Why three gay Catholics left the Church – and why they returned | Catholic News Agency

Contents:

• WHAT SHOULD A GAY CATHOLIC DO?
• GAY UNSELOR'S FIRG BY INDIANAPOLIS CATHOLIC SCHOOL PERMTED BY FERAL APPEALS URT
• FIRG OF GAY CATHOLIC SCHOOL TEACHER ULD TT LATT SUPREME COURT LG
• CAN CATHOLICS “PRAY AWAY THE GAY?”
• WHY THREE GAY CATHOLICS LEFT THE CHURCH – AND WHY THEY RETURNED
• I'M GAY, BUT I'M NOT SWCHG TO A CHURCH THAT SUPPORTS GAY MARRIAGE
• THE CATHOLIC CHURCH WILL BLS GAY PEOPLE AS LONG AS THEY DON’T GET MARRIED
• LIVG S? HOW GAY CATHOLICS MANAGE THEIR CONFLICTG SEXUAL AND RELIG INTI

WHAT SHOULD A GAY CATHOLIC DO?

C., that would pull out of social servic the cy rather than acce to a bill that would afford benefs to same-sex spo, a qutn, too long neglected, aris for the whole church: What is a gay Catholic supposed to do life? A gay layman I know who serv an important role a dce (and even wr some of his bishop's statements on social jtice) has a solid theologil tn and sir to serve the church, but fds impossible to be open the face of the bishop's repeated disparagg remarks about gays. The iative began part bee a iend poted out that my work foc on helpg queer adults rtore a relatnship wh God that has too often been damaged by the silenc and falsehoods that make gay people feel like outsirs wh their if, by the time a young person begs askg qutns about their own sexual orientatn, they already tst that there is a place for gay people the Catholic Church?

GAY UNSELOR'S FIRG BY INDIANAPOLIS CATHOLIC SCHOOL PERMTED BY FERAL APPEALS URT

I have spoken wh orthodox Catholics who say they would not put their own children Catholic schools or who have left Catholic tn part bee of anti-gay I learned rrponds wh what I heard om my panns durg the retreat weekend. D., released an pecially strgent policy 2022 that bars stunts om “advot[g], celebrat[g], or exprs[g] same-sex attractn” or “transgenrism” “ such a way as to e nfn or distractn” and urg the e of the term same-sex attractn all circumstanc, as opposed to more lloquial terms like gay. Archdce of Denver’s policy, released 2022, urg teachers to nont “genr iology” whenever possible, bars “gay-straight allianc”and requir schools to tell parents if a stunt “beg[s] to assert an inty at odds wh their blogil sex, ” which would out young people to parents whout regard for the child’s reasons for g out only to peers or tsted mentors.

This was a theme among several nversatns wh my terviewe: Silence about gay life don’t keep people out of emotnal entanglements, jt mak harr for queer young people to navigate their iendships. In the Catholic muni which she grew up, she was tght a “basele msage that homosexual acts were sful, ” but even that was only brought up “briefly and tentatively when you had a chasty talk.

’” Even though she wasn’t out of the closet, she had heard of other gay stunts who were expelled and was “always lookg over my shoulr for whether I would get lled to the office or kicked out.

FIRG OF GAY CATHOLIC SCHOOL TEACHER ULD TT LATT SUPREME COURT LG

Several people referred to the Catechism of the Catholic Church as the bt source, whether or not they accepted Catholic want stunts to know that gay Catholics exist, both bee the stori n illumate our fah and bee gay stunts should never feel that they have to choose between their fah and their Catholics I spoke wh want a church that is not aaid of qutns—and not aaid to learn om gay cultur while guidg gay people to eper flourishg. The regivg provid by gay people durg the AIDS epimic ma clear, she said, that “queer muny [is] a radil refal to dispose of anyone, ” addg, “Regardls of your posn on gay sex, there is a lot to learn” om queer muni about how to live real Catholics also want schools to re-exame their assumptns around genr difference and what lsons stunts might benef om. WASHINGTON – A feral appeals urt has led that a Catholic high school Indianapolis was ee to fire a gay guidance unselor bee she performed at least some relig duti, the latt legal setback for LGBTQ+ rights when they nflict wh Fzgerald had worked for 14 years as a guidance unselor at Ronlli High School when school officials disvered she was married to another woman.

Court of Appeals for the 4th Circu Richmond is an early tt of how that major Supreme Court cisn ptg ee speech agast anti-discrimatn laws will play out beyond the hypothetil suatn that se, which volved a platiff who had never actually ma weddg webs or been asked to do so by a gay person. “The Court rejected the dissent’s assertn that s cisn opened the door to discrimatn employment, ” ACLU attorney Josh Block wrote a reply to Becket’s the exampl raised the Supreme Court did not clu a relig anizatn or a gay employee, and Gorsuch repeatedly voked a 2000 cisn allowg the Boy Suts to expel a gay volunteer on “exprsive associatn” grounds. “We all said that thoands of relig anizatns all across the untry ask their employe to uphold their tradnal view of marriage word and ed, and if you terpret the statute that way, ’s gog to unleash lots of lawsus agast them, ” Goodrich the Supreme Court has specifilly said preventg racial discrimatn is a pellg ernment tert that jtifi rtrictg First Amendment eedoms, he noted that the Supreme Court has rejected such a fdg on discrimatn agast gay or transgenr people.

To disunt this, some homosexual activists have argued that moral imperativ om the Old Ttament n be dismissed sce there were certa ceremonial requirements at the time—such as not eatg pork, or circumcisg male babi—that are no longer bdg.

CAN CATHOLICS “PRAY AWAY THE GAY?”

Do not be ceived: Neher the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostut nor homosexual offenrs nor thiev nor the greedy nor dnkards nor slanrers nor swdlers will her the kgdom of God” (1 Cor. Jt as one n acquire alholic sir (by repeatedly beg toxited) whout nscly choosg them, so one may acquire homosexual sir (by engagg homosexual fantasi or behavr) whout nscly choosg them. Furthermore, the ten percent figure clus people who are not exclively homosexual but who only engaged  some homosexual behavr for a perd of time and then stopped—people who had gone through a fully or partially homosexual “phase” but who were not long-term homosexuals.

WHY THREE GAY CATHOLICS LEFT THE CHURCH – AND WHY THEY RETURNED

The morn arguments favor of homosexualy have th been sufficient to overe the evince that homosexual behavr is agast dive and natural law, as the Bible and the Church, as well as the wir circle of Jewish and Christian (not to mentn Mlim) wrers, have always held.

"I went to a Prottant nference and one of the people said, 'Maybe you need to nsir the fact that the label 'gay' don't fe you, ' and that was one of the most liberatg thgs, " Dan said. The statement stck many observers as a shift for the Vatin – which 2003 me out agast any “legal regnn of homosexual unns” – even as Francis did not change his long-standg opposn to gay marriage. In the wake of Pope Francis’ recent ment about same-sex civil unns, Pew Rearch Center nducted this analysis to better unrstand what Catholics around the world thk about legal regnn for same-sex upl and homosexualy general.

I'M GAY, BUT I'M NOT SWCHG TO A CHURCH THAT SUPPORTS GAY MARRIAGE

The term “homosexualy, ” while sometim nsired anachronistic the current era, is the most applible and easily translatable term to e when askg this qutn across societi and languag and has been ed other cross-natnal studi, cludg the World Valu Survey. In Eastern Europe, acceptance was weaker, wh roughly half or fewer of Catholics sayg that homosexualy should be accepted by society Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Lhuania. The Catholic Church teach that “homosexual acts are trsilly disorred” and lls on gay people to practice “chasty, ” though also lls on Catholics to treat gay men and women wh “rpect, passn and sensivy.

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTMany of New York Cy’s most outwardly gay-iendly parish are ncentrated Manhattan, a center of both gay culture and efforts to build a gay-iendly Watts for The New York TimThe pews fill up quickly each Sunday at the Church of St. Mistri; anizg events like spirual retreats, hik and happy hours at lol gay bars; celebratg Mass and other events durg Pri Month; and by speakg up for the gay Watts for The New York TimWhen the Vatin issued a statement March that said prits uld not bls same-sex unns, which rid as a form of s, the parish and a handful of others Manhattan issued statements of dismay or ed hoi durg Mass as an opportuny to fort L.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH WILL BLS GAY PEOPLE AS LONG AS THEY DON’T GET MARRIED

Interviews wh more than two dozen gay Catholics New York revealed a powerful sire to rencile their sexual inty wh their fah both God and an stutn that has often approached them wh hostily. Lbian, gay and bisexual people are much ls likely than heterosexuals to attend relig servic, intify as a member of a relig group or believe that Scripture is the word of God, acrdg to Pew Rearch Center survey data om 80 percent of people surveyed that poll said they nsired the Catholic Church to be “uniendly” to the L. ”The efforts to create a gay-iendly Catholicism highlight the reful path the Catholic Church and s clergy mt walk liberal plac like New York, an important Amerin relig center where churchgoers often look askance at the Vatin’s stanc on admistered day-to-day by more liberal, self-erng relig orrs — cludg the Jus, the Plist Fathers and the Francisns — affords the parish and their prits the eedom to do thgs like preach hoi that extol the digny of gay people and the value of their relatnships a way that prits who work directly for the rdal tend to also giv the archdce some distance om activi that tradnalists might oppose, like the Pri march participatn of St.

This sheltered upbrgg may help expla my sunny unrgraduate nfince that even though I knew of lerally nobody else who had ever tried to be both unashamedly gay and obediently Catholic, I was totally gog to do . I hope I've learned a few thgs about the dangers of sophomoric self-nfince: There are tim when my relatnship wh the Catholic Church feels a lot like Margaret Atwood's feroc ltle poem, You f to me like a hook to an eyea fish hook an open eyeAnd I've met many other gay or queer or same-sex-attracted Christians, all flavors of Christiany. We disagree (sometim sharply) among ourselv on the bt rponse to the growg cultural acceptance and polil succs of gay marriage; but before polics and even before culture, our rponse mt be personal.

) But I do thk was okay to enter the Church whout beg able to jtify all of her teachgs on my the time of my baptism the church's teachg on homosexualy was one of the on I unrstood the least. That's a quick and dirty summary, but seems to me more rponsive to the texts, more willg to fer to historil Christian wns, and more attuned to the importance and meang of our bodi than most of the fens I've read of Christian gay beg embedd Catholicism lors my readg of the Bible—that is actually what tradn is supposed to do—and shap my sense of which elements of Christian history are sential and which are wanrgs om the path. I've wrten about possible approach to unselg Catholic schools; anti-bullyg efforts; my problems wh some of the language the Church about homosexualy; reprsive ias of genr which would leave no room for St.

LIVG S? HOW GAY CATHOLICS MANAGE THEIR CONFLICTG SEXUAL AND RELIG INTI

Renewg this Christian unrstandg of iendship would help to make the Church a place where gay people have more opportuni for voted, honored love—not Church needs to grow and change rponse to societal chang. Eight Polish gays wh a Catholic background, who intified themselv as strong believers, shared their experienc durg semi-stctured terviews that were subjected to terpretative phenomenologil analysis.