Bishop John Stowe Acknowledges “Particularly Hard Year” As Pride Begins; And More News

The following are some items that may be of interest:

1) Bishop John Stowe of Lexington released a June 1st message for Pride Month, as he has done previously. This year, however, Stowe recognized the new challenges LGBTQ+ people, particularly those who are transgender and nonbinary, face. In his message, available on Facebook, the bishop, who is a leader on LGBTQ+ inclusion in the U.S., writes:

“As you celebrate the annual Pride festival and other events throughout the month, know that I and many of the faithful of the Catholic Diocese of Lexington will be praying for you and with you at this time. I know that it has been a particularly hard year following the legislative session in the Commonwealth with all its punitive measures against youth identifying as trans[gender]. I also know of the struggles that many of you experience personally and the rejection, meanness, misunderstanding and exclusion that you have too often experienced from communities of sfaith- including our own Catholic community. We all need to work to be more compassionate, understanding, civil, kind and willing to re-discover the universal fraternity that is God’s plan.

“First and foremost, you are children of God. With that comes immense dignity and worth that cannot be taken away. During this time of celebration, I hope that you will draw closer to the God of all creation and experience the all-embracing love manifest in Jesus. If you are of a different faith tradition or no faith tradition at all, you can certainly join us in striving for a more peaceful and fraternal world.”

2) Maxwell Kuzma, a transgender Catholic writer, reflected on how the act of washing feet on Holy Thursday can instruct the church in its treatment of LGBTQ+ people. Kuzma, who is a guest contributor to Bondings 2.0, noted in the National Catholic Reporter that shortly before Holy Week, the U.S. bishops’ conference issued a document against gender-affirming healthcare for trans people. He continued about the act of foot washing, in a reflection worth reading in full:

“As a transgender Catholic living in America in 2023, I wonder what our church could learn if we put this type of humble, messy love into practice, if we were less concerned with status and power dynamics and more interested in meeting people on the margins. Jesus was never someone who cared about social status or about what people would say about him. He was deeply concerned with the dignity of the human person. . .

“To truly celebrate the mystery of Holy Week, we are called to meet people where they are — and transgender people are in the pews. We are at the grocery store, at school, in the home, living out the beautiful mystery of our lives.

“Leveling theological rejections at people who are humbling themselves before God looks nothing like the example of Jesus. Maybe instead, the church can meet in a mutual intimacy of shared vulnerability — like washing each other’s feet.”

3) Yunuen Trujillo, author of LGBTQ Catholics: A Guide for Inclusive Ministry, appeared on a U.S. Catholic podcast to discuss the Bible and issues of gender and sexuality. You can find the conversation between the magazine’s editors, Emily Sanna and Rebecca Bratten Weiss, and Trujillo, who is also a Bondings 2.0 contributor, by clicking here.

4) PinkNews named Sr. Janet Rozzano, RSM, as one of its “29 incredible lesbians who are loud, proud and making the world a better place” for Lesbian Visibility Week in April. Rozzano, who was named to a similar list in Yahoo News in 2021, is a contributor to Love Tenderly: Sacred Stories of Lesbian and Queer Religious, an anthology published by New Ways Ministry, and has contributed to Bondings 2.0.

5) Eve Tushnet, a lesbian Catholic author who has written extensively about celibacy, wrote a review in America of the film Great Freedom, which concerns incarcerated gay people in late 20th century Germany. Of the movie, released in 2022, Tushnet wrote:

“‘Great Freedom’ isn’t a tragedy. It’s more like a joke—it even has a punchline! There are small moments of gallows humor, as when Hans suggests escaping to a place with lighter penalties for sodomy—or, as Leo repeats with incredulity, ‘You want to escape to East Germany?!”’There are small moments of gentleness, when even the camera offers a little sheltering privacy. The film is an exploration of the nature of eros: the many acts, not all of them defensible or intelligible, only some of them sexual, toward which it can propel us; the ways it isn’t freeing, but may be healing; the ways it can be warped but never fully caged.”

—Robert Shine (he/him), New Ways Ministry, June 3, 2023