Month: January 2022

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The Church is changing its approach to LGBTQ Catholics

A worshipper sings during an annual “Pre-Pride Festive Mass” June 26, 2021, at St. Francis of Assisi Church in New York City. The liturgy, hosted by the parish’s LGBT Ministry, is traditionally celebrated on the eve of the city’s Pride march for the LGBTQ+ community.

by Christopher Lamb

Is the Church beginning to decisively shift its approach on LGBTQ matters?

Pope Francis has not formally “changed” any official teaching but he’s opened the way to a more inclusive and pastoral approach to gay and lesbian people, and his letters encouraging those ministering to them are highly significant.  It is the opening of a more “synodal” approach to this issue, where the Church listens, learns and opens up new pastoral avenues. Personnel changes at the Vatican’s doctrine office, announced on 10 January, also suggest movements are afoot.

The latest letter to emerge from Francis was sent to Sister Jeanine Gramick, one of the founders of New Ways Ministry, a US-based support group for LGBTQ Catholics, in which he praises her work. It comes despite a 1999 ruling by the Holy See’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) which ordered her and Fr Robert Nugent to be “permanently prohibited” from pastoral work with gay people.

By endorsing the 50-year ministry of Sr Jeanine, Francis has effectively overturned this earlier censure, while his support for same-sex civil unions also supersedes the CDF’s 2003 document which declared that the “state could not grant legal standing to such unions”. In short, the Francis pontificate has made decisive steps in removing the “anti-gay” perception of the Church.

Fr James Martin, a Jesuit priest and writer who ministers to gay Catholics, says that while the Pope has not changed teaching he has “certainly changed the tone, the approach and the conversation around the issue.” Fr Martin has received his own letter from the Pope, which was the first written papal endorsement of a priest’s ministry to LGBTQ Catholics.

“Remember that the Holy Father has just praised a Catholic sister who had been under Vatican censure.  This could be the beginning of what church historians call a ‘rehabilitation’.  You could also argue that a change in tone is a kind of change in teaching. And the new teaching could be said to be, LGBTQ Catholics are worth listening to and ministering to,” the Jesuit priest explained.  

It could be argued the Pope’s letters and comments have little weight unless they are backed up with official rulings, and point out that last year he gave his approval to a CDF document blocking the possibility of the Church blessing same-sex couples.

Yet the Pope is demonstrating that official rulings alone are not enough to settle a contested issue. Time, as Francis says, is greater than space, and reality is more important than ideas. The critical test for any doctrine is how it is received by the Church community, and the Pope’s response opens up a space for the conversation to continue.

The winds of change are now blowing through the Vatican’s doctrine department, for so long the office which produced harsh rulings on the gay issue.

The Vatican has announced the Pope had decided to move the CDF official widely believed to be responsible for the document banning same-sex blessings out of his position. Archbishop Giacomo Morandi will now become the leader of the Diocese of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla, in Northern Italy.

While Francis approved the ruling on blessing same-sex unions, he later distanced himself from the language in the document and it was reported he would return to the issue at a later date.

Meanwhile, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, who leads the Archdiocese of Malta alongside working as a high ranking CDF official, has recently issued a formal warning to a priest for making homophobic comments. It appears to be the first time someone from the doctrine office has formally condemned homophobia.

At a broader level, the synod is also starting to have an impact and by throwing open the process to a broad range of voices it has already allowed small, yet historic, shifts to take place.

One of these came with the decision of the Synod of Bishops’ office in Rome to include both New Ways Ministry and Discerning Deacons, an English-language forum for discussion about the restoration of the female diaconate, on its resources page.

But this almost didn’t happen. A New Ways Ministry video, “From the Margins to the Center: a Webinar on LGBTQ Catholics and Synodality”, was removed from the synod office’s website after it had been made aware that New Ways Ministry had been censured by the US bishops’ conference a decade ago for its support of civil marriage for same-sex couples. The synod office then reversed its decision and apologised “for the pain caused” in what is the first time a Vatican official had apologised to LGBT Catholics.

The apology came after details of other letters that the Pope had sent to New Ways praising the group’s work and described their co-founder, Sister Jeannine Gramick, as a “valiant woman”. Francis also thanked Francis DeBernardo, the executive director of New Ways, for telling him the “full story” of the group as “sometimes we receive partial information about people and organisations.”

The rehabilitation of New Ways Ministry may seem like a small thing. Yet the apology and the Pope’s letters show a Church willing to listen and to learn from marginalised voices.

Sr Jeanine’s response to Francis’ letter and the 11-year investigation she faced also offers a model for what a synodal Church with different viewpoints looks like. She told America that when she received the correspondence from the Pope, she thought of the scripture from John’s Gospel: “I do not call you servants, I call you friends.”

Sr Jeanine added: “That’s how I felt, like I was getting a letter from a friend…I think that’s how Pope Francis wants us to live. And it’s what I hope we would be as a people of God: a community of friends.”

Even though she disagreed with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who oversaw the investigation into New Ways as prefect of the Vatican doctrine office, Sr Jeanine said she respected him as a “holy man” who believed he was doing the right thing.

“Cardinal Ratzinger is way out there on one branch, and I am way out there on a branch probably 180 degrees around that tree,” she said. “We couldn’t have been farther apart in our theological thinking. But we are rooted in that one tree. We have a common faith in Christ, and that’s what draws us together. We’re all around that tree somewhere.”

When it comes to LGBT Catholics, the tree is slowly being pruned and starting to bear new fruit.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Pope Francis writes to controversial nun, thanking her for 50 years of LGBTQ ministry

Sister Jeannine Gramick, the co-founder of New Ways Ministry recently received a handwritten letter from Pope Francis congratulating her on “50 years of closeness, of compassion and of tenderness” in a ministry that he described as being in “ ‘the style’ of God.”

Pope Francis has sent an encouraging letter to an American nun thanking her for her 50 years of ministry to LGBTQ Catholics, more than two decades after she was investigated and censured by the Vatican for her work.

In his letter dated Dec. 10, Francis wrote that Sister Jeannine Gramick has not been afraid of “closeness” and without condemning anyone had the “tenderness” of a sister and a mother. “Thank you, Sister Jeannine, for all your closeness, compassion and tenderness,” he wrote.

He also noted her “suffering … without condemning anyone.”

Gramick, who lives just outside of Washington, D.C., in Mount Rainier, Md., said that the letter felt like it was “from a friend.”

“Of course, I was overjoyed,” she said. “It felt like a turning point in the church, because for so long, this ministry has been maligned and in the shadows.”< For decades, Gramick and her New Ways Ministry co-founder, the late Rev. Robert Nugent, were considered controversial by some church leaders for the workshops they did about the science and theology around LGBTQ topics. Gramick said she would not provide her opinion, but she would present the Catholic Church’s teaching, as well as doctrinal positions from more moderate and liberal theologians. Gramick said she was under scrutiny from the Vatican for about 20 years before officials issued a declaration that she would be barred from ministry. “The ambiguities and errors of the approach of Father Nugent and Sister Gramick have caused confusion among the Catholic people and have harmed the community of the Church,” the 1999 statement from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith said.

Gramick later transferred to another religious order to keep doing her work.

A spokesman for the Vatican did not respond immediately Friday to a message seeking to confirm the authenticity of the pope’s letter to Gramick. The letter, first published on Friday in the Catholic publication America magazine, is the latest in a series of several letters the pontiff has written this year to gay Catholics and others who are serving and advocating for LGBTQ people.

The pope’s letter follows actions by the Vatican on gay rights that have frustrated Francis’s more liberal supporters. Early in his papacy, he famously declared: “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” But he has upheld church doctrine that calls LGBTQ acts “disordered.” Last year, the Vatican’s doctrinal body said that Catholic priests cannot bless same-sex unions.

In December, a Vatican official apologized to New Ways Ministry for having pulled a reference to it on the Vatican website, drawing praise from the group as a rare and “historic” apology and for restoring the reference. New Ways revealed that Pope Francis had written them two letters earlier in 2021 praising their ministry. In those letters, Francis noted Gramick’s work, that he knew “how much she has suffered,” describing her as “a valiant woman who makes her decisions in prayer.”

The Rev. James Martin, a New York City-based priest known for his ministry affirming LGBTQ Catholics, said he has received a few letters from Pope Francis but made one of them public in July 2021. Gramick’s letter, he said, is significant because she has been censured by the Vatican.

“For most LGBTQ Catholics, Sister Jeannine is a real hero, so they’ll be delighted. They’ll rightly see this as one of Pope Francis’s steps forward,” Martin said. “He doesn’t change church teaching on this but take steps … added up, all the steps, we’ve come a long way.”

Gramick said official investigations came after the late Cardinal James Hickey, the former archbishop of Washington, wrote to the Vatican asking officials to pressure Gramick and Nugent to stop their ministry. An investigation was launched in 1988 and in 1999, the Vatican issued its censure.

“It was devastating,” she said. “What can I say? It didn’t feel good.”

A spokeswoman for the archdiocese of Washington did not immediately return a request for comment on the letter.

Gramick said she and others from New Ways Ministries met with Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, in October and told them about the letters Pope Francis had sent the ministry. “Sounds like you’re pen pals,” Gregory told them, according to Gramick.

Gramick said she started her ministry when she was 29 while studying in graduate school and befriended a gay man who had left the Catholic Church for the Episcopal Church. In his apartment, she organized Mass for gay and lesbian people who had left the Catholic Church.

“When the liturgy was over, they had tears in their eyes because they felt they were being welcomed home again,” she said.

Gramick said she hopes the church will eventually change its position on sexual ethics and listen to the growing number of parishioners who have become more LGBTQ affirming.

“What would I say to LGBT Catholics is, ‘Hold on, it will change,’ ” she said. “We have to make our views known so that the officials of the church can properly express that change.’ ”

Francis also wrote to America magazine national correspondent Michael O’Loughlin, who is a gay Catholic, commending him for reporting on Catholic responses to the HIV/AIDS crisis.

From the earliest days of his papacy, O’Loughlin said, the pope has reached out to individuals in a personal way by calling people on the phone and writing the string of LGBTQ-related letters.

“There’s a lot of hurt and pain in the LGBT community and a single letter or group of letters is not going to fix that,” O’Loughlin said. “He’s interested in highlighting Catholics living out their faith even in areas that have been historically difficult for the church.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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It is blatant hypocrisy for Pope Francis to lecture anyone about violence against women

From opposition to abortion to a reductive view of women’s roles, the Catholic Church should consider its own role in perpetuating a culture of misogyny.

By Michael Coren

The Pope, it seems, is having a bad few days. This week he made a quite extraordinarily insensitive and crass comment, claiming that couples choosing to have pets instead of children are selfish, and their decision leads to a loss of “humanity” and is a detriment to civilization. Aside from the sweeping generalization and failure, ironically, to grasp the humanity involved, he is a celibate man named after the patron saint on animals!

The statement garnered international coverage, but something he said on New Year’s Day was much more significant. Pope Francis delivered a sermon in which he condemned violence against women as “an insult to God.” Addressing the issue with evident passion he argued: “Since mothers bestow life, and women keep the world together, let us all make greater efforts to promote mothers and to protect women.”

It’s not the first time the 85-year-old leader of more than 1.3 billion Roman Catholics has spoken out about the subject, and many across the world took this as another example of the pontiff as an enlightened progressive. Which to an extent he is: on several themes, such as the importance of tackling climate change, he has shown himself to be forward-thinking, sometimes more so than ostensibly liberal secular leaders. But as is often the case, there’s more to the story.

While Francis has seemed to be supportive of LGBTQ rights, for example, it’s actually more difficult for a gay man to enter a Catholic seminary now than it was under previous Popes, including John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The church’s catechism still regards “homosexual acts” as being of “grave depravity” and “contrary to natural law”, insisting that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered”.

Regarding gender-based violence, while it may be that on a visceral, personal level the Pope is appalled, even his language during his sermon reveals an inherent difficulty in the Catholic church’s attitude to women. “Since mothers bestow life… let us all make greater efforts to promote mothers and to protect women,” he said. Opposing violence against women on the basis that womanhood is intrinsically linked to motherhood is an abhorrent argument, but this model is at the epicentre of Catholic teaching: women as mothers, as spiritual heirs of the Virgin Mary, to be protected not because of humanity and equality but due to their fertility and piety.

That reductive view of women as virtual icons is part of the problem, rather than the solution. And it leads directly to the struggle for women’s reproductive rights.

Abortion is criminalised in many Catholic countries, causing widespread suffering, particularly for poor women. In El Salvador, three women who spent between six and 13 years in prison under draconian anti-abortion laws after suffering miscarriages have just this week been released. Even in the US, where church and state are allegedly separated, in Oklahoma last year a 21-year-old Native American woman was convicted of manslaughter after having a miscarriage. These are shocking but not unusual examples. With conservative Catholic justices so dominant on the US Supreme Court, abortion rights are under constant attack and the crucial Roe V Wade ruling may well be overturned this year.

The Catholic church teaches that abortion “is gravely contrary to the moral law” and the taking of innocent life, and many Catholic anti-abortion activists routinely make comparisons between women’s choice and the Holocaust. Francis may not be so irresponsible in his language, but he does describe abortion as “murder”. While seeming to be relatively understanding of Catholic politicians such as President Joe Biden who vote for women’s reproductive rights, the Pope has still said that “Those who carry out abortions kill.”

There are, of course, no women in position of power within the Catholic church. Christianity historically downplayed the central role of women in the ministry of Jesus and the life of the early church. The story of Mary Magdalene is indicative. She is referred to by name a dozen times in the four gospels, more than most of the male apostles, and she’s also present at Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. In 591, however, Pope Gregory I described her as a prostitute, likely confusing her with the maligned Mary of Bethany, and the ugly cliché of the saved “fallen women” has persisted in modern times. Rather than being a central figure in the story of Christ, Mary Magdalene became a passive example of restored brokenness, a sexual caricature.

1,500 years later women may be extremely active in the Catholic church, and in many cases keep it alive, but only men can be ordained and become leaders. The church’s catechism states: “The Lord Jesus chose men to form the college of the twelve apostles. The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible.” In Roman Catholic terms, a priest celebrates the Mass “in persona Christi” – in the person of Christ – and Jesus was a man. (He was also Jewish and circumcised but this doesn’t appear to be an impediment.)

The Catholic church has a right to hold to this position, and other Christian denominations are similarly, if less rigidly, male-dominated. But the point holds that in spite of Catholic protestations of equality, it is only “Father” who represents Jesus, has the power and authority to turn bread and wine into body and blood, and to hear confessions. That matters. Contrary to what some people might assume, Francis has said, “the door is closed” on the issue. “On the ordination of women in the Catholic Church” he stressed, “the final word is clear, it was said by St. John Paul II and this remains.”

None of this should be compared directly the filth of gender-based violence, which is a plague that goes far beyond religion. But there’s context, culture, and cause involved in what Francis said, along with perceptions of power, the place and freedom of women in society, and real and absolute equality are central. The daily experience of women in the church varies, but there are numerous stories, many of them contemporary, of women being told by priests to return to abusive husbands due to the “sanctity of marriage”. The commonality of that theme, and its roots, are deeply troubling – as are the cases of mothers reporting of their children being abused by priests yet being dismissed by the church, always men, as dishonest or hysterical.

Pope Francis has often been startlingly impressive when speaking out on climate change, the dignity of refugees, and economic justice, but closer to home and Rome he can be inconsistent, and even in denial. Women face oppression and violence in all sorts of places, caused by all sorts of reasons, and it’s time that organized religion admitted its own part – its own sins – and put its house in order.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Archbishop Apologises For Fr David Muscat’s Absurd Anti-Gay Comments And Pledges To Take Action

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Archbishop Charles Scicluna has pledged to take action against a priest who drew widespread condemnation after comparing being possessed by demons or having schizophrenia to being gay.

“To all those who felt offended by those words, to the mothers, fathers and siblings of gay people who felt hurt and betrayed by the Church they love so much, I hereby ask for your forgiveness,” Scicluna said when delivering mass this morning.

“I’ll take action to ensure these things don’t repeat themselves.”

@lovinmaltaofficial Archbishop Scicluna addresses Fr David Muscat’s shocking Facebook comments on 20-year-old Abner Aquilina. #fyp #fypmalta #lovinmalta #malta #tvm ♬ original sound – Lovin Malta

Scicluna didn’t specify what kind of action he will be taking.

Father David Muscat, a priest known for his often anger-filled rhetoric aimed at minorities like the LGBT+ community, said yesterday on Facebook that being gay was worse than being possessed.

His comment was widely criticised, with Inclusion Minister Julia Farrugia Portelli personally reporting Muscat to police commissioner Angelo Gafa’ for hate speech and Equality Minister Owen Bonnici warning the priest “had crossed a line”.

The Malta Gay Rights Movement also called on the Archbishop to wake up and pay attention to what members of his own church are preaching.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!