How Catholics Celebrate Pride: Jesuit Pastor Defends Pride Mass Against Protests

Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Washington, D.C.

So much negative news regarding Pride seems to have arisen this year. For this final week of Pride Month, we are instead highlighting, in a series of posts titled “How Catholics Celebrate Pride,” all the good ways that the people of God are celebrating queerness and advocating for equality. Some of the content will be highly visible news events. Other bits will be the more local, somewhat quieter, but no less significant actions of pro-LGBTQ+ Catholics in their parishes, schools, and communities.

At Holy Trinity Church in Washington, D.C., the pastor, Fr. Kevin Gillespie, SJ, affirmed the parish’s commitment to its LGBTQ+ ministry after right-wing activists tried to have its 3rd annual LGBTQIA+ Pride Mass cancelled. Gillespie issued a brief statement:

“This celebration is an expression of our parish’s mission statement TO ACCOMPANY ONE ANOTHER IN CHRIST, CELEBRATE GOD’S LOVE, AND TRANSFORM LIVES. Our LGBTQIA+ ministry is a response to the Holy Father’s call to go out to the margins. Our celebration of Pride is not celebrating personal vanity, but the human dignity of a group of people who have been for too long the objects of violence, bullying and harassment. Our parish reaches out to LGBTQIA+ people as it reaches out to all Catholics in our area.”

The Pride Mass was celebrated as scheduled on June 14 with more than 250 people joining in person, uninterrupted by the small group of protestors gathered outside the church. Petula Dvorak, a columnist for The Washington Post, wrote about attending the Mass and conversing with some of the queer faithful there. Dvorak told the story of Joseph Chee:

“Chee, who went to Catholic school, who studied Carmelite theology, who belonged to conservative political groups and who knew for a good part of his 30 years that he was gay, had spent years searching for his place in the world and in a church that didn’t seem to want him.

“‘I felt very alienated from all the communities that I had,’ he said. ‘I felt deeply convinced that I wasn’t supposed to leave the church, you know? But I was like, “Where is my place?”‘

“But under the leadership of Pope Francis, who last year publicly rejected judgment of gay people, Chee sensed an opening.”

Dvorak spoke to longtime parishioners and newer ones at Holy Trinity. Cerissa Cafasso, a bisexual Catholic, explained: “[At this parish] I can be myself, my full person, with no throat clearing.” Dvorak also reported:

“‘It’s ridiculous,’ said a gay man who traveled about five hours to walk up those steps of Holy Trinity, to sit in a pew and to — finally — exhale.

“He’s in his 30s, lives in a conservative town in Pennsylvania, works at very conservative organization and is only out to his family. He asked me several times to preserve his anonymity in our interview.

“Deeply Catholic, he kept trying to go to church, knowing what he knows about himself, about what those in the pews next to him think of him. ‘I wouldn’t feel welcome,’ he said.

“Ever since he accidentally found Holy Trinity’s online Mass during the pandemic (he said his mouse bumped a tab and opened the link, he called it a ‘God sighting’) he’s been attending their services, online, then in person, making that drive. Five hours each way, as often as he can.

“His mom came with him on Wednesday, and they knelt together.”

A growing number of parishes have held Pride Masses in recent years, like New York City’s Church of St. Paul the Apostle, run by the Paulist Fathers. Once again, its LGBTQ+ group, Out at St. Paul, planned to hold a Mass near The Stonewall Inn in New York City, where, in 1969, riots against police raids led to the launch of the modern gay rights movement. (Due to the park’s closure, the Pride Mass ended up being celebrated at the church.) Michael O’Loughlin reported about other parish celebrations in America:

“A parish in Hoboken, N.J., Our Lady of Grace and St. Joseph, will host a Pride Mass on June 25. In Seattle, Wash., St. Joseph Parish was scheduled to host a pride picnic on June 11, following the Saturday afternoon Mass, an event which has previously drawn scrutiny from conservative media. An art installation celebrating Pride is present again at Historic St. Paul Catholic Church in Lexington, Ky., which is intended to serve as a signal that the parish is welcoming to L.G.B.T. Catholics and their families. . .

“Meredith Augustin has helped plan the ‘Pre-Pride Mass,’ held the afternoon before the New York City’s pride parade, at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Manhattan since its inception about a dozen years ago. The parish’s director of pastoral music and staff liaison to its L.G.B.T. ministry, Ms. Augustin said that in previous years, the Mass had attracted protesters, but the parish never considered canceling it. . .

“In Chicago, St. Teresa of Avila Parish has marked Pride for several years, the Rev. Frank Latzko told America.The pastor said that he tries to keep messages of solidarity and acceptance in his sermons all year, but the weekend of Chicago’s Pride parade, which attracts about a million spectators, counts as a special celebration.

“While there is not a special ‘Pride Mass,’ many parishioners attend Sunday Mass, at which Father Latzko delivers a topical homily, before making the walk over to the parade.”

—Robert Shine (he/him), New Ways Ministry, June 26, 2023

Alexei says:

June 26, 2023 at 3:00 am

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,* and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”
It is so wonderful and welcoming when a church community is more than Christian or Catholic but truly Christ-like and is willing to “learn of me” as Jesus invited. Thank you Holy Trinity Church.
A preacher put this question to a class of children:
“If all the good people were white and all the bad
people were black, what color would you be?”
Little Mary Jane replied, “Reverend, I’d be streaky!”

So would the preacher. So would the mahatmas, popes, and saints.

A man was looking for a good church to attend and he happened to enter one in which the congregation and the preacher were reading from their prayer book. They were saying, “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.
The man dropped into a seat and sighed with relief as he said to himself,
Thank goodness, I’ve found my crowd at last.”
ATTEMPTS TO HIDE YOUR STREAKINESS WILL SOMETIMES BE SUCCESSFUL, ALWAYS DISHONEST.
Anthony de Mello in THE SONG OF THE BIRD, p.129