholic centers around the country. Many dioceses now have one or two parishes where gay Catholics can be open about this part of their lives. The number is growing. As change takes place in the wider society on this issue, we as a church are also changed. With over 60 million members in this country we cannot ever be isolated from developments in the wider culture. Some retreat houses now regularly offer affirming retreats for gays, their families and friends. An increasing number of Catholic schools have begun diocesan-approved gay-straight alliances. These developments give me great hope. Change is taking place in the Catholic Church from the ground up, and this is being recognized in some cases at an official level. This process is happening in North America, Europe, South Africa, and Australia. I don’t see such change in the Roman Catholic Church in most of the world, including my own country Ireland. Certainly some priests and those in ministry may be changing in Ireland, but there are not yet any structural changes to create this safe space for gay people. I came across this letter from Thomas O’Connor in The Irish Times, written in response to comments by the pope expressing bitterness about an international Rome gay pride event that was held in Rome during the Jubilee year:
Perhaps the Church should lead the world in its compassion and try to instigate dialogue, understanding and acceptance of homosexuals instead of “bashing us” every chance it gets.3 Indeed I often meet former Catholics who are gay here in San Francisco. Quite often they are angry and feel alienated from the church of their upbringing. I am sure you have seen the T-shirt that proclaims “Recovering Catholic.” I also meet Catholics at Most Holy Redeemer who say they couldn’t be a practicing Catholic if it were not for a parish like that. I long for the day when a pope might have a similar approach to this issue as Catholic Bishop Giallot of Partenia, a desert in North Africa. (He was removed from his diocese in Evreux partly because, sadly, he was too open pastorally to gay people.) Giallot says that the church must not be scared of homosexuals; rather we should ask forgiveness: He explained that he had received a request from a gay couple to bless their marriage. “Please receive us, although we are pariahs of the Church,” he said the couple had asked him. “I’ve got AIDS. My life will soon come to an end. Therefore we would very much like you to bless our union. It would be such a comfort.” Gaillot said he agreed to meet the couple and “to say a prayer, a sign of welcome and understanding.”4 To a large extent the Catholic Church is not a credible moral voice within the gay community. If you ever read the gay press you know that at times you think war has been declared between the two. I hear many gay people say that they did not leave the church but rather that the church left them when they accepted themselves as gay. Certainly in the current crisis of the Catholic Church, matters were made worse recently when Vatican spokesperson Joaquin Navarro-Valls questioned the validity of the ordination of gay men. Then there is the equating of homosexuality and pedophilia implicitly by some church officials and by some in the media. I thought we had gone beyond the stage where it was necessary to remind people that homosexuality and child abuse are separate issues – and that homosexuals are no more likely than heterosexuals to be pedophiles. But then maybe I have just lived for too long in San Francisco! Rather than becoming a search for scapegoats, the present crisis might better point us to the deeper malaise, our seeming inability as an institution to deal in healthy ways with issues of power and sexuality. Zero tolerance for pedophilia and sexual abuse must not be translated into zero tolerance for gay priests. I remember a fellow Jesuit who happened to be both gay and an alcoholic in recovery. One day in his sermon he preached on how he had found God in finding sobriety. After the Mass a woman came up to him and said (thinking she was consoling him), “You know Father, things could be worse, you could be a homosexual.” Indeed, instead of trying to screen out gay candidates as some such as Novarro-Valls are now suggesting, it would be healthier if priests were able to be more open about these matters. Right now some gay priests fear a possible witch-hunt. The issue is really not about whether a priest is gay or straight. We must resist the temptation to place gay and straight clergy in opposition to each other. The issue is whether there is a sufficient maturity and integration of sexuality into the rest of a person’s life. Rather than screen out gay candidates as some are now suggesting, I think it would be much healthier to encourage seminarians to come to understand and own, and then be more open and comfortable with, their given sexual orientation. As James Keenan wrote in The Tablet recently: “Among the clergy, gay and straight work more easily with one another and with the laity when they are mature and at ease with their own sexuality.”5 Andrew Sullivan is both Catholic and gay. He says the church is like the family that cannot talk about the subject even though its own daughter or son is queer. Sullivan says that queer Catholics need to make themselves known so that the rest of the church can listen and learn: Why not a teaching about the nature of homosexuality and what its good is. How can we be good? Teach us. How does one inform the moral lives of homosexuals? The church has an obligation to all its faithful to teach us how to live and how to be good––which is not the mere dismissal, silence, embarrassment or a “unique” doctrine on one’s inherent disorder. Explain it. How does God make this? Why does God make this?… I grew up with nothing. No one taught me anything except that this couldn’t be mentioned. And as a result of the total lack of teaching, gay Catholics and gay people in general are in crisis. No wonder people’s lives–many gay lives–are unhappy or distraught or in dysfunction, because there is no guidance at all. Here is a population within the church, and outside the church, desperately seeking health and values. And the church refuses to come to our aid, refuses to listen to this call.6 This process of creating safe space is a challenge both for gay Catholics and for the rest of the church. Gay Catholics are learning to be more assertive, to come out, and ask for change. However, this requires the willingness of others to listen and be willing to take action to make our churches safe and inclusive spaces. I am reminded of a good friend of mine who is a priest in the Oakland Diocese. He was approached by a lesbian parishioner who challenged him saying that in twelve years as a faithful Catholic in that parish she had never once heard any recognition that Catholics such as her existed. She felt she was tolerated as long as she did not speak up about this part of her life. My priest friend said he could only agree. He told me, “I may be straight but I’m not narrow. I simply had never thought about preaching on this matter. One consequence of that conversation was that I gave a homily that opened up the subject in that parish in a way this lesbian parishioner told me was very supportive. And a result of the homily was that the topic began to open up in our parish.” Silence on this topic, as Sullivan argues, is simply an inadequate response. Silence forces people to split themselves into two, to live a hidden life that is a lie, to live in fear; and it also deprives the wider community of so much. Silence, or mere toleration, does not make a parish, a school, or indeed a Catholic university, a welcoming community. The role of my priest friend, and that of other straight Catholics, is to act as allies in making such change possible. Gay people are beginning no longer to see themselves as the recipients of ministry but as rather the very ones who will bring about the change by doing the ministry themselves, by being prophetic and challenging the silence and fear that surrounds this issue. Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton has often spoken of the need for gays to come out in order to break down stereotypes and prejudices. Gumbleton tells the story of how his family was changed when his brother came out.7 Catholics, like anyone else, usually change and become more open to the issues when they know a friend or family member who is openly gay. In theology classes we were taught that the church is not just a teaching church but also a listening church. Right now, on this issue, we need a lot more attentive listening so that the voices of gay Catholics are finally heard. Then the Church may begin to represent for gay people a place of hope rather than the memory of rejection. The posters for this conference state that the speakers will present new ideas about how to reconcile the issue of homosexuality within the Jewish and Christian traditions. Sad to say, these are new ideas for the largest part of the Roman Catholic Church. The good news is that they are no longer new ideas everywhere in the Catholic Church. Things are changing. And yet, in another way, aren’t they very old ideas indeed? Those of us who call ourselves Christians do, after all, profess to follow Jesus of Nazareth, a man who especially befriended the marginalized in society. I remember once hearing Bono of U2 saying that Jesus would have felt at home hanging out in a gay bar. I would add maybe more so than in some of our churches. For something is seriously wrong when, with some exceptions such as at Most Holy Redeemer, Dignity, some Newman Centers, and a small but thankfully growing number of parishes, gay people do not feel comfortable, welcome, or at home in most of our churches. Unless we are willing to go into a real and equal dialogue with those who are struggling with their sexuality in terms of their faith, we are not responding as Jesus would. The choice, as Richard Smith suggests as the thesis of his book: AIDS, Gays and the American Catholic Church 8 is not between an inherited tradition and the latest politically correct fashion. Rather it is between a tradition that has become rigid and strangling to many people, and one that is flexible enough to grow. A living tradition, one that springs from our faith in Jesus, from the scriptures, and, for Catholics, from church teaching and the tradition, needs a willingness to interact with other cultures. This must include gay culture. The call of the Second Vatican Council was that we read the “Signs of the Times.” In other words, we need to ask what it is that God is trying to say to us through the experience and voice of gay Catholics -- their voices being heard for the first time in history. Can we try to discern together what gifts God is bringing to the wider church through gay Catholics? This is a very different approach from seeing gay people as a threat and as somehow undermining what we are about. In the context of the dialogue between gay people and the wider church, as Smith argues, we need a mutual and respectfully critical assessment of each side’s symbols and values, a recognition of the legitimate and positive elements within, and where appropriate, an assimilation of those positive elements of the other culture into one’s own. This is not the same as an uncritical acceptance of everything as found either in the church or in the gay community. There is neither justice nor merit in the mentality that claims to tolerate gays and lesbians as long as they know their place and keep to it. For far too long, such a mentality made racial minorities and women victims. The challenge today is to see homosexuality as a blessing rather than as a curse, and the church’s pastoral role to help gay people embrace who they are – men and women created in the image of God. Then people can be helped to see their sexual orientation as part of their Christian calling and vocation. I want to see dioceses around the world implement plans based on such a strategy. Important organizations such as the Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries, Dignity, and New Ways Ministry already raise many of these questions in the context of North America. I long to hear my church acknowledge the sin of homophobia, ask for forgiveness from gay people, and take action to create an inclusive church. After all, it is part of the body of Christ that is gay. For too long we have seemed to make this issue an exception to the rule of Christian love. Certainly I see signs of hope that this is changing. I am confident that the words Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said of the Christian churches will one day no longer be true. Tutu said that the churches make gay and lesbian people doubt they are children of God. That, he said, must be almost the ultimate blasphemy. I know that gay people differ greatly on this issue as on all, but I sense a growing wish to no longer be the object of pity or mere tolerance let alone hostility. Increasingly Catholic gay people want to be seen as capable of collaborating with straight Catholics in the Christian task of helping to build the world that Jesus is about in the Gospels, the world that he so deeply desires for us today, a world that is just and humane for all. The creation of safe space for gay Catholics is still very much resisted. Such space must be created if we are to be true to our mission as followers of Jesus Christ. Endnotes ___________________________________ 1 National Conference of Catholic Bishops, To Live in Christ Jesus: A Pastoral 2 A Statement of the Bishops Committee on Marriage and Family, National 3Patrick Mulcahey, written at request of the author, October 24, 2001. 4 Thomas O’Connor, quoted by Donal Godfrey in “Rome’s Rebels Speaking Out,” 5 Thomas C. Fox, foreword to Voice From the Desert, by Bishop Jacques Giallot 6 James Keenan, “The Purge of Boston,” The Tablet, 30 March 2002, 18. 7 Andrew Sullivan, “I’m Here: Interview with Andrew Sullivan,” by Thomas H. Stahel, S.J., America, May 1993, Vol. 168, No. 16, 11. 8 Chuck Colbert, “For gay Catholics, conscience is the key,” National Catholic Reporter, Kansas City, January 16, 1998. 17. 9 Richard Smith, AIDS, Gays and the American Catholic Church, (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 1994). Copyright 2002 by Donal Godfrey, SJ. Reprinted with permission of the author by |