Posted in category "Lesbians & Gays"
“He was one of the most gifted leaders in the post-Vatican II church in America,” said Rev. Jim Martin, a Jesuit priest and associate editor of America, a Catholic magazine, “and certainly beloved by the left, and sadly that gave his critics more ammunition.”
Archbishop Weakland was among those who publicly questioned the need for a male-only celibate priesthood. He also led American bishops in a two-year process of writing a pastoral letter on economic justice, holding hearings on the subject across the county.
He stepped down as Archbishop of Milwaukee in May 2002… one day after a former lover disclosed on the ABC network television show, “Good Morning America,” he had been paid $450,000 to keep quiet about an affair with Weakland in 1980.
But now, in interviews and in a memoir, A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church, Archbishop Emeritus Rembert Weakland is speaking out about how internal church politics affected his response to the fallout from his affair and why Catholic teaching on homosexuality is wrong. 
“If we say our God is an all-loving god,” he said, “how do you explain that at any given time probably 400 million living on the planet at one time would be gay? Are the religions of the world, as does Catholicism, saying to those hundreds of millions of people, you have to pass your whole life without any physical, genital expression of that love?”
He said he had been aware of his homosexual orientation since he was a teenager and suppressed it until he become archbishop, when he had relationships with several men because of “loneliness that became very strong.” 
Archbishop Weakland, 82, said he was probably the first bishop to come out of the closet voluntarily. He said he was doing so not to excuse his actions but to give an honest account of why it happened and to raise questions that the church’s teaching that homosexuality is “objectively disordered.”
“Those are bad words because they are so pejorative,” he said.
The archbishop said it was partly because of his strained relations with Pope John Paul II he did not tell Vatican officials in 1997 when he was threatened by a lawsuit by Paul J. Marcoux, the man with whom he had a relationship nearly 20 years before and who had appeared on “Good Morning America.”
Archbishop Weakland said he probably should have gone to Rome and explained he had had a relationship with Mr. Marcoux, that he had ended it by writing a lengthy and emotional letter that Mr. Marcoux still had and that the archbishop’s lawyers regarded Mr. Marcoux’s threats as blackmail.
But, the archbishop said, a highly placed friend in Rome advised him that church officials preferred that such things be hushed up, which is “the Roman way.”
“I suppose, also, being frank, I wouldn’t have wanted to be labeled in Rome at that point as gay,” Archbishop Weakland said. “Rome is a little village.”
In its report “Good Morning America” quoted from the 11-page handwritten letter dated August 25, 1980. The letter describes a planned vacation on Nantucket, a trip to Boston, and conflict over Marcoux’s involvement with a man named Don.
“I should not put down on paper what I would not want the whole world to read. But here goes anyway,” the letter said.
“I felt like the world’s worst hypocrite. So I gradually came back to the importance of celibacy in my life.” Weakland describes his decision to turn away from Marcoux and back to celibacy as “the greatest renunciations” in his life as a priest.
The letter also makes clear that even then, Marcoux was pressuring Weakland for money. “Paul, I really have given you all I personally possess. The $14,000 is my personal limit…Your anger was evident that I couldn’t play the great patron…”
He signed the letter, “I love you.” 
Seventeen years later, Marcoux resurfaced threatening to file a lawsuit. The archdiocese was prepared to counter with an extortion charge, but according to the signed settlement agreement, eventually Marcoux walked away with $450,000. Marcoux’s sister told reporters Marcoux had burned through all the money by 2002 – the time of the “Good Morning America” program.
Paul Marcoux told ABC News reporter Brian Ross he was just trying to get an apology. “That’s not blackmail?” Ross asked. “What do you call it?” Ross asked. “A settlement for a sexual assault case, and what I wanted to do was to have my day in court,” Marcoux said. And though the agreement bars Marcoux fom discussing it, he told Ross he couldn’t keep his silence any longer. “I’ve been involved in the cover-up. I accepted money to be silent about it, not to speak out against what was going on,” he said.
Marcoux linked his situation to the clerical sex abuse scandals: “He was sitting next to me and then started to try to kiss me and continued to force himself on me and pulled down my trousers, attempted to fondle me. Think of it in terms of date rape.” Marcoux was 32 at the time of the affair. A graduate student in theology at Marquette University, he met Archbishop Weakland at a reception.
His “date rape” example could apply to what most teenage girls get used to fending off with regularity.
Shortly after the “Good Morning America” program aired, Archbishop Weakland said he phoned the Apostolic Nuncio in Washington, DC–Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo–who, he said, told him, “Of course you are going to deny it.”
Archbishop Weakland said he told the Nuncio that while he could deny emphatically it was date rape, “I can’t deny that something happened between us.”
The book comes out on May 29th.
I welcome the return of Archbishop Weakland. We have missed him.
While researching a post about the character of Sal Romano, a closeted homosexual advertising executive on the very popular AMC series, “Mad Men,” I clicked on a link to a story about the 2002 murder of Salvatore Romano, 57, the last of the capoclaques, professional clappers traditionally entrusted with leading the applause at the theater, opera or other such event. Romano was paid by singers to applaud their performances at Rome’s opera house. He was believed to be murdered by someone he picked up and brought home for sex. Neighbors saw a young man running down the stairs with a cigarette in his mouth.
But it was another Roman victim mentioned in the article that caught my eye – Enrico Luizi, a papal protocol aide.
“Police are hunting for the killer of one of the pope’s gentlemen-in-waiting,” an article began, “who was found battered to death in his apartment surrounded by his Vatican medals and with a gay pornographic cassette in his VCR.”
Papal official Enrico Sini Luzi, 67, was founded dressed in his underwear with a cashmere scarf wrapped around his neck, lying face down on a velvet cushion. The back of his head had been smashed in by a brass candelabrum found nearby.
At the time of his death in January 1998, he was the latest of 19 men, suspected to be gay, who were murdered in Rome since 1990. There was speculation that some or all of the unsolved killings are the work of a serial killer, as many of the victims were found with scarves tied around their necks.
Mr. Sini Luzi, in his day garb of white tie and tails bedecked with papal decorations, served as an escort for bishops, ambassadors and heads of state who came to the Apostolic Palace for audiences with Pope John Paul II. His family family belonged to the minor nobility. 
At night, Luzi was a well-known figure in Roman male-only bars.
“He was a sociable man, maybe too much so. He knew a lot of people and brought many people home, usually young people,” a neighbor said.
The Vatican yearbook noted Mr. Sini Luzi began service as a Gentleman of His Holiness in April 1989. The Gentlemen of His Holiness were formerly known as Papal Chamberlains; they received their current title after the 1968 reform of papal ceremonies by Pope Paul VI.
A Vatican spokesman didn’t comment on Luzi’s murder, but the newspaper La Repubblica quoted an official of the Curia, the Rev. Giovanni D’Ercole, as saying: “In the face of death, one must only be silent. One cannot express judgements because it is not yet clear how the whole thing happened.”
Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the Italian Catholic bishops’ conference, reported in a brief notice that Luzi, whom it identified only as “E.S.L, a Roman nobleman,” died earlier that week, presumably the victim of violence.
Franco Grillini of Arcigay, the Italian gay and lesbian rights organization, accused the Vatican and Catholic hierarchy of creating a “homophobic atmosphere” that he said was “in large part responsible for this culture of violence.”
“This time, the victim is a gentleman of the pope’s entourage, which confirms that the people at risk are those who hide and live among people where homosexuality is not acknowledged, like the Curia,” he said.
Some members of Mr. Sini Luzi’s familystrenuously denied he was homosexual. “He was not a person of ‘certain habits,’” his brother, Lillo, 72, was quoted by La Repubblica as saying. “Such comportment cannot be reconciled with his morality and the Catholic education he always observed.”
Mr. Lillo Sini Luzi said any evidence of homosexual activity found in his brother’s apartment had probably been introduced by the assailant “as a trick.”
Tony Blair has challenged the “entrenched” attitudes of the Pope on homosexuality, and argued it is time for him to “rethink” his views.
During an April 8, 2009 interview with the U.K.’s leading gay magazine, Attitude, the former Prime Minister said: “Organised religions face the same dilemma as political parties when faced with changing circumstances.” 
“You can either A: hold on to your core vote, basically, say ‘Look let’s not break out because if we break out we might lose what we’ve got, and at least we’ve got what we’ve got, so let’s keep it.’ Or B: you say, “Let’s accept that the world is changing and let us work out how we can lead that change and actually reach out.’”
Asked about the Pope’s stance, Mr. Blair blamed generational differences and said: “We need an attitude of mind where rethinking and the concept of evolving attitudes becomes part of the discipline with which you approach your religious faith.”
“There are many good and great things the Catholic Church does, and there are many fantastic things this Pope stands for, but I think what is interesting is that if you went into any Catholic Church, particularly a well attended one, on any Sunday here and did a poll of the congregation, you’d be surprised how liberal-minded people were. The faith of ordinary Catholics is rarely found “in those types of entrenched attitudes,” he said.
Not all British Catholics applauded with his remarks.
On March 29, 2009, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, was received into the Catholic Church. He has not said publicly why he converted, but his third wife, Callista Bisek, is Catholic. Mr. Gingrich had been a Baptist.
But a comment he recently made may contain a hint: “Over the course of the last decade, attending the basilica…reading the literature, there was a peace in my soul and a sense of well-being in the Catholic church.”
Mr. Gingrich, a conservative Republican who has not run for elective office since he was forced out of Congress in 1999, has toyed with running for president in the past and is much-rumored to be considering a 2012 bid. It is not clear how his Catholicism might affect his political future, but in a recent Twitter post Gingrich commented President Obama has “anti Catholic values.” 
“It is sad to see,” he texted, “notre dame invite president obama to give the commencement address Since his policies are so anti catholic values”
Based on his sexual infidelities and multiple marriages, some U.S. Catholics question Rep. Gingrich’s self-promotion as a spokesman for authentic ”Catholic values.”
On April 15, 2009 Archbishop Timothy Dolan became the 13th leader of the Catholic church in New York since the Vatican appointed the first bishop here in 1808. A vast territory, the archdiocese includes Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island and seven northern counties, stretching from the border of the city to the Catskill Mountains.
This stretch of territory is the home of the toughest, crankiest, most argumentative and nit-picky baseball fans in the country–Mets and Yankees fans. It’s a great place when you’re on the back page of the Daily News – it’s a tough town when you’ve blown the save. 
“You are what your record says you are,” said Bill Parcells, the revered former head coach of the New York Giants and Jets football teams and another Catholic sports guy.
There are a lot of Catholic players and piles of Catholic fans spread out among the different NY teams. One of the reasons I’m back at church today is that I spotted a man in a Mets jacket heading for the door of my neighborhood church. I followed him in. As it turned out, that person happened to be the pastor, Fr. Danny. Here was somebody, I thought, like me.
Archbishop Dolan, 59, appears to be a very genial, down-to-earth, outgoing kind of guy. He likes to be with people. He laughs and smiles a lot. He’s a big baseball fan. He has gone from rooting for his hometown St. Louis Cardinals and Milwaukee Brewers to wind up at a NY Mets game at Citi Field his first weekend in New York.
One of his first stops as the new Archbishop of New York was the West Bronx Community Center in Highbridge. The teams of workers there give out free nutritious meals across the borough each year through a partnership between Catholic Charities and the Rusty Staub Foundation, a “I’m happy, happy,” said a delighted Anna Rodriquez, 76, after she got to give the archbishop a big bear hug. “He is so friendly.”
Rusty Staub, a former Mets baseball star, was on hand with the archbishop at the food pantry. Staub said he was honored that that Dolan chose to spend his first morning of face-to-face duties with the organization. “He obviously has a tremendous amount of energy,” Staub said, “I think that’s going to be a blessing.” “(I want) to learn, to listen, to shake hands, to meet people, to hear them dream,” Dolan said. “That’s a greater lesson than reading briefing reports, or reading histories.”
“I aim to be a happy bishop, sharing joys and laughs with you. So you will see me at the St. Patrick’s parade, and at the new Yankee Stadium, and at processions and feast days and barbecues across our almost 400 parishes. Being Catholic is not a heavy burden, snuffing out the joy of life; rather our faith in Jesus and His Church gives meaning, purpose and a joy to life. I love being Catholic. I love being a priest, and I fully intend to love being archbishop of New York while loving all of you in the Church in New York.”
“Loving the Church here means supporting her indispensable work for caring for the poor, the immigrants, the sick and elderly, the lonely, the unborn and the abandoned. It means working hard for her Catholic schools, in many ways the pride of the archdiocese. It means ensuring that our parishes are places where people encounter the Lord Jesus in the Mass, the sacraments and in an authentically Catholic community.”
“It means speaking from America’s most famous pulpit for justice and peace, for religious liberty and the sanctity of all human life. It means teaching the Catholic faith in season and out of season, as a good shepard must.”
Archbishop Dolan chose as his motto “Ad Quem Ibimus,” which means ”To Whom Shall We Go?”
For Catholics who love their Church, this is the crux of the matter. When Jesus asked the disciples if they, too, would leave him, St. Peter replied, “Lord, to whom should we go? You have the words of everlasting life.”
Let’s start from there. Not polemics and threats about Communion.
One team.
Commonweal‘s February 27, 2009 issue had a short piece entitled “The Perfect Sinner” by Harold Bordwell. It was about Max Jacob, a French Jew born in Brittany, who was a painter, poet, novelist, playwright, and critic, who played an important role in the formative years of Cubism as well as in the new directions of modern poetry during the early 20th century. His poetry was made up of an amalgam of Jewish, Breton, Parisian and Roman Catholic elements.
Max Jacob alternated between a wildly bohemian lifestyle and periods of contemplation. He converted to Catholicism in 1915, after experiencing a vision of Christ a few years earlier. But his conversion did not save him from the Gestapo, who rounded him up and took him to Drancy internment camp. He died there of pneumonia on March 5, 1944, two days before he was scheduled to be sent to Auschwitz. He was 68. His body was eventually returned to his home of Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire near Orleans. 
Saint-Benoit was the site of a celebrated abbey church. Max Jacob first came to Saint-Benoit in 1921, and stayed there periodically until 1937, when he settled down permanently, living a quietly religious life–early daily Mass, evening prayer, and working as a church guide.
Max Jacob reminds me of David, a “man after God’s own heart.” Sensuous, a sinner, each man experienced periods of prayful contemplation and penitence. But in their full and vivid life each also held God in a loved and honored place.
Max Jacob chose Saint-Benoit to escape his disorderly and worldly life–he was homosexual, he took drugs, he liked to play the clown–and, as his biographer Beatrice Mousli notes, to be nearer to God and away from his temptations that he could never resist in Paris.
It was a very different life than his days in Paris, where his writings and gouache paintings led to friendships with Picasso, Jean Cocteau, anf Guillaume Apollinaire, among others. There were rumors that Jacob was a male lover of Picasso. “Oh, Picasso was absolutely having sex with Max Jacob. And everyone knew!”, said John Richardson, Picasso’s biographer. Even Picasso’s mistress, Fernande Olivier, noted upon first meeting Jacob that the two men were “toujours ensemble.”
In his journals, novelist Julian Green remembers how Max Jacob used to haunt the Cafe Select by night, and then the next morning hurry down the boulevard to Notre-Dame-des-Champs to confess his sins, with the priests hiding behind the church columns but knowing that one of them would eventually have to listen to the same sins they all knew by heart.
Green calls Max Jacob the perfect sinner because he was truly sorry for his sins, which didn’t prevent him from starting all over the next day.
Shortly after A Good Man is Hard to Find was published, a discerning reader in Atlanta wrote to author Flannery O’Connor to tell her she realized that God was the main subject in the short story collection. “You are very kind to write to me and the measure of my appreciation must be to ask you to write to me again. I would like to know who this is who understands my stories,” O’Connor responded in a letter dated July 10, 1955. 
It was the first of 274 letters O’Connor sent to Elizabeth “Betty” Hester, sparking a friendship that would continue until the Flannery O’Connor’s death from lupus in 1964.
Betty Hester, ”an agnostic obsessed with God,”was shy, a flirt, and a chain-smoker with a menagerie of cats who cared for a widowed aunt named Clyde. Although she never published any of her stories, Hester shared her writing with O’Connor. Hester wrote book reviews for the diocesan newspaper, The Bulletin, as did O’Connor.
The early letters center on the two women’s faith. In the course of their correspondence, Hester converted to Catholicism, asking O’Connor to be her sponsor. Flannery tried to help Hester in her understanding of the Catholic faith in hopes of giving Betty some spiritual comfort; but shortly after her baptism, Hester decided to leave the church. That disturbed O’Connor more than Hester’s admission she was a lesbian. 
After much intense correspondence and several visits, Betty insisted on telling Flannery her “history of horror” before the friendship went any further. At 13, Betty had watched her mother commit suicide. The neighbors, believing she was “playacting,” did not intervene. Betty also told O’Connor that she had served in the Air Force in Germany, but was dishonorably discharged for “sexual indiscretion” with a woman.
O’Connor responded to Hester’s revelations with this frank and nonjudgemental note: “Compared to what you have experienced in the way of radical misery, I have never had anything to bear in my life but minor irritations…If in any sense my knowing your burden can make your burden lighter, then I am doubly glad I know it. You were right to tell me, but I’m glad you didn’t tell me until I knew you well. Where you are wrong is in saying that you are the history of horror. The meaning of redemption is precisely that we do not have to be our history, and nothing is plainer to me than that you are not your history.”
Hester and O’Connor remained friends and corresponded until O’Connor’s death. It is through the correspondence with Hester published in The Habit of Being that scholars are able to get a clear view of O’Connor’s thoughts on writing and her Catholic faith. 
In 1998 Hester committed suicide with a hollow-nose bullet aimed at her skull. She died after eating a late afternoon Christmas dinner and playfully mocking her friend, William Sessions, “for taking the Church seriously.” She was 76.
The February 10, 2009 announcement read:
“UTCatholic Launches Gay and Lesbian Group”
The UCC announces the formation of a prayer group for gay and lesbian individuals and those unsure.
To promote an atmosphere of comfort, group meeting times and locations are not publicly announced.
For more information, contact Fr. Ed Koharchik at the link below.
———
The principle behind UT’s University Catholic Center’s founding of a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender support group is that in God’s eyes, we are all the same, reported The Daily Texan, the University of Texas-Austin, school newspaper. Gay Catholic students can come together for discussion, prayer and fellowship. 
“We want to provide a safe place for young people to talk about this issue – how does it fit in with the Catholic Church teachings?” said the Rev. Ed Koharchik, associate director of the center. “Whether one is gay or straight, it’s morally neutral.”
In recent weeks, the center has promoted the support group, whose purpose is to shed light on the “misconstrued teachings of the church,” with respect to non-heterosexual lifestyles, Koharchik said.
“It’s about this group of people and how to stay within the teachings of the church and yet still identify as being of that orientation,” said Michael Jungwith, a graduate student. “It sounds reasonable.”
Koharchik said he hopes to deter Catholics from breaking off their relationship with God due to their sexual orientation. He said he wants community members to know that sexuality is not tied to an individual’s personhood and that linking the two together could “cut off awareness to goodness.”
Koharchik and UT alumna Chelsea Griffo enlisted the support of Bishop Gregory Aymond from the Diocese of Austin to implement the program.
Some students commented via the Daily Texan’s online edition:
“I find it difficult to reconcile my sexuality with my faith..and for this reason my faith suffers. SometimesI ask myself am I putting my sexuality before God…and on the other hand ignoring my sexuality before God. Growing up an realizing your gay is often a difficult task. When I look at my life and look at the lives of other gay people it appears to me that we are a lost community which clings to materialism and sex much easier than heterosexual people..The fact that the church teaches that homosexual acts are evil should not get in my way of finding my true self.” (Brian)
“I can’t speak for all the GLBT Catholics, but by first hand experience I am glad that the church leaders are welcoming us back. After being told so many times that I am going to hell for loving the person I love, I am glad that at least a couple of leaders of the church don’t shun me away. Having been raised Catholic, I have struggled with this most of my life.
Will I really go to hell for being myself? Is being who I am a greater sin than murder or adultery? If God created us in his image, am I a mistake? Could God have possibly made a mistake? I don’t think so or at least I hope not. Truthfully, I don’t know the answers to these questions, and I doubt anyone else can say they do. As holy as people think the pope is, he is not God. The only one who knows is God, and unfortunately for those against me and the GLBT community, the Bible is a book written by man not God.” (anonymous)
I’m sure Fr. Koharchik will have to mouth the party line about living a “chaste lifestyle” in order to keep the program open on Catholic premises; but I hope he facilitates a discussion of the many different contemporary Catholic viewpoints on sex, sexuality, and sexual ethics. He should discuss gay and lesbian Catholic religious figures, notable individuals and saints as role models. Some of these people have been celibate, but many others had active and passionate love lives.
Most of all, the group should be a safe place where the students can talk about their real life experiences, from falling in love, how to handle the hate from their co-religionists because of their sexual orientation, coming out to their Catholic family, and respecting who they are in the face of prejudice–especially from their religion.
Fr. Peter Kennedy, 71, was removed as pastor of St. Mary’s, South Brisbane, Australia, by Archbishop John A. Bathersby earlier this week. This action was a tremendous loss not only to the parishioners of St. Mary’s, but all Catholics around the world that look for points of light–parishes, groups, schools, retreat centers, religious people, theologians, authors, bloggers–to take hope and comfort in knowing light from an open door shines for us. 
Archbishop Bathersby accused Fr. Kennedy of being “out of communion” with the church by allowing women to preach the homily, giving Communion to gay and divorced people, baptizing babies using unorthodox wording, criticizing the pope and not wearing traditional vestments.
The archbishop’s decree said Fr. Kennedy had “caused harm to ecclesiastical communion in spite of frequent requests from me to do otherwise.”
“The question for me,” said Archbishop Bathersby, “is not so much whether St. Mary’s should be closed down, but whether St. Mary’s will close itself down by practices that separate it from communion with the Roman Catholic Church.”
“In reality St. Mary’s South Brisbane has taken a Roman Catholic parish and established its own brand of religion,” he said. “Undoubtedly it does good, it promotes a strong sense of community, opens its doors to all who wish to come, but its own style of worship and sacramental practice can hardly be described as Roman Catholic.”
The conflict between Archbishop Bathersby and the parish community of St. Mary’s stretches back at least six years.
In 2004 the Archbishop demanded that Fr. Kennedy comply with Redemptionis Sacramentum, follow the liturgical norms and stop baptizing people “in the Name of the Creator and the Liberator and of the Sustainer.” Fr. Kennedy countered that they were doing this to make the sacrament “more inclusive, less patriarchal.” 
The parish previously angered conservatives in the church by welcoming gay couples and allowing the Brisbane Gay and Lesbian Choir to perform there in June 2003 as part of Brisbane Pride Festival celebrations. Archbishop Bathersby opposed the performance and said it was “inappropriate.”
Tony Robertson, who belongs to St. Mary’s, said parishioners were rallying to save their parish. Robertson blogs on Out and About with Tony – A Queer Perspective on Life as a Gay Catholic.
“St. Mary’s is a church which takes seriously its identity as a Catholic community and practices the teachings of the Catholic Church which calls for homosexual persons be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity,” Robertson said.
“Such acceptance calls for practical action which welcomes gay and lesbian people to the life and worship of the community.”
Robertson noted that other Catholic churches also welcome sexual minorities, including one church that flies the rainbow flag among its public decorations.
“Those who have concerns about our support for sexual minorities need to remember that the Catholic Church also teaches that every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. In this spirit the Church has opened its doors to the Brisbane Lesbian and Gay Pride Choir who use the Church for weekly rehersals as well as supporting the musical and religious culture of St. Mary’s,” he said.
“Gay and lesbian Catholics who prefer a more traditional worship have always been a presence at the Cathedral of St. Stephen where one of the beautiful stained glass windows is dedicated to a gay member of the famous Mayne Family of Brisbane,” he added.
“Jesus Wept” at the loss of a relationship, not the interpretation of a rule.
Follow the St. Mary’s situation on St. Mary’s Discussion Forum.
Show your support for St. Mary’s on their MySpace page.
Interesting notes on gay history in the Mayne family can be found on page 229 in Colonialism and Homosexuality by Robert Aldrich.
In Defense of Desire – The Theology of James Alison is an article in the January 30, 2009 edition of Commonweal Magazine. It was written by Christopher Ruddy, associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Here is an excerpt:
“Alison builds his argument for the goodness of homosexuality by drawing from Catholic teaching on creation, original sin, and salvation. As (the Council of) Trent taught, human nature retains its integrity, even after the Fall. No dimension of human desire is therefore instrinsically evil–that is, irredeemable–because it is capable of being rightly ordered and healed. Salvation is the perfection of human nature, not rejection.
As Alison lays out the argument, Catholicism has long taught that people are heterosexual by nature, and that homosexual activity is thus unnatural. But this teaching conflicts with the growing recognition that homosexuality is a way of being, not simply a way of acting; unchosen, it belongs to one’s nature or essence. Drawing upon the scholastic axiom agere sequitur esse (acts flow from being), Alison maintains one cannot hold both the homosexual inclination is natural or involuntary and that homosexual acts are inherently evil. ‘Either being gay is a defective form of being heterosexual,’ he reasons, “or it is simply a thing that just is that way”–a reality, like “rain, tides or left-handedness,” as he puts it elsewhere. Alison affirms the latter position, and consequently holds that homosexuality is morally equivalent to heterosexuality. Like rain or tides: arguments from nature, for so long used to condemn homosexuality, now become its greatest support. ‘Natural law is our friend,’ Alison writes; the gay or lesbian person is saved in the perfection–not the rejection–of his or her homosexual nature.”
Dr. James Alison, 49, is a Catholic thelogian, priest and author. He lives in London. Visit his website. 
The article below was written by Ned O’Gorman, and appeared in the December 5, 2008 issue of Commonweal.
There is a place where even the liberal Catholic press fears to tread. The relative lack of serious discussion about homosexual desire casts into spiritual darkness a tribe of believing Catholic men and women who must fend for themselves in their quest for a serene emotional life, for companionship, and for the comfort of sexual love. For “the teaching church,” the subject is untouchable.
There are few intellectuals, lay or clerical, who will take it on, for it is risky to bring into the public forum the notion that there are Catholics who practice their faith with diligence and who love those of their own sex and have known the joy of that love. I am such a Catholic. I have discovered that such a love is easy to bear, complete, and holy.
So, I will offer some thoughts I have about a homosexual’s life and its difficulties, its spirituality, its struggles with desire and the church’s punitive silence. 
If I obey the church, there is only a life of absolute celibacy open to me. I must accept my lot, hope for the best, cross my fingers, and “offer it up.” What “the best” is, the church does not quite say, but it cannot be sexual.
Everything must be avoided that might lead to the discovery of the beloved: no flirtations, no gathering together with other homosexuals, no dating, no risk of arousal. If such constrictions were imposed on heterosexuals, there would be no marriages.
No priest will bless a union between homosexual Catholics, no matter how committed the couple is to a long fidelity, for the church forbids the homosexual an erotic life. An erotic life sets the homosexual beyond the communion of the sanctuary.
And if that is it, a Roman Catholic homosexual, devoted and faithful, believing and rigorous in the practice of his faith, after long suffering and neglect, might just say the hell with it and welcome love and live outside the sanctuary.
Could it be there is a band of men and women set apart by God who will never know the fullness of love within the life of the church? That question does not give comfort. I have known men who have married so that they might have a place in the church and in society, knowing that they were turning their back on the truth of their sexuality. They abandoned the love they had for other men and entered into marriages that failed, and devastation was soon everywhere-children, wives, families all in ruins.
What, then, does the church do?
It seems that the church has decided that there is nothing to do. So upon this tribe of men and women exile falls with a mighty thud. Perhaps the only way for them to live a life of faith and fullness is to live the life of the outlaw and the renegade, trusting in the Lord and his consolations.
