What If Queer Chosen Families Are Cornerstones for God’s Kin-dom?
What if God is inviting us to build something much more wonderful: an interdependent kin-dom in which all of our gifts are used, and all of our needs are met?
Ariell Simon (she/her) is a healthcare chaplain living in central Missouri. She entered the Catholic Church in 2011 as an undergraduate student at Loyola University Maryland, and later received a Masters of Divinity from Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. Ariell has served as a healthcare chaplain in hospitals and nursing facilities in three states. She is currently an adjunct instructor of undergraduate Religious Studies. Ariell enjoys offering spiritual direction, writing, and fostering a theological imagination for an inclusive Church.
What if God is inviting us to build something much more wonderful: an interdependent kin-dom in which all of our gifts are used, and all of our needs are met?
How will the implementation of Fiducia Supplicans, the Vatican declaration allowing priests to bless same-gender couples, shape new contours to pastoral care? Many commentators agree that the document has an evangelical aim, however, their views about the evangelizing methods point in two different directions.
“The Bible was written in a patriarchal time, but it recognizes that people reimagined and reshaped their gender identities back then—just like they do today.”
“The tradition on sexual ethics led us not to greatness but to negativity and minutiae,“ writes Fr. James Keenan, S.J. a leading Catholic ethicist. In National Catholic Reporter, Keenan traces the historical development of Catholic sexual ethics, showing how it has become increasingly restrictive and negative over time—an analysis with clear implications for LGBTQ+ issues.
“The Church is for sinners.” With this statement, gay priest and theologian James Alison summarizes the underlying message of Fiducia Supplicans and explains the document’s significance will “open a way forward that will allow LGBT Catholics to be listened to on their own terms while maintaining the unity of the Church.”
“There is…fresh hope for the church to develop a truly ‘catholic’ (inclusive) stance toward its LGBTQ+ members,” one theologian opined in evaluating the Synod on Synodality’s first General Assembly that concluded last fall.
“God made male and female, yes. But God made day and night, too, as well as dawn and dusk,” writes Nathan Schneider in a recent America article pushing back against Catholic denunciations of so-called “gender ideology.”
Nick Fagnant, Commonweal’s Synod Writing Fellow and a doctoral student in theology, writes about how the spirit of Pope Francis’ Synod on Synodality can influence Catholic schools’ policies toward LGBTQ+ students.
This message of accompaniment and welcome rings hollow for members of the LGBTQ+ community whose mental health has been impacted by homophobic and transphobic church teaching and policies.
Without restorative justice, “we’re just asking the wounded to ignore their own wounds, and fostering the kind of neutrality that serves the oppressor.”
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