Romes no doesnt stop Mass at New
Ways conference
By CHUCK COLBERT
Louisville, Ky.
In the 25 years since its founding, New Ways Ministry has never
been informed by any church officials that it was under investigation or
sanction by the church. So its endorsers greeted with astonishment and anger
the news that a Vatican official had requested the local bishop here to forbid
the celebration of the Eucharist during the groups fifth national
symposium, whose theme was, Out of Silence God Has Called Us.
New Ways Ministry describes itself as a national Catholic ministry
of justice, dialogue and reconciliation for lesbian and gay Catholics and the
wider church community. But according to Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, secretary
of the Vaticans Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, New Ways
does not promote the authentic teaching of the Catholic church.
So Bertone wrote to Louisvilles Archbishop Thomas Kelly
directing him to forbid eucharistic celebrations during the March 8-10
gathering. Because of the confusion and scandal which will inevitably
arise from this event, this congregation asks your excellency to inform
organizers of the symposium that they do not have permission to celebrate the
Eucharist as part of their conference, Bertone wrote.
New Ways Ministry leaders, after conferring with canon lawyers,
decided to celebrate the Eucharist at the conference with retired Bishop Leroy
Matthiesen of Amarillo, Texas, presiding.
I was not given any instructions from the Vatican or
Archbishop Kelly not to do the Mass, Matthiesen said. The example
of Jesus was not to exclude but to include. He added that presiding
seemed such a natural thing to do.
Kelly, who did not attend the symposium, encouraged participants
to attend Mass at the Cathedral of the Assumption, located a few blocks from
Galt House, the hotel where the conference was held.
After consulting with canon lawyers, New Ways leaders determined
that, in accord with Lumen Gentium, a Second Vatican Council document,
they did not need permission to celebrate the Eucharist. The local
ordinary [bishop], not the Vatican, is the regulator of the Eucharist in a
particular diocese, the group said in a news release.
The congregation was trying to deny permission when
such permission was not needed, explained the organizations
executive director Francis DeBernardo.
A number of symposium endorsers and participants expressed anger
that the Eucharist was used as a weapon or reward,
DeBernardo said. He explained, however, that intercessory prayers would be
offered during the Mass for church unity. DeBernardo said that it was the
organizations hope that all church members, specifically gay and
lesbian Catholics, will always feel welcome at the table of Jesus.
More than 500 persons attended the Mass at the symposium, and most
received Communion.
It did not go unnoticed that Matthiesen wore a rainbow-colored
alb, or that rainbow-colored banners graced the background of the conference
stage. Rainbow colors are a symbol of the gay and lesbian community and gay
pride.
I experienced a feeling of unity and solidarity, said
Fr. Richard P. Lewandowski, pastor of St. Camillus de Lellis Parish, Fitchburg,
Mass., and campus minister at nearby Fitchburg College.
Hailing from the Worcester, Mass., Lewandowski said he has been
deeply affected by the continuing saga of clerical sexual misconduct in the
Boston archdiocese.
The situation in Boston was indeed on the minds of symposium
participants, with many expressing sadness and astonishment as the
ever-expanding scandal of clerical sexual abuse of children spreads outside the
New England region to other parts of the country.
Something has to be done, Lewandowski said. So
throughout the symposium, he asked dozens, if not hundreds, of attendees to
sign two pledges of Catholic solidarity.
One is for our solidarity, prayers and support to the
priests and people of Boston. The other solidarity poster pledged similar
prayer and support to all gay bishops and priests during this
defining moment for the universal church, he said.
Like Lewandowski, many of the symposiums participants were
priests. Some of them are gay. One symposium focus session was on the issue of
gay men in the priesthood and religious life, a timely topic, given the recent
statement of Vatican spokesman Joaquín Navarro-Valls on the ordination
of gays. Navarro-Valls told The New York Times that people with
homosexual inclinations just cannot be ordained. That does not imply a final
judgment of people with homosexuality. But you cannot be in this
field.
Nevertheless, Franciscan Fr. Ralph Parthie oversaw two workshops
sessions in which priests, gay and non-gay alike, discussed everything from
how to deal with a homophobic bishop, to coming out of the closet
to ones self, to fellow priests, families and friends and even
parishioners. Parthie has ministered to and with gay priests and religious for
20 years.
A similar focus session dealt with lesbian nuns and their struggle
to integrate their lesbian members more fully. The focus of the New
Ways conference was to address gay and lesbian ministry in the church, with the
aim of developing wide-ranging programs and policies of interest to lesbian and
gay Catholic and their families.
Another highlight of the symposium was New Ways issuing a
12-point strategic plan called Lesbian and Gay Ministry in the Catholic
Church: A Vision for the Future, which can be found at
www.NewWaysMinistry.org.
Gay and lesbian ministry has grown in the church, said
DeBernardo. It can no longer be a marginalized concern.
In releasing the strategic plan, DeBernardo said that New Ways
would undergo a yearlong process of seeking endorsements from Catholic
organizations and individuals.
The purpose is to demonstrate a sensus fidelium or
sense of the faithful, he said. We hope to show church
leaders that the Catholic people want their church to be a more welcoming place
for its gay and lesbian members.
The schedule of workshop sessions covered a substantial range of
topics. Through plenary sessions and workshops, for example, the symposia
organizers targeted teachers and principals, campus and youth ministers,
seminary leaders and parish workers.
Topics of discussion concerned parish-based programs that welcome
gay people, including church employment policies that protect lesbians and gay
men who are public about their sexual orientations. Another workshop explored
the development of a Catholic safe-schools program. Yet another discussion
called for a theological re-visioning of the churchs condemnation of
same-sex marriage.
A major constituency at the symposium was Catholic parents with
gay and lesbian children. Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, who has become an
increasingly visible and outspoken advocate for compassionate pastoral ministry
with gays, addressed parents concerns.
During a Catholic pre-symposium conference organized by New Ways
associate director Linda McCullough, Gumbleton acknowledged that the
church has a long way to go. Gumbleton also addressed what for many
Catholic parents are the four most difficult words to understand in Catholic
church teaching about their sons and daughters homosexuality and
its same-sex expression -- objective disorder and intrinsic
evil. With regard to such terminology, which hints at gay peoples
moral dysfunction, Gumbleton said those words are, such an extreme thing
to say about anyone.
Gumbleton also made a case for primacy of conscience in matters of
sexual morality. We dont put people out of the church for following
their conscience, Gumbleton said in reference to a recent acknowledgement
by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at Georgetown University that he
disagrees with church teaching on the death penalty. No one is suggesting
that he shouldnt receive holy Communion, Gumbleton said.
Eugene Kennedy, a syndicated columnist, psychology professor
emeritus at Loyola University-Chicago and author of The Unhealed Wound: The
Church and Human Sexuality, spoke poetically, mythically and metaphorically
about the churchs difficulty with human sexuality. By using the
Arthurian myth of the Grail King, Kennedy explained the churchs
discomfort with sexuality in terms of an unhealed wound. According
to the myth, King Anfortas was wounded in a joust, by a poisoned spear
through his testicles, so severely he could not be healed.
Unhealed people who are sexually wounded, Kennedy said, abuse and
victimize others. The sexual abuse of children is the same pattern the
church uses in relation to its own people, he said.
Kennedy also took aim at the institutional church. Church as
hierarchy has collapsed, he said, comparing the nationwide clerical
sexual abuse of children to the collapse of World Trade Center towers.
NCRs Rome correspondent John L. Allen Jr., spoke
about the Vatican and homosexuality in a talk titled, From Stonewall to
Stonewalling.
Dominican Fr. Bruce Williams, a moral theology professor at the
Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome, reflected on
the pastoral implications of the case of Sr. Jeannine Gramick and Fr. Robert
Nugent, who were silenced by the Vatican and prohibited in 1999 from pastoral
ministry with gay and lesbian Catholics. Gramick and Nugent are the founders of
New Ways Ministry. Williams served as their theological adviser during the
Vatican investigation of their ministry and writings.
For any pastoral ministry worthy of the name, honest
conversation is the fundamental requisite, Williams said. The
politics of pastoral ministry, he said, seems clear. We must do all
we can to promote honest conversation in the church about matters of concern to
lesbian and gay members, as well as to bring about the kind of free and open
church climate in which that conversation takes place.
A final plenary session featured Gregory Baum, religious studies
professor emeritus at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Baum, a key figure
in the Second Vatican Council, focused on homosexual love and the churchs
natural law tradition.
He said, the entire teaching of sexuality must be
reviewed before the church undertakes any serious consideration of
homosexual love and marriage or holy unions for gay couples.
Rethinking the role of sexuality and the role of sex in the
context of marriage is key, Baum said.
Freelance journalist Chuck Colbert writes from Cambridge,
Mass.
National Catholic Reporter, March 22,
2002
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