Tag Archives: Catholic

Minnesota Progressive Catholics

Catholic Coalition for Church Reform

Australian born Michael Bayly is a leading spokesman for the local (Minnesota) gay Christian community. He serves as the executive coordinator of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM), the editor of The Progressive Catholic Voice, and co-chair of the Minnesota-based Catholic Coalition for Church Reform (CCCR). Earlier this year when an international group of progressive Catholic bloggers decided to collaborate on a new blog called Open Tabernacle, a pair of Minnesotans, Michael and I, were invited to participate.

From the CCCR website:

We are the Church. In our understanding of Church, all the baptized are one big community of smaller communities, we are all equal, we all participate in different ministries (lay, clergy, bishop), we communicate with one another, and we share a vision and a self-critique. The five words we have been using to summarize this model of Church are community, equality, participation, dialogue, and prophecy. It is a model arising out of Vatican II and seems to us most in line with the Gospel message. It has been promulgated by the Asian bishops and it also fits well with the positive values of our U.S. culture.

Dignity Twin Cities

Formed in 1969, the same year that the gay rights movement was born in the Stonewall riots of Greenwich Village, Dignity USA continues as the leading LGBT advocacy group within American Roman Catholicism. Here is their vision statement:

DignityUSA envisions and works for a time when Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Catholics are affirmed and experience dignity through the integration of their spirituality with their sexuality, and as beloved persons of God participate fully in all aspects of life within the Church and Society.

A local chapter, Dignity Twin Cities, was formed in 1974. Initially accepted by the local Catholic hierarchy, the organization was eventually booted out of Catholic property and now holds its liturgies and meetings at Prospect Park United Methodist Church. The Rainbow Sash movement is associated with Dignity. The current president of Dignity Twin Cities is Brian McNeill.

Womenpriests

The Roman Catholic Womenpriest movement is small but energized, and I have blogged previously about the women who challenge the patriarchal Catholic hierarchy at the cost of excommunication (here and here).

Roman Catholic Womenpriests reject the penalty of excommunication issued by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith on May 29, 2008 stating that the women priests and the bishops who ordain them would be excommunicated latae sententiae.” Roman Catholic Womenpriests are loyal members of the church who stand in the prophetic tradition of holy obedience to the Spirit’s call to change an unjust law that discriminates against women. Our movement is receiving enthusiastic responses on the local, national and international level. We will continue to serve our beloved church in a renewed priestly ministry that welcomes all to celebrate the sacraments in inclusive, Christ-centered, Spirit-empowered communities wherever we are called.

Bishop Regina Nicolosi of Red Wing, Minnesota is a leader of the national Womenpriest movement.

Regina Nicolosi, MA, was born in a small town on the Rhine River. She was a teacher in Germany. 1969 she came to the USA to marry the love of her life, Charles, a radiologist and deacon. Together they raised four children, one of them from Colombia and one from Korea. Regina participated fully in Charles’ preparation to the diaconate. She earned her Masters Degree in Pastoral Studies. Regina has worked as a housing manager for seniors, as a chaplain in a correctional facility for boys, in a drug and alcohol recovery unit and in a nursing home. She is retired now. She helps prepare women for ordination and celebrates Eucharist with Dignity and other small faith-communities.

On Thursday, June 24th, I met Michael, Brian, Bishop Regina and other leaders of the progressive Catholic movement in Minnesota at a gay pride mass held in south Minneapolis. Following the liturgy, I was honored to be the guest speaker at this gathering of committed, Catholic, Christians. Michael’s personal blog reports on the events of the evening in his post entitled LGBT Catholics Celebrate Being “Wonderfully Made”. Click on the link to Michael’s blog for many pictures and Michael’s excellent reporting of this event.

From left to right: Art Stroebl (event coordinator), Obie Holmen, Brian McNeill, Michael Bayly.

Author appearances and advocacy

Regular followers of this blog know that I haven’t posted much lately, and that’s because I have been on the road promoting my novel, A Wretched Man. Most recently, I spent four days with the Wisconsin Annual Conference of the United Methodists (UMC) in La Crosse. I managed to sell a goodly number of books and network with numerous congregations and organizations that may use my book for an adult forum or book club discussion. The study guide that I prepared as a pdf document proved to be quite popular.

The trip to La Crosse had an unintended benefit: my exhibitor’s booth was placed next to Kairos CoMotion, an LGBT advocacy group within the Wisconsin UMC, and I had plenty of time to visit with Jim and Steve, a gay couple who have been together for many years and who were married in Toronto four years ago. Steve has long been an LGBT leader and spokesman within the Wisconsin UMC following his rejection for admission to a UMC seminary because he was gay. At the conclusion of the convention, I accompanied Jim and Steve to a meeting and communion service for the Kairos CoMotion supporters. I hope to post more about this group and the status of LGBT issues within the Wisconsin UMC later.

Switching from past book-related appearances to future ones, I note that in yesterday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper, I was lumped together with a couple of heavy hitters of progressive Catholicism under the header “Controversial Roman Catholic speakers are coming to Twin Cities.”

First on the scene is author Obie Holmen, who will be reading from his new book, “A Wretched Man,” Thursday at the House of the Beloved Disciple, 4001 38th Av. S., Minneapolis. The reading will be preceded by a 7 p.m. “mass of celebration for our LGBT brothers and sisters.”

I must smile at the article headline since I am not Roman Catholic nor do I think my support for the majority position of the ELCA on this blog qualifies me as “controversial”. But any press is good press, as they say, and to be linked with luminaries of Roman Catholic progressive thought such as British theologian James Alison and feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether is flattering.

Early in July, the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) will hold its national, General Assembly in Minneapolis. Cokesbury functions as the official booksellers for the Presbyterians, and their bookstore will offer my book for sale during the weeklong Presbyterian assembly that promises up to 8,000 attendees. On Monday, July 5th, at 2:30 pm, I will be present in the Cokesbury bookstore at the assembly to autograph copies of the novel.

Finally, Lutherans Concerned North America (the ELCA gay advocacy group) will hold its biennial convention in Minneapolis beginning July 7th. The theme of the gathering will be Let Justice Roll Down Like Waters. On Saturday morning, July 10th at 8:30 am, I will present a workshop entitled “Paul the Apostle–History’s Greatest Homophobe?” The LCNA convention will close with a celebration dinner back at the Minneapolis Convention Center (after the PCUSA clears out) to remember and relive the historic vote in that venue last August.

On the evening of Saturday, July 10, we are having a night on the town! We will head over to downtown Minneapolis to revisit the historic place where the ELCA voted for full-participation of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. It’s appropriate to revisit the site. Many people said that celebration felt “stuck in their throats”. We hope that we will be able to clear our throats and cheer with joy. It will be an evening of reconciliation, celebration, and defining our path moving forward.

Busy. Busy. Busy. But also extremely rewarding. Hope to see you along the way.

Blog posts I didn’t write

As a blogger, I spend more time reading others posts than writing my own. This page contains links to recent posts from the blogs I follow.

[recreading items=15].

Catholic patriarchs counterattack

The papacy is under siege as allegations mount of Benedict’s complicity in the priestly sexual abuse coverups of prior decades. Should we be surprised at the circle-the-wagons response of the patriarchy? It is merely a conspiracy of the liberal press, says one spokesman. Blame the Jews, says another. And now the Vatican’s number two, Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, scapegoats the gays:

“there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true,” said Bertone. “That is the problem.”

The “deputy pope” missed the irony that his comments made in Santiago, Chile overlooked the notorious local case of a priest preying upon girls and young women, impregnating one. Irish blogger, Colm O’Gorman, blasts Bertone:

But to suggest that homosexuality is to blame for paedophilia is deceitful and vile. To blame an already marginalised section of society for the crimes of child rapists is a contemptible act which further reinforces homophobia and hatred and grants permission to bigotry and violence.

It is also a blatant deceit. It is true that the majority of victims of abusing priests are male children and teenagers. But by no means are all. And even so, we don’t describe sexual offenders who target girl children as heterosexual offenders, we describe them as paedophiles. The gender of the victim does not make the abuse either heterosexual or homosexual and many abusers target children of both sexes.

It is time to dust off an earlier post from this blog dated November 20th, 2009 entitled NEWS FLASH: GALILEO ARRESTED which reported the preliminary findings of the study commissioned by the American Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops to investigate the causes of priestly sexual abuse, which suggested “the idea of sexual identity be separated from the problem of sexual abuse. At this point, we do not find a connection between homosexual identity and the increased likelihood of subsequent abuse from the data that we have right now.”

I reprint below the entire post which first appeared here late last fall.

Copernicus expressed the view that the earth circled around the sun and not vice versa. The 17th century astronomer Galileo Galilei agreed:

Galileo’s championing of Copernicanism was controversial within his lifetime, when a large majority of philosophers and astronomers still subscribed (at least outwardly) to the geocentric view that the Earth is at the centre of the universe. After 1610, when he began publicly supporting the heliocentric view, which placed the Sun at the centre of the universe, he met with bitter opposition from some philosophers and clerics, and two of the latter eventually denounced him to the Roman Inquisition early in 1615. Although he was cleared of any offence at that time, the Catholic Church nevertheless condemned heliocentrism as “false and contrary to Scripture” in February 1616,and Galileo was warned to abandon his support for it—which he promised to do. When he later defended his views in his most famous work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632, he was tried by the Inquisition, found “vehemently suspect of heresy,” forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.

When the Catholic Church of the twentieth century experienced a crisis of priest sexual predation, homosexuals were scapegoated. According to Thomas C Fox, editor of National Catholic Reporter:

It has been so unfair. Elements in our Catholic community have repeatedly placed the blame of the sex abuse scandal that has rocked our church at the feet of a gay clergy.

It has been a case of guilty until proven innocent.

But wait, a new scientific study commissioned by US Catholic Bishops and conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice researchers reports a contrary view:

The study, which is due to be completed next year, was commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops after the scandal overtook the U.S. church in 2002.

In a presentation to the bishops on Tuesday, Margaret Smith of John Jay said: “What we are suggesting is that the idea of sexual identity be separated from the problem of sexual abuse. At this point, we do not find a connection between homosexual identity and the increased likelihood of subsequent abuse from the data that we have right now.”

Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of the gay Catholic group DignityUSA, called the report “very welcome news for gay people, gay priests, and our families and friends.”

She said the John Jay report confirms other studies in concluding that sexual orientation is not connected to pedophilia or other sex crimes. “We hope that the hierarchy of the Catholic Church will finally accept this finding, since it has been borne out through their own study,” Duddy-Burke said.

Surely, the bishops will accept this scientific finding. Surely, the church will promptly and expeditiously exonerate Galileo. Or not, as progressive Catholic blogger Terence Weldon suggests:

The fact that this report confirms what the rest of the world knows [i.e., that homosexuality is not a factor in the cases of abusive priests], is welcome, but not earth-shattering. Don’t hold your breath for the bishops to announce that they accept the report, or will act on this finding, or even for them to release the full report when it has been concluded.

The real causes of the problem lie within the church’s own structures, as numerous observers have noted: the appalling monopoly and abuse of power, compulsory clerical celibacy, and a deeply flawed, seminary based training system that is a hangover from the Middle Ages, leaving priests with minimal understanding of human sexuality, their own or anyone else’s.(Reports elsewhere state that this same interim John Jay report concludes that priests with the better training in human sexuality were the least likely to offend).

The naysayers within the hierarchy were quick to dismiss the scientific report, according to Beliefnet News:

“I wouldn’t put a lot of credence in it,” said Archbishop John Nienstedt of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

After the abuse crisis rocked the church in 2002, Nienstedt helped lead a Vatican investigation of U.S. seminaries aimed at rooting out homosexuality, and served on a committee that drew up new sex abuse prevention policies for U.S. dioceses. He has also written that homosexual orientation is the result of childhood trauma.

And blogger Mark Silk adds:

[Nienstedt promoted] the idea being that if you got rid of the gays, the abuse would stop. Not that Nienstedt doesn’t have a fall-back position; to wit: “a priest has to be accessible to all his people, and someone with a strong same-sex attraction would not be good to have in the pastoral care of people.” As opposed to a priest with a strong opposite-sex attraction?

The bishops’ problem with the John Jay study goes beyond Nienstedt’s species of homophobia, however. If, as the study suggests, sexual abuse by priests is the result of not homosexual orientation but the availability of certain types of people (i.e. altar boys), then someone might be led to the conclusion that clerical celibacy is a big part of the problem. The horror, the horror!

A Roman Catholic emergency synod of Bishops?

The media and the blogosphere exploded last week with news that the cancerous clergy sexual abuse crisis and its coverup may have reached deep into the bowels of the Vatican. Was the pope himself, in his prior leadership role as Archbishop, complicit in the coverup of abuse of a German pedophile priest? Later, as Cardinal Ratzinger and head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, did he ignore or coverup memos of abuse complaints?

In response, the Vatican churns out press releases suggesting all the problems are ancient history and that the Roman Catholic hierarchy is currently achieving renewed levels of trust. The following comes from a press release from the Director of the Vatican press office dated March 27th and reprinted from the National Catholic Reporter blog:

The truth is that the cases that have come to public attention generally took place some time ago, even decades ago, although recognising them and making amends with the victims is the best way to restore justice and to achieve that ‘purification of memory’ which enables us to look to the future with renewed commitment, with humility and trust.

A contribution to this trust comes from the many positive signals emerging from various episcopal conferences, bishops and Catholic institutions in different countries on the various continents: directives for the correct handling and prevention of abuses, which have been reiterated, updated and renewed in Germany , Austria , Australia , Canada etc.

Other spokesmen for the Roman Catholic patriarchy offer a conspiracy theory that blames the liberal media, as reported by the Guardian of London:

At last, one of Pope Benedict’s closest aides uses the word “conspiracy” in relation to the systematic global cover-up of child abuse by paedophile Catholic priests. Unfortunately, Cardinal José Saraiva Martins believes the conspiracy is against the Catholic church, which is its victim.

But there may be a stirring in the lower levels of the patriarchy as a rumbling is rising amongst the episcopate for a special synod, a gathering of bishops from around the world to deal with a problem that seems increasingly beyond the power of the Vatican to control. As reported by John Phillips and reprinted in the progressive Catholic blog, Englightened Catholicism:

Many bishops have let it be known they want Benedict to convene a special synod or worldwide conference of bishops to examine the problem because of a growing feeling that the Vatican cannot handle this.

Yet to be seen is whether the Vatican hierarchy or a more democratic episcopacy will deal honestly with systemic problems such as a patriarchal, males-only priesthood, mandatory celibacy, secrecy, or the institutional, top-down, manipulative hierarchy itself. Or, as many fear, will this crisis be seen as merely one of public relations?

Crumbling Roman Catholic patriarchy

The patriarchy of Roman Catholicism, even the papacy itself, is under siege.

The sex abuse revelations that shook the foundations of American Catholicism in the last decade have reached Europe, first in Ireland, then Germany (implicating the brother of the pope), and today the headlines in newspapers around the world proclaim complicity of the pope himself in covering up the sordid history of abuse on the part of a Wisconsin priest.

In the US, the Council of Bishops stood against the health care legislation that has become the law of the land even as American nuns championed the cause of reform. A small group of Catholic women are inviting excommunication by challenging male only ordination with their own bishops ordaining females in highly public and visible ceremonies. An influential Cardinal has publicly questioned the institution of a celibate priesthood.

Progressive Catholic voices rise. Progressive Catholic organizations such as Voice of the Faithful and Call to Action dare to challenge orthodoxy.

Against this backdrop comes an open letter from Father John J McNeill, not merely a voice for gay rights in the church, but perhaps the voice. I have previously blogged about the lengthy history of Father’s McNeill’s advocacy and the important role he and his writings have played in LGBT equality issues of the last generation. Now, in his open letter to the pope and the entire patriarchal hierarchy, his prophetic voice once again rings clear as he speaks truth to power. His letter, reprinted below in its entirety (with a hat tip to Open Tabernacle blog), is nothing less than a warning that what is presently at stake is the very moral authority of the papacy.

Open Letter to Pope Benedict XVI

In my three areas of expertise; spirituality, psychotherapy and theology, I am aware of a desperate need for spiritual transformation in the culture, the nation, and the Church. I will do my best to make a contribution to that need from my perspective as an older man with many years of involved experience.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

An Open Letter to Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Levada, Cardinal George and all Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in the World on the Issue of Homosexuality:

My initial open letter of November 2000 was addressed to the American Bishops at their annual conference. In the past ten-plus years, the contents of the letter have taken on greater relevance and force in the light of new scientific discoveries concerning the nature of homosexual orientation and the psychological and spiritual needs of GLBT people, as well as recent statements from the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching authority out of touch with those discoveries.

As a result, I would like to readdress the letter to the following: Pope Benedict XVI; Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF); Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and his fellow American bishops and, finally, to all the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in the world.

Catholic gay and lesbian people demand that, if the Church wants to be seen as their loving mother, mediating to us God’s unconditional love, the Church has no choice except to enter into dialogue with its gay members. In 1974, the delegates of DignityUSA’s first national convention requested in a letter that a dialogue be opened between the American bishops and the members of the Catholic gay and lesbian community. With very few exceptions that letter was ignored.

Now, 38 years later, once again in the name of my Catholic lesbian siters and gay brothers I call for open dialogue. For over 38 years, I have ministered as priest and psychotherapist to lesbians and gays. I helped found Dignity/New York to provide a safe and loving community within the Catholic Church for gay people. For over 33 years, I have given retreats for lesbians and gays at Kirkridge, an ecumenical retreat center. I have written four books on gay spirituality: The Church and the Homosexual, Taking a Chance on God, Freedom, Glorious Freedom and Sex: As God Intended: A Study of Human Sexuality As Play. I also published an autobiography on my own spiritual journey as a gay priest.

As a result of my experience, I have come to the conclusion that what is at stake at this point in time is not only the spiritual and psychological health of many gay and lesbian Catholics and other lesbian and gay Christians. What is at stake is your moral authority to teach on the issue of homosexuality. In the past, when you undertook a listening process to hear what the Holy Spirit was saying through the People of God, you won our respect. We respected you when you made your statements on the economy, on nuclear warfare and, especially, your aborted effort to draw up a letter on the role of women in the Church. You listened carefully to what women had to say, and drew up your statements responding to what you heard from women. These actions gave us gay and lesbians reason to hope that the Holy Spirit would lead you into a spirit of willingness to listen to us gay and lesbian Catholics.
What is at stake now is your own moral authority! Unless we gay and lesbian Catholics receive the message that you take us seriously and are willing to listen carefully to what the Holy Spirit is saying to you through our lives and our experience, your judgments on homosexuality will be ignored, for the most part, and you will lose what authority you have left to deserve to be listened to with respect on this issue.

I have never heard the same level of courage from the American bishops in dealing with the Vatican as that shown by the Major Superiors of Religious Men in response to the egregious document issued by The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, entitled, “Some Considerations Concerning Homosexual Persons” as follows:

“We view (this document) as a hindrance to the Church leaders of the United States in this most difficult and sensitive area of human living. —We are shocked that the statement calls for discrimination against gay men and lesbian women. We find the reasoning for supporting such discrimination to be strained, unconvincing and counterproductive to our statements and actions to support the pastoral needs and personal dignity of such persons. Far from a help to the Bishops and other religious leaders in the United States Catholic Church, the statement complicates our already complex ministry to all people.
“Moreover we find the arguments used to justify discrimination based on stereotypes and falsehoods that are out of touch with modern psychological and sociological understandings of human sexuality. We regret such actions by the CDF and we reaffirm our support for the human rights of all our brothers and sisters.”

As a gay Catholic theologian and psychotherapist, I am fully aware of the enormous destruction recent Vatican and USCCB documents, and news items, as well as actions taken by the USCCB and several state Catholic Conferences in the U.S. leading up to the November 2008 elections, have caused in the psychic life of young Catholic gays, and of the violence they will provoke against all gay people. This is compounded further by the initial Vatican reaction and opposition to the United Nations proposal sponsored by France and backed by 27 European Union nations which seeks to end the practice of criminalizing and punishing people for their sexual orientation—their very human nature and spiritual being. I find myself in a dilemma; what kind of faith and trust can I place in a teaching authority that I see clearly acts in an unloving, hateful and destructive way toward my gay family and is more interested in defending its institutional interest than it is in truth and justice? In the name of the thousands of gay and lesbian Catholics and other Christians to whom it has been my God-given privilege to minister, I make this statement:

At this point, the ignorance and distortion of homosexuality, and the use of stereotypes and falsehoods in official Church documents, forces us who are gay Catholics to issue the institutional Church a serious warning. Your ignorance of homosexuality can no longer be excused as inculpable; it has become of necessity a deliberate and malicious ignorance. In the name of Catholic gays and lesbians everywhere, we cry out “Enough!”

Enough! Enough of your distortions of Scripture. You continue to claim that a loving homosexual act in a committed relationship is condemned in Scripture, when competent scholars are nearly unanimous in acknowledging that nowhere in Scripture is the problem of sexual acts between two gay men or lesbian women who love each other, ever dealt with, never mind condemned. You must listen to biblical scholars to find out what Scripture truly has to say about homosexual relationships.

Enough! Enough of your efforts to reduce all homosexual acts to expressions of lust, and your refusal to see them as possible expressions of a deep and genuine human love. The second group you must listen to are competent professional psychiatrists and psychotherapists from whom you can learn about the healthy and positive nature of mature gay and lesbian relationships. They will assure you that homosexual orientation is both not chosen and unchangeable and that any ministry promising to change that orientation is a fraud.

Enough! Enough of your efforts through groups like Courage and other ex-gay ministries to lead young gays to internalize self-hatred with the result that they are able to relate to God only as a God of fear, shame and guilt and lose all hope in a God of mercy and love. What is bad psychology has to be bad theology!

Enough! Enough again, of your efforts to foster hatred, violence, discrimination and rejection of us in the human community, as well as disenfranchising our human and civil rights. We gay and lesbian Catholics pray daily that the Holy Spirit will lead you into a spirit of repentance. You must publicly accept your share of the blame for gay murders and bashing and so many suicides of young gays and ask forgiveness from God and from the gay community.

Enough, also, of driving us from the home of our mother, the Church, and attempting to deny us the fullness of human intimacy and sexual love. You frequently base that denial by an appeal to the dead letter of the “natural law.” Another group to whom you must listen are the moral theologians who, as a majority, argue that natural law is no longer an adequate basis for dealing with sexual questions. They must be dealt with within the context of interpersonal human relationships.

Above all else, you must enter into dialogue with the gay and lesbian members of the Catholic community. We are the ones living out the human experience of a gay orientation, so we alone can discern directly in our experience what God’s spirit is saying to us. And for the first time in history, you have gay and lesbian Catholic communities of worship and prayer who are seeking individually and collectively to hear what the Spirit is saying to them in their gay experience—what experiences lead to the peace and joy of oneness with the Spirit of God and what experiences lead away from that peace and joy! God gave you the commission of discerning the truth. But there is no mandate from Jesus Christ to “create” the truth. We pray daily that the Holy Spirit will lead you to search humbly for the truth concerning homosexuality through dialogue with your lesbian sisters and gay brothers.

The only consolation I can offer gay and lesbian Catholics in the meantime is the profound hope that the very absurdity and hateful spirit of recent Vatican and USCCB documents, news items and political actions will lead gay Catholics to refuse them and recognize the contradiction of their message, and that of Jesus, who never once spoke a negative word concerning homosexuals.

I work, hope and pray that lesbian and gay Catholics and other gay Christians will exercise their legitimate freedom of conscience, discerning what God is saying to them directly through their gay experience. I hope, too, that they will be able to de-fang the poisons of pathologically homophobic religion, accepting the good news that God loves them and accepts them as gays and lesbians and refusing to be caught in the vortex of self-hatred vis-à-vis a God of fear.

I believe that we are at the moment of a special “kairos” in this matter. The Holy Spirit is “doing something new.” I was the guest at a gay ecumenical community that established homes for adult retarded people in the city of Basel in Switzerland. The extraordinary spirit of love and compassion that permeated that community was a foretaste of what lies in the future. I believe there is a vast reservoir of human and divine love that has remained until now untapped because of prejudice and homophobia. The Spirit is calling on you to help release that vast potential of human and divine love through your actions.

The worldwide prayerful vigils in December 2008 were to raise our concerned voices over the stance taken by the Vatican to perpetuate the criminalization, incarceration and death sentences towards people of a homosexual orientation. It is not only counter – productive, it violates your own teaching that all persons are due dignity and respect and that homosexual persons should not suffer violence, injustice and discrimination. Furthermore, that they should be welcomed as full and equal members of the Church and society. We pray and hope that the same Holy Spirit who has graciously liberated us who are gay to self-respect and self-love will liberate in you, our Catholic leaders, a profound love for your gay brothers and lesbian sisters and melt away all prejudice and judgmentalism in your hearts.

May you make us welcome as full members in your family in Christ.

May God bless your efforts!

Sincerely in Christ
John J. McNeill

Comments from the Editor of Dignity’s Quarterly News Journal:
The open letter to the USCCB of November 2000 is currently popping up on several Internet user groups and blogsites, and appears in the Appendix in John’s latest book, Sex as God Intended:A Reflection on Human Sexuality as Play.

Since the release of John’s open letter, there have been numerous documents and communications promulgated by the Pope, Vatican offices and USCCB on matters related to homosexuality. Even more so during 2008. Except for minor nuances, they contain the same repetitive rhetoric. Repetition of falsehoods, erroneous interpretations and bad logic doesn’t make for “the truth” and mitigates our trust and respect of “the teaching authority.”

I was in communication with John from the last week of December 2008 through early January 2009 . I learned he had but one response from a bishop of the United States in response to his initial open letter. John has issued this update and said that while announced as an open letter to the Pope, Cardinals Levada and George and the bishops of the world, it was also directed to ordinary gay Catholics for their discernment and investigation of personal and collective lived experience.
John suggests that the more out of touch the hierarchy of the Catholic Church get, “…the more we learn in a painful way to let go and grow up spiritually”. He calls it “…the blessing of fallibility. We are witnessing the birth pangs of the Church of the Holy Spirit.”

World wide progress toward marriage equality & Father John McNeill becomes a blogger

Two items come to me today from my progressive Catholic friends at Open Tabernacle. The first is Terence Weldon’s post about the progress toward marriage equality in Europe and South America. His post offers some great color-coded maps that show various shades of equality from “full marriage” to “prohibited”.

[A]cross what used to be known as “Western” Europe, only Italy and Greece still have no provision. Even in the former Soviet bloc, there have been advances. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia all recognize Civil Unions, Croatia recognizes unregistered “cohabitation”, and Estonia, the matter is receiving political “consideration”. Meanwhile, although the map does not yet show it, Cyprus too may soon introduce full same sex marriage.

The second is the news that Father John J McNeill has become a blogger who will cross post on the Open Tabernacle. Father McNeill is a legendary pioneer in promoting a progressive religious and biblical understanding of LGBT issues. His classic book, The Church and the Homosexual, first published in 1976, has been reprinted numerous times and remains the standard work of scholarship in the field. I purchased a copy of the fourth edition over fifteen years ago, and it helped inform my own understanding. From a reviewer’s comment printed on the back cover:

A vintage work in the evolving history of the relationship between gay people and institutional Christianity. McNeill’s book remains central to the story.

Now eighty-four years of age, Father McNeill continues to be a prophetic voice for our age, speaking for progressive Catholics and all Christians. His blog, Spiritual Transformation, is brand new, and his first couple of posts are calls for justice for women in the church. Here is a sampling:

Over the past fifty years of ministry in both my study and experience I have become more and more convinced that the deepest root of homophobia both in our culture and in our church is feminapbobia, the fear and suppression of the feminine. Consequently, the most important contribution that can be made to gay liberation is for the gay community to commit itself to women’s liberation.

And another:

If it true that the future of the human race depends on the integration of the feminine on an equal basis with the masculine, it is equally true that the future of the Catholic Church will depend on its willingness to integrate women into its power structure. Tragically, however, the present leadership is fighting tooth and nail to prevent that integration.

I urge my readers to check out his blog and become a follower or RSS subscriber or whatever means you use to follow blogs. You will be rewarded with the rich fruits of a ripened mind.

Gay and female clergy civil disobedience

Dr Martin Luther King Jr. championed civil disobedience as a pushback or resistance to existing law with the goal of ultimately changing the law; of course, that is precisely what happened. Rosa Park’s refusal to sit in the back of the bus and lunch counter sit ins are prototypical examples of civil disobedience. Of course, King had learned from Mohatma Gandhi who used civil disobedience, first in South Africa and later in India, to exact reforms and ultimately Indian independence from colonialist England.

In the Episcopal Church, the election of V. Eugene Robinson as New Hampshire bishop in 2003 was also a form of civil disobedience. Despite denominational rules to the contrary, Robinson was elected as bishop as an openly gay man in a committed relationship. Six years later, the Episcopalians revised their rules to include “all the baptized in all the sacraments”. The fait accompli of Rev Robinson forced the Episcopalians to confront the issue of gay clergy and to ultimately change church policy de jure to accord with the de facto status of Bishop Robinson.

The extraordinary ordinations of gay clergy in the ELCA in the early ‘90’s, accelerating in the new millennium, similarly helped to push the issue of gay clergy to the forefront of the ELCA consciousness, culminating in the momentous actions of the ELCA churchwide assembly of 2009 (CWA09) in which ministry policies were formally changed to allow persons in same gender, livelong, monogamous relationships to become rostered clergy. Those who pushed back, who exerted pressure through civil disobedience, are now being welcomed back into the ELCA (see prior posts here and here).

The most recent example is Pastor Anita Hill of St Paul Reformation church. After I sent Pastor Hill a congratulatory email, she replied, “I’ll be glad when the process is complete for all of us in ELM [Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries]”, and her email contained a quotation from Alice Walker: “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

The Presbyterian Church (USA) is now witnessing the same process of civil disobedience. The John Knox Presbytery covers SW Wisconsin, NE Iowa, and SE Minnesota. As an ELCA person, I think of a Presbytery as being similar to an ELCA regional synod (or diocese in the Roman Catholic and Episcopal traditions). A lengthy article published Feb 22 by the Presbyterian News Service provided background and context to the news that the John Knox Presbytery had voted to reinstate Scott Anderson, a gay man in a twenty year committed relationship, to the rolls of Presbyterian ordained clergy despite ministry policies to the contrary.

The ordination standards of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) [require] that those being ordained practice “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness.”

The Anderson case is based on an apparent loophole in the polity of the PCUSA based on a “scruple” which is an “objection of conscience”. That is, Anderson claimed an objection of conscience to the fidelity-and-chastity rule, and his Presbytery, by a vote of 81-25 agreed. But, that is certainly not the end of the story as opponents will likely appeal this decision to the judiciary of the PCUSA, which must decide whether the policy of “scruple” may be used to circumvent the fidelity-and-chastity ordination rule. If the PCUSA judicial system upholds the ordination of Anderson, it will have established a precedent, a fait accompli, that the PCUSA General Assembly must confront.

The PCUSA is scheduled to convene its 219th annual General Assembly on July 3 in Minneapolis (perhaps ironically, in the same venue as the ELCA assembly which voted to allow gay clergy last year). Certainly, ministry policies will be front and center of the assembly business. If the PCUSA judiciary affirms the Anderson ordination based on the policy of “scruple”, it would appear that the burden of persuasion will have shifted from gay clergy advocates to their opponents; that is, it will be the burden of the opponents of gay clergy to persuade the assembly to change the policy and not vice versa.

In a similar context, there is a “Womanpriest” civil disobedience effort underway within the Catholic Church in the US (see prior posting). The official Roman Catholic policy prohibiting female ordination is set in stone, and there are no exceptions based on “scruple”. Yet, a group of women, and their male supporters, are proceeding to ordain females nevertheless, at the risk of excommunication.

Womanpriest Bishop Andrea Johnson spoke the following as quoted by a Nashville blogger in advance of Johnson’s appearance at Vanderbilt:

“We feel that canon law, which does not represent the people at all — only a few guys in Rome — is unjust,” Johnson [said]. “We’re breaking canon 1024. Like Rosa Parks, we’re saying, ‘No, we are not going to sit on the back of the bus.’ “

2010: the status of ELCA Lutheran—Roman Catholic ecumenical dialogue

As part of a two week, “2010 Ecumenical Journey”, ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson and his delegation recently met with Cardinal Walter Kasper at the Vatican. Cardinal Kasper is the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity–the Vatican’s point man for ecumenical relations with other church bodies.

Prior to this Vatican meeting on Feb 12th, Bishop Hanson’s delegation had met with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams on Feb 4th for discussion of Lutheran-Anglican relations, and with Eastern Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I and Orthodox ecumenists in Istanbul on Feb 8th and 9th.

What is the status of Lutheran – Catholic dialogue? A little over a decade ago in 1999, ecumenical discussions led to the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification”. Wikipedia provides a succinct explanation of this agreement:

The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification is a document created by and agreed to by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Lutheran World Federation in 1999, as a result of extensive ecumenical dialogue, ostensibly resolving the conflict over the nature of justification which was at the root of the Protestant Reformation.

The Churches acknowledged that the excommunications relating to the doctrine of justification set forth by the Council of Trent do not apply to the teachings of the Lutheran churches set forth in the text; likewise, the churches acknowledged that the condemnations set forth in the Lutheran Confessions do not apply to the Catholic teachings on justification set forth in the document. Confessional Lutherans, such as the International Lutheran Council and the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference, reject the Declaration.

On July 18, 2006, members of the World Methodist Council, meeting in Seoul, South Korea, voted unanimously to adopt this document as well.

That was then; what’s happening these days?

In an honest appraisal of Lutheran-Catholic relations, former ELCA Presiding Bishop Herb Chilstrom last year acknowledged that ordaining women “was the first nail in the coffin of further ecumenical progress,” and he asked “how long are we going to live with the illusion that Vatican II is alive and well in Roman Catholicism?” Chilstrom’s comments were in the context of CWA09 and the probable dampening effect of ELCA pro-LGBT ministry policies on ecumenical relations with the Vatican.

What did Cardinal Kasper have to say about the consequences of CWA09? Seemingly, his greatest concern was not with the ministry policies themselves but with the schismatic actions of dissenters.

“We are concerned, but the dialogue goes on,” Kasper told the Lutherans. “We want to continue … so we do not interrupt any dialogue. But what we see are new ‘fragmentations’ in the Protestant world in the churches. This has bothered us a lot.”

ELCA Bishop Robert Hofstad of the Southwestern Washington synod, a delegation member, responded:

If our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters can say to us, “do not go away from each other too fast,” then how can we in the ELCA be running away from each other with such speed, at least in some anecdotal instances? How can we be running away from each other so fast when we have a commitment from people like yourselves, and a hope to say “please let us not run away from each other too quickly?”

“That’s a very encouraging word, and that’s a word that I’m going to take back to my colleagues,” Hofstad said.

The report of the meeting from the perspective of the Catholic News Service included both hopeful and troubling aspects of the discussion.

Cardinal Kasper said it is essential “to keep alive the memory of our achievements” in dialogue, educate the faithful about how much has been accomplished and prepare a new generation to carry on the work.

On the other hand, the Cardinal said, “the Vatican needs to better explain to its dialogue partners the Catholic conviction that ‘the Catholic Church is the church of Christ and that the Catholic Church is the true church … [including] the primacy of the bishop of Rome, the pope.’”

Hmmm.

Roman Catholic female ordination

Call to Action is the largest group of progressive Catholics with roots in the liberalizing reforms of Vatican II, originally sanctioned by the American Council of Bishops, but which became an outsider organization as conservative retrenchment set in during the papacy of John Paul II.

Pope John Paul II repeatedly dashed hopes for any internal liberalizing during his lifetime, and he prepared for the future by appointing as bishops only men who upheld his views on contraception and the ordination of women. Meanwhile, there were crackdowns on theologians like [Hans] Kung and an insistence from Rome that diversity of opinion was not to be tolerated.

The organization is stronger than ever and continues to a thorn in the flesh of the patriarchal and hierarchal Vatican:

We appeal to the institutional church to reform and renew its structures. We also appeal to the people of God to witness to the Spirit who lives within us and to seek ways to serve the vision of God in human society.

We call upon church officials to incorporate women at all levels of ministry and decision-making.

We call upon the church to discard the medieval discipline of mandatory priestly celibacy and to open the priesthood to women and married men…so that the Eucharist may continue to be the center of the spiritual life of all Catholics.

We call for extensive consultation with the Catholic people in developing church teaching on human sexuality.

We claim our responsibility as committed laity, religious and clergy to participate in the selection of our local bishops, a time-honored tradition in the church.

We call for open dialogue, academic freedom, and due process.

We call upon the church to become a model of financial openness on all levels, including the Vatican.

We call for a fundamental change so that young people will see and hear God living in and through the church as a participatory community of believers who practice what they preach.

Another group of progressive Catholics has moved beyond advocacy to open defiance of the Vatican by ordaining women despite excommunication. Called Roman Catholic Womenpriests, the organization now has five female bishops who are actively ordaining women to the priesthood around the US.

The Sarasota Florida Herald Tribune offered a lengthy article on Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan and her ordination of two women as priests and one as a deacon over the weekend.

A former nun who the Vatican says has been excommunicated will ordain two women priests and one deacon in Sarasota today, part of a growing and controversial movement claiming to be an offshoot of the Catholic church.

The ordinations will be the first in Florida by the group known as Roman Catholic Womenpriests, which preaches equality for women by allowing them into the priesthood and plays down allegiance to the pope.

The official Catholic church calls the movement and the ordinations illegitimate, and the local diocese sent letters to parishes saying any Catholics who support the ordination of women by attending today’s ceremony will be automatically excommunicated — a banishment from participating in church sacraments such as baptism and communion until forgiveness is given by a priest.

“Good!” said Bridget Mary Meehan, the former nun who is performing today’s ordinations and is one of five bishops in the national movement. “They’re upping the ante. People will have to be courageous to support us and that is what this is about. Like our sister Rosa Parks, we refuse to sit on the back of the bus any longer.”

A similar story comes from the Sacramento Bee newspaper in California.

To parishioners in her small Sacramento congregation, Elizabeth English is their Catholic priest: She presides over their Sunday Mass, leads them during Communion and baptizes their babies.

To the Roman Catholic Church, English symbolizes a topic that church leaders consider closed: the ordination of women priests.

English left the Roman Catholic Church five years ago to pursue her calling to the priesthood. She is now a priest in the Independent Catholic Church, a group not recognized by the Vatican. She is the only female Catholic priest in the Sacramento region.

“I had to leave the church; there was no place for me,” she said. “I wish there was.”

Another of the five Womenpriest bishops, Andrea M. Johnson, will appear tomorrow at the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University. Bishop Johnson will speak and participate in a blue ribbon panel discussion about female ordination. This information comes from blogger Wild Hair whose self description is “Roman Catholic Priest, still in reasonably good standing; aka: eminence, the cardinal archbishop of HGN.”

Finally, Bishop Bridget mentioned earlier has her own blog with lots of info and links about the Womenpriest movement. Check it out.

This article is cross posted at The Open Tabernacle.