Category: Activism

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Methodists defy ban and elect first openly lesbian bishop

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The Rev. Karen Oliveto, right, is the first openly gay bishop in the United Methodist Church.
The Rev. Karen Oliveto, right, is the first openly gay bishop in the United Methodist Church.

The Western district of the United Methodist Church elected its first openly gay bishop Friday night, bucking the denomination’s ban on same-sex relationships.

The Rev. Karen Oliveto, who is a pastor at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco, was elected at a meeting of the church’s West Jurisdiction in Scottsdale, Arizona. The inclusion on LGBT members in church life has been a contentious issue in the 12.7 million-member denomination, with districts divided over what the church’s policies should be.

Eliel Cruz-Lopez, executive director of Faith in America, told LGBTQ Nation that Oliveto’s election is “historic” and has implications beyond the United Methodist Church:

The United Methodist Church is the second largest Protestant denomination in the United States. Last night, they became the largest Protestant denomination with an openly gay Bishop. In electing Rev. Karen Oliveto, the Western Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church performed civil disobedience against the world church. This is historic. It’s also an act of spiritual protest against a homophobic policy that denies openly LGBT clergy from ministry. This election shows the UMC is changing and that the Holy Spirit is moving the church towards justice.

The Reconciling Ministries Network echoed that sentiment, calling Oliveto’s election a “historic moment” in the movements for LGBTQ spiritual and civil equality:

The election of Rev. Dr. Karen Oliveto of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco, CA breaks through anti-LGBTQ law in The UMC and carries queer people to the highest levels of church leadership. Officially barred from so many churches and positions of spiritual leadership, queer persons may now see themselves as leaders of the body of Christ in the largest mainline protestant denomination in the United States.

Officially, the church explicitly forbids gay, lesbian, and bisexual people from being church leaders. It’s laws say:

The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. Therefore self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be certified as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in The United Methodist Church.

In fact, being “a self-avowed practicing homosexual” and officiating a gay wedding are both chargeable offenses, listed among such disturbing acts as child and sexual abuse.

But some church districts are rejecting that law, allowing both LGBT clergy and same-sex church weddings. The Reconciling Ministries Network says Oliveto’s election is a sign that times are changing:

A 40 year movement to end codified discrimination against LGBTQ persons is reaching a tipping point that hardly any rational-minded observer can deny. Since LGBTQ people have long been denied access to public spaces, homes, and churches, today’s news represents the breaking down of a long-standing barrier that has prevented queer people access to the fullness of Christian vocation on the grounds that they are “incompatible with Christian teaching.” It seems that unjust policy is finally subject to the winds of the Spirit.

Due to the church’s clear policies, it’s likely Oliveto’s election could face challenge or reprimand.

Complete Article HERE!

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Deep pocketed interests denied justice to church abuse survivors

By Sister Maureen Paul Turlish

child sex abuse

I have said it before and I will say it again:

Accountability and transparency for the crimes of childhood sexual abuse today and in the future absolves no one from the accountability and transparency for the sexual crimes committed against children in the past.

Deep pockets denied the rights of all those who were sexually abused as children.

Their right to access justice in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was denied them by groups that had much to lose; the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese along with the other Pennsylvania dioceses as well as the insurance industry and  and several business lobby groups.

Mostly, however, the opposition to the retroactive measure, statute of limitation reform, was led by Archbishop Charles Chaput, by way of the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference which he leads, and the heads of the Pennsylvania dioceses who dutifully follow orders.

Sister Maureen Paul Turlish
Sister Maureen Paul Turlish

And why? Is it money? Hardly.

Keep in mind that about $10 million dollars has been spent defending Msgr. William Lynn.

One can only guess at how much the public relations firm and the lobbyists from the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference are costing [the church]. That will likely never be known.

Then what is it?

It’s the fact that the bishops, the members of the hierarchy, will continue to do whatever they have to do, and what they have done for decades if not centuries.

And that is to do whatever it takes to protect a powerful institution and its secrets.

The safety and protection of the most vulnerable, the children, was never their priority regardless of the words of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Complete Article HERE!

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UNITED METHODIST CHURCH MOVES TOWARD ACCEPTING HOMOSEXUALITY WITH NOMINATION OF 3 GAY BISHOPS

BY KELLY FRAZIER

BenjaminHutchison
Openly gay Rev. Benjamin Hutchison was forced to resign from his position in the United Methodist Church in 2015.

 

THE NOMINATION OF THREE OPENLY GAY MINISTERS GOES AGAINST THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH’S RULES ON HOMOSEXUALITY.

 
Three ministers of United Methodist Church, Rev. Karen Oliveto, Rev. David Meredith and Rev. Frank Wulf- have been nominated for Bishop posts in the church. All three are openly gay. This development has escalated the ongoing debate taking place in the denomination over the LGBT issues. It also directly challenges the official prohibition concerning homosexuality.

The three ministers were nominated in early June as candidates for the UMC Bishop position in two dissimilar Methodist jurisdictions. This happened even as UMC’s Book of Discipline condemns homosexuality. It also bans any ordination of any self-avowed practicing homosexuals. The three gay ministers are among 54 candidates in the competition to fill 15 vacant positions as bishops. The inclusion on the ballots will be done through a number of jurisdictional elections held all over the US in the week of July 13. This is not the first instance where a gay candidate has enjoyed nomination. Wulf himself was nominated once before, as per the Executive Director of Reconciling Ministries, Matt Berryman. There is no doubt about the progressive momentum this time following the Portland-held General Conference of the United Methodist Church.

The three ministers were nominated in early June as candidates for the UMC Bishop position in two dissimilar Methodist jurisdictions. This happened even as UMC’s Book of Discipline condemns homosexuality. It also bans any ordination of any self-avowed practicing homosexuals. The three gay ministers are among 54 candidates in the competition to fill 15 vacant positions as bishops. The inclusion on the ballots will be done through a number of jurisdictional elections held all over the US in the week of July 13. This is not the first instance where a gay candidate has enjoyed nomination. Wulf himself was nominated once before, as per the Executive Director of Reconciling Ministries, Matt Berryman. There is no doubt about the progressive momentum this time following the Portland-held General Conference of the United Methodist Church.

According to Berryman, an increasing number of annual conferences are declining to comply with Book of Discipline, and open ordination to LGBT people and also the passing of resolutions which affirm God’s image in transgender people. The actions build on the pivot which was implemented at the General Conference. In the United States, the United Methodist Bishops get elected by the five jurisdictional conferences of the denomination. Similar to the international General Conference, the jurisdictional conferences usually meet at intervals of four years. Many LGBT rights advocates hold the belief that it is the ideal time- and the first time ever- that conditions are right for an LGBT candidate to be a bishop. There is an excellent chance that an LGBT bishop will be installed in the North Central Jurisdiction or the Western Jurisdiction of the church. The situation was extremely unlike even a few years ago. Even though a substantial portion of American Methodists are supportive of same-sex marriages, a conservative delegate coalition from the US and other countries have repeatedly blocked the required votes at the denominational meetings. This action stops the formalization of this sentiment in the doctrine of the church. Candidates, for their part, can nominate themselves. Many of them are nominated by other groups before the jurisdictional conferences.

Complete Article HERE!

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Yes, There Are Women Priests, and The Vatican Wishes There Weren’t

By Barbie Latza Nadeau

Pope John Paul II slammed the door, and Catholic conservatives say females can never be priests, but it may already be too late.

Father Roy Bougeois from Georgia poses with a group of Roman Catholic activist in front of the Vatican

VATICAN CITY — In early June, a small group of devout Catholic women marched near St. Peter’s Square with a big pink cardboard telephone booth marked “Door to Dialogue,” trying to draw attention to the taboo topic of female priests. The group, part of the 40-year-old U.S.-based Women’s Ordination Conference and the 20-year-old Women’s Ordination Worldwide group, donned purple priest stoles and held signs with slogans like “22 Years On Mute” and “Calls Waiting.”

They also hung 100 giant posters of women priests in various poses with the hashtag #ordainwomen. The photographs were taken by Italian artist Nausicaa Giulia Bianchi, who has documented 70 self-ordained female priests in an attempt to highlight what many see as blatant misogyny within the Catholic hierarchy.

“All have been excommunicated for breaking the Vatican law,” Bianchi writes on her website. “Disobeying a patriarchal law to follow the call of God, they ask for the spiritual equality of men and women to be recognized.”

Among the group supporting prohibited priestesses was Father Tony Flannery, a male Irish priest who was suspended from active ministry and censured and barred from speaking out and writing about the church in 2012 because he was an outspoken advocate of women’s ordination and married priests. While in Rome, he compared the current stance of the church on women’s issues to its mindset in the Middle Ages.

“I am becoming increasingly convinced that the inequality of women is becoming a major issue and a major challenge facing the Catholic Church,” he told the National Catholic Reporter. Unless addressed, he said, the church “will continue becoming more sidelined and little more than a sect.”

The group of demonstrators marched here during the Vatican’s Jubilee for Priests and Seminarians, which was a special event under the umbrella of the Holy Jubilee Year of Mercy dedicated to the all male clergy.

Members of the group, who called their march the Jubilee for Women, didn’t get to bend the ear of Pope Francis directly, but they did make their point. “The Jubilee, intentionally coinciding with the Vatican’s ‘Jubilee for Priests’ offered a celebration of a renewed image of the priesthood,” Kate McElwee, co-executive director of the Women’s Ordination Conference, told The Daily Beast. “One that is inclusive and welcoming of all people.”

The group was able to secure a permit to demonstrate in Rome, which was nothing short of a miracle in a city that normally sides with the Holy See. It was the first time in the 40-year history of the Women’s Ordination Conference that women priests had been allowed anywhere near the Vatican, where the idea of ordaining women has been met with everything from blatant sexism to outright misogyny. In fact, any women who consider themselves ordained priests are automatically excommunicated from the Catholic Church. And the march stopped at the gates to St. Peter’s Square.

Still, there is hope.

Last month, when Pope Francis told a group of 900 nuns he would create a commission to study the concept of ordaining women deacons, Catholic conservatives warned that it must never evolve to ordaining women as priests because priests can only represent Christ, who is a male figure, and therefore a woman could never fulfill that role. Even some supporters of women’s ordination scoffed at the deacon idea as a way to placate those who support women clergy.

But McElwee, who is the first advocate of the Women’s Ordination Conference to be permanently based in Rome, believes it is a move in the right direction.

“Opening a commission to study the diaconate for women would be a great step for the Vatican in recognizing its own history,” she says, referring to decades of research and biblical and historical evidence that point to several women deacons working alongside men in the early church. “Discussion on ordained ministries for women is new for the Vatican, and something we celebrate.”

If Francis does create the commission and it does lead to the ordination of deacons, two steps that are yet to happen, it would amount to a complete about face. In 1994, Pope John Paul II issued the Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, a document that banned even the discussion about the ordination of women. “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful,” he wrote, effectively slamming the door.

Some of the women already consider themselves ordained Catholic priests under an organization called the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests. Cristina Moreira, who is from Spain, told The Daily Beast that they prepare and ordain women to carry out all the same duties as male Catholic priests, even though the Church automatically excommunicates them.

Moreira told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, “This is the year of Jubilee and Mercy, of forgiveness. We’ve come to ask Pope Francis to lift the excommunication,” adding, “What evil have we done? To give communion is nothing bad, and to help those in need isn’t either.”

The women priests say their ordination was performed legitimately within the framework of church structures. “The principal consecrating Roman Catholic male bishop who ordained our first women bishops is a bishop with apostolic succession within the Roman Catholic Church in communion with the pope,” according to the group’s mission statement. “Therefore, our bishops validly ordain deacons, priests and bishops.”

Argentine Rómulo Antonio Braschi, a former Catholic bishop who rejected his own excommunication in 2002 for ordaining his wife, has openly ordained several female priests in addition to her, and the group says other male bishops have done so anonymously since the first ordinations took place.

Moreira and Janice Sevré-Duszynska, an American female priest who marched on Rome, say they delivered a petition in support of women’s ordination to an unnamed “senior Vatican official” who is said to have delivered it to the pope. The very fact that they were given that opportunity spells a massive change of heart, or at least a very savvy public relations effort, on the part of the Vatican, which surely doesn’t want to shut out 50 percent of the faithful by slamming the door again.

“At this time, the Catholic Church legitimizes sexism by prohibiting women from ordained ministries and decision-making roles within the church,” McElwee says, standing firm in her belief that they will one day be heard.  “Until women are fully included in church structures as equals, [we] will continue to expose this injustice through art, activism, public witness, and dialogue.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Where did the Orlando shooter learn his hate? Hint: It wasn’t from Osama bin Laden.

By Jenny Boylan

FEAR1

Donald Trump wasted no time. “Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn’t he should immediately resign in disgrace!”

This was early on Sunday, as the country was waking up to learn about the massacre in Orlando. Fifty people dancing at “Latin night” at a gay nightclub, The Pulse, had been killed by shooter who, at that hour, had not yet been identified.

The facts weren’t all in then, and are even now still being revealed. But it wasn’t too early for Donald Trump to decide on the source for this tragedy. “I called it,” he tweeted, referring to his pledge to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country.

There are a lot of threads in this story: gun rights, terrorism, ISIS, Latino and Latina identity, immigration, and the endless and execrable campaign of 2016. It is hard to understand this catastrophe without taking the time to understand how all these forces intersect. The weeks ahead will give us the chance to learn more.

But one thing seems clear already. Omar Mateen didn’t learn his hatred of LGBT people from a distant cell of terrorists in Syria. He learned it on American soil.

This was no foreign born terrorist who furtively snuck over the border, like those Mexican “criminals, drug dealers, and rapists” Trump has mentioned. This was a man born in New York, raised in this country. Whatever he is, he is the product of our own culture.

We know that Mateen had been married, for a year, and that the marriage was marked by violence and abuse. But we also know that he had used an app called Jack’d, a dating site for men. He’d once proposed meeting a gay man for a drink at Pulse, the very club where he would later commit his atrocity.

One possible narrative of this tragedy is that it was committed by a man who was attracted to other men, and who found it impossible to accept the truth of what was in his heart. So instead he decided to destroy what was in himself, by lashing out at his brothers and sisters, to destroy the lives of people living with an absence of shame that he could not imagine for himself.

This was a man who had learned that it is better to commit mass murder — and suicide — than to accept oneself. This was a man who had learned that the lives of gay and lesbian and bi and trans people are expendable, that his own life, if he was one of us, was not worth living.

From whom did he learn this lesson? Did terrorists in Syria send him telegrams? Did the Taliban reach him by phone?

hate (2)

Of course not. He learned hatred of LGBT people, and of himself, right here at home.

He learned it from a county in which 200 anti LGBT bills have been introduced in the last six months.

He learned it in a country in which legislators have approved bills making it legal for any business not to approve services for marriages on the basis of religious objection.

He learned it from a country in which in one state, people with female anatomy and appearance are legally required to use the men’s room, because of what might appear on their birth certificates.

He learned it from a country in which, in another state, mental health professionals are permitted, if they so choose, to refuse services to gay people.

He learned it from a country in which people like me, and families like mine, are blithely referred to as “abominations.”

 
He learned it from a country in which the Lieutenant Governor of Texas — the second highest elected official in our second largest state — responded to the tragedy in Orlando by posting the message on Twitter: “God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”

He learned it from a country in which more than a third of transgender people have attempted to take their own lives. One such victim, seventeen year old Leelah Alcorn, threw herself in front of a truck last year rather than live in this culture. “Fix society,” she wrote in her suicide note.

The society Alcorn wanted fixed is not the society of the Taliban in the mountains of Pakistan. The society Alcorn wanted fixed is not the society of the Islamic State. It was the society of her home town of Kings Mills, Ohio, a state that has no protections for sexual orientation or gender identity outside of state employment.

It was the society of Orlando, Florida, where a person who survived the massacre at the Pulse on Saturday night can be legally fired on Monday morning for being gay.

On Sunday, just hours after the Orlando shooting, a twenty year old Indiana Man, James Wesley Howell, was arrested in California with an arsenal of weapons he apparently intended to use on an attack on the Los Angeles Pride celebration. His car contained three assault rifles, high capacity magazines, ammunition, and a five gallon bucket containing chemicals.

From whom did Howell learn his hatred? Hint: It wasn’t Osama bin Laden.

We cannot create a more loving and compassionate country by sealing our borders. Hatred of people like me, and of my family, does not come from overseas.

The fault is not in our stars. It is in ourselves.

Complete Article HERE!