Highly LGBTQ-Negative Bishops Up for Elections to USCCB Leadership Next Week
U.S. bishops gathered in Baltimore
With the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) meeting in Baltimore approaching next week, most attention has been on whether the bishops will approve a controversial document on the Eucharist. But there will also be some key committee chair elections occurring, and candidates include some of the most LGBTQ-negative church leaders in the U.S.
Perhaps most notably, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield is running to chair the bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development. If elected, this bishop, who has threatened transgender students with expulsion, sought to deny funerals to Catholics in same-gender marriages, and performed an exorcism when marriage equality was approved in his state, would spearhead USCCB efforts for social justice in the U.S. He is running against Archbishop Borys Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia.
For chair of the Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life, and Vocations, Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver faces Bishop Earl Boyea of Lansing. Both men have LGBTQ-negative records. In Colorado, Aquila has endorsed conversion therapy initiatives and compared LGBTQ relationships to bestiality. In Michigan, Boyea issued an anti-transgender policy regarding church life earlier this year.
For chair of the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth, Bishop Robert Barron, an auxiliary of Los Angeles, is pitted against Bishop Edward Burns of Dallas. Barron, who is the founder of the Catholic media group Word on Fire, has previously claimed that transgender identities were a modern form of Gnosticism, an ancient Christian heresy, and analogized transgender people to pedophiles. He made slightly more positive comments in 2017 about the need to include LGBTQ people, but insisted in 2018 that such a welcome should also be a call to conversion. For his part, back in 2016, Burns, while bishop in Juneau, Alaska, had Catholic locations refuse to host weddings if the couples were not heterosexual Catholics because marriage equality had been legalized.
Finally, for chair of the Committee on Migration, it is a race between Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso and Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami. While Seitz’s record on LGBTQ issues is fairly neutral, Wenski has suggested marriage equality would lead to polygamy, threatened LGBTQ church workers’ jobs, and criticized a fellow bishop for making an LGBTQ-positive statement in the wake of the Pulse Nightclub massacre in 2016. Previously, as chair of the USCCB’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development and then acting chair of the Committee for Religious Liberty, Wenski used his authority to fight against LGBTQ rights, including praising the Trump administration for allowing discrimination against unhoused LGBTQ people.
It is striking how strongly connected opposition to LGBTQ inclusion and prominence in the U.S. bishops’ conference are at this point. Candidates like Paprocki and Aquila are not merely bishops who stay quiet and tow the line on LGBTQ issues. They are leaders of a culture war movement to suppress equality.
Next week’s elections could have grave implications. What will it mean for programs like the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, which has come under fire for funding LGBTQ-positive coalitions if Paprocki becomes its overseer? How will gay and bisexual seminarians fare if the bishop charged with seminary formation believes in conversion therapy? Will the U.S. bishops once again oppose immigration reform efforts simply because there are provisions to care for LGBTQ migrants?
The USCCB is unlikely at this point to become a conference in line with Pope Francis’ vision, but given the influence and money the U.S. bishops wield, its workings are still worth watching closely. It will be up to pastoral leaders and laity at the grassroots to bring about LGBTQ-positive initiatives in the U.S. church.
Catholic Organizations for Renewal, a network which includes New Ways Ministry, is hosting a witness titled “Bread, Not Stones” this Monday outside the bishops’ meeting in Baltimore. More information is available here.
—Robert Shine, New Ways Ministry, November 12, 2021
I suspect that most of the US bishops do not realize that they are about to vote to make themselves and the church they profess to lead even more irrelevant. The large archdiocese where I live has begun a plan that could eventually close according to one report seventy percent of the parishes in coming years. Maybe the bishops should study demographics and then the reason folks simply find them not pastors and not in touch with real life.
I would like to know the median age for these bishops and also the age of the youngest contender. Would younger men be more open to the realities of the world, church, human condition ? I keep waiting for a change of heart from the USCCB but I think they are too set in their ways. Like some politicians they cannot change their positions once they have made a statement. The problem is that they are caught up in Canon Law.- a creature of their own making.
Younger priests are more conservative, on average. Much of what the hierarchy says falls on deaf ears because it is more political than pastoral. Their slide into total irrelevance continues and is well deserved.
Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso has done a lot to speak out for humane treatment and civil rights for asylum seekers. I hope he finds a place within USCCB to continue his work.
This is making it harder to stay in the church. Sounds like these bishops are politically skewed to make life hell for all LGBTQ people and allies on earth. They are not fully in line with the teachings of Jesus … how can we stop them ?