NEWS NOTES: Some Follow-Ups to Past Stories

Here are some articles,which follow up on previous Bondings 2.0 posts, that you may find of interest:

In May, we presented the news that the Bishops of England and Wales had published a set of guidelines to eliminate bullying of LGBT youth in Catholic schools.  The National Catholic Reporter recently published New Ways Ministry’s Executive Director Francis DeBernardo’s analysis of the document.  In it he compares the British bishops’ remedy for bullying with the near absence of any discussion of bullying by the U.S. bishops.

In June, we reported on the Diocese of Jefferson City’s new guidelines on admitting students from non-traditional families to its Catholic schools. In a news article, The National Catholic Reporter explores the controversy that these guidelines provoked, having pleased neither conservatives nor progressives in the Church.  New Ways Ministry’s Francis DeBernardo calls the guidelines “a double-edged sword.”

Earlier in August, we reported on a gay married couple in Brazil who received a letter of congratulations and blessing from Pope Francis when they had their three adopted children baptized.  In an essay for The Huffington Post, DignityUSA Executive Director Marianne Duddy-Burke examines this development and writes “The Letter Those Brazilian Dads Should Have Received on the Baptism of Their Children.”

In our “All Are Welcome” series,   Bondings 2.o regularly reports on the ways that Catholic parishes are welcoming LGBT people into their communities.  In a blog post for The National Catholic Reporter, Frank McKown, the former co-chair of Catholic Ministry with Gay and Lesbian Persons for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, describes some insights he has had about the need to welcome all.  His post is entitled, “We must welcome gays, lesbians as they ‘were created to be’ .”

—Robert Shine, New Ways Ministry, August 19, 2017