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Cultivating Justice Love
Dignity Canada Dignité (A Position Paper)
Volume 33 Issue 1, 2 & 3 | Posted: March 28, 2019
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
At the Vatican on February 21-24, 2019, the Catholic Church hosted an urgent meeting of bishops from throughout the world, primarily the presidents of national bishops’ conferences, heads of Eastern Catholic Churches and the heads of certain Vatican offices. Its purpose was to understand better the sexual abuse of minors by members of the church’s clergy and the subsequent cover-up of this abuse by bishops, with a view to preventing sexual abuse in the future.
As input into this critical meeting, Dignity Canada Dignité has sent a position paper to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, for careful consideration and to bring to the attention of bishops at the Vatican Synod.
The paper concludes that the official teachings on sexual ethics, themselves, have contributed to the sexual abuse of minors. We cite the writings of a retired Catholic bishop who described how the official teachings on sexual ethics have, as one of several systemic factors, facilitated or enabled the sexual abuse of minors by clergy. A research report released in 2011 found evidence of this systemic factor in a number of abusing priests in the USA. Excerpts follow (the entire paper is available online.)
1. The purpose of this paper
In preparation for the upcoming meeting of Pope Francis with the presidents of bishops’ conferences to discuss the sexual abuse scandal, we of Dignity Canada Dignité (DCD) offer our perspectives on one of the root causes of abuse – the church’s official teachings on sexual ethics.
We do so as people in solidarity with victims of sexual abuse and as people who want to see an end to centuries of abuse and their causes. As lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and other sexual minority (LGBTQ+) Catholics who are members of the Body of Christ, we have a valuable perspective on human sexuality and sexual ethics. We unite our voices with retired auxiliary bishop of Sydney, Australia, Geoffrey Robinson, who in his 2013 book entitled For Christ’s Sake End Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church for Good identified some of the underlying systemic causes of clergy sex abuse.
2. We offer our perspective as wounded healers who delight in how God made us.
DCD has provided pastoral care to LGBTQ+ Christians and has attempted to be a prophetic voice in the Catholic Church for almost four decades. Indeed we provide care to one another so that we may heal from the trauma inflicted on us by members of the church including its pastors. We are what gay Catholic priest Henri Nouwen termed “wounded healers.” We are also, in one respect, more than Nouwen could dare to be – free to clearly state that our sexual orientations and gender identities are entirely good, true and beautiful, and reflect our created wholeness. Nouwen was trapped in the clerical closet. With our siblings of Dignity USA and many similar groups and organizations around the world, we have long called for a revision to the church’s official teachings on sexual ethics. In 1985, we and Dignity USA co-authored “Sexual Ethics: Experience, Growth, and Challenge – A Pastoral Reflection for Lesbian and Gay Catholics.”
4. We offer our perspective as people who persevere in recognizing the Divine dwelling within and among us.
Against unfavorable odds, members of DCD have journeyed through life discerning in many graced communities the will of God for us as LGBTQ+ Catholics. With God’s grace, we have strived to live and love with integrity. We have shared the journey with numerous Catholic pastoral ministers, theologians, other LGBTQ+ organizations and Catholic families, as well as Christians from many denominations. Through the years, many members of DCD have continued to attend Mass. This is in spite of statistics that say that 88% of Catholics in Canada do not believe it is necessary to go to church in order to be moral, and 81% of Catholics who believe it is not important to believe in God in order to be moral. Some have been mistreated or forced out of their parishes and others have quietly endured what is generally a second-class status in what remains, despite Vatican II, a patriarchal tradition-bound church that embodies and teaches contempt for women and the LGBTQ+ sexual minorities. A pastoral associate in Edmonton was fired from his parish because he is in a relationship with a man, and because he started a welcoming ministry. A gay married couple in another city reports that while they attend Mass together regularly wearing civil wedding bands, they have sometimes felt excluded by various looks of other parishioners, by being invited more than once to a singles’ program, and by the knowledge that their relationship receives no support from the church although the church provides marriage preparation, couples’ programming, and troubled marriage retreats to straight couples. Many LGBTQ+ Catholics would hesitate even to honestly discuss certain aspects of their lives with a priest in the sacrament of reconciliation.
6. We offer our perspective in spite of being silenced.
LGBTQ+ Christians have not been listened to. Our voices have been silenced, rejected and demonized. A legalistic, authoritarian mindset that tends to reject and disrespect others has governed the actions and pronouncements of many priests and bishops (and a few religious sisters), leaving too many of us orphaned from communities and families that should have shown us the unconditional mercy of God. We ask now, as we have continuously since the Dignity movement began in 1969, to be heard as who and what we are. We speak our truths as children of the source of all truth, called to live in truth. Our sexual identities are important truths. To live in truth is to be honest about our sexual identities. We reject the sin of clericalism because it asserts that the church’s pastors have the sole possession of truth and have the right to silence the voices of other church members. We reject the sin of clericalism because it privileges being high on a hierarchical structure. We reject the sin of clericalism because it stifles the unfolding of mystery and the development of doctrine. True discipleship trusts in the new promptings of a God who is young.
7. We rejoice when pastors are truly conformed to Christ.
In the ordination rite, we pray that the newly ordained becomes more conformed to Christ. And so we rejoice when pastors take the risk to hear us (as Jesus did with Zacchaeus) and go out to meet us where we are (as the father did with his prodigal son in Luke’s parable). Pope Francis reminds us that a good pastor has the smell of the sheep. We applaud Cardinal Blase Cupich for his careful disciplining of the priest who burned a welcoming ministry flag that included the cross and a rainbow in 2018, and for clearly expressing support for the LGBTQ+ community after the mass murder at the PULSE nightclub in Orlando in 2016. We applaud other courageous bishops in the United States, Canada, the Philippines and other parts of the world who did the same. Gratefully, the All Inclusive Ministries (AIM) at Our Lady of Lourdes parish in Toronto worked with the parish to produce a special liturgy of mourning in response to this tragic event, which touched LGBTQ+ people in many nations. Cardinal Cupich has an LGBTQ+ welcoming ministry in Chicago, and has stood with Fr. James Martin in calling for more such ministries and for a general overhaul in the way the church treats LGBTQ+ people.
8. We have suffered for generations and continue to suffer when teachers and pastors act out of fear rather than faith.
Saints John Chrysostom, Ambrose and Augustine misinterpreted the story of the destruction of Sodom from the Bible, reading it very differently from authorities no less than Jesus Christ himself. Thus began an intense tradition of contempt, which was amplified in a work by Saint Peter Damian and led eventually to persecutions and the criminalization of “sodomites” in harsh legal codes that were spread around the world through European imperialism.
While there were seasons of relative tolerance documented in 1980 by historian and gay Catholic John Boswell, the church has failed us pastorally through most of its history, but especially in a series of Vatican documents issued beginning in 1986. The ill-considered reassertion and further development of doctrinal contempt, without respect for our faithful discernment, formation of consciences and the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives and relationships, has caused serious harm. The church called by God to exercise an option for the poor has too often and in too many ways impoverished us.
In saying this we do not mean to position ourselves as outside the church. We are present in a hidden or more open way in every human group, tribe, nation, culture, and institution. As church we are called to exercise the option for the poor with all categories of the poor, including ourselves as LGBTQ+ Christians. Many of us struggle to love ourselves, and the Catholic Church like many churches has made that very difficult.
Some of us have been harmed by programs for the “same-sex attracted” that make us hate ourselves by demanding that we live extraordinary lives of sexual renunciation based on the assumption that no matter how illogical or antagonistic, church teaching is divine. In our discernment based on decades of struggle and reflection, if it is not a teaching of love, it cannot be the authentic teaching of Christ or Christ’s church. And as Sister Margaret Farley teaches, justice and love are inseparable. If we as the Catholic Church are to act with preferential love for the poor, then the needs of LGBTQ+ Christians must be addressed. We call on our bishops to act with charity by building a bridge with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.
10. The chasm between the beliefs of ordinary Catholics on LGBTQ+ issues and the official teaching continues to widen.
As of 2018, 28 countries recognized same-gender marriage or civil unions. These include nations with deep Catholic roots such as Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Ireland, Malta, Mexico, Portugal, and Spain. Fr. Paul F. Morrissey argues that this is for two reasons. The first has to do with the erosion of the credibility of the Catholic Church on sexual matters, especially in the face of clergy sexual abuse. The second has to do with the Catholic sense of sacramentality that sees an outpouring of grace in all good things even beyond the seven sacraments.
In the US and Canada, the majority of Catholics accept and approve of same-gender marriage. 60% in Canada in 2015, and 67% in the US in 2017 expressed support for same-gender marriage. At the recent synod on youth, the consulted generation even in a rigged consultation expressed LGBT support, but the final document crafted by bishops silenced that support. According to paragraph 150 of the final document, “There are questions relating to the body, affectivity and sexuality which require a deeper anthropological, theological and pastoral elaboration, to be carried out in the most appropriate ways and at the most appropriate levels, from the local to the universal.”
24. We call for an end to the “silence of Sodom.”
Some have blamed gay and bisexual priests for the sexual abuse crisis, and that analysis is clearly homophobic and wrong. “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010,” a comprehensive research report authored by Karen J. Terry of John Jay College in 2011 and presented to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, found that no single psychological, developmental or behavioural characteristic differentiated priests who abused minors from those who did not.
Further, priests with a homosexual identity were not more likely to sexually abuse minors than those with a heterosexual orientation. Santa Clara University psychologist Dr. Thomas Plante who has spent more than 30 years researching and treating psychological issues among Catholic clergy, argues that same-gender attraction does not make a priest more likely to sexually abuse children. (see related in "Other News") Many gay and bisexual priests continue to serve the church well, and some have taken great risks to serve LGBTQ+ Catholics.
Since the church teaches contempt for LGBTQ+ lives and relationships, gay and bisexual priests have been forced to implicitly or explicitly deny that church teaching, relying on more fundamental church teachings such as universal human dignity; love of neighbor as self; and the prohibition on bearing false witness. Unfortunately, because they are in the clerical closet, their everyday lives and professional futures demand they keep quiet about who they really are.
This creates what Mark Jordan calls “the silence of Sodom,” an atmosphere of unspoken truth that has historically been forced upon so-called “sodomites” (a hateful word invented by the church), especially in the all-male priesthood and religious life, and shades everywhere into lying. This silence has given rise to a clerical culture of deceit that as James Alison argues, contributes to abuse.
28. We end with a commitment to the “Journey of Faith.”
At the closing Mass on the synod on young people, Pope Francis delivered a homily based on the story in Mark’s Gospel of the healing of the blind beggar, Bartimaeus. The pope calls on Christians to journey in faith with three fundamental steps: to listen, to be a neighbor, and to bear witness. Just as Jesus stopped and listened to the blind man, the first step in the journey of faith is listening. What Pope Francis calls “the apostolate of the ear” involves “listening before speaking.” Many of those with Jesus tried to silence Bartimaeus. For them, this person in need was a nuisance. “They preferred their own timetable above that of the Master, their own talking over listening to others. They were following Jesus, but they had their own plans in mind.” But as the pope teaches, “for Jesus, the cry of those pleading for help is not a nuisance but a challenge.” The second step on the journey of faith is to be a neighbor. Jesus “goes personally” to meet the blind beggar, and “does not delegate someone else” to do so. “That is how God operates. He gets personally involved with preferential love for every person. By his actions, he already communicates his message.”
Dignity Canada Dignité (A Position Paper)