With so many qualifiers available to place before “Christian,” one wonders if Jesus’ prayer that “they all may be one” (Jn. 17) will ever be realized, this side of the parousia. Though these days may get little attention in the wider world, it’s good that many Churches, including the Roman Catholic Church, continue to observe this special octave of prayer. (Catholic Resources for 2007)

A new link to a grassroots Catholic organization: Fortunate Families: Catholic Families with Lesbian Daughters and Gay Sons.

New Orleans Archbishop Alfred Hughes has written a social justice document that Catholics can be proud of: Made in the Image and Likeness of God: A Pastoral Letter on Racial Harmony. I like the title, too!

(Then-Fr. Hughes was a spiritual director on the faculty of Boston’s St. John’s Seminary when I began my studies there in 1981.)

On the First Sunday of Advent this year, the Always Our Children (AOC) ministry of St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, DC sponsored a meeting entitled, “Catholic and Homosexual: Is There a Place in the Church for Me?” Named after an earlier pastoral letter by the U.S. Bishops directed toward parents of homosexual children, this AOC ministry is one of the few that continues to attempt to meet the needs of gay and lesbian Catholics in the nation’s capital.

Given the Church’s official pronouncements about gay men and women in recent years, the question — “Is there a place for me in the Church?” — is at least an honest one. Ever since the Ratzinger-directed shift to the right in Catholic magisterial pronouncements, especially with the Vatican’s 1986 pastoral document on ministry to homosexual persons, offical Catholicism has put forth statements causing gay Catholics to ponder this question more and more: Do I really belong here? Are the doors of the Church open to me and am I welcome in this community of faith and at the Lord’s Table?

Msgr. Richard Burton (yes, his real name!) began the gathering at St. Matthew’s by giving an overview of the U.S. Bishops’ most recent document on “Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination,” noting that the bishops end their statement with a section entitled, “Concluding Remarks: A Respectful Dialogue.” I was pleased and grateful that the Cathedral parish in our nation’s capital had the courage to host such a gathering, which Msgr. Burton considered to be a “semi-private dialogue.”

In their conclusion the bishops note: “At the same time, it is important that Church ministers listen to the experiences, needs, and hopes of the persons with a homosexual inclination to whom and with whom they minister” [emphasis added]. Noting that, “Dialogue provides an exchange of information, and also communicates a respect for the innate dignity of other persons and a respect for their consciences,” I’m sure I’m not alone in looking forward to the bishops themselves participating in such dialogues in the future.

Have you ever had someone spit at you? I don’t just mean “toward” you, and I don’t mean on the playground in third grade. I mean as an adult, has anyone ever actually spat in your face?

That’s what happened to me yesterday on my way home through Capitol Hill. An unpleasant encounter with a taxicab driver ended with him spitting at me through the open drivers-side windows of both our vehicles.

He quickly sped off, leaving me shocked, angered and wanting to lash back at him. I called the cab company and the DC taxicab commission and followed with what formal avenues were open to me, but what I continue to be struck by the extreme level of anger that this incident brought about. I wasn’t just angry, and I wasn’g just really, really angry… I was ANGRY!!!

As I sad quietly in my bedroom later last night, trying to calm down and think through why I was reacting in such an extreme way, I kept thinking about what the US Catholic bishops did earlier this week in approving new guidelines for those ministering to gay people. It occurred to me that what happened with the cab driver was actually the second time I had been spat upon in as many days — the bishops and their so-called guidelines for pastoral care having done it the first time.

These guidelines continue to move the official teaching of the Catholic church further and further away from the more moderate approach taken by the official church over the past forty years. The bishops have embraced language that is out of sync with the rest of the sciences in refusing to use the term “orientation” and instead speaking of “homosexual inclination.” I’m not sure what inclination actually means here, but it certainly doesn’t convey the meaning that the rest of science has come to understand by orientation, namely an inherent (I would say God-given) and unchanging quality or characteristic at the very core of one’s identity as a person.

The Vatican exerted pressure on the government of Israel earlier this week by condemning a scheduled Gay Pride event. The Vatican’s communique to Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs began as follows: “The Holy See has reiterated on many occasions that the right to freedom of expression, sanctioned by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is subject to just limits, in particular when the exercise of this right would offend the religious sentiments of believers.”

The Holy See was expressing concern that such a demonstration would be an affront to the religious values of Jews, Muslims, and Christians for whom Jerusalem is a sacred, holy city.

What the Vatican fails to recognize, however, is that the gay men and women who would be demonstrating to express pride in their God-given identity are, most likely, themselves faithful Jews, Muslims, and Christians. The fact that their co-religionists betray their own Faiths by condemning a whole group of God’s children does not give the “religious sentiments” of these particular believers more significance than the views of their gay brothers and sisters.

Dear Mr. Solmonese,

I know that part of your job and the job of your media/communications staff is to put the best possible spin on things political, but when I read the subject of this email communication [HRC’s post-election listserv email exlaiming, “We did it!”], all I could think of was George W. Bush’s pronouncement, “Mission Accomplished!”

“We did it!”?? What, exactly, did we do? Yes, from a standpoint of partisan politics, the results of congressional elections are good for the Democratic party. Certainly the election of public officials who are on record supporting the advancement of those rights which gay men and women have so long been denied is also a good, dare I say hopeful, sign. But while the elected can celebrate, as a gay man I see precious little to celebrate when four more states (and perhaps five) have voted strongly to ban “same-sex marriage” in one form or another.

This means that the majority of voters in these states have come out and publicly stated that they believe gay men and women do not deserve the rights of heterosexuals. This means that the lives of gay men and women in these four states are worse today than they were yesterday. This means that as a community, we have such a long road ahead of us to change the hearts and minds of many who would rather, to be frank, see a world in which gay people did not exist.

Am I wrong to think that the HRC exists not for the advancement of one political party over another, but rather for the advancement of the rights of gay and lesbian people, regardless of other factors? I hope that your pronouncement of victory will result in concrete measures in the next Congress that clearly and practically improve the lives of gay men and women throughout country. Failing that, perhaps the HRC needs to re-consider its methods and strategies. To my way of thinking, this does come down to a matter of hearts and minds. A “fair-minded Congress” will naturally be the result of a “fair minded electorate” who believe that gay men and women are just as equal before the law as all other persons.

Best wishes.

Timothy MacGeorge Washington, DC

Why is my church so afraid of the Truth?

Both the Catholic and secular press are carrying stories these days about the proposed document that the US Bishops will discuss and vote on during their upcoming meeting in Baltimore. The document on “ministry to persons with a homosexual inclination” apparently reiterates the tired phrases (“disordered”) and self-contradictory logic (a homosexual inclination is not in itself sinful [which must mean it’s either morally good or morally neutral, right?] but acting on this morally good or neutral inclination is sinful) that has become standard fare in these official pronouncements.

What is most disturbing — yet not surprising — is that the document has precious little in terms of external input. Where was the consultation with real-life gay men and women? Were any openly gay people asked what their thoughts on the topic might be? Where was the discussion with other fields of science — psychology, medicine, sociology, anthropology — that might just have something to say about homosexuality?

If the bishops are so certain of their views on this topic, then what would be so wrong with actually engaging gay and lesbian people in conversation? Wouldn’t that be the truly pastoral thing to do — to engage, to encounter, to listen with respect and speak with confidence? Their failure to engage, however, is unfortunately just a sign of the weakness of their teaching and will, in the end, lead to its being relegated to that closet that countless thousands of gay Catholics have happily left behind.

Dear Bishops Loverde and DiLorenzo,

I am not a resident of Virginia, so perhaps my thoughts will be of little concern to you. However, as a resident of the District of Columbia, a parishioner in the Archdiocese of Washington, and an ordained priest, I am writing to share with you my extreme disappointment that you and the Catholic Conference of Virginia have taken on the proposed amendment to the Virginia state constitution that would effectively ban same-sex marriage. Your position has received much media coverage (cf. Va. Bishops Push Voters on Ban), and so my letter is an attempt to share with you the perspective of someone who is fully Catholic and fully opposed to your position.

I am confident that in time, the Church will come to regret its formal teachings that have condemned gay men and women in so many ways, even to the point of using terms that undermine gay and lesbian people as children of God. As an institution that moves ever so slowly (consider, for example, how many centuries it took for the “official church” to remove its condemnations of Copernicus and Galileo for stating the truth that the earth revolved around the sun), I am saddened that this change will probably not come in my lifetime.

However, when Church leaders move from the realm of the ecclesial into the public square and use their ill-founded understandings of sacred scripture, history, sociology and psychology to perpetuate myths, misunderstandings and even hatred, I feel I must speak out. Rather than identifying each and every item in your letter that “misses the mark,” I pose to you a very simple question: Do you believe that God’s children — including God’s gay and lesbian children — are created “in the image and likeness of God”? Is your answer to this question an unconditional “Yes!,” or is it a lukewarm, “yes, but….”? If and when you fully embrace the core teaching of Christianity that we are all gifted with the goodness of human dignity, then you will begin to see how far your “teaching” is off-base.

There are many resources available that more fully express a Catholic and Christian understanding of the issues involved. Here are two of the best:
Dignity/USA-Frequently Asked Questions
SoulForce
I hope you will thoughtfully and prayerfully avail yourselves of these resources.

Please be assured of my prayers for you and your ministry. In particular, I will pray that God give you an abundance of His Spirit to help open your eyes — just as Jesus opened the eyes of Bartimaeus — to the humanity and fundamental goodness of all God’s children, including those whom God has created gay and lesbian.

Pax et bonum!

Timothy MacGeorge, M.Div., MSW
Washington, DC

Sometimes I think that American culture is sorely lacking in integrity. According to Webster, integrity is “firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic value.” A person with integrity has a high degree of consistency between the values he/she claims to embrace and the actions or behaviors in which he/she engages.

Values — whether moral or artistic — are expressed in a whole variety of ways. One of these is the way we choose to spend our time and our money. Take entertainment, for instance — especially the kind that requires a little cash. The books we buy, the music we purchase, the big-screen movies we watch — in some way these are all expressions of our individual and collective values. If that’s the case, then what are we to make of the fact that this past weekend, the biggest box-office hit was a movie (“Saw III”) whose director was thrilled that the gratuitous violence and bloodsheed actually caused one viewer to vomit?

I ask this question particularly in light of the claim of those “on the right” (especially the “religous right) that Americans en masse embrace “family values,” want to “protect children,” and that our’s is a “Christian culture”?

I wonder how many American families first went to church yesterday morning and then headed to the theaters in the afternoon? Given the price of admission these days, they probably doled out more for the blood and gore of “Saw III” than they put in the collection basket. For many churches, yesterday’s main scripture reading was the story of Jesus’ healing Bartimaeus, the “man born blind.” I suppose many among us would prefer to see people being violently blinded or otherwise bloodied, maimed and tortured instead of listening to and taking to heart the call of Jesus to serve others and be a healing presence in a world already terribly bloodied, blind and broken.