Posted in category "Lesbians & Gays"
On February 5, 2010 USCCB president Francis Cardinal George issued a statement publicly disparaging New Ways Ministry. Upon reading it, my first thought was: what little we have is even too much.
Sr. Jeannine Gramick and Fr. Bob Nugent, co-founders of New Ways, were like a lighted, open doorway in a dark alley. Many gay and lesbian people, myself among them, came home through them and their ministry. God knows what would have become of us without them. They were a beacon of welcome, friendship and compassion in a very hostile world. 
For 33 years New Ways Ministry has been a source of comfort, support, affirmation and encouragement for lesbian and gay Catholics to come back and remain within the institutional church. It is the one place where we can be affirmed in who we are without any sense of shame, regret or self-loathing.
“Anyone who has taken the time to listen to the stories about the lives of lesbian/gay people will come to realize that guidance about sexual activity is not where they need help most,” said Frances DeBernardo, Executive Director. “It is in the areas of living truthfully, openly, honestly, and courageously–the areas that consume most of their time and energy–where they seek the support of the church.”
These are areas where the Church offers no support.
The starting point for New Ways Ministry has always been less of the teaching of the Magisterium and more towards the Beatitudes – the values expressed by Jesus. True, the organization has not admonished gay Catholics they must live chastely or to “strive” to live chastely, the way the officially-sanctioned Courage Apostolate does.
Cardinal George stated that since the founding of New Ways Ministry in 1977, “serious questions have been raised about the group’s adherence to church teaching on homosexuality.” “No one should be mislead by the claim that New Ways Ministry provides an authentic interpretation of Catholic teaching and an authentic Catholic pastoral practice,” George said. “Genuine pastoral concern is based on respect for every person, no matter their sexual orientation, and acceptance of the truths of the Catholic faith,” he added. “These are the terms in which the church welcomes everybody and offers them a true home in Christ’s love and mercy.” 
Why did Cardinal George pick this time to start a kerfuffle with New Ways: Could it have anything to do with the fact the Courage is having their 2010 annual conference this July at the University of St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, Illinois? Or, that New Ways Ministry is planning a workshop in March 2010 in the Chicago area?
This program – “Next Steps – Developing Catholic Lesbian/Gay Ministry,” is billed as a “weekend of prayer, presentations, dialogue, and planning designed to assist those seeking ways to include lesbian/gay people and issues in their home parishes, schools, or other ministerial settings.”
Is the notion of openly gay Catholics (chaste and not) in Catholic settings threatening? The possibility that people in the pews might experience doubt about the “intrinsic evil” of lesbian and gay relationships once they know us–their fellow parishioners–as caring people, as loving parents, as devoted and committed couples?
The condemnation of New Ways Ministry by Cardinal George has sparked a healthy debate among faithful Catholics online. I found the following exchange over at America magazine’ s website informative and heartening.
One writer, Jeffrey L. Miller posits: “They (New Ways Ministry) are a openly dissident group that has never believed what the Church believes on same-sex attraction and have damaged countless individuals by encouraging a disorder instead of helping them to live what the Church believes and to live a chaste life. Organizations like New Ways Ministry cooperate with evil by not teaching that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and thus encourage sin. It is a spiritual work of mercy to help your brother repent, it is an evil act to tell them they don’t need to repent.”
“Jeffrey: I hereby encourage you to repent:” countered Jim McCrea.” ‘The Pharisees’ sin has come to be called ’scotosis,’ a deliberate and willful darkening of the mind that results from the refusal to acknowledge God’s presence and power at work in human stories. If the neglect of Scripture is a form of sin, a blind adherence to Scripture when God is trying to show us the truth in human bodies is also a form of sin, and a far more grievous one… If it is risky to trust ourselves to the evidence of God’s work in transformed lives even it when challenges the clear statements of scripture, it is a far greater risk to allow the words of Scripture to blind us to the presence and power of the living God.’
“And it is even worse,” McCrea added, “to allow the words of a very fallible, defectible and historically indefensible human church to do the same.”
Steve Schewe drolly observed: ”Mr. DeBernardo’s statement that ‘we have always been found to be firmly in line with authentic Catholic teaching’ seems disingenuous; I wish he would have acknowledged his organization’s long history of differences with the Catholic hierarchy, including the disciplining of Sr. Gramick and Fr. Nugent. This is all old news.” 
“So why did Cardinal George let loose with his condemnation this week? Could it have anything to do with the testimony by U.S. military leaders in the Senate advocating a process to end DADT, and the relatively calm response to their testimony? A rising tide of tolerance towards gays and lesbians continues; it will be interesting to see how the attempt to overturn Proposition 8 in California turns out, particularly since one of the lead attorneys for the plaintiff, Ted Olson, is a leading conservative with impeccable credentials.”
“Given the growing national acceptance of gays and lesbians in secular society and among people of faith, Cardinal George’s attack brings to mind the late Jaroslav Pelikan’s quip that “heresy may be the result of poor timing.”
“Heresy may be the result of poor timing”–I’ll be sure to share that one with Sr. Jeannine Gramick the next time I see her. She’ll appreciate it.
On the night of Monday, May 4, 1998, Swiss Guard Lance Corporate Cedric Tornay, 23, killed Lt. Col. Alois Estermann, 43, and his Venezuelan wife, Gladys Meza Romero, 49. After they were dead, Tornay knelt, put his service revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger. 
The Vatican handled the autopsy and investigation of the crime by itself, without asking for help from Italian officials. They considered the case clear-cut. “It was a fit of madness in a person with very peculiar psychological characteristics,” papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the day after the killings. ”That is the only hypothesis,” a Vatican official confirmed. “There is no reason to advance any alternative.”
Estermann and his wife were given a splendid funeral, concelebrated by 16 cardinals and 30 bishops. Before the service, Pope John Paul II made a point of praying at all three caskets, which were displayed, side by side, for viewing. Tornay was given a separate funeral in a chapel in the small church of St. Anne’s.
Cardinal Secretary of State Angelo Sodano said the Requiem Mass for Col. Estermann and his wife at St. Peter’s Basillica, a rare honor for laymen. In his homily Cardinal Sodano said, “In times like these we feel above all the need to be silent.” The Estermanns had been married 16 years. They did not have any children.
The official explanation of their deaths didn’t make sense to people who knew Cedric Tornay. A flurry of articles and books followed the murders.
Bugie di sangue di Vatican (Blood Lies in the Vatican) by the “Disciples of Truth” was printed by a tiny publisher in Milan. It was reputed to have been written by a group of disaffected priests inside the Vatican. They claimed that Estermann was the victim of a struggle for control of the Swiss Guard – which had been in charge of papal security for the past five centuries – between the secretive, traditionalist Catholic movement Opus Dei and a masonic power faction ensconced in the Curia. Estermann and his wife were members of Opus Dei. The director of the Holy See press office, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, is a member as well.
John Follain, a British investigative journalist and Sunday Times correspondent for Italy and the Vatican authored City of Secrets: The Truth behind the murders at the Vatican. It was published in 2003 by William Morrow & Co. He followed several threads in trying to establish a motive for the murder. One of them was a homosexual love affair gone sour.
One source Follain met and interviewed was Italian writer and art historian, professor Massimo Lacchei. In his 1999 book, Verbum Dei, Verbum Gay (God’s Word, Gay Word) Lacchei offers ten short stories about homosexuality in the ranks of Catholic clergy. The book would have passed generally unnoticed had Lacchei not called a press conference to announce that the two Swiss guard officers in the chapter ”Mass in a Private Chapel” were in fact Estermann and Tornay. In the book they appeared as “Major Jorg” and “Lieutenant Kaspar.” “This is not fiction, they (the stories) are based on real encounters” Lacchei told reporters.
The story is an account, spiced up with a couple of lewd ancedotes, of an all-male party Lacchei attended in 1997 at the home of an elderly and important Roman politician. The most eagerly awaited guests were two officers of the Swiss Guard. The story opens with the guests waiting expectantly for the two officers. They arrive, Mass is celebrated, and then, over a meal, the others sit in rapt attention as they relate the story of their relationship. 
Lacchei said he had no proof that the two Swiss Guards were lovers, but their presence at the gay brunch–and their behavior there–certainy made him think so. “They were so intimate and friendly for a subordinate and a captain,” he said. Lacchei told Follain of a second, chance meeting with Tornay in April 1998, a month before his death. Lacchei had been out walking his dog on the Via della Conciliazione, the avenue leading to St. Peter’s, when he saw Tornay and invited him home. Tornay confided that Estermann had betrayed him. He saw Estermann in an embrace with another guard in the changing rooms of the barracks. “I can forgive, but never forget” Tornay said.
A former Vatican employee told Follain a story about a homosexual chaplain of the Swiss Guard. The chaplain had several affairs with members of the corps. Whenever his advances were rebuffed, he would dress himself in civilian clothes and go to Roma Termini Station to find male prostitutes. “The ex-employee told me,” Follain related, “that a Swiss Guard plucked up his courage and complained about him to the elderly, wheelchair-bound Cardinal Andrzej Maria Deskur, who has been the pope’s closest friend ever since they studied at the seminary together. ‘We will do nothing,” Deskur muttered. ‘The chaplain is digging his own grave.’” The chaplain later died of AIDS.
As Tornay and Estermann’s relationship deteriorated, Estermann began to persecute Tornay. Estermann’s refusal to grant Cedric Tornay the Benemeriti medal for three-years service–a routine award– may have sparked the killings. Hurt and fustrated, there was no where Tornay could go to unburden or be heard. He could not discuss his relationship with Estermann. Officially, homosexuals do not exist in the Swiss Guard. “I had no choice but to hid my homosexuality,” said an ex-guardsman named Steiner. “I soon realized that the only way to survive as a homosexual in the heart of the Church was to keep it invisible.”
Tall and thin, with a short-cropped sandy beard, Steiner did not return to Switzerland after his service but stayed in Rome and opened up a flower shop. “Some people choose to live in the Vatican because for them it is like living in a giant, protective cocoon,” he said. “But for many people life in the Vatican is just a big pretense, because the truth is that under all those cassocks and the robes there are individuals who want to live normal lives, who have desires that are absolutely normal–including sexual ones.”
Vatican spokesman Vavarro-Valls took pains to deny rumors of a sexual motive for the killings. Navarro, who said he had known the Estermanns well, insisted: “”They were a model couple. The fact that they didn’t have children wasn’t important, because they dedicated their time to charity work.”
Others disagreed. “The relationship could not be other than one of a homosexual nature,” Ida Magli, a prominent anthropologist, told the Roman daily Il Messaggero. “”The Holy See wanted to close a case in a hurry, perhaps out of a need to hide a sad, worrisome truth.”
Mary Daly, 81, died two weeks ago, mostly forgotten, certainly unshriven. Carolyn Moynihan, deputy editor of MercatorNet, noted that Daly “seems to have departed this life as a kind of orphan herself. The New York Times obituary notes that she ‘leaves no immediate survivors’. No family on earth? No father in heaven? I hope it really was not like that for Mary Daly at the end.” 
After her two first two books, which stood the Catholic world on its head, Mary Daly spun off into the ether, writing books with titles like: Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Voyage; and Quintessence..Realizing the Archaic Future. Daly created her own language, but most people weren’t interested in learning it. She lost her hold on the larger Catholic imagination.
In the 80s the lesbian herd moved past her, too, migrating on towards the mainstream–”Ellen,” “The L Word,” “Rachael Maddow,” “Suze Orman,” human rights, marriage rights and child rearing. The labrys pendant was lost or forgotten. Daly was, too.
Mary Daly was the quintessential Irish Catholic girl. Born October 16, 1928, in Schenectady, NY, she went all through Catholic schools, and received a BA from the College of St. Rose in Albany, NY and a MA from Catholic University in Washington, DC. After earning her doctorate in religion from St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, in 1953, she went on to obtain two degrees from the University of Freiburg in Switzerland, since no U.S. institutions at the time offered theology doctorates to women.
Dr. Daly was hired as an assistant professor at Jesuit-run Boston College in 1967, when the school only enrolled men. She started as a reformist, and her first book, The Church and the Second Sex, (1968) she argued that the Catholic Church was patriarchal in nature and had systematically opposed women for centuries. In response, the college attempted to dismiss her, but the support she received from students and the public kept her in the classroom.
As a student in the early ’70s at Trinity, an all-women’s college in Washington, DC, I was thrilled about Mary Daly and her books. “Someone speaking for us,” I thought as I picked one up, “someone speaking the truth about what it’s like to be a woman in the Catholic Church.”
Sr. Joan Chittister reflected on Daly’s impact on history: “I learned how to look newly at things I’d looked at for so long that I was no longer really seeing any of them. Women need to thank Daly for raising two of the most important theological questions of our time: one, whether the question of a male God was consistent with the teaching that God was pure spirit, and two, whether a church that is more patriarchal system than authentic church could possibly survive in its present form. These two questions have yet to be resolved and are yet rankling both thinkers and institutions.”
Daly came out as a lesbian in the early 70s–when she was in her 40s. She began to study ancient cultures, and came to regard all major modern religions as oppressive to women, a view expressed in her second book, Beyond God the Father (1973). Her original critique of the Roman Catholic Church as a bastion of patriarchy was extended to the entire Christian tradition. She rejected Christianity’s focus on a monotheistic deity and what she attacked as its intrinsic patriarchy. She asserted that Christianity’s focus on Jesus Christ was just another dimension of its patriarchy–a Savior in a male body.
As Margaret Elizabeth Kostenberger explains, Daly’s “compete rejection of Scripture” on the basis of its “irremediable patriarchal bias” took her far outside the Christian faith. While other feminists called for the adoption of female or gender-neutral language for God, Daly attacked those efforts as half-measures that fail to take the “phallocentricity” of theism seriously.
Her famous dictum, “If God is male, then the male is God,” stood at the heart of her argument against religion. She accused Christianity of “gynocide” against women and suggested that all monotheistic religion–and Christianity in particular–is “phallocentric.”
“I urge you to sin,” she wrote to women readers. “But not against these itty-bitty religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism–or their secular derivatives, Marxism, Maoism, Freudianism and Jungianism–which are all derivatives of the big religion of patriarchy. Sin against the infrastructure itself!”
In 1999 Professor Daly left Boston College after a male student threatened a lawsuit when he was denied a place in her class on feminist ethics. She had long limited enrollment in some advanced women’s studies classes to women only, maintaining that the presence of men there would inhibit frank discussion.
What happened to Mary Daly, that she imposed the same gender barriers in her classrooms as she experienced? Daly went to Europe for advanced degrees because no U.S. Catholic university would accept a woman in a theology program. Years later, Daly bared men from her advanced courses in women’s studies because she felt their presence would have a negative impact on the other students. Men, she said, “have nothing to offer but doodoo.”
It may be retribution, but it doesn’t seem right. How do you rail against a system of discrimination, and then implement it with glee yourself?
So I am left with a mystery to solve: why did Mary Daly, a “post-Christian,” continue to affiliate with Boston College, an unabashedly Catholic institution? Love and hate are bound very closely. Daly was never indifferent.
Perhaps it began with a girlhood hurt. Daly wrote about her intellectual formation in a 1996 article in the New Yorker “Sin Big,” in which she recalled being mocked by a male classmate, and altar boy, at her parochial school because she could never “serve Mass” because she was a girl.
“(T)his repulsive revelation of the sexual caste system that I would later learn to call ‘patriarchy’ burned its way into my brain and kindled an unquenchable Rage,” she wrote.
Daly described herself as a pagan, an eco-feminist and a radical feminist in a 1999 interview with The Guardian newspaper of London. “I hate the Bible,” she told the paper. “I always did. I didn’t study theology out of piety. I studied it because I wanted to know.”
So with all that, how could she in good conscience continue to teach at a Catholic university?
Here’s what I think: at BC, Daly could be an outlaw, get a paycheck, credibility for book deals, and still have the protective mantle of identity that gave her cachet: a professor at a highly regarded Catholic university.
She lived on the piercing insights she fearlessly raised 40 years ago. But Daly had ceased to be a theologian, and even her philosophical writing declined into self-important gibberish. She should have taken her own advice–a person becomes stagnant if they don’t move on. 
If you’re going to call yourself a Post-Christian, then be Post-Christian. If you have moved on… move on, and stop clinging to institutions that you say you no longer believe in.
A man wrote the best epitaph for Daly that I have read: “When I was in the seminary, attending class at B.C. during the eighties, Mary Daly was a joke. Imagine my surprise when, years later, as a purely cynical move to impress a feminist scholar, I cited Mary Daly in a paper, but was not able to put her work down. Although her work never persuaded me to abandon my beliefs, or my own thinking, Mary did push me to consider a whole world of concern that years earlier I would have dismissed as nonsense. Now, when I think of her, I do not think of a nut, or a totally whacked out feminist. I think of a pioneer, who, although not worthy of discipleship, is certainly worthy of being taken seriously as a thinker and a human being. I wish I had met her, although I’m not sure of how it would have turned out.”
Lesbian and gay saints have contributed in their individual ways to the life of the Church. Two examples are Saint Alcuin, who openly professed his emotional and sexual passion for several brother monks; and Saint Bridget of Ireland, who deeply loved the young nun, Darlughdach, who slept with her and sometimes functioned as her ambassador.
There are also gay icons–the handsome youth, Saint Sebastian, and Saint Joan, a woman who dressed herself in men’s clothing, became a warrior, and defied the gender role and expectations of her time.
Of course, there is also Saint Peter Damien with his fixation on gay male sex. He is the epitome of a self-hating homosexual who persecutes others of his kind in order to avoid detection, and punish the objects of his own desire.
Here are two clues to help identify gay and lesbian saints: 1) did they enter religious life partially to avoid marriage; and 2) does part of their story involve a special “friend” they had in religious life?
Today’s lesson: Saint Galla of Rome. 
In his Dialogues, Pope Saint Gregory the Great speaks of a holy woman of Rome named Galla, who had been married for less than a year when her husband died. Refusing to remarry, the young widow resolved to devote the rest of her life to God. To protect her beauty againt men’s attention, it is said she disguised herself as a man and God gave her a beard.(!)
Joining with a community of women living near St. Peter’s Basilica, caring for the poor and sick, this wealthy and pious woman founded a convent and a hospital. She is reputed to have once healed a young deaf and mute girl by blessing some water, and having the girl drink from it.
As she lay stricken with breast cancer, Galla kept two candles burning each night at the foot of her bed, for Gregory explains, “She hated darkness, being a friend of light, physical as well as spiritual light.”
It was between these two candles that one night the Apostle Saint Peter appeared in a vision to Galla. The dying woman asked him: “Have my sins been forgiven?” Smiling, Peter nodded yes and answered, “They are forgiven. Come.”
But Saint Galla now requested, “I beg you to let Sister Benedicta come with me.” Peter told her, “Sister Benedicta will follow you in thirty days.” Three days later, Galla died, and a month later, Benedicta.
Rest together in peace.
Death: c. 550 A.D.
Feast Day: October 5
The little ditty below by E.J. Montini appeared in The Arizona Republic in response to a $50,000 donation by the Most Reverend Thomas J. Olmsted, Bishop of Phoenix, Arizona, to the anti-gay marriage campaign in Maine. 
A reader had a sad refrain
But did not wish to write it plain.
And so with Seuss-like zeal did deign
To craft a query in quatrain.
He (or she) wrote:
“Mr. Montini, could you explain,
“Is the Phoenix Catholic Diocese insane?
“While poor folks here are full of pain
“Our church sends 50 grand to Maine?”
My response:
Yes, Bishop Olmstead did ordain
That he would help his friends in Maine
Who needed money to maintain
Their anti-married gays campaign.
In Maine a state law did proclaim
That any Dwight could marry Dwayne.
The church held this view in disdain
And sought the old laws to retain.
To win that vote they had to gain
Some riders on their money train.
Our bishop from his vast domain
With cash did shower them like rain.
Fifty thousand dollars came
From Phoenix all the way to Maine.
And helped the churches in their aim
To bring the old rules back again.
Meantime, OUR state is full of pain.
The governor has made it plain.
State services we can’t maintain.
The budget crisis is to blame.
While politicians play their game
The poor are going down the drain.
They need assistance that’s humane
Their meager lifestyle to sustain.
By sending money off to Maine
The bishop seems to make the claim
That poor folks here eat quiche Lorraine
And wash it down with fine champagne.
What does Phoenix have to gain
From shipping 50 grand to Maine?
Can one stake a moral claim
When politics is made to reign?
Politicians are the bane
Of everything that’s good and sane.
Do not Christians in the main
Avoid the secular and vain?
It seems a little inhumane,
Less like Abel, more like Cain,
To send money with the aim
Of changing policy in Maine.
But bishops like old monarchs reign,
Each one a little Charlemagne.
Parishioners cannot constrain
Their spending habits or terrain.
A reader can to me complain
With four lines meant to entertain.
And I can rack my little brain
To rhyme her back in the same vein.
But rhyming doesn’t change the game.
And rhymers cannot be profane.
The bishop here sent cash to Maine.
All we can say is, that’s a shame.
- Thanks to Voice of the Faithful for this little gem.
“For generations,” ChurchOuting.org proclaims, ” in Catholic churches across the country, LGBT youth are told they should be ashamed of who they are and that they should lead loveless lives as social and religious abominations. The emotional, psychological and spiritual abuse inflicted on them by Catholic priests and our church hierarchy is in reality as damaging as the physical or sexual child abuse anyone would quickly condemn. Yet to this abuse, few raise their voices and say “ENOUGH!”
“It is shameful that in many Catholic churches, this abuse is being supported by men, who are gay themselves, leading closeted lives of self-persecution and quiet desperation.”
“Even more shameful, is that many of these priests, while remaining silent, actually lead duplicitous lives rich with romantic and sexual relationships — both homosexual and heterosexual.”
“This hypocrisy must end.” 
Churchouting.org intends to “out” Catholic clergy members in the Washington Archdiocese that are leading secret gay lives, or, straight priests having affairs with parishioners, that are anti-gay civil rights or silent on the issue. More on the organization and it’s campaign here.
The organization takes its inspiration from the success of sexual abuse survivors in Boston, who banded together and went public with their stories of rape and sodomy by priests that were moved around by complicit bishops. They went public because the institutional church did not respond to their requests for individual justice, and to do something about the problem of sexually predatory priests. Instead, the church wanted to protect the clergy involved, protect the church, by sweeping the problem under the rug and attempting to shame or cajole the people who came forward into silence.
Terry Nelson, owner of the blog Abbey-Roads, has a different take on the behavior of homosexual clergy:
“The fact is, many same sex attracted men have struggled to live according to the teachings of the Church, and as all of us who admit to being sinners, many fall – and rise again. Priests are not perfect, to preach the truth about homosexuality is not hypocrisy – even if a priest fails to live up to his vows from time to time. If he repents and strives to live accordingly, in time he will be victorious. On the other hand, perhaps there are ‘bad’ priests living duplicitous lives, and exposure could perhaps bring them to repentance? I don’t know.”
I believe Mr. Nelson is correct that many Catholic priests see their lives this way – a struggle and a rising and falling. But the church is failing them in one important regard: because they need to live closeted lives, and pretend they’re straight or sexless, there is no where they can go to get affirmation and support as celibate gay Roman Catholic priests. They need to hide. This situation can breed a compartmentalized life and justifications for aberrant behavior.
(Ex) Fr. Tom, who blogs on The Gospel According to Hate, had this illuminating personal memory of a visit to the annual U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops gathering in Washington:
“Every year without fail, gay Catholic men stood silently outside the bishops’ hotel, holding candles and keeping a twenty-four-hour vigil in protest of the church’s hypocritical, psychologically outdated, and pastorally damning teachings concerning the LGBT community.”
“Passing the protesters, I wasn’t the only seminarian averting my eyes, afraid that if I looked a gay in the eye that he would know, that the truth of his glare would strip away my clerical shield, and that I would be proclaimed a “known” homosexual.”
“Each of the four years that I attended, the damn bus took forever to pull away, and I sat there, from behind the safety of the reflecting bus windows, looking at the courageously grieved gay protestors.”
“No one on the bus spoke of them. We just stared, silently accepting their judgment, our hearts heavy with shame. Then we were whisked back to the safety of the seminary, the homoerotic dormitory, and the corresponding compartments of our collective clerical closet.”
Sad.
I commend the founder of ChurchOuting.org, D.C. attorney Phil Attey, for his courage in taking on this fight and backlash. Even if he doesn’t publish one name, just the threat of exposure is going to put a big crimp in the swinging lifestyle of some gay cardinals, bishops and priests.
But I also caution him not to out gay clergy that go about their work in a quiet way. Gay Catholic priests cannot come out to their bishops and expect to be a pastor for very long. They have to be closeted–they have no choice.
However, as pastor, they have credibility with Catholics in the pew – the people the bishops are most concerned about. If the pastor doesn’t condemn gay people, if they stress dignity and respect for all, then gradually this teaching is going to seep down.
I would also not equivocally out gay bishops. Some of them may do what they can behind the scenes to change or mitigate things.
However, what I would do is put gay cardinals and bishops who are actively anti same-sex marriage and civil rights on notice they are not going to protect themselves, or further their careers in the church at the expense of gay people. They need to pick another issue, or, they are going to find themselves feeling the pain of what they advocate.
Yesterday was a day of quotable quotes by fellow Catholics and would-be Catholics.
Vatican: In a move that caught just about everyone off guard, the Vatican said yesterday it would make it easier for conservative Anglicans uncomfortable with women priests, openly gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions to re-join the Roman Catholic Church. Anglicans would be able to “enter into full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony,” said Cardinal William J. Levada, the perfect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, at a news conference announcing the decision. “The unity of the church does not require a uniformity that ignores cultural diversity, as the history of Christianity shows,” he said.
“I don’t want to be a Roman Catholic,” said Martyn Minns, an Anglican bishop from Fairfax, Virginia. “There was a Reformation, remember.” 
“Not all Anglo-Catholics can accept certain teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, nor do they believe that they must first convert to Rome in order to be truly catholic Christians,” said the Rev. Jack Leo Iker of Fort Worth, Texas.
Your Censor Librorum says: I don’t think more than a handful of Anglican bishops, priests and congregations will take advantage of the Vatican’s new “Apostolic Constitution” to join the Roman Catholic Church. Bishops have big egos, and they will be nothing but small potatoes in the Church, because a lot of them are married. The big upside to this for liberal Catholics is the issue of a married priesthood. Why make an exception for Episcopalians, but not Catholics–Catholic priests, former priests and parishioners are going to ask. This latest Vatican outreach to bolster the fold with more conservatives is going to end up as a big pain in the neck for U.S. and other Roman Catholic bishops.
Sports: ESPN analyst and Ex-Met general manager, Steve Phillips, had a fling with a 22-year-old production assistant named Brooke Hundley over the summer. He dumped her. She got mad and wrote to his wife. The New York Post published her letter. “…he enjoys being with me,” Brooke wrote to Marni Phillips, “because I have more of a passion and drive to really do something with my life. And that you’re making him go to mass and therapy despite the fact that he doesn’t believe it will save your marriage, but he doesn’t want to lose hs kids.”
She went on..“I’m not telling you all of this to hurt you in any way, but simply to show you that I am a real person in his life and that I care deeply about his happiness. I was raised Catholic too and while I know our faith dissuades divorce, it also respects it with regards to infidelity because people should have the opportunity to be with the whomever makes them happy and can give them what they need.” 
The finale is the worst: “I may be only 22, but I’m not stupid, and I hope you can understand we never wanted you to find out this way. I want you to meet me and I want to tell you anything you may want to know, my cell number is xxxxx, check the phone records you can see I’m not lying and to top it off Steve has a big birthmark on his crotch right above his penis and one on his left inner thigh, so you know I’m not being fake.”
Your Censor Librorum says: I hope Mrs. Phillips can see a way to speak to her husband again after she’s finished beating him to a pulp. As for Miss Hundley, where did you hear the Church “respects” infidelity if a married person finds someone on the side to fill an unmet emotional or sexual need? I must have missed that one in my pre-Cana conference.
American Idol: Adam Lambert is an American Idol runner-up who came out of the closet after the season ended. But a recent Details magazine shoot had Lambert in a steamy embrace, kissing a lingerie model who shed her bikini. “Women know he’s gay, but they are still crazy about him. He’s no Liberace,” said Details editor-in-chief, Dan Peres. “To put him with a beautiful female model felt absolutely right.” 
Lambert told the magazine, “I like kissing women sometimes. Women are pretty. It doesn’t mean I’m necessarily sleeping with them.”
Your Censor Liborum Says: This sounds like Rock Hudson.
Mob Guy: A confessed Gambino family gunman, Robert Mormando, had a surprise for everyone in a Brooklyn courtroom on Monday. He told the judge he was gay.
Mormando, 44, was being sentenced for his part in the 2003 shooting of a bagel store owner, who was wounded in his driveway.
A divorced father of two, Mr. Mormando was born and raised in Ozone Park, Queens, a neighborhood long associated with former don, John Gotti.
Complicating matters, Mr. Mormando had a close personal friendship with Richard G. Gotti, John Gotti’s nephew. Richard Gotti is currently in prison on a federal racketeering charge. While there is no suggestion that the friendship was anything more than that, the mere fact an “avowed” gay man was once “inseparable” from a member of the Gotti family is “an intolerable stain on their name,” said a person who has knowledge of the case.
Indeed, that kind of “stain” can get you killed if you’re mobbed up. In 1992, John D’Amato,a former boss in the DeCavalcante crime family, was murdered by an underling when, after an argument, D’Amato’s girlfriend told his cronies he was gay.
Anthony Capo, a former soldier for the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante family, which is often described as the real-life “Sopranos,” said he killed John “Johnny Boy” D’Amato after finding out about his secret life.
“Nobody’s gonna respect us if we have a gay homosexual boss sitting down discussing La Cosa Nostra business,” Capo told jurors in Manhattan federal court. “She told me John D’Amato and her were going to sex clubs in the city, swapping partners and John was engaging in homosexual activity,” he said. 
Your Censor Liborum Says: This guy must have been absolutely nuts to come out in court. Didn’t he watch the Sopranos?
Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, warned that “spiritual toxic waste” is being exported to Africa by the First World. 
During his address last week to the Second Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops, he said: “The Holy Father, in his homily during the Inaugural Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, pointed out, with a very incisive expression, how the First World ‘is exporting its toxic waste’ to Africa and other developing countries. One of these poisons is the so-called gender theory, which, heavily disguised, is starting to infiltrate associations, governments and even some ecclesial environments on the African continent, judging from what the Pontifical Council for the Family tells us.”
Cardinal Antonelli noted that people working for “various international institutions and organizations” start from real problems that must be “dutifully resolved.” Among these, the cardinal noted injustice and violence against women, infant mortality, malnutrition and famine, and problems of housing and work.
But, he lamented, “They propose solutions based on values of equality, health and liberty: sacrosanct concepts, but rendered ambiguous by the new anthropological meanings that are given to them.”
“For example,” the cardinal explained, “equality of people no longer just means equal dignity and access to fundamental human rights; but also the irrelevance of the natural differences between men and women, the uniformity of all individuals, as though they were sexually undifferentiated, and therefore the equality of all sexual orientations and behavior: heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transsexual, polymorphous. Each individual has the right to practice–and change, should they wish–their choices in line with their drives, desires and preferences.”
During the January 2009 World Annual Meeting of Families in Mexico City, Cardinal Antonelli did offer an option: “the homosexual experience must stay within the confines of a private relation, a relation between friends.”
In other words, keep things quiet and private. No scandal. Society should not be shaken. This must have been his mantra as bishop of Florence.
Shortly before he became head of Pontifical Council for the Family, Cardinal Antonelli had to deal with an ugly sexual abuse case in his diocese–serious enough (meaning it had hit the newspapers and the city criminal justice department) for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to send a special envoy to investigate.
20 women accused Fr. Lelio Cantini, 82, of having raped them when they were minors, from ages 12 to 17. The alleged victims wrote to the Pope, asking due punishment for the abuser. Confronted by their testimony, church authorities first transferred the priest to another parish, and then, out of the diocese. 
Cardinal Antonelli admitted that the Church had settled the matter in secret after the accusations reached the Vatican.
But Fr. Cantini had never been disciplined. The priest admitted he coerced girls and teenagers in his parish to have sex. The rapes occured between 1973 and 1987.
After the investigative process, where the accusations were proved to be true, on April 2, 2007, Cardinal Antonelli issued the punishment for the priest: Fr. Cantini was barred from saying Mass and ordered to contribute a portion of his income to charity for a period of five years. In addition, for the first year, he was ordered to recite a psalm each day for a year begging for pardon over the sins he committed.
In case you are wondering, it’s Psalm 51 – the one that begins, “Have mercy upon me, O God … Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity.”
Growing up in the pre-Vatican II church, I can tell you Cardinal Antonelli would have had a big line in front of his confessional as the “easy penance” guy!
So, all of this is a little confusing as to what “values” the good cardinal is promoting, except for the value of silence.
I spent part of Friday afternoon poking around in an old marine salvage store in town. Along with time-crusted anchors, portholes sporting blistered paint, antique lanterns and knives, and leather bracelets sailors used to wear when they mended sails, the store has a selection of old books. That’s where I head first. 
A title caught my eye, “The Wreck on the Half-Moon Reef.” It was written by Hugh Edwards, the Australian diver who found the wreck in 1966. The book was published in 1970.
I pulled it off the shelf and opened it to read the jacket. The book was the account of the wreck of the 38-gun Dutch East Indiaman Zeewyk in 1727 on the savage reefs around the Abrolhos Islands. “The lookout thought that the surf on the Half-Moon Reef was ‘moonlight.’ The result was a quick death for some, a slow death for others, and the torture and execution of two youths for the ’stupid sin’ of sodomy.”
It’s rare a nautical history includes a full chapter describing a sodomy trial and execution. I bought the book.
Chapter 12, The Stupid Sin, begins: “The two sodomy-accused boys were doomed from the moment that the eager informants burst into the officers’ tent with the news.” The youths, it seems that they were not older than their mid to late teens at the most, had been accused of a homosexual act. The “stupid sin” as the Dutch called it.
One of the officers, Adriaan van der Grafee, kept a journal during the voyage and recorded their trial and punishment.
“December 1st, 1727: At eight o’clock in the morning the Petty Officers enter our tent and ask to see the Skipper, and inform him that two hands named Adriaen Spoor from St. Maertensdyck, and Pieter Engels, from Ghent, both boys, were found yesterday committing together the abominable sins of Sodom and Gomorrah.”
The boys were spotted by several others having sex in broad daylight, around 3 o’clock in the afternoon according to the account.
The white-faced boys were brought to the officers’ tent, “But they were not willing to make a confession. Wherefore we placed burning fuses between all their fingers. But being obstinate they would no more confess. So upon due consideration we resolved with the entire Council and consent of the Common Hands, to place these men apart on one of the northernmost islands.”
Marooning, death by exposure or drowning. That is what the verdict meant.
The youths were rowed across to one of the tiny cays at the north-eastern corner of the island group, about eleven miles away from the wrecked Half-Moon, and set on separate islands. The boat, with an official party of two petty officers, a boatswain and six unnamed seaman, then put about and left them to die.
The place they were left is known today as the Mangrove Islands. Hugh Edwards describes them: “Mere nodules of coral slates and spikey bushes raised four feet above the surrounding reefs. There is no water on them. No food, Deep channels run between islets and if they youths could not swim they would have been prisoners, each on his own rock until they died from sun and thirst, or went mad with despair and flung themselves in the water. In any event, death must have overtaken them within a day or two.”
Van der Graeff does not record in his diary whether the two boys were left any provisions when they were tumbled ashore, nor does he mention any conversation or pleas for mercy.
“In the case of the boys,” Edwards opined, “emphasis was placed, on sentencing them, in the brazen nature of unnatural sexual intercourse in broad daylight. Perhaps it was the flagrant nature of the indiscretion that enraged their shipmates.”
Despite the harsh punishments of the time, homosexual relations aboard ships were well-known.
Edwards notes that Engels previously appeared to be the object of bullying and persecution by some Zeewyk crewmen. He says, “it is interesting to note the modern psychological belief that those who are most condemnatory of sexual deviation are often those who sense the desire for such deviation in themselves.”
Whether out of shame or conscience, the incident is never mentioned again in van der Graeff’s journal, and the islands where the youths were marooned were not noted on the maps.
Edwards describes a sad postscript to the event: “More than a century later, in 1844, one of the party who had gone to the Abrolhos from the recently established Swan River colony to survey for guano and a fishing industry, laid his groundsheet down in darkness on the Mangrove Islands, and after a wretchedly uncomfortable night got up gumbling in the morning to find he had slept on a human skeleton. It may have been the pathetic remains of Adriaen Spoor or Pieter Engels.”
After I finished the chapter I closed the book and thought of those poor boys. How horrible to imagine them left to die, alone, on a barren ledge of rock. Each knew he was going to die, and had several days to think about it, and how they had been abandoned without mercy or pity.
The author, probably unintentionally, had several rich metaphors in his story: two youths, punished for their audacity in having sex in the daylight; each consigned to an island to die alone. Some of their tormentors and judges were men who, while expressing fear of the Lord’s punishment on their society for the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, really wanted the lads dead and gone to kill their fears of homosexual desire and possibly cover their own involvement.
The best, though was the Dutch expression of homosexual sex as “the stupid sin.” It is a stupid sin. It is stupid, how much time is spent on it, obsessing about it, to the point of murder.
I found this interesting interview of Sr. Donna Ryan by Thomas C. Fox in a recent edition of the National Catholic Reporter. Read the whole thing here.
“I think the culture wars have been won,” says Mercy Sr. Donna Ryan. In the 13 years she has served as chaplain to a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Catholics, she has seen growing acceptance of this community by society at large. “It is kind of like the church is becoming the last group in our culture to face this reality,” said Ryan. 
HOPE, the organization she serves in the Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri diocese, was recently asked to leave its meeting place in the Cathdral of the Immaculate Conception, but the group carries on, she says, because its members “care about the church and they care for one another.”
The diocese’s ministry to gay and lesbian Catholics has been going on since the 1960s, with few tensions. At first the group was called Dignity and at one point it was told it couldn’t use that name. So they simply began to refer to themselves as “gay and lesbian Catholics.” They met in different parishes.
When I came to the diocese 13 years ago, I was asked to be the group’s chaplain. We invited them to the cathedral. We thought the cathedral should be an umbrella for many different ministries. Soon after the group decided it wanted to call itself – HOPE. We wanted a better symbol to represent ourselves. We designed a logo and picked a scripture reading from Romans about hope. 
At that time we worked very closely with the diocesan structure. Former Bishop (Raymond) Boland was very supportive. We met regularly at the cathedral once a month and had speakers and retreats. After Bishop (Robert) Finn came we were asked to leave the cathdral. So now we meet at a local Jesuit parish.
I am overwhelmed by their love and faithfulness to the church. We meet every month. I keep asking, “What other group of people would regularly spend a Sunday afternoon in a church basement?” They do it because they care about the church and they care for one another. I’ve found their witness very meaningful in my own life. In the end, they struggle with the same things that any couples do; to be faithful in their relationships.
Frequently members of the group hear someting like “You are intrinsically evil.” This is very offensive to them. As a minister I do wonder. I think the beauty of our Catholic tradition is that our sacramental life involves the blessing of the ordinary with rituals and with communal support. I think that anytime two people want to make a commitment to one another, and be faithful and fruitful, and to live generous lives of service, they should be able to. I yearn for a time when we can bless them and support them. In some ways, however, we already do. 
The beautiful thing about the church’s sacramental life is that we have a book of blessings. One of the blessings is for the blending of families. I think there is also a blessing for friendships. Sometimes we have used these prayers to bless and support couples who want to make a commitment. These are very adult people. They are not dependent upon any particular statements by our church for their identity. But because they love the church, some of the statements have been especially hurtful.
They receive messages from society and the church that somehow they are not normal. When you feel that year after year after year, it is often difficult to break free. So as a chaplain I deal with that. Often we have parents who come to the group. Their child is someplace else in the country and they’re struggling to accept this piece of their family’s life. I am so proud that we have this group for parents and children and brothers and sisters to come together. We have these conversations of acceptance.
