Biography of an Unsung Hero of the Catholic LGBTQ+ Movement

A rich and longstanding history of LGBTQ advocacy exists within the Catholic Church, even if we do not always have access to every story or every piece of it. What survives tends to be uneven: some lives are well-documented, others appear only in fragments, and many forms of advocacy—pastoral, educational, institutional, or relational—never leave a public record at all. There has been a broad spectrum of ways LGBTQ Catholics and their allies have worked for dignity, truth, and belonging within the Church.

Against the Current: Father Tom Oddo and the New American Catholic by Tyler Bieber (Unencumbered Press, 2025) examines the life of Fr. Tom Oddo, CSC. Rather than attempting to tell a total history of LGBTQ Catholic advocacy, the book focuses on how faith, education, institutional leadership, and public engagement converged in one particular life. In doing so, it offers readers a grounded and human-scale entry point into a much larger and more complex story.

Born in 1944 and killed in a car accident at just 45, Tom lived an astonishingly full life. A Holy Cross priest educated at University of Notre Dame, a national leader within DignityUSA, and eventually president of the University of Portland, Tom Oddo came of age alongside the reforms of Vatican II and interacted with many well-known and well-loved figures in Catholic LGBTQ advocacy–including New Ways own Sr. Jeannine Gramick! Bieber’s book situates Tom firmly within the historical moment—not as a radical outlier, but as someone who took seriously  the Second Vatican Council’s call for the Church to read the signs of the times.

One of the most compelling tensions Bieber explores is Tom’s careful navigation of institutional boundaries. Tom believed deeply in moving the Church forward, but he also understood the cost of being dismissed outright. He did not “push it too far” in ways that would foreclose his ability to teach, preach, or lead. That posture may frustrate some contemporary readers, but Bieber shows the depth and breadth of  the advocacy Tom was able to accomplish. His was a  strategic and pastoral choice shaped by real constraints. For queer Catholics who have often had to translate their lives into palatable language just to remain in the room, that tension feels familiar.

Bieber’s care as a historian is evident not only in what he includes, but in how he arrives there. Against the Current is grounded in extensive archival research, particularly materials held at the University of Portland, where Tom served as president until his death. Bieber poured over meeting minutes, speeches, correspondence, student publications, and institutional records. In a recent conversation on my podcast, Whiplash, Bieber shares candidly about how this process moved and at times challenged him. Hearing him reflect on that research alongside the book underscores just how deliberately these choices were made, and how much Tom’s story touched Bieber’s life as well.

The book’s title emerges from a formative practice in Tom’s life: he was a lifelong swimmer, and in reflecting on what it means to truly live the Christian life, he analogously understood his role to “swim in the waters of God,” even when that meant moving against the current of the world—or the Church. Tom’s advocacy did not grow despite his faith, but because of it. His passion for justice was inseparable from his spiritual depth. Like so many LGBTQ people of faith, he encountered Christianity not as a static rulebook but as a mystery that demanded everything of him.

That integration of contemplation and action is perhaps most clearly articulated in Tom’s Harvard dissertation, a comparative study of Trappist Thomas Merton and Jesuit Daniel Berrigan. Bieber shows how Tom understood activism and spirituality as mutually dependent: ove of God and love of neighbor is a single, indivisible movement. It animated his work with Dignity, where he served as National Secretary, his public defense of gay civil rights, and his insistence that Catholic moral teaching must reckon honestly with biological and psychological data about human sexuality.

Father Tom Oddo, CSC

What makes Against the Current especially resonant today is how contemporary Tom’s voice still sounds. Decades ago, he challenged the Church for describing homosexuality as a “serious depravity,” arguing instead that it could be a God-given gift when lived ethically and lovingly. He insisted that religion must shape how we treat one another, not merely how we pray. Reading these passages now—amid resurgent Christian nationalism and renewed Catholic culture-war rhetoric—it is difficult not to feel both grief and clarity. Grief for how many lives have been harmed. Clarity about what faithful Catholic witness can look like.

Tom carried these commitments into his presidency at the University of Portland. Bieber’s portrayal of his approach to Catholic higher education is especially striking: a refusal to confuse faith with fear, or formation with censorship. Tom believed Catholic institutions should stand for something and allow every question to be asked. Truth, he trusted, was strong enough to survive scrutiny.

One of the physical embodiments of that vision—the creation of the campus’ Chapel of Christ the Teacher—becomes, in Bieber’s telling, a quiet theological statement. A space designed not to dominate or intimidate, but to orient worship toward learning, humility, and encounter. It is a small detail in the book, but a revealing one. Tom believed architecture, pedagogy, and policy all preached a gospel, whether intentionally or not.

Against the Current is not hagiography. Bieber is attentive to unresolved questions, to the limits of what Tom could or would say in his time. But that honesty is precisely what gives the book its power. Fr. Tom Oddo emerges not as a flawless hero, but as a deeply faithful man trying—imperfectly, persistently—to tell the truth and stay rooted in love.

For queer Catholics today, this history matters. It reminds us that the Church has already contained the tools necessary for queer liberation to flourish—and that those tools have been wielded before, by people willing to trust their experience, their intellect, and the Gospel more than institutional inertia. 

Tyler Bieber has given us a gift: a reminder that swimming against the current has always been part of the Christian life.

—Max Kuzma, January 12, 2026

For further reading:

Oregon ArtsWatch: “In ‘Against the Current,’ author Tyler Bieber recounts the life of the Rev. Thomas Oddo, one of the University of Portland’s most consequential presidents.”  Contains an interview with author Tyler Bieber.