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Pride and Prejudice: The uneasy relationship between gays and lesbians and their church

By editor on February 21, 2012 9:22 am in Features / 3 comments

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On a clear, windy Sunday in March 2010, Father William Breslin told his parishioners at Sacred Heart of Jesus in Boulder, Colorado why the parish school would not re-enroll a child of same-sex parents for the coming school year.

“I hate the fact that I had to make a choice between being loving and protecting the teachings of the church,” Breslin told Mass-goers. “The lesbian couple is saying that their relationship is a good one that should be accepted by everyone; and the church cannot agree to that.” Breslin added that he saw ample love all around Boulder, but “a scarcity of discipleship. . . . I chose to protect the faith over doing what would have looked like the loving thing to do.”

In the pews, Shawn Reynolds, a gay parishioner, remembers that he shut down during the homily. He left at communion and hasn’t returned. “Pastors are supposed to tend to the flock, not disperse them,” he says.

Incidents like this one lead some gay and lesbian Catholics to wonder if there’s a future for them in today’s Catholic Church. The past decade has brought a number of disappointments to these Catholics, who had hoped for greater acceptance and a greater emphasis on love.

They point to the U.S. bishops’ 1997 document Always Our Children, comparing it to what has been understood as the harder line of a 2006 document, Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination. They find other evidence of the church’s harsh official position in the prohibition in 1987 of DignityUSA (the oldest advocacy organization for gay and lesbian Catholics) from meeting on church property and the 2006 Vatican decision that gay men called to the priesthood would face greater barriers.

Arthur Fitzmaurice, who has been active in gay ministry in the Los Angeles area and is on the board of the Catholic Association for Lesbian and Gay Ministry (CALGM), sees the messages from the bishops as unbalanced and unhelpful. “Being gay has been a gift from God,” he says. “Neither they nor I can put down what God has given me. But the bishops’ silence or negative rhetoric is driving people away.”

The gulf between the bishops and gay and lesbian Catholics plays out most starkly in the battle over same-sex marriage, the most prominent gay rights issue in the United States today. [more]

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US Catholic

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3 Comments

James Francis says:

February 21, 2012 at 7:21 pm

Lets put the cards on the table. The Gays demand that they be allowed to marry. In the secular world they have won and gotton the liberal Politicians and some conservatives to vote for them to keep their jobs. Liberals will sell out their mother to keep their jobs. The Bishops are the defenders of the faith and will not sell out God,or the commandments, An Alcholic who insists that he/she can drink Alcohol like normal people and demands this as their wright, either kill themselves, or accepts that they have a defect within themselves that for what ever reason, they cannot drink Alcohol. This defect is not a badness or makes them less of a person. They accept it and more on. They are equally loved by God as all people who drink Alcolol. God said that marriage is between a man and a women…The world and all religions throughout the ages have accepted this. The Bishops cannot change this because we in America are presured to do what is Politically corect. Jesus loved everyone but spoke about sin, he didn’t say that because I love you, I give you permission to sin and that’s what the Gay’s are insisting. If you love me you will condone and let me marry and in our eyes, be equal with you. No. I have two relitives that are gay. As persons I loved them deeply, but I do not believe they have the wright to marry another gay person.

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John says:

February 21, 2012 at 3:34 pm

To tell someone that love is more important that morality and living a properly ordered life entraps themselves in believing they are not accountable for their own actions. The church is clear that an active homosexual relationship, regardless of how much love is involved, is sterile.

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Richard Andrew says:

February 21, 2012 at 12:26 pm

Love and discipline: we need both. Liberals and progressives tend to want all the love without the discipline, whereas many conservatives harp on the discipline at the expense of the love.

People often invoke Jesus Himself as the prime example of love and tolerance, and yet that same Jesus told the adulterous woman to “go and sin no more” (John 8:11); He told the rich young ruler to “go and sell all that you have, give the money to the poor, and follow Me” (Matthew 19:16-30), the man didn’t do so but went away full of sorrow; when Jesus gave very explicit teaching about the Eucharist, that we must “eat My flesh and drink My blood” many of His disciples forsook Him (John 6:35-69). Jesus Himself did not stop them, nor did He mollify His words to satisfy those who didn’t like what they heard.

Of course, love is necessary for “God is love” (I John 4:8); nevertheless, discipline is also necessary for the Way is narrow and difficult, and there are few who find it (Matthew 7:13-14). We cannot call ourselves Christians and then proceed to live our lives in any way that we choose.

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