NEWS NOTES: Theologian Compares LGBTQ People’s Relation with Church to Katy Perry Song; And More
Here are some items you might find of interest:
1. Theologian Jason Steidl wrote in the National Catholic Reporter that “the relationship between LGBTQ Catholics and their church is a Katy Perry song” given the “topsy-turvy headlines from the last few weeks.” Steidl reviews the many news items, concluding:
“The news cycle may come and go, bringing us good reports and bad, but the human beings behind that news remain. LGBTQ Catholics are in desperate need of God’s love expressed through the church. I have seen the Spirit blowing in likely and unlikely ways to move the people of God toward affirmation, not condemnation.”
2. In related news, author Richard Rodriguez shared with attendees at Loyola University’s Catholic Imagination Conference last month about being a gay Catholic in this moment of change in the church. The National Catholic Reporter shared that Rodriguez said he is “in love with a church that tells me I don’t know what love is.”
3. The Virginia Catholic Conference has voiced its opposition to a proposed state ban on conversion therapy for youth. The Conference’s executive director, Jeff Caruso, said minors and their families “should be free to seek counseling towards the resolutions they desire” when it comes to “unwanted same-sex or mixed-sex attractions.”
4. Fr. Jerome Secillano, executive secretary of the Public Affairs Committee for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, criticized the SOGIE (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity/Expression) bill presently being debated in that nation. Secillano said that while the bill “appears to be a noble form of legislation” targeting discrimination, “its contents say otherwise” because it prioritizes the rights of LGBTQ people, who, according to the priest, are seeking “a special privilege.” The priest’s position on the SOGIE bill is at odds with many church leaders in the Philippines who have spoken positively about it. For more information, click here.
—Robert Shine, New Ways Ministry, October 27, 2019
Re: Catholic Church’s obsession with sex
It seems absurd that a Church that has been the subject of so much sexual scandal should persist with ridiculous condemnations of the sexual preferences of the laity particuluarly when such secular practices do no harm.
The same can’t be said for Clerical peodaphelia of which Cardinal Pell is a case in point.
That said, however, the Catholic Church could do a power of good by historically recounting the injustices done to Catholics in the past; particuluarly those in Northern Ireland
Traditional Irish landholders were forceably dispossessed in Ireland from the Tudor to Williamite regimes which relegated Irish Catholics to serf status culminating in the Great Famine.
Perhaps the Church could account for its lack of legal action against the Crown post
Catholic Emancipation in 1828 championed by Daniel O’Connell.?
Now that the Vatican is a Country, it can prosecute a case for the dispossessed of Northern Ireland in the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
This would be more relevant and rewarding than bickering about sexual preferences and
non injurious same-sex practices.
Thank you
Is go mBeannaigh Dia Duith
Brendan Lynch
Re: LGBTQ Catholics have great reasons for hope at the grassroots.
I would like to verify one sense in this essay, “Neither is God’s work limited to cosmopolitan cities such as Chicago and New York.” I live in an unincorporated village in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, population 2,500. This is a very conservative, red part of California. It is also the home of Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Parks and our Dioceses of Fresno retreat center. We have a mission Church. I am an eighty-two-year-old widowed and out gay man, and I am very welcomed in the community and in our mission church in which I am an active participant. I am a catechist for the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. Yes, there is hope in the grassroots for Catholic LGBT+ persons.