The Top Ten WORST Catholic LGBTQ+ News Events of 2022

Thank you to all Bondings 2.0 readers who responded to our annual poll about “The Best and Worst Catholic LGBTQ+ News Events” of the year.  The results are in! Today we will post the results for the poll of “Worst” events, and tomorrow, we will close out the year with the results from the poll of the “Best” events.

After each event, we have included the percentage of votes received.  Following the list is a little analysis of the rankings.  You are encouraged to provide your own analysis in the “Comments” section of this post.

The Top Ten Worst Catholic LGBTQ+ News Events of 2022

1. Archbishop Paul Coakley, incoming Secretary for the U.S. bishops’ conference, says at a right-wing funded event that transgender people are “doing great damage to society” and the LGBTQ+ movement is demonic. 90%
2. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops elects LGBTQ-negative leaders, including Archbishop Timothy Broglio as President, who has endorsed anti-transgender policies and has claimed gay priests are a cause of sexual abuse. 77%
3. The Archdiocese of St. Louis preemptively withdrew Catholic schools from a government school lunch program to help feed hungry children over proposed federal LGBTQ+ non-discrimination protections. 53%
4. TIE  Zambian bishops re-affirm their support for criminalizing LGBTQ+ people after Lusaka’s Archbishop Alick Banda publishes a letter with charged anti-gay rhetoric.46% 
5. TIE  U.S. bishops are largely silent after the mass shooting at Club Q in November with few bishops even being able to name LGBTQ+ people as the primary targets. 46%
6. Bishop Robert McManus strips the Nativity School of Worcester, Massachusetts, of its Catholic affiliation and ability to celebrate the Sacraments because the school refused to take down Pride and Black Lives Matter flags. 45%
7. TIE  Columbus, Ohio’s new bishop, Earl Fernandes, expels the Paulist Fathers from Ohio State chaplaincy after they served there for 66 years, in part because of the Fathers’ LGBTQ+ ministry. 44%
8. TIE  The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops oppose various federal non-discrimination regulations aimed at protecting LGBTQ+ patients and students. 44%
9. More U.S. dioceses issue gender policies aimed at restricting LGBTQ+ people’s participation in the church, especially when it comes to Catholic education. 37%
10. Fired LGBTQ+ church workers continue to lose discrimination lawsuits in U.S. courts due to wide exemptions for religious employers.  20%

ANALYSIS

Eight of these top ten items are directly connected to the negative approach that many U.S. bishops take toward LGBTQ+ issues. Another item is about negative policies from Zambian bishops. And the final item, while not directly connected to bishops, is indirectly related to them as they are often a party to discrimination lawsuits. This does not speak well for U.S. bishops.

The untold story, however, is that a number of bishops, U.S. and globally, are taking some positive steps, as you will see in the results of the BEST poll which will be published in tomorrow’s post.

The other insight that this pattern highlights is that while bishops may still take negative approaches to LGBTQ+ issues, the absence of other Catholics taking the same negative approach shows how much the rest of the Church–indeed, the majority of the Church–is supportive of LGBTQ+ equality.

—Francis DeBernardo and Robert Shine, New Ways Ministry, December 30, 2022