A Synodal Church Must Abandon Colonizing Ideas of Gender and Sexuality, Writes Gay Catholic

So many of the conversations about and hopes for the Synod on Synodality’s global assembly in Rome this October have focused on what will be gained as the Catholic Church becomes more of a synodal institution. But one gay Catholic points out that if the church wants to move towards Pope Francis’ synodal vision, it will have to also let go of some longheld ideas.

In the National Catholic Reporter, Donny Mioskowski Cámara identifies “three unspoken assumptions that prevent the church from faithfully transmitting the liberating and life-giving message of God to us through the teachings and life of Jesus…power as domination, the superiority of elite Western European culture and the norms of heteropatriarchy,” the idea that cisgender, heterosexual men dominate a societal hierarchy.

Cámara turns to Brazilian liberation theology to draw a contrast between power that dominates and Jesus’ exercise of power as love and service. As a gay Filipino-American Catholic, he is acutely aware of the oppression imposed on his ancestors by the Spanish conquerors, who “used tremendous violence to impose a society structured by domination at all levels.”

Like the vision of a synodal church where a diverse community of voices discern together, the pre-Spanish Philippines encompassed numerous cultures, social structures, languages, and religious practices across the islands, Cámara points out. To successfully conquer the region, the Spanish needed homogeneity and thus enforced their own Western European culture, including “a system of gender and norms of sexual practices that is known as heteropatriarchy,” which is now “profoundly embedded in contemporary Filipino culture.”

Cámara describes the babaylan, spiritual leaders who embodied both male and female and wore women’s clothing. Under colonial rule, the babaylans were repressed and even killed. Any gender or sexual practices outside European norms were vanquished, a legacy that still undergirds Cámara’s and other Filipino Catholics’ experience today. He points out:

“Heteronormative sexual practices did not exist in pre-colonial Philippines. People had sexual-emotional relationships with people of all genders, and different-sex relationships were not seen as superior to same-sex relationships. There was no concept of ‘straight’ and ‘gay’ or ‘cis’ and ‘trans’ people.”

Shifting to a synodal church requires naming these destructive tendencies so as to choose “a symbol of authentic liberation and freedom, and not of the homogenous adherence of all to a close and centralist system that tends to disqualify those who depart from it.” In short, the model is the example of Jesus’ life and teaching rooted in love of one another exactly as they are rather than how well they adhere to a standard imposed by those who attempt to dominate. Cámara writes:

“If the church inculturates itself in many diverse ways, then there will no longer be only one way to talk about the Divine, only one way to pray together in community, only one way to structure families and only one way to live a sexual life. Yet the true unity in all this diversity will be love.”

The ongoing Synod on Synodality is indeed a rich opportunity for the church to loosen its grip on domination,  heteropatriarchy, and bias towards white European norms. May Cámara’s hopes and vision re-energize us towards the Gospel call of liberation for all people.

—Angela Howard McParland (she/her), New Ways Ministry, August 1, 2023