Celebrating a Fantastic Four and 1/2 Years of Catholic LGBT Blogging!

This past weekend, Bondings 2.0 marked its fantastic 4 and 1/2 year anniversary!  We have been providing readers with at least one post about Catholic LGBT news and opinion every day since November 29, 2011.  We’ve made a commitment to serve our readers, and we are gratified that we continue to receive positive feedback about this information ministry that New Ways Ministry has undertaken.  Many of you have told us that Bondings 2.0 is the first thing you read in the morning, and that it sometimes helps to shape your morning prayer time.  We consider that a beautiful blessing!

We’ve been blessed with a wide and varied readership, many of whom take the opportunity to share their own thoughts and ideas in the “Comments” sections of individual posts.  Those contributions make this blog truly “social media,” composing a forum where readers who are distant from one another because of space, age, culture, nationality, and opinion can refine their own thinking by hearing various perspectives.

Only twice a year do we turn to blog readers to ask for your financial support to help New Ways Ministry continue this project:  on the yearly anniversary at the end of November and on the half-yearly anniversary at the end of May.  If you find this resource to be valuable to your ministry, advocacy, personal and spiritual development, or for any other reason, would you consider making a contribution today to keep the blog vibrant?  Donating is as easy as clicking here, filling out the donation form, and writing “Blog” in the “Comments” box at the end of the donation form.  Your donation is tax-deductible.

A $50 donation would amount to less than one dollar a week.  If you think that receiving daily information on Catholic LGBT issues is helpful to you, please consider donating right now.   If you donation can be more than $50, we would certainly be grateful, and if your donation needs to be less than that, we are even more grateful for your sacrificial giving.

Another helpful way you can help to grow this blog is to tell your friends and network contacts about it.  Ask them to check us out, and let them know they can become followers of the blog by typing their email address into the “Follow” box at the top of the right-hand column of this page and clicking the “Follow” button below it.  They will be notified when the blog is updated, and they can decide if they want to hear from us daily or weekly.  If you would like us to send your friends an invitation, just send their email addresses to [email protected], and we will send them a notice that makes it even easier for them to check out the blog.  We promise we will not keep the email addresses you send or use them for any other purpose.

As we mentioned last week, our blog is starting on a new venture of scheduling “meetups” for blog readers and friends to come together in different cities to which New Ways Ministry staff will be traveling. We’ve already scheduled our first meetup in London, England, where we will partner with Terence Weldon, the editor of Queering the Church, for an evening of lively discussion.  Stay tuned for upcoming meetups in Chicago, Illinois, Columbus, Ohio, and Atlanta, Georgia, later this summer.

Here at Bondings 2.0, we have tried to provide you with the latest important news, offer some background and contextual information, and let you sample what we think are the most provocative commentaries we have read. It has been an exciting half-year since the end of November 2015 when we last came to you asking for financial support.  Amoris Laetitia has been published,  a Catholic school in the U.S. has made a commitment to continue to employ a transgender teacher, a Catholic university president publicly congratulated the school’s lesbian basketball coach on her marriage, and LGBT Irish people were finally fully welcomed in New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade.  On the downside, we continue to hear bishops speaking harmful language about LGBT people,  LGBT employees continue to be fired, and LGBT youth face unnecessary obstacles to their self-acceptance.

If you read this blog for ideas about pastoral care, to learn what is going on at Catholic colleges and universities, to keep track of the terrible trend of LGBT employment disputes at Catholic schools and parishes,  to hear how Pope Francis is and is not changing the church’s approach to LGBT issues,  to understand how Catholic laity and clergy are affecting politics and society, or to learn about Catholic LGBT history, we hope you will find it in your heart and your bank account to keep the blog going by offering a small contribution.

If you prefer not to donate on-line, you can call our office 301-277-5674, during business hours, Eastern U.S. time, and we can take your credit card information over the phone.  Or you can send a check made to “New Ways Ministry” to 4012 – 29th Street, Mount Rainier, Maryland 20712.  However you decide to donate, your gift is tax-deductible.

Thank you for considering a donation!  Thanks for sharing this blogging adventure with us!  Our readers’ interest and support are what keep us going and what make this work a true labor of love!

–Francis DeBernardo and Bob Shine, New Ways Ministry

 

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