On a clear, windy Sunday in March 2010, Father William Breslin told his parishioners at Sacred Heart of Jesus in Boulder, Colorado why the parish school would not re-enroll a child of same-sex parents for the coming school year.
“I hate the fact that I had to make a choice between being loving and protecting the teachings of the church,” Breslin told Mass-goers. “The lesbian couple is saying that their relationship is a good one that should be accepted by everyone; and the church cannot agree to that.” Breslin added that he saw ample love all around Boulder, but “a scarcity of discipleship. . . . I chose to protect the faith over doing what would have looked like the loving thing to do.”
In the pews, Shawn Reynolds, a gay parishioner, remembers that he shut down during the homily. He left at communion and hasn’t returned. “Pastors are supposed to tend to the flock, not disperse them,” he says.
Incidents like this one lead some gay and lesbian Catholics to wonder if there’s a future for them in today’s Catholic Church. The past decade has brought a number of disappointments to these Catholics, who had hoped for greater acceptance and a greater emphasis on love.
They point to the U.S. bishops’ 1997 document Always Our Children, comparing it to what has been understood as the harder line of a 2006 document, Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination. They find other evidence of the church’s harsh official position in the prohibition in 1987 of DignityUSA (the oldest advocacy organization for gay and lesbian Catholics) from meeting on church property and the 2006 Vatican decision that gay men called to the priesthood would face greater barriers.
Arthur Fitzmaurice, who has been active in gay ministry in the Los Angeles area and is on the board of the Catholic Association for Lesbian and Gay Ministry (CALGM), sees the messages from the bishops as unbalanced and unhelpful. “Being gay has been a gift from God,” he says. “Neither they nor I can put down what God has given me. But the bishops’ silence or negative rhetoric is driving people away.”
The gulf between the bishops and gay and lesbian Catholics plays out most starkly in the battle over same-sex marriage, the most prominent gay rights issue in the United States today.
Continue reading: Pride and Prejudice: The uneasy relationship between gays and lesbians and their Church
Image: Change.org