NEWS NOTES: February 4, 2018

Here are a few items that may be of interest:

1. Father Adam Boniecki, a Catholic journalist in Poland, has been barred by his religious community, the Marian Congregation, from making public statements, in part because he had spoken out against discrimination of gay and lesbian people.  A German language news article about the priest can be found at kath.ch. 

2. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, based in Costa Rica, stated recently that Latin American nations, many of them heavily Catholic, should legalize unions between two people of the same gender, according to a news story on WorldReligionNews.com. The report says that LGBT equality is expanding across Latin America.

3. In a speech commenting on Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on the family, Amoris Laetitia, India’s Cardinal Oswald Gracias, who has previously spoken out for a more pastoral approach to LGBT people, condemned marriage equality as one of the modern media’s threats to family life, saying:

“Infidelity, sexual activity outside of marriage, and the absence of a moral and spiritual vision of the marriage covenant are depicted uncritically, while positive support is at times given to divorce, contraception, abortion, and same sex unions. Such portrayals are detrimental to the common good of society.”

Crux contained a full-report on his talk.

4. Some first-person stories of gay Catholics have recently appeared on the web:

a) Patrick Gotham wrote “I Thought Gay Celibacy Was My Only Option — I Was Wrong,” a reflective essay on his coming to awareness of his gay sexuality while exploring the possibilities of becoming a diocesan priest and also a monk.  Gotham’s essay appears on Medium.com’s “Reaching Out: Stories of LGBTQ Faith Lost and Found,” a wonderful resource.  To read more of his posts on the site, click here.

b) Tony Christopher, a gay man, was raised in a conservative Catholic family in Kerala, India, and he shares his life experiences in an interview with The Deccan Chronicle entitled “Courage in the face of acceptance.”

—Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry, February 4, 2018