Is the Catholic Church Actually Progressive on LGBT Issues?

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Jane Fae

Is the Catholic Church actually progressive on LGBT issues, despite news headlines to the contrary? Yes and no, says Jane Fae,  a U.K. journalist who is a Catholic transgender woman. In a recent essay for Gay Star News, Fae asserts that what matters most is complexity and context of the issues involved.

Because of the complexity, Fae cautioned against LGBT advocates celebrating “bad news” about the Church, such as the contentious debates that took place at the Synod on the Family in October 2015.

Fae said secular LGBT advocates should not rejoice when it seems that the Church is splitting apart.  She wrote:

“The problem. . .is this particular piece of ‘bad news’ [about the Synod on the Family] is equally bad news for the millions of LGBTI people who do not live in broadly progressive countries.”

Why do LGBTI people suffer when the Catholic Church is troubled? Fae suggested any church critique must extend “beyond simple dislike” and include proper understandings of church history and ecclesial politics. Last fall’s Synod on the Family changed little, but those hoping for reforms should have been more realistic about the global church to begin with:

“The demographics of the present church show some 1.3 billion followers with the fastest growing segment in sub-Saharan Africa, an area not exactly known for its celebration of LGBTI values. . .

“Because of its size, the Catholic Church straddles the world, including millions of people whose views on LGBTI rights range from ultra-regressive to highly progressive. Inevitably, it ends up taking a middle of the road position which, equally inevitably, looks very backward from our perspective.”

Fae cautioned against a binary in which the West is progressive and others are “some dark opposite,” describing such thinking as “wrong” and “racist.” Instead, Catholics should consider both how the church fails on LGBT issues and how it leads, depending on the context discussed. She wrote:

“In those areas that are most antipathetic towards LGBTI rights, [the Catholic Church] is frequently a force for progress. Sometimes the main one, sometimes the only one.”

Fae contends that Catholics, including clergy, forcefully defend LGBTI human rights in some pats of Africa and Eastern Europe. She also noted the efforts by LGBT Catholics in London to aid LGBTQI asylum seekers. This is why a divided and troubled Catholic Church is no benefit to the cause of LGBT justice, as Fae explained:

“The church is not going to disappear. And while a split church might be helpful to campaigners in some parts of the world, it would be disastrous for those campaigning elsewhere, in areas where oppression is greatest, and where clergy protect minorities from persecution.”

As for the Synod on the Family, Fae does not consider it a loss. Pope Francis was deftly able to “balance a desire for a far more inclusive church with the need to avoid it splitting up.” For progressive Catholics who want same-gender weddings celebrated sacramentally, it was clearly not a victory. But the synod was a forward step because it avoided schism or disunity, hinted at by certain traditionalist members, while succeeding at shifting language. And to those suggesting shifts in language are not sufficient, Fae finds historical parallels in Vatican II. She wrote:

“Without defining a single new doctrine, just using a new positive vocabulary of spiritual kinship, the council significantly reshaped the church. . .That is the trick that Pope Francis was attempting to repeat.

“He has had few victories so far but the language is shifting. And, if what has gone before is any indicator of what is to follow, where language leads, hearts will eventually follow.”

Living in the Northeast U.S. where LGBT legal rights and cultural acceptance are basically normative, it can be easy for me to forget the harsh realities still faced by millions in our world. Jane Fae’s piece is a reminder that everything is grayer than we might prefer, that context matters significantly, and that change in the church is incremental and happening, even if the pace is painfully slow. You can read her column in full by clicking here.

–Bob Shine, New Ways Ministry

 

 

 

8 replies
  1. Terence Weldon
    Terence Weldon says:

    Thanks for featuring this important story. (I wanted to do so myself, and would have done if I had not been laid up in hospital following really major surgery).

    Fae is correct: there are undoubtedly some really nasty bits in the Catholic Church on LGBT issues – but these are of far less importance in the full picture of Catholic doctrine than is generally believed. In contrast, there are many supportive elements which are indeed core elements of doctrine – which are far too little known, let alone practiced.

    Now back home again and in full recovery mode, I hope to be spending some serious time expanding on this, the untold secret of Catholic good news for LGBT people – and how LGBT Catholic groups around the world are helping to restore these important elements to their rightful place in Church practice.

    Reply
  2. Larry
    Larry says:

    I agree that living here in the US and especially in the Northeast as I do as well makes one forget how harsh it is in other places in the world for gay folks. But it is not that I don’t know intellectually what is going
    on in other parts of the world. That is why it is so hard to hear Ms. Fae opine that the Catholic Church is progressive and we must rely on the subtle, nuanced and glacial changes that she sees. I suggest she might have a different view if she left the cocoon of her UK life and lived as a transgendered woman in one of the African countries where the local Catholic Bishop would encourage his flock to harm her. Academic subtleties would I think become irrelevant quickly.

    However, I would like to be more hopeful and I look forward to the comments of Terence Weldon on the untold secrets of good news for Catholic LGBT people. Maybe we can make this news not so secret.

    Reply

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