Rifts, questions emerge at meeting on
gays
By CHUCK COLBERT
Special to the National Catholic Reporter Rochester,
N.Y.
The U.S. Catholic churchs tense and increasingly public
struggle over homosexuality was on full public display recently as nearly 300
delegates gathered here for a three-day conference of the National Association
of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries.
The associations fifth annual conference focused on the U.S.
bishops 1997 pastoral letter Always Our Children and on
placing its recommendations into practice at the parish and diocesan level
nationwide.
Released more than a year ago, Always Our Children --
addressed primarily to parents of homosexual children -- urges love and
acceptance of gay sons and daughters.
But how to show that acceptance and whether homosexuals should be
admonished to remain celibate has created sharp divisions. Those divisions were
evident in contrasting images in this city in upstate New York on Lake
Ontario.
Speaker after speaker -- parents, gay sons and lesbian daughters,
priests, deacons, nuns -- spoke the language of hope, love, justice and
reconciliation.
John Good of Los Angeles, president of the association, said:
For many of us who were born and raised Catholic, discovering that you
are gay or lesbian can present challenging dilemmas. Growing up, we were taught
that the options for adulthood were either marriage or religious life. As gay
or lesbian persons, we must come to terms not only with our sexuality, but also
our desire for a spiritual life. Many of us want to continue in our faith
traditions and seek support in that journey.
Outside, the images were quiet and grim. Protesters, armed with
placards and handouts, had a different message: Practicing Catholics
cannot practice homosexuality, Love the homosexual with the
truth, Homosexuals are called to chastity, and Stay out
of our schools, their signs read.
Nonetheless, Bishop Matthew Clark, who came under fire from
conservative Catholics for his support of the association, received a standing
ovation as he welcomed the attendees. With all the publicity this
conference has generated, you might ask if I really mean happy -- I
really am, he said, smiling.
Clark has been at the center of controversy of another sort. The
Rochester diocese recently made national headlines when Clark removed Fr. James
B. Callan from his 22-year ministry at Corpus Christi, a liberal, inner-city
parish, for failing to make changes to keep the parish in line with church
rules (NCR, Aug. 28).
Those attending the conference came from 26 states, three
countries and 58 dioceses. Pastoral ministers from more than 35 dioceses belong
to the organization.
Plenary speaker Richard Peddicord, a Dominican friar and moral
theologian at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, took up a conference
theme of social justice when he endorsed gay civil rights protection. He said
the issue of gay and lesbian participation in society is not a matter to
be decided by Catholic sexual ethics.
Sexual ethics is concerned with the values related to human
sexuality and the goals associated with human sexual functioning, he
said. It is manifestly incapable of answering questions concerning human
and civil rights and determining who will or will not be allowed to share in
the concrete goods of society.
In traditional Catholic morality, all of these are regulated
by the primary social virtue, that of justice, Peddicord said.
Other speakers advocated full participation for gay and lesbian
Catholics in the church.
Some presenters provided advice and tips for pastoral ministers,
counselors and educators in local parishes, as well as Catholic schools.
Bill Kummer described a ministry in the St. Paul and Minneapolis
archdiocese that offers a safe-schools, collaborative approach for
gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students struggling with their sexual
identity.
Other workshops dealt with chaste friendships, adult education
strategies on church teaching and pastoral needs and potential responses for
people living with AIDS.
But underlying tensions ran through the weekend as well. The issue
of Dignitys exiled status at the conference came up at the general
membership meeting and during several workshops.
Dignity, a national organization of gay Catholics that has been
ousted from official church locations because it opposes some church teachings
on homosexuality, was not permitted to be an official exhibitor. An official of
the group was even disinvited from participating in a workshop. Bob Miailovich
of Washington, president of Dignity/USA, charged that a demonizing of
Dignity was underway at the meeting.
Another underlying tension that surfaced was over church teaching
requiring chastity -- or mandatory lifelong celibacy for homosexuals. One gay
priest from the Midwest challenged the language of church teaching,
particularly the terms intrinsic evil and objective
disorder to describe gay sex. Love is not disordered, he said
at one workshop.
The high point of the conference came on Saturday evening as 600
people, with police escorts, passed by the nearly 75 protesters outside St.
Marys Church to attend Mass. Many were deeply moved and described the
liturgy in superlatives, saying it was powerful and
exhilarating.
Even Bishop Clark, presider and homilist, was visibly moved.
Sue Cassidy, of suburban Philadelphia, the mother of a gay son,
struggled to find words to describe her feelings. Awesome, she
said, from the moment I walked into the church.
National Catholic Reporter, October 2,
1998
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