Jesuits in US Bolster Outreach Initiative Aimed at Encouraging LGBTQ+ Catholics

— Catholic dogma continues to repudiate same-sex marriage and gender transition

In this photo provided by America Media, from left, the Rev. James Martin, Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, N.M., and Rev. Eric Andrews attend the closing Mass for the Outreach conference at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, in New York, June 18, 2023. Martin is the founder of Outreach, a unique Jesuit-run program of outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics.

By Associated Press

Even as Catholic dogma continues to repudiate same-sex marriage and gender transition, one of the most prominent religious orders in the United States — the Jesuits — is strengthening a unique outreach program for LGBTQ+ Catholics.

The initiative — fittingly called Outreach — was founded two years ago by the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit who is one of the country’s most prominent advocates for greater LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Catholic Church.

Outreach, a ministry of the Jesuit magazine America, sponsored conferences in New York City in 2022 and 2023, and last year launched a multifaceted website with news, essays and information about Catholic LGBTQ+ resources and events.

On Tuesday, there was another milestone for Outreach — the appointment of journalist and author Michael O’Loughlin as its first executive director.

O’Loughlin, a former staff writer at online newspaper Crux, has been the national correspondent at America. He is the author of a book recounting the varied ways that Catholics in the U.S. responded to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ‘90s — “Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear.”

O’Loughlin told The Associated Press he’s excited by his new job, viewing it as a chance to expand the range of Outreach’s programs and the national scope of its community.

“It’s an opportunity to highlight the ways LGBT people can be Catholic and active in parishes, ministries and charities,” he said. “There’s a lot of fear about to being too public about it. … I want them to realize they’re not alone.”

O’Loughlin says his current outlook evolved as he traveled to scores of places around the U.S. to promote his book, talking to groups of LGBTQ+ Catholics, and their families and friends, about how to make the church more welcoming to them.

Those conversations made O’Loughlin increasingly comfortable publicly identifying as a gay Catholic after years of wondering whether he should remain in the church. Its doctrine still condemns any sexual relations between gay or lesbian partners as “intrinsically disordered.”

The latest expansion of Outreach occurs amid a time of division within the global Catholic Church as it grapples with LGBTQ+ issues.

Pope Francis, a Jesuit who has met with Martin and sent letters of support to Outreach, has made clear he favors a more welcoming approach to LGBTQ+ people. At his direction, the Vatican recently gave priests greater leeway to bless same-sex couples and asserted that transgender people, in some circumstances, can be baptized.

However, there has been some resistance to the pope’s approach. Many conservative bishops in Africa, Europe and elsewhere said they would not implement the new policy regarding blessings. In the U.S., some bishops have issued directives effectively ordering diocesan personnel not to recognize transgender people’s gender identity.

Amid those conflicting developments, Martin and other Jesuit leaders are proud of Outreach’s accomplishments and optimistic about its future.

“There seems to be deep hunger for the kind of ministry that we’re doing, not only among LGBTQ Catholics, but also their families and friends,” Martin said by email from Ireland, where he was meeting last week with the the country’s Catholic bishops.

“Pope Francis has been very encouraging, allowing himself to be interviewed by Outreach and sending personal greetings to our conference last year,” Martin added. “Perhaps the most surprising support has been from several bishops who have written for our website, as well as some top-notch Catholic theologians who see the need for serious theological reflection on LGBTQ topics.”

Martin will remain engaged in Outreach’s oversight, holding the title of founder.

The Rev. Brian Paulson, president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, evoked both Jesus and the pope when asked why his order had embraced the mission of Outreach.

“Pope Francis has repeatedly called leaders in the Catholic church to emulate the way Jesus spent his ministry on the peripheries, accompanying those who had experienced exclusion,” Paulson said email. “I think the work of Outreach is a response to this invitation.”

Paulson also said he was impressed by Martin’s “grace and patience” in responding to the often harsh criticism directed at him by some conservative Catholics.

There was ample evidence of Outreach’s stature at its conference last June at a branch of Fordham University in New York City. The event was preceded by a handwritten letter of support sent to Martin by Pope Francis, extending “prayers and good wishes” to the participants.

“It’s a special grace for LGBTQ Catholics to know that the pope is praying for them,” Martin said.

Another welcoming letter came from Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York.

“It is the sacred duty of the Church and Her ministers to reach out to those on the periphery,” he wrote to the conference attendees.

The keynote speakers included Fordham’s president, Tania Tetlow, and the closing Mass was celebrated by Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Complete Article HERE!

Priest who ‘organised gay orgy’ faces eight years in jail as cops charge him over party that saw man overdose on erectile dysfunction pills

— Police and paramedics were refused entry to the premises upon their arrival

Father Tomasz Zmarz¿y from the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Angels in Poland was charged with sex and drug crimes

By Ed Wight

A priest who is alleged to have organised a gay orgy in which a man was hospitalised after overdosing on erectile dysfunction pills has been arrested and could face up to eight years in jail.

Father Tomasz Zmarzły from the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Angels in Poland was charged with sex and drug crimes as well as failure to help someone at medical risk following a police investigation into the incident.

The disgraced clergyman had allegedly thrown a small party with a male prostitute and his friend at his apartment in the city of Dąbrowa Górnicza in September last year.

But when police and paramedics were refused entry after being called when one of the men collapsed, prosecutors launched an investigation into the priest for failing to help the unconscious man.

Leaked telephone recordings suggested that the victim may have been plied with the date rape drug known as GHB.

According to Fakt newspaper which received the recording, a man believed to be the male prostitute is heard talking frantically to the emergency services.

In the call, the paper said he is heard sobbing: ‘He was so high… And they told me that he shouldn’t be touched! I tell them, check, I lifted his head and he was foaming at the mouth…’

He is then allegedly heard saying: ‘There are bars on the doors, I don’t know why… they kicked me out, hurry up!

‘Yeah, they were taking some DHB or something. I don’t know. Some GHB and drops or something… I don’t know, send an ambulance here. And the police.’

When police and paramedics were finally allowed into the apartment, they found a naked man lying unconscious on the floor.

He was taken to hospital where he later recovered and discharged himself.

It later emerged that Father Zmarzły who was suspended following the incident had also been looking for hookups on the gay dating app Grindr.

According to his former partner who contacted local newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, Zmarzły turned to the dating app after being unsure about becoming a priest.

The former partner said: ‘At the end of his studies at the seminary, Tomek, aware of his homosexuality, hesitated about whether to accept priestly ordination at all.

‘He [went on] Grindr but he finally decided to become a priest.’

Local outrage in the strongly Catholic town saw one man attempting to burn down the church and ‘the faithful’ stopped their children attending service.

The local mayor also cut off ties with the church which is overseen by the diocese of Sosnowiec.

The disgraced clergyman had allegedly thrown a party with a male prostitute and his friend at his apartment, but police and paramedics were refused entry after being called when one of the men collapsed
The disgraced clergyman had allegedly thrown a party with a male prostitute and his friend at his apartment, but police and paramedics were refused entry after being called when one of the men collapsed
Blessed Virgin Mary of the Angels
Blessed Virgin Mary of the Angels

Posting on social media at the time, mayor Arkadiusz Chęciński said: ‘As a city, we are famous for tolerance and respect for all faiths and views.

‘However, due to recent reports from the diocese negatively influencing opinions about the city, the outrage of the inhabitants and the lack of a clear dissociation from these matters forces me to make the unpleasant decision to suspend the city’s cooperation with the Diocese of Sosnowiec until real corrective actions are taken.’

The disgraced priest also faced a backlash from his colleagues.

A fellow member of the clergy said: ‘It’s time to stop pretending. Everyone in our community knew that he had a huge problem with sexuality.

‘However, nothing was done to help him solve the problem.’

Following his arrest this week, prosecutor spokesman Waldemar Łubniewski told the Polish Press Agency: ‘Three of the charges are drug-related offences, one of which is for giving another person an illegal substance.

‘Another charge is related to violating another person’s sexual freedom.

‘The fourth charge concerns causing serious bodily injury and failing to provide assistance to a person whose health and life was in danger.’

The spokesman did not give specifics of the sexual charge, but it is known to carry a maximum penalty of up to eight years in prison.

Zmarzły is yet to comment following his arrest on Monday, but when the scandal was first reported, he sent a statement to the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper denying all the allegations.

Complete Article HERE!

LGBTQ+ church leaders share reflections on service

LEAD WITH LOVE: The Rev. Sarah Hulbert, dean at The Cathedral of All Souls in Biltmore Village, says those who aren’t welcoming LGBTQ+ parishoners with open arms are missing God’s greatest commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself.

by Greg Parlier

The Rev. Sarah Hurlbert says she can understand why some fellow members of the LGBTQ+ community never want to step foot in a church.

“Why would you want to be a part of a religious group that has oppressed folks?” she concedes.

But Hurlbert, who identifies as bisexual, says the same God that made her who she is also called her to the priesthood. She is disappointed in those who use the Bible to discriminate against minority communities because of what she says is an improper conflation of politics and Christian teachings.

“The more you study, the more you realize a lot of what’s being preached out there as the Gospel is not true,” she asserts. “And a lot of it is this cultural conservatism, and they’ve gotten the Bible and the flag and the Constitution all mixed up. And so it’s important for us to be in the public square, not proclaiming a political party.”

For Hurlbert, there are two primary commandments given by God to guide human life.

“Love God above everything else; love your neighbor as yourself. Outside of that, we have created all these things, all these hoops that people have to jump through, none of it’s Gospel. So what Jesus came to say was a pretty simple message that we’ve managed to really, really make hard.”

Hurlbert joined The Cathedral of All Souls in Biltmore Village as dean in 2022. It is part of the Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina, which, she says, has been on the forefront of expanding acceptance in the Episcopal church, one of the first Christian denominations to officially allow openly LGBTQ+ ministers in its leadership.

While the national Episcopal leaders voted to make the church “fully inclusive” in 1976, it was 2009 before they passed a resolution officially allowing the ordination of LGBTQ+ bishops, and there wasn’t full support for same-sex marriage until 2015, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

At All Souls in the 1980s, the Rev. Neil Zabriskie was on the leading edge, challenging the WNC diocese to “begin facilitating conversations around human sexuality as well as becoming a welcoming and safe church for gay and lesbian persons,” according to All Souls’ website.

That conversation continued into the next decade, and today, the Rev. José A. McLoughlin, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina, says it’s his goal to welcome and earnestly include everyone, regardless of background.

“In a world where division persists, we hope that our commitment to being open and affirming is an example of the transformative power of love,” he says. “We hope also to be a living example of a church where everyone is not only accepted but fully embraced for who they are and that each person can find belonging that leads to full flourishing in the divine light of love.”

Coming out in the church

The Rev. David Eck, who is gay, did not hide who he was from his congregation when he became pastor of Abiding Savior Lutheran Church in Fairview in 1993. That was a risky move at the time.

“I think early on a lot of us sort of flew under the radar,” he says. “In my denomination, I would have been fired had the bishop known.”

OPEN BOOK: The Rev. David Eck has been leading Abiding Savior Lutheran Church in Fairview for about 30 years and was always open with his congregation about his sexual orientation.

It wasn’t until 2009 that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, of which Abiding Savior is a member, voted to allow gay and lesbian clergy to serve openly, he says.

“I would perform all the unions for couples before it was legal to actually marry folks,” Eck says. “And my congregation was supportive of that. And so, you know, we’ve just been sort of quietly affirming a wide diversity of people.”

When Eck did come out to the bishop and his colleagues from other churches, he was the only openly gay Lutheran pastor in the state, but that was less important to him than worship and community outreach.

“Those who know me well weren’t surprised,” he recalls. “Some folks, you know, just can’t seem to get beyond that prejudice. I had to part ways with some people, and there are pastors in the community that won’t work with me. It just is what it is.”

Hurlbert’s journey to the church and self-acceptance went through Broadway. After being raised in the Episcopal church in Central Florida, she moved to New York City, where she worked backstage in Broadway theaters and attended an Episcopal church she liked. But something was unsettled. She met a few women who were ordained in the church and eventually started to realize what she needed to do.

“Something was being stirred up,” she says of her decision to go to seminary. “I took my time and told God a lot of times that God was wrong. And then I did some real conversation in spiritual direction with clergy, and I finally came to realize, yep, this is what’s happening.”

It wasn’t until she was out of seminary and in the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan, where there were lots of other LGBTQ+ clergy, that she came out. By that time, in 2014, the church was much more accepting, making her transition to being open much easier than if she had come out during seminary.

Part of her delay to accept her own sexuality had to do with cultural norms around female relationships, Hurlbert says. There is a cultural acceptance that female relationships take many forms, so early on she was led to believe that certain feelings she was having were just a type of platonic female friendship. Later, when she entered the church, she fought the urge to get swallowed up by her ministry, not allowing herself to be loved by someone because she was so consumed by her duties caring for her congregation.

Eventually, she fell in love with her now-wife, Dee Hurlbert.

LGBTQ+ leadership

For Jesse Nelson, who is gay, the presence of LGBTQ+ leaders in the church is important to fostering a welcoming environment, especially with so much divisive rhetoric coming from segments of the Christian community.

“At the end of the day, you can’t be accepting of LGBTQ+ folks as a church and not accept them into leadership,” he argues. “To me, that’s just not possible. If you’re doing that, you’re playing a game that’s causing confusion.”

Nelson grew up in an evangelical Baptist church in Cashiers but began participating in a local Catholic church because it was a little more socially progressive, he says.

He moved to the Waynesville area about four years ago to help take care of his ailing grandfather and wound up joining Grace Church in the Mountains, an Episcopal church in town, because he liked the way the congregation preached “radical love.”

“They take ‘love God’ and ‘love your neighbor’ very seriously. I think that, for me, that’s pretty important to spiritual life,” he says.

Now, Nelson hosts “joyful fellowship events” for members of the church to share in their experiences as members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Hurlbert says it’s vital for church leaders to actively show the wider community love and acceptance, through word and action, especially in the face of hateful rhetoric that is also being attributed to the Bible.

“I preach to our folks that we’ve got to be out there because there are young people growing up in this far-right Christian nationalism that know in their heart that something’s wrong, but they have nothing that they can go to,” she says. “They don’t even know that there’s a place where you can go and be gay and Christian. For a lot of people, it’s a matter of life and death for us to just be out there and be who we are.”

For Nelson, integrating LGBTQ+ people into the church is the only way to build a community that resembles the one taught by Scripture.

“The point of Christianity to me is to grow in love and understanding, and to build peaceful, loving communities,” he says. “And to do that, I think you have to be accepting of the LGBTQ+ community. Not just tolerate it, but you know, integrate it into spiritual life. Because yeah, it is part of our life experience. So it is sacred.”

Complete Article HERE!

Archdiocese puts pastor of Whitefish Bay and Fox Point parishes on leave, under investigation

— The Archdiocese of Milwaukee put a priest on administrative leave as it investigates an allegation of a consensual relationship.

Fr. Mark Payne

By Kelly Meyerhofer

Fr. Mark Payne serves in the senior Archdiocese of Milwaukee position of judicial vicar. He has also been pastor of two North Shore parishes since 2022: St. Eugene in Fox Point and St. Monica in Whitefish Bay. In addition, he is chaplain of the national TV Mass produced by Wisconsin-based Heart of the Nation.

Catholic news website “The Pillar” on Thursday, Nov. 30, first reported allegations that Payne was in an apparent relationship with another man, and the priest hired that man to teach at St. Monica School.

A day later, on Friday, the archdiocese announced it had pulled the pastor from the parishes and placed him on administrative leave.

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City of Milwaukee property records, reviewed by FOX6 News, showed the priest and the other man co-owned a duplex near the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. It showed they bought the two-bedroom, two-bathroom home in 2003 for $245,000.

Courtesy: Heart of the Nation

As “The Pillar” also first reported, the other man was arrested in 2018 for an OWI and a second charge that was dismissed: possessing cocaine.

The criminal complaint, obtained by FOX6 News, noted that police alleged finding in the man’s pockets and wallet a total of seven baggies with a white substance that tested positive for the presence of cocaine. The complaint also said the man “admitted to using cocaine.” However, a Milwaukee County judge dismissed that charge as part of a plea deal. The complaint noted the man had been convicted of a separate OWI in 2016.

The archdiocese’s letter sent to parishioners on Dec. 1 declared: “Father was told his hiring of the grade school teacher was not appropriate. Father Payne assured us that he is faithful to his priestly vows and that the information painted a misleading picture of the situation.”

Archbishop Jerome Listecki

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee vicar for clergy, Fr. Nathan Reesman, wrote parishioners that the archdiocese had known about the allegations and was allowing Fr. Payne to “clear up any possible misunderstandings before taking the step of initiating a formal investigation.”

The archdiocese’s communications director, Sandra Peterson, added in an email to FOX that the archdiocese “had already been conducting an inquiry, and on Friday the archbishop called for a formal investigation. That’s the next step after an inquiry, so this was already in the middle of the process.”

In light of the story, the archdiocesan letter reported it moved up the timeline, as Archbishop Jerome Listecki launched a formal investigation to be led by an expert from another diocese “to ensure maximum objectivity.”

The archdiocese asked parishioners to “please pray for the next steps in this situation, for Father Payne, for his parish communities, and for all those impacted by this information.”

After news broke, the parishes wrote an email to parishioners on Saturday. It said the two parishes’ pastoral councils, finance councils and trustees met “to discuss how to move forward in light of the information learned yesterday.”

The email continued, “We ask for your patience as this process unfolds and also ask that we as parish communities pledge to not engage in gossip and speculation regarding the current situation and trust the investigative process undertaken by the archdiocese.”

Complete Article HERE!

Polish Bishop Resigns After Diocese Is Rocked by Sex Scandal

— A priest in the bishop’s diocese was accused of holding a sex party in his church apartment that involved a male prostitute who lost consciousness.

Blessed Virgin Mary of the Angels, in the town of Dabrowa Gornicz

By Andrew Higgins

A Polish bishop whose diocese has been badly tarnished by reports of a gay orgy involving priests and a prostitute resigned on Tuesday, the latest in a long series of sexual and financial scandals in Poland’s Roman Catholic Church.

Grzegorz Kaszak, the bishop of Sosnowiec in southwestern Poland, announced his departure after one of his priests was placed under criminal investigation in connection with reports last month that he had organized a sex party during which a male prostitute lost consciousness from an overdose of erectile dysfunction pills.

Bishop Grzegorz Kaszak

Gazeta Wyborcza, a liberal daily newspaper, reported in September that one of the priests at the gathering, held in a building belonging to the parish of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Angels in the town of Dabrowa Gornicza, had called an ambulance. Others at the party prevented paramedics from tending to the unconscious man, the paper reported, but the paramedics called the police and the priests relented.

The priest who organized the gathering in his church apartment, identified by the diocese only as Father Tomasz Z., gave a statement last month to Polish media that disputed details of what had happened, quibbling over the number of priests present at the time of the alleged sex party and saying that “it is worth reading what the definition of an orgy is.”

He dismissed the uproar over events in his apartment as “an obvious attack on the church, including the clergy and believers,” and claimed that nobody would have raised a fuss if “something similar had happened” to a person outside the clergy.

The diocese, in its own statement last month, said that the “participation” of Father Tomasz “in what happened on the night of Aug. 30-31 is not in doubt.” It said he had been barred from celebrating Mass, stripped of all other functions and “sent to live outside the parish.”

Announcing that the church had set up a commission to investigate “the scandalous event” reported by the press, the diocese asked media outlets to keep in mind that “almost all” priests in the parish were good and had themselves, by reporting what had taken place, “become victims due to this deplorable crime.”

Bishop Kaszak announced his departure Tuesday in a message posted on his diocese’s website but gave no reason. The Vatican said on Tuesday that it had accepted the bishop’s resignation. It, too, gave no explanation.

The departing bishop has not been accused of taking part in the reported orgy but is held responsible for the behavior of priests in his diocese.

“I ask everyone to forgive my human limitations,” he wrote in his farewell message. “If I have offended anyone or neglected something, I am very sorry.”

The resignation came less than a month after the Polish Catholic Church, in a lengthy report on the state of its affairs, warned that priests needed to get a grip on “crimes of sexual abuse of minors by some clergy” and other misbehavior.

“The church’s internal difficulties constitute an excellent breeding ground of accelerating trends of secularization,” the report, Polish Church 2023, said.

Trust in the church, according to experts, has also been damaged by its close alliance with Poland’s nationalist governing party, Law and Justice. In a critical general election on Oct. 15, the party lost its majority in Parliament to centrist and liberal opponents who have often criticized the church for aligning with right-wing political forces in pursuit of its agenda on abortion and other issues.

Law and Justice in 2018 banned Sunday shopping, and in 2020 pushed through a near-total ban on abortion, a move that delighted the church but alienated many young people, who mostly no longer attend Mass and voted overwhelmingly for parties opposed to Law and Justice.

Long seen as a Catholic stronghold that, in contrast to Ireland and Spain, had managed to hold back a tide of secularization that has swept across most of Europe, Poland has over the past decade seen a sharp decline in church attendance, though most still declare themselves Christians. Enrollment in seminaries has also plummeted, forcing several to shut down.

Lamenting that a process previously referred to by experts as “creeping secularization” was now “galloping,” the church report warned that “the church in Poland is entering a rather dangerous ‘twist’ in its history. Much depends on how it will be able to defeat this.”

Complete Article HERE!