For Irish L.G.B.T.Q. New Yorkers, It’s Been a Long Way to Staten Island

— Activists like Brendan Fay have campaigned for decades to make St. Patrick’s Day festivities open to L.G.B.T.Q. groups. A new parade in Staten Island on Sunday is their final achievement.

Brendan Fay, left, has fought for more inclusive St. Patrick’s Day parades for decades. His husband, Tom Moulton, right, readied the sash Mr. Fay planned to wear to the Staten Island parade this Sunday.

By Liam Stack

This year, for the first time, every New York City borough will host a St. Patrick’s Day Parade that allows L.G.B.T.Q. groups, bringing a decades-long conflict to an end.

That milestone will be celebrated on Sunday with a new parade on Staten Island, part of a deal brokered by Mayor Eric Adams. It’s the result of decades of work by activists like Brendan Fay, an indefatigable Irish immigrant who began lobbying for the inclusion of gay marchers 34 years ago.

“There has been a huge cultural transformation that I have lived through from 1990 until today,” Mr. Fay, 65, said this week as he prepared to march in the Staten Island parade.

Still, he said, “we had no idea it would take so long.”

The new parade quickly overshadowed the borough’s traditional march, held on March 3, which officials said they believed to be the only one left in the United States that bans gay marchers. Most of New York’s elected officials, who plan to march on Sunday, have boycotted the borough’s original parade for years.

The organizers of the original parade, a private group, could not be reached for comment, but they have previously stated that they did not want the parade to contradict teachings of the Catholic Church or be used to promote “political or sexual identification agendas.”

In 2018, Larry Cummings, the main organizer of the parade, told The Irish Voice, a diaspora newspaper in New York City, “Our parade is for Irish heritage and culture.”

When Mr. Fay moved to the United States from Ireland in 1984, few if any St. Patrick’s Day parades welcomed L.G.B.T.Q. organizations. Mr. Fay was a Catholic school religion teacher, and had thought he would spend his life working for the church.

But in 1991, Mr. Fay joined a group of gay marchers in Manhattan whose inclusion in the Fifth Avenue parade had been negotiated by the mayor at the time, David Dinkins. It went very badly: Both the mayor and the marchers were booed for more than 40 blocks, and they were pelted with beer bottles and slurs. Some spectators chanted “AIDS!” as they passed.

After the parade, Mr. Dinkins likened it to “marching in Birmingham, Alabama,” during the civil rights movement. Gay groups were banned from the parade the next year on the grounds that their presence was inappropriate for a celebration of a Catholic saint.

In a black-and-white photo, Brendan Fay, wearing a dark vest and white jeans, holds hands with two others as they twirl in a circle. Beyond them are police barriers and people marching in a parade.
Brendan Fay, center, dances to Irish music as he protests the exclusion of gay people from Staten Island’s parade in 1993.

Following news coverage of the event, Mr. Fay was fired from his job, which imperiled his visa status. But he soon began working at the Metropolitan Community Church, a gay church in Midtown, and turned his life to activism on behalf of AIDS patients, L.G.B.T.Q. people and immigrants.

“I come out of a spirit of Catholic social justice activism,” he said. “People say, ‘When did you become an activist?’ And it goes back to nuns and priests and committed lay people in Ireland, protesting for the people of El Salvador and against apartheid.”

But the St. Patrick’s Day Parade always loomed large, not just as a street festival but as a symbol for something more.

“At the heart of the parade issue is a deeper issue of human belonging,” Mr. Fay said. Exclusion from the parade mirrored the silences that we lived with most of our lives — the wonder if you could safely hold hands on your neighborhood street, if you could be yourself at your place of employment or with your family.”

While gay activists fought for decades to be included in St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the United States, their participation in events in Ireland was largely uncontroversial. And as Irish America became more politically conservative, Ireland was moving rapidly in the opposite direction.

In 2015, the year the New York City parade first allowed gay marchers, Ireland became the first country in the world to enact same-sex marriage by popular vote.

The next year, Mr. Fay was given an award for his activism by Michael D. Higgins, the president of Ireland. In 2017, he was invited to Ireland to be the grand marshal of the parade in Drogheda, “the town I fled from in 1984,” he said. And months later, a 38-year-old biracial gay man, Leo Varadkar, became Ireland’s prime minister.

Throughout the 1990s, Mr. Fay worked with the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization, and then formed his own group, the Lavender and Green Alliance, in 1994, to lobby for gay inclusion in the city’s main parade on Fifth Avenue and in smaller parades in the other boroughs.

Mr. Fay and other protesters were arrested so many times that when police officers saw him at a parade, “they would sometimes ask me if I was going to be their guest for another St. Patrick’s Day,” he said.

The tipping point came in 1999. Mr. Fay was arrested three times: at the Fifth Avenue parade, at the Bronx parade and at the Brooklyn parade. After years of campaigning, the activists had little to show for it except an arrest record.

A group of men wearing white and green sashes, including Brendan Fay, who has a goatee, are crowded into a light blue van by police officers.
In 1999, members of the Lavender and Green Alliance, including Brendan Fay, center, were arrested after attempting to march in a St. Patricks Day parade in Brooklyn.

And then Mr. Fay had an idea: Why not throw their own parade?

Working with friends in Queens, he cobbled together St. Pat’s for All, an event with a homespun spirit that began in 2000.

“When we were doing the parade we asked, ‘What does it mean to be Irish?’” he said.

Their answer to that question was a parade where local parish groups and Irish drag queens would march beside N.A.A.C.P. members holding banners about Frederick Douglass’s travels to 19th-century Ireland.

But St. Pat’s for All became a sensation even before its very first bagpipe blared because of a surprising phone call Mr. Fay received from the White House. It was an aide to Hillary Clinton, who at the time was preparing to run for the United States Senate from New York.

She wanted to march in this new parade she had heard was coming to Queens. Could Mr. Fay accommodate that?

“They asked me about the stage and the sound system and all of that, and we had none of it planned,” Mr. Fay said. “But she came in March 2000, and the media came, and that was that.”

St. Pat’s for All is still held every year in Sunnyside and Woodside, but its spirit has now spread to almost every parade in the New York area.

And as Mr. Fay marches on Sunday in Staten Island, the last borough to extend a welcome to all, he will be thinking of friends and parade fixtures who did not live long enough to see this day: Father Mychal Judge, who died in the Sept. 11 attacks; the activist Tarlach MacNiallais, who died of coronavirus in 2020; and the author Malachy McCourt, who died on Monday at age 92.

“I don’t take anything for granted — L.G.B.T. people take nothing for granted when it comes to being welcomed as part of your community,” he said. “I never thought, of course, that a parade would become so much of my life, but it did.”

Complete Article HERE!

Majority of Hispanic Catholics Support Same-Sex Marriage, a New Study Reveals

— While religion and sexuality have long been a clashing issue, a new study now reveals shifting patterns in such values and attitudes across the U.S.

About 20% of those who identify as LGBTQ are also Hispanic, according to a new study.

By

Sexuality among religious Latinos has long been a complex subject. While the place of same-sex marriage among major traditional religions has been contested over decades, a new survey shows that a number of religious Latino groups in the U.S., including Hispanic Catholics, support same-sex marriage and believe it should be allowed.

The study was conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI, throughout 2023. With more than 22,000 adults interviewed, the institute seeks to form a detailed profile of the demographic, religious and political characteristics of LGBTQ Americans.

The analysis measures Americans’ attitudes on LGTQ rights across all 50 states on three key politics: nondiscrimination protections, religiously based services refusals and same-sex marriage.

The study comes at a contrasting time for Latino religious followers.

On one hand, Latino evangelical support for Christian nationalism is on the rise, with about 55% of Hispanic Protestants saying they supported or sympathized with the movement in 2023, a 12% increase compared to the year prior, NBC News reports.

“I believe that God is going to do something very great with the Latino people in the United States,” Pastor Dionny Baez told his protestant congregation in Miami.

On the other hand, the share of Latinos who are religiously unaffiliated (describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular”) now stands at 30%, up from 18% in 2013.

Pope Francis presides over the Christmas Eve mass at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican on December 24, 2023
Pope Francis formally approved letting Catholic priests bless same-sex couples back in December.

But when it comes to sexuality, the Hispanic profile in relation to religion and sexuality becomes more nuanced, according to PRRI.

In the U.S., roughly one in ten Americans identified as part of the LGBTQ community. Of this number, one in five are Hispanic (20%) the second largest race in the country to identify as part of this community.

Despite these numbers, support for LGBTQ people varied widely depending on the religion.

The lowest levels of support for nondiscrimination protections are from Hispanic Protestants (61%), followed by white evangelical Protestants and Muslims (56%).

Hispanic Catholics generally support such laws, but they saw one of the most dramatic declines between 2022 and 2023, decreasing 8 points (from 83% to 75%).

When it comes to same-sex marriage, a similar pattern emerges. While strong majorities of Christian nationalism Rejecters and Skeptics are in favor of allowing gay and lesbian couples the right to marry legally, most of those who are sympathizers and adherents of the movement oppose it.

89% of Hispanic Christian nationalism Rejecters favor same-sex marriage, followed by 70% of Hispanic Christian nationalism Skeptics who think similarly.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, 55% of Hispanic Christian nationalism sympathizers oppose allowing same-sex marriage, compared to 75% of adherents who think the same.

Catholics have long opposed same-sex marriage, but lately there have been factions seeking to present a more open stance. One of them is spearheaded by none other than Pope Francis, who back in December formally approved letting Catholic priests bless same-sex couples under certain circumstances.

While the Pope stressed that blessings in question must not be tied to any specific Catholic celebration or religious service and should not be conferred at the same time as a civil union ceremony, he also requested for such blessings to not be denied, insisting that people seeking a relationship with God and looking for his mercy shouldn’t be hold up to an impossible standard to receive it.

“There is no intention to legitimize anything, but rather to open one’s life to God, to ask for his help to live better, and also to invoke the Holy Spirit so that the values of the Gospel may be lived with greater faithfulness,” he said.

Complete Article HERE!

Polish Catholics get a new leader as the church struggles to reckon with sexual abuse

— The leaders of Poland’s influential Catholic Church have chosen moderate Archbishop Tadeusz Wojda to be their new principal, at a time when the church is struggling to reckon with the abuse of minors by some Polish clergy

Archbishop Tadeusz Wojda

The leaders of Poland’s influential Catholic Church on Thursday chose moderate Archbishop Tadeusz Wojda to be their new principal, at a time when the church is still struggling to reckon with the abuse of minors by some Polish clergy, while the number of Poles going to church has fallen sharply.

At a two-day conference, bishops and archbishops elected Gdansk Archpishop Wojda, 67, to replace the conservative Archbp. Stanislaw Gądecki, of Poznan, as the head of the Polish Episcopate, for a five-year term, a communique said.

More than 90% of Poles, a nation of some 38 million, are still officially members of the Catholic Church, but figures from 2022 showed less than a third of Catholics attended mass, according to the church’s statistical institute.

For 27 years, from 1990 until 2017, Wojda served at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelizations of Peoples, during the terms of three popes: Polish-born John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis. He was then appointed archbishop of Bialystok, in eastern Poland, bordering Belarus. In 2021, he was made archbishop of Gdansk.

During his tenure in Bialystok, when thousands of migrants arrived at the border with Belarus, Wojda called for openness and tolerance, but also stressed that borders must be protected. At that time he also spoke strongly against equality parades of the LGBT+ community in the region and said homosexuality was a “sin.”

Observers do not expect Wojda to change the Church’s strongly defensive course in the face of revealed cases of abuse of minors by priests.

A number of Poland’s archbishops and bishops have retired or stepped down, with the Vatican’s approval, for ignoring or trying to cover up abuses cases and for downplaying the trauma of the victims.

In some of the cases, the perpetrators have been indicted in court cases and ordered to pay damages to the victims. In a recent case, the diocese of Kalisz paid 300,000 zlotys ( $76,000) to the victim of a pedophile priest, in September.

The previous right-wing government forged close ties with the Church and supported some of its institutions financially, winning the gratitude of many believers. That government was also of similar mind with the Church on condemning abortion and promoting traditional family values.

The current pro-European Union government is seeking to cut the Church’s links to politics and also to limit its privileged financial position that exempts the church from taxation.

Historically, the Catholic Church has been held in high esteem by Poles, having been close to the nation and supporting its culture and freedom drives during the country’s division in the 19th century, during World War II and during more than 40 years of Moscow-controlled communist rule, until 1989.

Complete Article HERE!

Banned priest Tony Flannery to break silence on fate of the Catholic Church

Fr Tony Flattery has been unable to celebrate mass publicly since his faculties were revoked in a Vatican crackdown on liberal views.

By Lorna Siggins

Banned Redemptorist priest Tony Flannery plans to question the survival of the Roman Catholic church at a public talk in Galway shortly before Easter Sunday.

Fr Flannery (77), who was suspended from public ministry by the Vatican in 2012, intends to give his views on whether “religious belief as we have known it can survive in modern Ireland”.

He also intends to pay tribute to Pope Francis for “freeing up discussion, areas of study and the search for the truth”.

The Redemptorist priest had been disciplined in 2012 for publicly expressing support for women’s ordination and same-sex marriage, and for expressing more liberal views on homosexuality.

Although he has been outspoken since his suspension and was profiled in a recent TG4 documentary, he has not given a public talk with a question and answer session in six years.

He says the talk he intends to give in the Clayton Hotel, Galway on March 27 was scheduled to be given in church property several months ago.

However, when the organisers learned that the ban imposed on him applied not only to speaking in churches but to speaking in “all church-owned property”, a new venue had to be found.

Fr Flannery says that in spite of his suspension, he has “studied and read” and has been contemplating “how best to address the falling attendances at Mass” and “the falling away in general from the Catholic faith”.

“If we take the traditional indications of the health of the faith as measured by the Catholic Church… then all the signs are that it is in serious trouble, and that the faith is in the terminal stage of ill health,” he says.

“Churches are emptying or are being frequented only by the older generation,” he says, noting that “seminaries are closing down, and priest numbers are declining rapidly”.

“There appear to be few, if any signs of new growth – but that is by no means the full story.

“We are living in a really interesting time in the [Catholic] church since the arrival of the papacy of Francis. Even in the 11 years since his appointment he has brought about a great deal of change,”he says.

“I have no doubt that the biggest legacy Pope Francis will leave from his time in charge is that he has freed up discussion, areas of study and the search for truth in the church – all of which had been seriously restricted for many centuries by rigid imposition of official teachings.

“The “pre-Francis” church had adopted the position that it had the full truth, and that it had nothing to learn from the world.

“Francis, on the other hand, realised that in order for the church to be relevant, it must engage with modern life, and be part of the debate about the future of the world and of people.”

He cites as examples of that attitude change “the extent to which Francis has engaged in the debate about the destruction of the environment and the necessity of facing up to climate change”.

Fr Flannery says all are welcome to his talk in Galway’s Clayton Hotel, Briarhill, on March 27, and will allow for a question and answer session.

Last year, the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) and Lay Catholic Group (LCG) called for him to be restored to the ministry and said he had experienced a “grave injustice”.

Complete Article HERE!

Pope Francis laicizes North Dakota priest after sexual assault guilty plea

By Daniel Payne

Pope Francis has ordered the laicization of a North Dakota priest who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a woman in that state.

Diocese of Fargo Bishop John Folda said in a statement this month that former priest Neil Pfeifer “received a dispensation from the clerical state (laicization) from Pope Francis” effective March 8.

Pfeifer himself “sought the dispensation after adult women came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct,” Folda said in his statement.

“Mr. Pfeifer pleaded guilty on July 13, 2023, to a misdemeanor charge of sexual assault in Stutsman County,” the bishop said.

Laicization is the term for when a priest has been dismissed from the clerical state. An individual who is confirmed as a priest will always remain one, but laicization takes away his ability to licitly execute the functions of the priesthood, except in the extreme situation of encountering someone who is in immediate danger of death.

Someone who has lost the clerical state also no longer has the canonical right to be financially supported by the Church.

Often, a man who is laicized is also dispensed from the obligation of celibacy and permitted to marry, though this is not always the case, especially when someone has been involuntarily removed from the clerical state.

Folda in his statement noted that the decision to laicize a priest “is not made by the local diocese or bishop but is determined by the Holy See.”

“Laicization means that Mr. Pfeifer has been returned to the lay state and may no longer exercise priestly ministry,” the bishop said. “As a result, in accord with canon law, he may no longer celebrate Mass, hear confessions, or administer other sacraments.”

“Laicization does not invalidate sacraments that he previously administered,” the prelate added.

“When members of the clergy or others representing the Church abuse someone, they violate a sacred trust,” Folda said in his statement.

The diocese announced in 2021 that Pfiefer had been appointed the pastor of St. James Basilica in Jamestown, St. Margaret Mary in Buchanan, and St. Mathias in Windsor.

Pfeifer’s term at those parishes was to last for six years, until 2027.

Complete Article HERE!