In this book they seek to make a biblical case for same-sex relationships and marriage.

Ending the conservative Christian love affair

"We advocate for full inclusion of believers with differing sexual orientations not because we reject the authority of the Bible," the pair write.

"Far from it: We have come to advocate their inclusion precisely because we affirm the force and authority of the Bible's ongoing story of God's mercy."

Two respected Christian thinkers making a biblical argument for LGBTQ+ relationships and inclusion would have been newsworthy just a decade or two ago; in recent years, many scholars, pastors and lay thinkers have published books drawing similar conclusions.

So while the Hayses add their voices to the chorus and strike some new notes, they are a bit late to the concert.

But the most remarkable thing about this book is not its arguments, interesting and important as they are, but rather Richard Hays' name on its cover.

For the last quarter-century, conservative Christians have been citing Hays to argue against same-sex relationships and marriage.

His 1996 book "The Moral Vision of the New Testament" argued that the Bible explicitly prohibits LGBTQ+ marriage. Homosexuality, he wrote, "is one among many tragic signs that we are a broken people, alienated from God's loving purpose."

Since news of the current book broke, the conservative Christian love affair with Hays has ended.

The Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has lamented Hays' change of mind as "a cause of grief and sadness."

The Gospel Coalition has declared that the Hayses are "deceiving people when it comes to God's offer" of salvation, and Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary called the book "heresy…. A full doctrinal revolt."

Repentance

One might wonder why Hays, 76-years-old and battling pancreatic cancer, would choose to publish a provocative book years after retiring from Duke Divinity School.

Hays' answer is simple: This book is an effort to engage in an ancient Christian practice that he has taught about in classrooms for years: repentance.

In a video interview, Hays described the book to me as a metanoia, an ancient Greek word meaning "change of mind" and translated as "repentance" in English versions of the New Testament, where it appears 20 times; the verb "repent" appears an additional 27 times.

A recurrent theme in the teachings of Jesus, it's also a fixture in the prophetic cries of John the Baptiser and a main message of the Apostle Paul, who taught that living according to God's will means to be "transformed by the renewing of your mind."

Hays says metanoia denotes more than feeling or saying you are sorry; it means taking action to demonstrate one's new perspective. "The Widening of God's Mercy" is his effort to do just that.

"The present book is, for me, an effort to offer contrition and to set the record straight on where I now stand … I am deeply sorry. The present book can't undo past damage, but I pray that it may be of some help," Hays told me.

Those harmed by Hays' previous work may reply that even the most magisterial volume of repentance won't undo the damage caused by his previous work.

It's impossible to repay the generation that has been psychologically tortured by conservative pastors and parents armed with Hays' "moral vision" for their lives.

However impactful his new book, Hays can't make up for the years of sanity lost to depression, the sense of rejection by one's creator, countless prayers pleading to be changed that went unanswered. No book can pay such a debt.

At the same time, repentance requires us to attempt to seek forgiveness and make repair, no matter how delayed. It takes uncommon courage to make amends for past mistakes in the twilight of one's life, and it's a step that Hays frankly did not have to take.

It has already cost him the respect and accolades of an influential swath of Christianity.

If Christians are nothing else, they are people who know how to change their minds.

Today, however, some types of Christians have come to regard changing one's mind as a sign of spiritual weakness, as if it can only be the fruit of cultural capitulation or compromise.

I've heard pastors and theologians like Mohler brag about believing exactly the same things today as they did when they were mere youths.

They may be models of consistency, but they seem to know very little about the practice of repentance beyond the moment of Christian conversion. By definition, consistency and repentance are forces at odds. To repent is literally to forfeit one's consistency.

The late Christian writer Frederick Buechner said, "To repent is to come to your senses." And, Buechner added, it's not so much something you do as it is something that happens to you. For Hays, at least, this is how it began.

Thinking challenged

Hays goes directly at his critics on this point. In the years after the publication of "A Moral Vision of the New Testament," Hays said in our interview, he began to feel "deeply troubled by the way my chapter has been appropriated as ammunition by some individuals and groups taking the uncompromising ‘conservative' position."

When he penned his book in 1996, he said, he considered the chapter on homosexuality to be "proposals about how to best discern the New Testament's relevance for difficult and contested questions in our time" that could "start a conversation rather than end one."

As conservatives seized upon his words and used them "as a cover for exclusionary attitudes and practices wrapped in more ‘compassionate' packaging," Hays realised he had been naïve.

Hays' thinking was also challenged by the spiritual fidelity of the gay and lesbian people in his life.

He describes his Church as "a grace-filled Church community where gay and lesbian Christians participate fully as members and as leaders, without making it into a Church-defining issue."

The more he considered the many LGBTQ+ students in his classroom who were "both excellent students and gracious, compassionate people," the harder it became "to say that they should have the door slammed on them in terms of admittance to the full range of the Church's sacraments."

If these sexual minorities existed outside of God's good graces, then why was Hays witnessing so much undeniable spiritual fruit in their lives?

It all came to a head at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hays had watched with dismay as Christopher's employer, Fuller Theological Seminary, began expelling homosexuals and allies from their community.

"I was not proud of what had happened at this school where I worked," Christopher told me.

"And I had a hunch, too, that my Dad didn't feel comfortable with what had come of what he'd written, and that his heart was in a different place, too, but we had never really talked it out."

Mercy

Father and son entered into a period of intentional conversations as the pandemic went along, and they wrote out what they had come to believe.

The result was a picture of a God who changes his mind in response to human pain and seeking, and who is always expanding the reach of his mercy.

Through this process Richard Hays realised that in his previous work, he had been "more concerned about my own intellectual project than about the pain of gay and lesbian people inside and outside the Church, including those driven out of the Church by unloving condemnation."

He decided, along with Christopher, to write a book arguing for full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people into the life of faith that includes an epilogue written by Richard in which he profusely apologises for the harm his previous work has caused.

"The Widening of God's Mercy" is a prestigious New Testament scholar's attempt to demonstrate that he has come to his senses.

What remains to be seen, but will soon become apparent, is whether those Christians who are still unconvinced about the faithfulness of sexual minorities will join him.

• First published by Religion News Service
• Jonathan Merritt is senior columnist for Religion News Service

Writing for the Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano, Fr Radcliffe acknowledged the complexity of applying Church teachings. This is especially challenging for young people trying to accept their sexuality.

"The challenge, for gay people and everyone, is to learn to express love appropriately" Radcliffe wrote. He emphasised respecting the dignity of others as children of God.

"I am convinced of the fundamental wisdom of the Church's teaching" Radcliffe stressed. "But I still do not fully understand how it should be lived by young gay Catholics who accept their sexuality and rightly desire to express their affection."

Radcliffe emphasised the importance of love and respect in the context of faith. He suggested that the Church's teaching is not about denying desire but directing it towards God. Citing St Thomas Aquinas, he noted that desire plays a role in spiritual growth and the return to God.

Shift in Church's understanding

Fr Radcliffe also pointed to what he sees as a shift in the Church's understanding of gay people. He highlighted Pope Francis' view that gay people should be recognised as brothers and sisters who can be blessed. This is opposed to them being seen solely through the lens of sexual acts.

"My intuition is that most gay Catholics in mature, committed relationships usually go beyond a great interest in sex" Radcliffe continued.

He added that mature gay Catholics in committed relationships are often more focused on the virtues of "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness", referencing Galatians 5:22.

Fr Radcliffe further noted the struggles of gay people worldwide, reminding the Church of its responsibility to fight for their dignity, especially in countries where they face persecution and even capital punishment.

Radcliffe, 79, a former Master of the Dominican Order, will lead a pre-Synod retreat starting on 30 September.

Sources

Catholic Culture

AP News

CathNews New Zealand

Being gay

After a difficult freshman year, I begged my parents to transfer me to the local public school. That request, to my father, was ridiculous.

Little did he know how ashamed and deeply isolated I felt inside, while a student in this revered high school.

As Eros bloomed inside, I lived in fear that I would be exposed, found out.

I lived in dread that I would be discovered as this despised thing whose name I did not know, but whose negative associations I could see and feel all around me.

All was not bad. I had some wonderful teachers: Jesuits and lay alike.

My senior English teacher, a layman and a coach, particularly affected me: he taught us to write from our feelings and he showed us respect and affirmed our dignity. A man for others. And I made vital life-long friendships.

Paradoxically, my nascent faith deepened as it also grew pale. I encountered Jesus in a new way.

And I was introduced to rudimentary Ignatian wisdom, that incomparable combination of a psychologically grounded spirituality, honoring intuition and insight, a contemplative posture that fostered religious imagination and presence.

Targeted and isolated

But my prep school was a difficult place for an—albeit deeply closeted—gay boy.

Back then, it strongly exemplified the dominant culture's values, values anathema to the development of whole persons, values particularly perhaps unwittingly suited to molding boys into narrow and constricted men.

So much of that—thankfully—has changed, but of course, remnants (some most durable, both overt and covert) remain.

Let two incidents suffice.

At our homecoming football game at the Municipal Stadium my freshman year, I was sitting with a friend when two guys from my homeroom approached.

One said: This is the one and proceeded to cuff my collar and pull me up out of the bleacher.

The other sucker-punched me, then threw me back into my seat and walked away, scornfully laughing.

They imparted the knowledge I dreaded: We're onto you. I lived with that daily fear, believing that somehow, I deserved what I got for being the one, the one they were all onto.

All our culture's words and notions and judgments came home to roost in … a young gay boy that the world, let alone his parents, could not know.

Alone and afraid

In sophomore year, I fell-in-swoon.

I fell in swoon like nigh all high school boys do, though unlike my friends, I was not falling for a girl. I was falling for a boy, one who sat a row away from me. It felt overwhelming.

I was excited and alarmed and scared. There was no one with whom to speak, no one with whom to share these feelings or even acknowledge that the feelings existed.

I felt then the beginnings of what I would feel profoundly until my 29th year: I was alone in this. In the most riveting sense.

And alone I believed I would always be, with no language, no community, no symbol nor myth, no conversation, no dialogue, no hope.

What did adhere in high school and in the world in which I lived were the messages the dominant culture proffers.

During puberty's final onslaught, I came to believe I was beyond the pale of grace. I came to know I was unacceptable in the eyes of the world.

All our culture's words and notions and judgments came home to roost in me, a 16-year-old boy, a young gay boy that the world, let alone his parents, could not know.

Lost from God

Finally, and primarily, I grew to believe that I was unacceptable as a human being in the eyes of God.

In the truest sense, I did not know why, for this thing that had visited me, not of my making nor at my initiative.

The more I prayed to be changed, which was the heart and content of my prayer (so deeply aware that I had not chosen this, but come to believe it was visited upon me because of my sinfulness), I regarded my not changing as God's further judgment on me.

I thought God found that my prayer, and my life, were insincere, beyond the pale of believability.

I was not available to the strands of grace everyone else seemed to somehow merit.

The One I called God, and my dear companion Jesus, previously the source of such great succor in my life, were taken away. Or they left. Or I could not find them.

They somehow necessarily abandoned me to despair because this person I had become could manage no change, could not desist either my feelings nor my desires, no matter how hard I fought them or prayed to be delivered from them.

I was alone.

This is the terror for many queer boys and girls: We are alone. Continue reading

• William D. Glenn, a former Jesuit has a Master of Divinity degree from the Pacific School of Religion, where he was awarded the Paul Wesley Yinger Award for Distinguished Preaching. He also has a Masters in Clinical Psychology from the University of San Francisco.

Father Seungbok Lee's actions have won applause from individuals and groups supporting same-sex couples' rights.

Two sets of female same-sex couples - Yeon Yeon and Yoon Hae, and Chris and Ari - are full of praise for Lee and the Catholic Church for their public blessing.

Other same-sex couples should feel encouraged to do the same Yeon says.

In line with the Vatican's guidelines, the blessing took place after Mass had been celebrated.

The Catholic group Arcus (Latin for "rainbow") arranged the Mass. The group, with the Archdiocese of Seoul's backing, was founded last May to offer support to LGBTQ people.

They were at the Mass to support the couple - as well as nuns and six priests from various parishes.

Being recognised

Both couples say the blessing has helped them feel like part of the Catholic community.

Chris and Ari, who had married in Canada in 2013, say "the fact that the two of us were blessed together is meaningful in itself.

"Receiving the blessing is a big step forward, but I feel that there are still mountains to overcome.

"I think it will take more time for social changes such as legalising same-sex marriage" Chris adds.

Yeon feels much the same way, saying "Tears continued to flow as I listened to the prayer during the blessing. I felt like my existence was being acknowledged for the first time.

"As a sexual minority couple, I felt like I was not even recognised for myself."

She also hopes the Church will formally approve same-sex marriages in the future.

Authority to bless same-sex and unmarried couples

The same-sex blessings followed the guidelines set out in a new document, Fiducia Supplicans (Supplicating Trust).

The Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith published Fiducia - which Pope Francis formally authorised - on 18 December last year.

The document clears the way for Catholic priests to bless a same-sex or other unmarried couple.

However, it also says same-sex couple blessings cannot be formal liturgical blessings. Nor may they give the impression that the Church is blessing these unions as if they were a marriage.

Fiducia has not changed the Church's accepted definition of marriage, which must be between a man and a woman.

Rather, the document provides for only an informal and spontaneous blessing between same-sex or unmarried couples. This blessing is neither a sacrament nor a rite of the Catholic church, Fiducia says.

Source

• UCA News

The preliminary report, issued half way through the synod, asked if the Church community was welcoming to gay people.

It noted that gay people have "gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community" and acknowledged some positive aspects of same-sex relationships.

But final document, the relatio synodi, restated norms from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

It stated that there "is no foundation whatsoever" to compare homosexual marriage to heterosexual marriage.

But it said gay people "should be welcomed with respect and sensitivity" and that discrimination against gays "is to be avoided".

The paragraph containing this text did not get the traditional two thirds majority (122 votes) needed to be included in the final report, with 118 bishops voting for it and 62 against.

But this may have indicated the some progressive bishops felt the final text had been too watered down or restrictive.

Two other proposed paragraphs also did not get to the two thirds threshold, but did get absolute majority votes.

Both concerned the issue of Communion for divorced and remarried people.

One proposed: "Any access to the sacraments should be preceded by a penitential journey under the responsibility of the diocesan bishop."

But Pope Francis decided to include these three paragraphs in the final report anyway, in the interests of maximum transparency, a Vatican spokesman said.

Bishops' conferences will use the document, described as a work in progress, in preparation for the 2015 synod.

The final report was the product of revisions last week of small working groups of bishops.

In a three-page "message" on Saturday, the synod fathers called for the Church to be "a house with doors always open to welcome everyone".

In his final address at the synod, Pope Francis called on the prelates to "feed the flock" and to search for lost sheep.

The Pontiff directed them to avoid the temptation to become a "hostile rigorist" concerned only with enforcing Church doctrine.

He also warned against being a "destructive do-gooder" that advocates "false mercy" instead of truth telling.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• The Tablet
• Reuters
• Catholic News Agency (synod fathers' message)
• Globe and Mail
• Vatican Radio (Pope Francis' speech at synod conclusion)
• Vatican Press Office (Synod final report: in Italian)
• Irish Times
• Image: Vatican Radio

Based on comments by the presiding bishop of the US Episcopal Church, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Irish Times reported the conference had been cancelled.

Bishop Schori said the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby was "very clear that he is not going to call a Lambeth until he is reasonably certain that the vast majority of bishops would attend".

No planning or fundraising has taken place for a 2018 conference, she observed.

One blog reported her saying that the Archbishop of Canterbury had told her that the conference had been cancelled.

The Lambeth Conference, a gathering of Anglican bishops from around the world, traditionally takes place every ten years.

The 2008 conference was marred by a significant boycott over the gay clergy issue, the Irish Times article noted.

Bishop Schori said the next Lambeth Conference "needs to be preceded by a primates meeting at which a vast majority of primates are present".

As Archbishop Welby "continues his visits around the [Anglican] communion to those primates it's unlikely that he will call such a meeting at all until at least a year from now or probably 18 months from now", she said.

"Therefore I think we are looking at 2019, more likely 2020, before a Lambeth Conference."

But the Virtue OnLine Anglican news service said the blog which broke the story about the Lambeth Conference being cancelled failed to check with Lambeth Palace.

Lambeth spokesman Ed Thornton told VOL the cancellation hasn't been confirmed yet "and we won't be commenting at least until primates visits are completed".

An Anglican bishop subsequently told VOL that the Archbishop of Canterbury may well postpone Lambeth till 2020.

"It is by no means cancelled, it is still too early to say," the VOL article continued.

"2018 is four years away and anything can happen between now and then."

Sources

• Irish Times
• Virtue Online
• Anglican Ink
• Image: 40Yearsordained2000yearsministry.com

But a move by a bishop in Wisconsin to route all such decisions through his office is raising questions about whether that neutral zone will now become another battleground, and whether the growing acceptance of gay parents will inevitably draw more attention to this practice and force church leaders to establish clearer rules.

The default position for most bishops — reiterated in a major Vatican document released on Thursday (June 26) — is that if the parents pledge to raise the child Catholic, then no girl or boy should be refused baptism.

They generally let parish priests make the final call and let them administer the sacrament, though it is usually done in a private ceremony with the biological parent — not the adoptive mother or father — listed on the baptismal certificate.

The new debate was prompted by the emergence of a memo — first reported by the Wisconsin State Journal — that was sent in early May to priests of the Madison Diocese by the top aide to Bishop Robert Morlino.

In the memo, the vicar general of the diocese, Monsignor James Bartylla, says there are "a plethora of difficulties, challenges, and considerations associated with these unnatural unions (including scandal) linked with the baptism of a child, and such considerations touch upon theology, canon law, pastoral approach, liturgical adaptation, and sacramental recording."

Bartylla says that pastors must now coordinate any decision on baptizing the children of gay couples with his office and that "each case must be evaluated individually." Continue reading

• Source: Religion News Service
• Image: gloria.tv

Bishop Gene Robinson's election in 2003 shocked the worldwide Anglican communion.

After entering into a civil union with his partner of 25 years Mark Andrews in 2008, Bishop Robinson announced the split in May this year, the Religion News Service reports.

"As you can imagine, this is a difficult time for us — not a decision entered into lightly or without much counselling," Bishop Robinson wrote in a letter.

"My belief in marriage is undiminished by the reality of divorcing someone I have loved for a very long time, and will continue to love even as we separate," Bishop Robinson wrote in a column for the Daily Beast.

"Love can endure, even if a marriage cannot."

But he wrote it is a comfort "as a gay rights and marriage equality advocate, to know that like any marriage, gay and lesbian couples are subject to the same complications and hardships that afflict marriages between heterosexual couples".

Due to changes in New Hampshire laws on same-sex marriage, Bishop Robinson became legally married to his partner when they didn't opt out of the change in state law.

In 2003, hundreds of people left the Episcopal Church in protest at Bishop Robinson's consecration.

Critics said Robinson's actions defied scriptural authority and thousands of years of Christian tradition.

His divorce could fuel the fire, said Douglas LeBlanc, an Episcopalian and former editor at Christianity Today.

"I'm sure there might be some conservatives who might say, ‘We told you so all along, if you depart from church teachings on homosexuality, you're opening the door to all kinds of chaos,'" LeBlanc said.

"In many ways, I think you are. But I think it's imperative to say, the [Episcopal Church's] house of bishops is not lacking on heterosexual sin."

In 2012, the Episcopal Church voted to allow bishops to permit priests to bless same-sex marriages.

Bishop Robinson retired as Bishop of New Hampshire last year.

He went public with his sexual identity and divorce from his wife in 1986.

Sources

• Religion News Service
• The Daily Beast
• Image: Virtue Online

When asked why other churches accept Gay people, Mr Anderson said he did not know.

Commenting on modern society, he said: "You can't even go to a movie without getting slammed; even Big Ears has turned out to be a homosexual".

Anderson said many Gay people were "riddled with diseases" and that they needed to be "dealt with".

He believes many Gay people will go to Hell.

Anderson is promoting a controversial technique for converting homosexuals into heterosexuals that has been widely discredited internationally.

At present there he has no one undertaking the course he is offering.

Source

• 3News
• PinkNews
• Image: 3News

I sigh. When I turn to my daily newspapers, I sigh further, at the stereotyping, the false assumptions, the hostility in some quarters, the focus upon protocol rather than substance, the obsession with fiscal laxities at the Vatican rather than the proclaimed mission of Christ. Much of this criticism is boringly predictable; I may be wrong, but I suspect it might be hard to find a month, for example, when New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd does not launch an attack upon the papacy and the Catholic Church. And when the College of Cardinals announces the successor to Benedict, there will be fervid speculation about the new pope's attitude toward divorce, abortion, the Jews, secularism in Italy, and so on.

That is one view of the Catholic Church, the church of hierarchy, tradition, formalism, its bursts of reform soon restrained by a return to conservatism. It is the church so familiar to the minds of secularists, pagans and anti-Catholics everywhere. It is the church of the 19th-century popes. It is the church of infallibility, incense, candles, and of Latin masses. Pushing it further, it is the church of financial corruption and sexual abuse. It is the church of stereotype, which is not wise.

In the early 1790s, as Europe reeled under the shock of the French Revolution, the great English politician and philosopher Edmund Burke warned against condemning an entire nation, a France of about 30 million souls, for the troubles and wars. Shouldn't we be wary of condemning a church of roughly 1 billion believers? Continue reading

Sources

• Paul Kennedy in The New York Times
• Image: Stuff

Paul Kennedy is Dilworth Professor of History and director of International Security Studies at Yale University.

Reports dubbed the pope's appointment of Cordileone as the "Bombshell by the Bay."

The incoming prelate of the city that thrust same-sex marriage onto the national stage has decried the "contraceptive mentality" of modern life.

Cordileone, a 56-year-old son of a commercial fisherman, is known to his supporters as a charming and brilliant defender of the faith.

The Los Angeles Times reported that the prelate is fluent in Spanish and Italian, and has been known to sing vintage TV theme songs in Latin and is a deep believer in a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Father Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center, was quoted in the Times report that Cordileone's appointment "re-emphasizes the Vatican's concern, and the U.S. bishops' concern, about gay marriage."

"Even in a city like San Francisco, they're willing to appoint someone who … has a high state and national profile on this issue," he said.

Cordileone used to be bishop of Oakland diocese for three years where he said gays and lesbians who are in sexual relationships of any kind should not receive the sacrament of Holy Communion.

"If we misuse the gift of sexuality, we're going to suffer the consequences," he said, "and I firmly believe we are suffering the consequences."

Source

• Los Angeles Times
• Newser.Com
• US Catholic
• Image: Diocese of San Diego/LA Times

She goes on to speak about how it is that she is a feminist and still a Catholic, and that while she finds in the Church "things that abhor and disgust me ... none of these takes away from the core tenets of my faith: that Jesus is both human and divine, the son of God, and in him I am saved".

• Read Kristina Keneally's address
• Image: Illawarra Mercury

Nichols has shrugged of recent criticism that Masses for homosexuals provide a platform for dissent from Church teaching, and he reaffirmed the Westminister diocese's pastoral provision for gay Catholics.

Rejecting complaints that the gatherings in Soho for weekly Mass encourage active homosexuals to ignore Church teachings, the archbishop said that he is taking steps to ensure that the ministry supports the Church's teaching and that the Masses "are not occasions for confusion or opposition concerning the positive teaching of the Church on the meaning of human sexuality or the moral imperatives that flow from that teaching, which we uphold and towards which we all strive."

The pastoral provision, known colloquially as the "Soho Masses", has attracted criticism since it was established in February 2007 by the archbishop's predecessor, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor.

Earlier this month a short video of the bidding prayers at one of the Masses was posted on YouTube. Critics claimed that the prayers challenged Catholic teaching on homosexuality - a claim denied by the organisers.

"As we approach the fifth anniversary of the establishment of a pastoral provision for Catholics of a same-sex orientation at the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, I would like reaffirm the intention and purpose of this outreach," said the archbishop.

Nichols outlined three essential and consistent foundations of the practice:

• the dignity of all persons created by God,
• the moral principles concerning chastity and the Church's teaching on sexual activity, and the pastoral care of Catholics who are of same-sex orientation, and
• all who participate in the Mass are called to live the church's teaching through an ongoing conversion of life.

The Soho Masses Pastoral Council, the group who organises the masses say that as a result of the archdiocese's outreach, an increasing number of gay Catholics had returned to the practice of the faith.

"The Masses offer us a warm, joyful and inclusive occasion to share in communion with each other, with our families and friends, and with the whole Church, secure in the knowledge that we, too, have our place at the Lord's table," the group said.

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• Image: Lego Rainbow Catholic Rosary

Of the two responses, my ego prefers the first — who doesn't like thinking of themselves as some kind of hero? — but the second might make more sense. Being gay doesn't mean I'm special or extraordinary. It just means that my life is not always easy. (Surprise!) And as my friend J. said when I told him recently about my homosexuality, "I guess if it wasn't that, it would have been something else." Meaning that nobody lives without a burden of one kind or another. As Rabbi Abraham Heschel said: "The man who has not suffered, what can he possibly know, anyway?"

Where are all these bigoted Catholics I keep hearing about? When I told my family a year ago, not one of them responded with anything but love and understanding. Nobody acted like I had a disease. Nobody started treating me differently or looking at me funny. The same is true of every one of the Catholic friends that I've told. They love me for who I am.

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