Tag Archives: New Ways Ministry

Jesuit Priest Endorses Students ‘Making a Mess’ in Seattle

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From Bondings 2.0 (New Ways Minsitry):

#KeepMrZ2013 is a movement of high school students in Seattle organizing for their gay vice principal fired for marrying his husband.  Now one more voice is speaking out in support of these youth.

Father John Whitney, SJ, pastor of St. Joseph’s Parish in Seattle, spoke about the students from Eastside Catholic High School in his homily earlier this week.  He begins by describing the conflict in early Christianity about whether to accept Gentiles as members or only Jews, and he reflects on how this controversy was resolved:

“We must imagine the scene: the Church, still subject to occasional bouts of persecution and yet growing feverishly among both Jews and Gentiles alike, faces a great conflict—how are Gentiles to be admitted into the community?…

“What is most amazing about this moment in the Church is how the community comes to decide, together, what is to be done. There is debate and disruption, but it is not seen as division; rather, it is the way the Holy Spirit is working within the community. Further, this debate is grounded on human experience, and not on tradition or on the power of office. Rather than beginning with Scripture—with the Torah or the Prophets—the community begins with the experience of the faithful: with the testimony of Peter, Paul, and Barnabas—none of whom claim special authority in the face of the communal discernment, but all of whom, instead, simply testify to the way in which they have seen the Gentiles touched and filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit….Here is diversity without division, complexity with separation, debate and dissent without the need for punishment or condemnation. In listening for the living Spirit of Christ Jesus, the Church begins by listening to the sinners and seekers who are his body in the world.

“I have thought often of this scene in Acts, over the last year, and especially as I have listened to Pope Francis speak of the need for “uproar” by religious, or call young people to make “a mess” in their dioceses. Like many, I have been refreshed and renewed not by some great doctrinal changes, but by the absence of fear expressed in the words of the Holy Father; by his trust in the workings of the Holy Spirit and his passion for courageous acts of faith—even acts that risk error or end in failure. For Francis, it seems, the timidity of tightly held borders, the safe-harbor of accepted opinion and doctrinal purity risks a greater sin—a greater loss to the Church—than the dangerous paths of love and welcome….

“In the last few weeks, the students of Eastside Catholic High School, and their companions from other schools in the area, have given us an example of the kind of passionate discernment, motivated by the Gospel, that characterizes an important dimension of Catholic education—and, indeed, should characterize our faith both in and out of school. Regardless of the particulars of this situation (and personnel issues may have complexities I do not know), these students have spoken up as products of Catholic education, as women and men motivated by the Spirit and by their own experience of grace. Though it is a painful time, their teachers and their parents should be proud of the Gospel spirit that has been planted in these young hearts. Likewise, we in the broader Church should be grateful for the mess these young people bring, and should listen with compassion and openness to the Spirit that moves within them. Their love, their gentleness, their quest to make of the Church “the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people,” demands more than the silence of authority; it demands communion and engagement with the Church—i.e., education, direction, dialogue—since their spirit is a sign of the Church and is life-blood for the Church. May we engage, with fearless love, at the side of our younger sisters and brothers; and may trust in the God whose Church we are all becoming.”

You can read the reflection in full by clicking here.

–Bob Shine, New Ways Ministry

via Bondings 2.0.

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New Ways Ministry Welcomes Supreme Court Decisions on Marriage Equality

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The following is a statement of Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry on the Supreme Court’s decisions about marriage equality:

The Supreme Court’s decisions today that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and that marriage equality should be revived in California feel like “justice rolling down like a river,” in the words of the prophet Amos. While Catholic bishops will not welcome these decisions, the people in the pews of Catholic parishes across the country are ecstatic that these major injustices against their lesbian and gay friends and family members are now dissolved.  We thank the Court for these decisions, and we give thanks to God for answering our many prayers seeking justice.

Catholic lay people across the U.S. and in California have worked hard to support their deeply held Catholic belief that equal treatment by our government’s laws should be extended to lesbian and gay couples who want to marry.  Catholics hold this belief because of their faith, not in spite of it.  Our Catholic social justice tradition motivates us to work for strong families and expansive social protections, and these can only be achieved when all families are treated fairly and equally under the law.

These Supreme Court decisions are definitely not the final word on marriage equality in our nation.  Much work remains to be done.  And Catholics will be part of that work in state and national campaigns to facilitate marriage equality and to end other injustices against LGBT people such as discriminatory immigration policies.   Catholics will stand with those of other faiths to show that religious people do not support discrimination.

Catholics also have work to do within our own church.  We are ashamed and dismayed that our bishops are often the most vocal opponents of marriage equality.  Their statements often reveal a stunning ignorance of lesbian and gay lives and a lack of compassion that is unbecoming of faith leaders.  Catholics pray that today’s Supreme Court decisions will open our bishops’ eyes so that they will at least meet and dialogue with lesbian and gay Catholics and their families.  If the bishops do this, they will witness firsthand how the Gospel of justice and love which they preach is practiced by those they consider the least in their flocks.

New Ways Ministry is a 36-year old national Catholic ministry of justice and reconciliation for LGBT people and the Catholic Church.  For more information visit http://www.NewWaysMinistry.org.

via  Bondings 2.0.

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“Catholic Parents Cope Differently When LGBT Children Are Excluded”

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The trend of LGBT individuals exiting the Catholic churches of childhood is now expanding to include their parents, too. Many clergy and ministers try to balance pastoral care with doctrinal statements, and some Catholic parents of LGBT children are finding the results inadequate. WBEZ, a Chicago public radio station, profiled several Catholic couples with children of varying sexual orientations and gender identities to understand further the parents’ relationship with the Church.

Mary Jo and Norm Bowers

Mary Jo and Norm Bowers, Catholic parents with a lesbian daughter

Toni and Tom Weaver explain how combining their love for their gay son with their strong Catholic identities is an evolving process. Toni describes herself as an active member of her parish in the music ministries and through daily Mass attendance. Their son, Michael came out the day after graduating college, and Toni believes her warm embrace in that moment would not always have been true. WBEZ reports:

“’If he had come out to me 10 years earlier, I’m not sure what my response would have been,’ Toni said. ‘I was definitely very traditionally Catholic and had even been moving in Evangelical circles. I was the first one to preach that homosexuality was wrong.’

“But Weaver said she came to a fuller understanding of homosexuality when she began studying for a master’s degree in theology:

“’Here were people who were gay who were being treated atrociously, and they were being denied their basic rights, and they were the butt of jokes…It finally dawned on me that people don’t choose their sexual orientation. That for me was an absolute turning point, and I attribute it to the work of the spirit.’”

The Weavers welcome their gay son, and then sought to alter the attitudes of Catholics around them, but were harmed when a bishop’s letter condemning marriage equality was read during Mass. This episode triggered the Weavers to permanently leave their Catholic parish:

“’I think that was the first time I felt slapped in the face by my church…I stood up, we were sitting in the middle of the pew. I stood up, and I turned toward the door and walked out. I grieved the church for 18 months. I grieved it. Something had died in my life.’”

Other parents remain split on how to engage Catholic communities, like Norm and Mary Jo Bowers who have a married lesbian daughter with two children baptized in the Church. Mary Jo left the Church, but her husband remains with a highly localized perspective:

“’I’ve told my pastor, I said, ‘To me my whole religion is this parish. It stays within the confines of this parish…I have nothing anymore to do with the hierarchy and what comes out of Rome’…

“Norm Bowers said he was offended by that and by a column in a Catholic paper. A priest wrote that children raised by gay couples might grow up ‘confused.’

“’I said to myself, which Catholic who has a brain isn’t confused in the Catholic church today?’”

Parents who remain, like Norm Bowers, find the positives in their local parishes and maintain hope that, under a new pope, perhaps the tone will change to something more pastorally-inclined. They also benefit from supportive clergy, like Fr. Bill Tkachuk of St. Nicholas Parish in Evanston, Illinois who compliments parishioner’s efforts to create an LGBT-affirming Catholic community:

“[Fr. Tkachuk] said the church needs to be more sensitive to families in the way it talks about gays and gay issues: ‘Speaking in the language that people can hear with their hearts and accept with their hearts, as opposed to a more academic language that can be received as very hurtful, even if it’s not intended that way.’

“His parishioners recently wrote to Cardinal Francis George of Chicago. They objected to a letter in which the cardinal called civil unions a ‘legal fiction,’ and gay marriage ‘contrary to the common sense of the human race.’”

Barbara Marian and her husband now commute over an hour to St. Nicholas each week after having too many negative experiences in her local parish. Barbara has a lesbian daughter, along with three nieces and a nephew who identify as LGBT and sees no plausible way to leave the Catholic Church:

“’We live with love for these neighbors, colleagues and children and we see them as whole persons,’ Marian said. ‘We don’t focus on the small part of their lives that involves their genitalia.’…

“‘I am Catholic through and through and through,’ Marian said. ‘There is no separating me from the church. Although it brings me to my knees with anger and tears when the bishops make a statement and strafe my community, I bleed.’”

As growing numbers of Catholics and parishes support LGBT equality, and as more children feel safe coming out to their families, anti-gay efforts by Catholic bishops will continue affecting long-term parishioners who refuse to remain or stay silent when they watch their children come under attack.

A good resource for Catholic parents of all sorts–those who are struggling with accepting a child’s orientation, those who are struggling with church structures, those who want to become more involved with equality issues–is Fortunate Families, a national network of Catholic parents of LGBT sons and daughters.

–Bob Shine, New Ways Ministry

Bondings 2.0

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LGBT Catholics hope for future papal dialogue after Benedict’s resignation

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With the departure of Benedict, DignityUSA, the nation’s largest gay and lesbian Catholic organization, called for an end to church statements that “inflict harm on already marginalized people” and depict gay people “as less than fully human.”

Members of a gay activist group hold up signs Dec. 16 outside St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. They demonstrated against part of Pope Benedict XVI's World Peace Day message, in which he affirmed Catholic teaching on marriage as the lifelong bond of a man and a woman. (CNS/Reuters/Alessandro Bianchi)

Members of a gay activist group hold up signs Dec. 16 outside St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. They demonstrated against part of Pope Benedict XVI’s World Peace Day message, in which he affirmed Catholic teaching on marriage as the lifelong bond of a man and a woman. (CNS/Reuters/Alessandro Bianchi)

In a collective statement, leaders of Equally Blessed, a coalition of Catholics that works for equality for gay people, called upon the cardinals to select a pontiff who will realize that “in promoting discrimination against LGBT people, the church inflicts pain on marginalized people, alienates the faithful and lends moral credibility to reactionary political movements across the globe.”

The coalition, which includes Call to Action, DignityUSA, Fortunate Families, and New Ways Ministry, said the church now has the opportunity to turn away from Benedict’s “oppressive policies toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Catholics, and their families and friends.”

For at least the last five decades, Catholic pronouncements on gay Catholic issues have been at least ambivalent and even sometimes contradictory. They have included exhortations on pastoral care and inclusivity and at the same time admonitions against gay lifestyles and warnings to gay Catholic organizations.

This ambivalence has resulted from church torn between the pastoral nature of the Gospels and sexual code based on centuries-old understandings of natural law. Official Catholic sexual morality forbids all “unnatural” acts under penalty of grave sin. It also rests in teachings that sexual acts are to be open to biological procreation. By extension, church prelates have fought hard politically against gay rights and gay marriage.

Sometimes Catholic ambivalence in extending a hand to gay people appears within the same document. Pope John Paul II in a 1981 statement on the family called for “an even more generous, intelligent and prudent pastoral commitment” by families that find themselves “faced by situations which are objectively difficult.”

The U.S. bishops in a 2006 document, “Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care,” wrote there is a need to “help persons with a homosexual inclination understand church teaching.”

“At the same time,” the bishops went on, “it is important that Church ministers listen to [their] experiences, needs, and hopes.”

via National Catholic Reporter.


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Raising LGBT Standards in Catholic Schools

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National Catholic Schools Week concludes today having celebrated, under the theme “Catholic Schools Raise the Standards,” the many positives that Catholic education provides millions of students. In many areas of education parochial schools lead, but it is past due for Catholic education to confront its poor record on LGBT issues.

Raise_Standards_logo_v1

Catholic schools, historically, strove to live according to the ideals of dignity and welcome by educating those of varying ethnicities,  creeds, and economic classes with an emphasis on marginalized communities. Quality education in a respectful atmosphere, provided to all regardless of finances, was one fruit from generations of women and men religious, and now lay educators.

Yet, the news today about Catholic education too frequently tells of unjustified firings for inclusively-minded church workers, a lack of support for LGBT students, or excluded same-gender parents. If Catholic schools claim they raise the standards, it is time to do just that by forging a positive future for every student, teacher, staff, administrator, and parent.

On Wednesday of this week, I attended a discussion sponsored by Georgetown University about “LGBTQ Life on a Jesuit Campus.” Students, staff, Jesuits, and alumni gathered to reflect on Georgetown’s efforts to foster a welcoming campus for every student. These efforts blossomed in recent years to indeed raise the standards of LGBT acceptance there, and include the active LGBTQ Resource Center, an LGBTQ prayer group out of the Catholic chaplaincy, student organizations, and peer discussion groups.

Not every Catholic institution of higher education, high school, or elementary school will be so progressive, lacking both the resources and prestige Georgetown benefits from. All can apply the lessons of Georgetown to their local circumstances though.

Transforming a school into an LGBT-positive environment does not involve diminishing the Catholic identity, rather it involves enhancing those core principles of love, inclusion, and dignity that makes a school most Catholic.

For younger students, creating respectful environments encourages life-long toleration for each person based upon their dignity, not their differences. For older students, schools can foster a harmony between developing spiritualities and sexualities and combat the harmful divergence of these two that leads to so much pain for students of faith.

Catholic schools promise value-added education of the whole person, not just academic knowledge. Each of us must now contribute to creating an LGBT-affirmative educational system within the Catholic Church that truly raises the standards.

The handicap of an institutional hierarchy fixated on anti-marriage equality efforts should not constrict parents, educators, and students from implementing small, meaningful changes at their institution. We can emphasize inclusive language that combats hetero-normativity and respects a variety of gender expressions and identities. We can create respectful classrooms where anti-gay name-calling and harassment are not  tolerated, and actively programmed for eradication. We can explicitly include LGBT community members by welcoming same-gender parents and standing by transgender teachers. We can ensure schools provide counseling, spiritual, and guidance resources for students confronting the complexities of sexuality, spirituality, or some combination of the two.

I recommended the website of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network for further resources on making a primary or secondary school more welcoming. I also highly encourage those struggling within a Catholic college or university to contact New Ways Ministry for support we provide in Catholic higher education.

We can do more to raise the standard of Catholic schools on LGBT issues and we must. The Gospel demands no less of us.

–Bob Shine, New Ways Ministry

via  « Bondings 2.0.

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