Category Archives: Current Events

What’s the difference, really??

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Here are two current stories about two very similar men whom the Catholic Church treats very differently.

The first is a man who followed a call to ministry, was ordained a priest within his church, and eventually became a bishop. Because that church allows priests to be married, Jeffrey Steenson also has a wife, three children, and even a grandchild.  Steenson, the former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande, Albuquerque, NM has since left the Anglican Communion, been welcomed into the Catholic Church and ordained a Catholic priest.  Most recently he was appointed head of a new Ordinariate intended to smooth the transition to the Catholic Church for Episcopalians who, for whatever reason, feel called to swim the Tiber. Although Fr. Steenson will not be permitted to become a bishop, his new position essentially gives him all the administrative authority of a bishop and he will even be a voting member of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The second man also followed a call to ministry within his church, and was similarly ordained both a priest and a bishop.  Though I don’t presume to know anything other than what is being reported today, Gabino Zavala apparently also felt called to the intimacy of a marital relationship and family life, and recently revealed that he is the father of two teenage children.  In the current structures of Catholicism, however, the requirement of mandatory celibacy makes all this a big “no, no.” And so, today’s big news is that the Pope has accepted Zavala’s resignation as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The Vatican announcement of this news cites that part of Canon Law (can. 401§2) which allows for the resignation of a bishop prior to the established retirement age of 75 due to ill health or “some other grave cause.”

Putting aside the fact that Bishop Zavala did not live up to the imposed requirement in the Western Church that priests and bishops be celibate, the question remains:  At a substantive, material level, how are these two men really different, and why does the Catholic Church treat them so differently?

Cardinal George Crosses the Line

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At first, one might think that Cardinal Francis George’s uncharitable comparison of the gay rights movement to the Ku Klux Klan was simply an unfortunate, off the cuff comment.  Watch the video of the interview with the local Fox station in which the comment was made, and you might have a different impression.  George is polished man when it comes to media interviews, and both his KKK reference and response to the pointed, followup question seem just a bit too prepped.

What should have been a story about how the LGBT community adjusted the schedule of its annual Pride Parade out of respect for the worshiping community at Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish has since become yet another example of how certain individuals in the Church’s hierarchy will go out of their way to speak ill of gays and lesbians. As Equally Blessed correctly states, the Cardinal’s comment is truly “unworthy of his office.” I would go even further. Such a statement is mean-spirited and damaging, not to mention simply untrue.

In these final days of the Advent Season, Catholics and all Christians look forward to celebrating the birth of Jesus and the presence of the Living God in all creation, especially in each and every person who reflects the image of the Divine.  His Eminence’s hurtful and hateful words tarnish him more than they do those of whom he spoke.

Gay Men Mocking Nuns: UPDATE

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This is an update with related information to my earlier post calling for an end to using Catholic religious women — i.e. sisters and nuns — as fodder for humor and cheap laughs.

  • This promotional review of the performance provides several images of GMCW members dressed like nuns, singing and dancing.
  • And this Washington Post story from earlier this month starts off with a reference to the “dancing nuns” rehearsing.

So, tell me again … why is it funny to make fun of Catholic religious women who have devoted their lives to doing good as nuns and sisters? Granted, many LGBT Catholics have legitimate beefs with the Catholic Church. Many of us feel rejected, unwelcome, and at times even demonized.  But rarely, if ever, did this rejection come from religious women.  In fact, it has been communities of religious sisters who have often stood up to the power of bishops and others and promoted an atmosphere of respect and welcome for gays and lesbians in the Church.  So why is  it funny that we repay them with such mockery?

The answer is, it isn’t.  This isn’t funny, it’s not OK, and it should stop.

Let’s Stop Mocking Religious Women

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So I went to the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington (GMCW) Red & Greene holiday concert last evening.  It was the first of four performances of this annual event here in DC, and usually has a delightful mix of serious and light hearted entertainment. Last night was no exception. I was entertained, I laughed, and was even moved at times.  I’m no drama/theater/music critic, so this isn’t a “review” (if you can go, I recommend going!), but there was one piece last evening which irked me.

Here’s what it was, and here’s why.

Shortly into the second part of the show, the part that is usually more funny and a bit campy, a group of chorus members performed dressed in black habits — the generic habit one sees when someone wants to “dress up as a nun.”  They all had names that were variations of Sister Mary Something — the French accented Sister Mary Antoinette with a large white pompadour; the Latina Sister Mary Juana with … well, you get the picture. The performers were  talented and the parodied lyrics of familiar Christmas songs were certainly clever and witty.

In Catholic parlance, “religious” can be a noun, and “a religious” is a woman or man who takes certain vows, lives in community, and spends her/his life in prayer and service.  Now, even most Catholics would look at last night’s skit and see the humor in it, or at least the intended humor.  But I knew in my gut that I didn’t like it.  Even my companion — a non-Catholic — at one point leaned over and, with a reference to San Francisco’s famous (or infamous) Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, said he never understood why dressing up as nuns was funny.  And, to be blunt, I don’t either.  I found it offensive and sexist.  Religious women (interchangeably referred to as sisters or nuns, though there is a difference) seem to be fair game within the LGBT community when it comes to groups or types of people to make fun of.

You’d think we’d know better.

Just earlier this week I received a Calll It Out alert from HRC seeking support for its very legitimate appeal to ABC about its upcoming show, “Work It.” The premise of that show appears to be that two straight men feel the need to dress up as women in order to get jobs. As HRC puts it, such shows make light of the “very real challenges transgender Americans face,” and it asks supporters to Call It Out, reminding us that transgender people are “worthy of the same dignity that all Americans deserve.”

Actions like this, which challenge us to re-think our received ways of thinking and seeing — especially when it comes to the ways we think of and see others — is what makes me proud of such efforts from within the LGBT community.

Catholic religious women have historically been the unsung heroines of pastoral ministry in the Church (and, I would say, society).  They are the ones who teach and heal and comfort and nurture and care for others each and every day. They typically do so quietly, without much fanfare or recognition. They also are active promoters of Gospel values by seeking social justice, advocating for the poor and the “least among us” by challenging ecclesial, social, and political institutions, often being the voice of those who can’t speak for themselves.

Currently, there are over 55,000 women religious in the US in many and varied ministries, doing good and transforming the world.  Aren’t they also “worthy of the same respect all Americans deserve”?  Let’s stop using these good women as cheap props and easy targets in gay skits, Pride Parades, and drag shows.  They deserve better, and we should know better!

The Right Side of Salvation History

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20111208-110105.jpgDuring her recent and much acclaimed speech in Geneva, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton challenged the world to live up to the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognize the inherent dignity of LGBT people around the globe. In doing so, she shared with her UN colleagues that human rights advocates in the US often call upon political and other leaders to be “on the right side of history” and remember that no good has ever been achieved by a contraction of the rights individuals enjoy in civil society. On the contrary, history bears out that it is only through an expansion of rights to groups previously excluded has progress been made in advancing the goals of equality and justice the 1951 Declaration espouses. Inclusion, not exclusion, has always been the path of progress.

A similar challenge can and should be made to Christian leaders who cite biblical passages out of context or institutional “teachings” limited by time and culture when they take positions against the civil and religious rights of God’s LGBT children. Just as it is possible to be on the wrong side of history, so too it is possible to be on the wrong side of Salvation History.

Generally speaking, the notion of Salvation History rests in the fundamentally Christian belief that God is active in our world. It recognizes the Mystery of the Incarnation in the concrete and sees the Hand of God not as some divine puppeteer pulling the strings in our daily lives, but rather as the presence of the Spirit Whose ways are simultaneously known and unknown, manifest and hidden. We don’t always know what is of God and what is not, but we believe that God is present and at work in all creation.

For those who do believe that every human person is a reflection of the Divine; for we who struggle each day to allow that image and likeness of God within us to be seen more clearly, despite our faults and failings which all too often dull the brightness of that beautiful image, how can we make sense of such labels as “objectively disordered” and other terms describing gay and lesbian people as somehow “less than” their straight sisters and brothers?

The simple, truthful answer is we can’t. The Truth that all people reflect the Image of God and the “teachings” about homosexuality put forth by many Christian communities, including my own Catholic Church, are simply irreconcilable. One perspective will be on the right side of Salvation History, and one will not. I’m putting my nickel on the Truth.

Rush Limbaugh Gets it Wrong — Again!

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According to this Huffington Post piece, Gay Student’s Flamboyant Behavior Blamed For His Murder, that font of wisdom who never fails to express concern for the “least among us,” Rush Limbaugh has apparently declared, “He [murdered student Larry King] was showing up in school dressed as a woman,….  So now a confused 17-year-old is dead because the school [said] ‘Ah, there’s nothing we can do.'”

Limbaugh’s lament is not about the school’s lack of action with the student who pulled the trigger.  No, it’s about the school’s “failure” to make the murdered student dress in a way that ensured he fit in with all the other kids, like a good, “normal” boy should

Well, Rush, you got it wrong again! I don’t care if he was showing up at school wearing a plastic bag, a Superman outfit, or something from RuPaul’s closet!  The “confused” student in this case is not the one who was murdered, but the one who — apparently influenced by his association with neo-Nazis, his devotion to Hitler, and his heterosexual parents addicted to illegal drugs and violence —  seemed not to know that murder is murder is murder. He seemed not to know that there is absolutely no justification for one student to bring a loaded weapon into school and and to execute a fellow student, as Brandon McInerney apparently did.

I pray that the family of Larry King will find comfort, and that Brandon will get the help he needs to rid his mind and heart of the hate into which he apparently has been indoctrinated.

What do Straight Catholic Priests think about the new Anglican Ordinariate?

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By now everyone is probably aware that the doors of the Roman Catholic Church have been opened widely to those disaffected members and the Anglican Communion who seek communion with Rome. Such disaffection usually has to do with the ordination or women and more open attitudes toward gays and lesbians in some branches of Anglicanism. Whether as individuals or even as entire parishes and communities, Rome has put in place processes and structures by which Anglicans (Episcopalians in the US) can enter the Catholic Church, often keeping in place many of the traditions and practices they bring from their Anglican heritage.

On its face, this would seem like a gracious thing to do. It was back in 1980 when Pope John Paul II granted a special “Pastoral Provision” allowing clergy from the Anglican Communion to become Catholic and continue to exercise their priestly ministry.  The difference with this new provision was (and remains) that if married, such clergy would obviously remain married — thus creating a married Catholic priesthood. At the time, I was surprised that there wasn’t more of an outcry from Catholic priests who had made the difficult choice between marriage and priesthood.  After all, the Church has always thought of both as vocations, both sacramental, and not mutually exclusive.  Though complex, the rationale of mandatory celibacy in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church has largely been rooted in matters of order and church discipline. Yes, there have been countless attempts to spiritualize this requirement, but mandatory celibacy for non-monastic clergy in the Roman Rite has sometimes been called a discipline in search of a theology.

More recently, this open door policy has been expanded not just to individuals, but to entire Anglican parishes.  Benedict XVI’s apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus (2009) established the norms and procedures for this en masse “swimming the Tiber” to take place.

And so we come to the most recent meeting of the US Bishops held in Baltimore Nov. 14-16, 2011.  There, it was announced that the Anglican Ordinariate, as it is known, would be implemented in the US on January 1, 2012.  Washington’s Cardinal Donad Wuerl heads up the US bishops’ efforts to welcome former Anglican groups, while Bishop Kevin Vann of Fort Worth, TX takes over as the “Ecclesiastical Delegate” for the 1980 Pastoral Provision process.

So, my question is this:  What do men who were raised Catholic and who feel called both to priesthood and marriage have to say about all this? We certainly know that priests were not consulted before either of these provisions were announced, but one would expect that some priest or group of priests would at least raise to the bishops questions about the fundamental fairness of this very unequal treatment.  I can find nothing from a “policy perspective” on the website for the National Federation of Priests’ Councils, nor can I even find a website for a recently announced new Association of U.S. Catholic Priests.  So, what do straight Catholic priests think of all this? Anyone??

Abp Dolan: “Conversion of hearts, not calls to action”

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This direct quote from his presidential address to the current meeting of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) struck me like a knife. In a litany of descriptions about the essence and mission of the Church, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York said that the Church’s focus should be on what “Jesus prefers,” namely “conversion of hearts, not calls to action.”

The not-so-subtle critique of Call To Action notwithstanding, Dolan’s words are hard to understand. In an address that one would expect to be unifying those from all points of the Catholic spectrum, is this not a direct self-contradiction? Is not the life of Christ and His followers one that should continually seek both conversion of heart and the Gospel call to live out its mandates in daily action? Is not the Gospel in action evidence itself of the converted heart, or rather, the heart in the midst of ongoing conversion?

Here’s the full paragraph in which this statement was made:

“Our urgent task to reclaim “love of Jesus and His Church as the passion of our lives” summons us not into ourselves but to Our Lord.Jesus prefers prophets, not programs; saints, not solutions; conversion of hearts, not calls to action; prayer, not protests: Verbum Dei rather than our verbage.”

Daniel Avila Resigns from USCCB

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Apparently in response to his outrageous commentary printed last week in which he claimed that “the evil one” must be responsible for same-sex attraction, USCCB policy advisor Daniel Avila is reported to have resigned from his high-level position with the nation’s bishops.

There’s no announcement yet on the USCCB web site, but it will be interesting to see (1) if  it’s announced in writing, and (2) what reason is given.

My 5 Minutes of Fame — ADHD Awareness Week 2011

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Interview with Fox 5 for ADHD Awareness Week

In my job as the director of the National Resource Center on ADHD (NRC) at CHADD, I’m usually a behind-the-scenes kinda guy.  Last week (Oct. 16-22) was ADHD Awareness Week and the sponsoring organizations — including both CHADD and the NRC — were called upon by various media to do interviews, including ones that answer questions about recently updated guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics on the evaluation, diagnosis and treatment of ADHD for kids age 4-18.  My boss, Ruth Hughes, would normally have done this interview with DC’s local Fox affiliate, but a scheduling conflict made that impossible. So, here’s my 5 minutes of on-air fame, captured for perpetuity!