“Living This Diversity Should Make Us Rejoice!”

“There is no need to fear the diversity of charisms in the Church. Rather, living this diversity should make us rejoice!”

With these words, Pope Francis announced his prayer intention for January 2024: “For the gift of diversity in the Church.” This month, the pope is celebrating that, the church, from the earliest Christians to the presen day, has been marked by diversity as much as unity. Francis’ message focuses on Christianity’s ecumenical variety, but his insights can be appklied to all kinds of ecclesial diversity, including LGBTQ+ identities.

Pope Francis also recognizes that a tension has always existed in the church between diversity and unity. His January prayer  for us to understand diversity in the church as a gift comes amid a period of heightened tension. The Vatican’s allowance of blessings for queer couples has roiled the church for weeks now. While many LGBTQ+ people and allies celebrate Fiducia Supplicans, the declaration allowing such blessings, the backlash against the document, and against Pope Francis, has been strong and persistent. Readers of Bondings 2.0 will know that whole episcopal conferences rejected the declaration and banned queer couples from being blessed, prompting the Vatican to clarify such outright bans were not allowed. Still, other bishops welcomed the declaration, even promising to bless queer couples personally. The flurry of these statements and commentaries proceeds unabated.

Personally, I know Fiducia Supplicans to be progress worth celebrating. The psalmist’s words in today’s liturgical readings resonate because of this, with a slight twist: “I have waited, waited for [God], and [God] stooped toward me and heard my cry. And [God] put a new song into my mouth, a hymn to our God.” For so long, LGBTQ+ people have waited for the church to recognize our love. God was with us in this waiting. It is the institutional church who finally stooped low and listened. And now, LGBTQ+ Catholics and allies can sing a new hymn of praise to God because, the institutional Catholic Church has stated formally that same-gender relationships have good in them.

In Fiducia Supplicans—and even more so in the pro-LGBTQ+ movements in Germany, Flanders, and elsewhere that brought it about—I see the lived diversity that Pope Francis says “should make us rejoice!” Expounding on what “charism” means in church life, the pope said in 2014:

“The most beautiful experience, though, is the discovery of all the different charisms and all the gifts of his Spirit that the Father showers on his Church! This must not be seen as a reason for confusion, for discomfort: they are all gifts that God gives to the Christian community, in order that it may grow in harmony, in the faith and in his love, as one body, the Body of Christ. The same Spirit who bestows this diversity of charisms unites the Church. It is always the same Spirit. Before this multitude of charisms, our heart, therefore, must open itself to joy and we must think: “What a beautiful thing! So many different gifts, because we are all God’s children, all loved in a unique way”. Never must these gifts become reasons for envy, or for division, for jealousy!”

Yet, despite the pope’s exhortations not to let diversity lead to fear, jealousy, or division, the reaction to the blessings declaration has demonstrated these realities exist in spades. There are immense tensions, which some venture even threaten the church’s unity. While I am less worried about that possibility actually happening, being in communion with Catholics worldwide is something I cherish. It is worth preserving, though perhaps not at the cost of justice for the oppressed, as is often implicitly suggested.

How do I plan to live out a prayer for the gift of diversity in the church? Imitating Jesus, as is often true, is a good starting point. In today’s Gospel readjg, asked by the soon-to-be apostles Andrew and Peter where he was staying, Jesus replies, “Come, and you will see.” The Gospel then tells us that the apostles and Jesus went to his lodging and stayed together for the day. Likewise, to the non-affirming people critical of LGBTQ+ identities and love, we should, if it is safe and we are able, offer the invitation, “Come, and you will see.” And we should sit together for a while.

Thankfully, the church is well situated for these encounters because of the Synod on Synodality, now in its final year. In the coming months, Catholic LGBTQ+ advocates need to focus on showing our hesitant and even resistant coreligionists that there is nothing to fear from a diversity of gender and sexual identities, that this diversity is something in which we can and should all rejoice.

The LGBTQ+ movement has succeeded in large part because of such personal encounters. The early slogan “Gay is good!” was not merely a rhetorical argument. It has been most powerful when a person someone knows and loves comes out, and can witness firsthand that gay is good. Blessing queer couples openly will hopefully allow more Catholics to understand that their love is good, and more broadly, that being LGBTQ+ is God-given and worth celebrating.

In the Synod on Synodality’s final year, let us renew our efforts to reach out, invite, and sit with everyone and anyone, especially those with whom we disagree—so that when the Synod concludes, the entire church may sing together a new hymn of praise to God for the glorious gift of diversity which has been given to us.

Join New Ways Ministry for a webinar on the Synod and LGBTQ+ people in 2024 featuring Synod delegates Julia Oseka and Dr. Cynthia Bailey Manns. The webinar will be held on Tuesday, January 30, 2024 at 7:30 – 8:45 p.m. Eastern U.S. Time. For more information and to register, click here.

—Robert Shine (he/him), New Ways Ministry, January 14, 2024