Month: November 2023

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As a Queer Catholic Woman I Had High Hopes Before the 2023 Catholic Synod on Synodality

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When the summit on the future of the Catholic Church began on October 9, I allowed myself for the first time in many years to feel optimistic. I smiled at pictures of Pope Francis welcoming LGBTQ Catholic advocates Sr Jeannine Gramick and Outreach director Fr James Martin, finally feeling that this could be our moment, my moment to find a home in the Church that had raised me. I felt that little sacristy door slightly creak open as I fumbled to dial the phone to call my mom. Was this it? Sadly, no. My excitement faded as I followed the livestream of the Synod of Bishops, punctuated by anger as I read the summit’s 41-page report.

This past Friday I saw New Ways Ministry’s statement, “Synod Report Greatly Disappoints, But We Must Have Hope,” while walking down a busy DC thoroughfare. In it Francis DeBernardo, executive director of the LGBTQ+-affirming Catholic organization, points out how, despite previous documents discussing the welcoming and inclusion of LGBTQ Catholics, there were no positive statements on LGBTQ issues—not even one use of the term “LGBTQ.” Instead, a single paragraph—approved by vote—stated:

“In different ways, people who feel marginalized or excluded from the Church because of their marriage status, identity or sexuality, also ask to be heard and accompanied.”

Once more the door that’s historically been closed to LGBTQ individuals and women was shut in my face. As I had done many times before, I opened myself up to the possibility that Pope Francis’s acknowledgement and inclusion of LGBTQ Catholics would lead to Church action. I had faith in this Synod, just like I did the Synod on Young People in 2018 whose final report also omitted the term “LGBT.”

Each time this happens, many LGBTQ Catholics dare to hope. For example, when the pope said, in 2022, that God “does not disown any of his children,” or in 2023 that “people with homosexual tendencies are children of God,” a number of LGBTQ Catholics and advocates, myself included, got excited for a day or two—maybe even called our parents (if the Church hasn’t driven a wedge between them and us). But then the news cycle passes and, with each expression of anti-LGBTQ Catholic doctrine on diocesan and global levels,  these small victories are tarnished with sadness and frustration.

This is not to say that these moments of recognition don’t matter to me or to so many other LGBTQ Catholics; it’s just to say that it hurts me so much more when these slight openings have no practical impact on my life as a queer Catholic woman.

Jesuit Fr. Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator assured LGBTQ Catholics that “the space is there to continue to have this conversation,” that no issue has been finalized ahead of the next assembly in 2024. “Nothing is closed,” remarked the dean of the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, who added that the document “attempts to pull together all the divergent positions.” But how can we represent all viewpoints if the document won’t even say my name, say our name—LGBTQ Catholics? So the door is unlocked, but we’re not permitted to open it?

I want to be hopeful, but I, as well as many other Catholics, acknowledge that the changes Francis and other LGBTQ Catholics and allies are pushing for will not be achieved this year. They probably won’t be achieved this century. The door is rusted and rooted—it’s probably going to take more substantial remodeling. The Church moves at a slow pace, and I’m hopeful that these small moments will mean something, perhaps in a few decades or centuries. But at this moment, it feels like it doesn’t. The progress that I, and so many other LGBTQ Catholics dream of realizing, is extraordinarily unlikely to come true while I’m alive. In the end we’re working to open a door we will never walk through.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Catholic church loses landmark case over tactics that shield it from Australian abuse claims

— Guardian investigation found the church routinely uses deaths of paedophile priests to avoid paying or to reduce amount of settlements

High court rules Catholic church’s use of permanent stays to delay justice in abuse cases is unlawful.

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The Catholic church has lost a landmark case over its controversial use of the deaths of paedophile priests to thwart survivors’ attempts at justice.

The high court on Wednesday delivered a significant blow to the church’s use of permanent stays in historical abuse matters, where it has sought to argue that delay, the death of perpetrators, and the loss of records render it unable to receive a fair trial.

Earlier this year, a Guardian investigation found that the church was now routinely using permanent stays in cases where perpetrators have died, either to defeat active claims before the courts or to low-ball survivors in settlement negotiations.

The tactic is causing profound harm to an already vulnerable group.

Critics say it is also immoral, given the church’s own role in delaying justice for decades, which included hiding abuse complaints from law enforcement and destroying or deliberately not keeping records.

Survivor groups argue the approach is at odds with the intent of Australian parliaments, which all removed time limits on bringing civil claims in recognition of the significant barriers to survivors coming forward.

One survivor, known as GLJ, whose case for compensation was permanently stayed, asked the high court to intervene and allow her case to proceed. GLJ alleges she was abused as a 14-year-old by Lismore priest Father Clarence Anderson.

Anderson died in 1996, well before GLJ’s complaint, and the Lismore diocese argued it was put in an unfair position, unable to properly investigate the allegation or mount a defence. The church says it was left “utterly in the dark” on whether the abuse occurred.

But GLJ’s lawyers say the church had held evidence about his abuse of other children from 1971, the year of his defrocking, and had ample opportunity to investigate his conduct more broadly in the 25 years prior to his death. Instead, it did nothing, her lawyers say.

The high court on Wednesday ruled in GLJ’s favour, saying permanent stays should only be granted in “exceptional” cases.

In their decision, chief justice Susan Kiefel and justices Stephen Gageler and Jayne Jagot said any other use of stays would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

“If a court refuses to exercise its jurisdiction to hear and decide cases in other than exceptional circumstances and as a last resort to protect the administration of justice through the operation of the adversarial system, that refusal itself will both work injustice and bring the administration of justice into disrepute,” they wrote.

The judges also said reforms removing time limits on survivors’ claims had changed the legal context.

“In this new legal context, the Diocese’s contention that any trial of the proceedings would be necessarily unfair must be rejected,” they wrote. “As the Diocese acknowledged that its case for a permanent stay for abuse of process was based only on necessary unfairness of a trial and not undue oppression or unfairness otherwise, no permanent stay is justified. The proceedings must go to trial.”

GLJ’s lawyers, Ken Cush and Associates, say their client is relieved and delighted at the outcome.

“GLJ hopes this landmark decision will also be able to help others right across Australia to bring their claims before courts despite the Catholic church again seeking to mount technical legal defences to their claims,” the firm said in a statement.

“GLJ is hopeful that this decision combined with the learnings and recommendations from $343,000,000 Royal Commission about the damage done by childhood sexual abuse will mean the Catholic church will take this opportunity to reflect on the morality of its continuing to mount these technical legal defences.”

Documents before NSW courts make it clear the church knew Anderson was abusing boys at least four years before GLJ’s alleged assault. It did not remove him from the clergy and instead shuffled him through parishes, where he continued to abuse boys.

Knowledge of his abuse was held at senior levels of the church, including by the then bishop of Lismore, who wrote in 1971: “[Anderson] has had a recurring trouble in sexual matters, especially homosexuality. This first came to my notice about some six years ago, and in every case young boys were involved. We have made persistent efforts to help him to overcome his problem, but apparently without any appreciable result.”

Survivors take an average of 22 years to come forward, according to the child abuse royal commission, and GLJ’s lawyers argued that made the loss of evidence and the deaths of perpetrators common.

Perry Herzfeld SC told the high court earlier this year that meant there needed to be a greater tolerance for the loss of evidentiary records in historical abuse cases, or the use of permanent stays would become routine, rather than exceptional.

“The inevitability of the long passage of time and the inevitability of the impoverishment of the evidentiary record means that one has to approach these applications with a greater tolerance for that,” he said.

The decision will be welcomed by survivors and advocates for reform.

Various jurisdictions, including New South Wales, where the use of stays is most prevalent, have been awaiting the outcome of the GLJ case before responding to calls for legislative change.

The Australian Lawyers Alliance has already met with the NSW attorney general to lobby for limits to be placed on the use of stays in historical abuse cases.

“In general these institutions have taken great care not to take records or to make sure that records go missing. In particular, some of them have kept no proper records of complaints made in respect of particular abusers,” Dr Andrew Morrison KC, ALA spokesperson, said in June. “So it’s a disgraceful situation that they should be able to take advantage of that to avoid proper compensation.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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In the end, Pope Francis’ big summit dodged big issues

— Women’s ordination, priestly marriage, LGBTQ Catholics

By Claire Giangravé

What many will take away about the Synod on Synodality, the monthlong summit on the future of the Catholic Church, is that the 450 clergy and lay faithful called to the meeting skirted the key agenda items of women’s ordination, marriage for priests and acceptance of LGBTQ Catholics.

On Saturday, after the synod released a tepid summary of its work, the Women’s Ordination Conference pronounced itself “dismayed” by the failure of the synod to allow women to become priests.

“A ‘listening church’ that fails to be transformed by the fundamental exclusion of women and LGBTQ+ people,” a statement read, “fails to model the gospel itself.”

The term LGBTQ did not make it into the final document at all, earning the “disappointment” of New Ways Ministries, a network of gay Catholics and their allies, in its statement on Sunday, though it noted that the group drew encouragement from some of Pope Francis’ words of support.

But for the synod’s organizers, the event was never about providing definitive answers on these topics but about promoting dialogue and overcoming division. “Many ask for results. But synodality is a listening exercise: prolonged, respectful and humble,” Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary-general of the synod, said Saturday evening.

In the final 42-page document, titled Synthesis Document for a Synodal Church in Mission and approved by 364 voting participants in the meeting, the summit is portrayed as a success, with most of the 20 separate points passing by overwhelming majorities, even if no single paragraph obtained full consensus.

During the event, which opened Oct. 4 with a Mass presided over by Pope Francis, participants talked about the spirit of friendship, respect and dialogue overcoming polarization even in the most divisive debates. Even conservative clergy who were initially critical, including German Cardinal Gerhard Müller and the Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn agreed the synod was a positive experience.

Divisions were, nonetheless, evident: In votes on the individual points in the final document, 69 attendees voted against a paragraph on the possibility of women becoming deacons, who are ordained to preach at Mass but not to celebrate the Eucharist or hear confessions. Mentions of considering the possibility of married priests drew 55 negative votes, or 15% of the voting membership.

Attendants wrote that they are aware that the term synodality awakens “confusion and concern” among many that the teaching of the church will be changed. Since its start, the synod has been accompanied by vocal criticism of conservative prelates who believe the summit is a Trojan horse aimed at forwarding progressive agendas in the church.

Some of those conservatives had bridled at the portrayal of this year’s synod as a completion of the work of Vatican II, the meeting called by Pope John XXIII in the early 1960s seeking to reconcile the church with the demands of changing society. Since then, many progressives have felt that those reforms have been muted or ignored and looked to the synod to make good, increasing conservatives’ fears regarding the dilution of tradition and the power of the hierarchy.

The document’s opening section indeed presents the Synod on Synodality as a “further reception” of Vatican II, but while it recognized the almost familial conflicts posed by the small discussion groups — “We also share that it’s not easy listening to different ideas, without immediately giving into the temptation of answering back,” the document read — participants said that through prayer the effectiveness and primacy of synodality in the church eventually came through.

“A substantial agreement emerged that, with the necessary clarifications, the synodal prospective represents the future of the church,” the document read. The document, drafted with the assistance of theologians, describes synodality as “a journeying of Christians toward Christ and the Kingdom, together with all of humanity.”

In his speech to the synod assembly Wednesday (Oct. 25), Francis further laid out a view of a Catholic Church centered around the “infallibility of faithful people.” The faithful, the pope explained, share an intuition of the beliefs of the church that needs to be interpreted and adopted by the church as a whole.

The closing document proposes that updates to canon law be made to enlarge the participation of people in the church.

Adding to the document’s vision of a more open power structure is its call for the church to be more receptive to individual cultures around the Catholic world, and it urges the church to combat xenophobia and racism.

The document also emphasizes the need to promote relationships with other churches and denominations, suggesting that a council of Roman church patriarchs and archbishops be formed to advise the pope on ecumenism, and even proposing a synod on the Eastern churches. Attendees voiced the hope that Easter 2025, when all Christians will celebrate the paschal feast on the same day, may foster further communion among believers.

The spirit of openness infused the synod participants’ recommendations about the hierarchy, calling on bishops to be “examples of synodality.” Among the proposals were the strengthening of lay and clergy councils at the parish and diocesan levels, allowing lay people to have a voice in selecting bishops and reducing the role of the papal nuncio, the Vatican’s ambassador in a given country.

At the top of the power structure, the document said, the council of cardinals that advises the pope, known as the C9, should take on more responsibilities and suggested reforming canon law to offer “dispositions for a more collegial exercise of the papal ministry.”

But there are limits to how democratic the church hierarchy is willing to become. While the presence of lay people at the synod was welcomed in the document, it also warned that “the criteria allowing nonbishops to participate in the synod will have to be clarified.” When the synod rejoins after a year, it stated, “some suggest that there should be a meeting of exclusively bishops to complete the synodal process.”

And synodality seemed to dictate that where the deepest divisions lie, more discussion is needed. On the question of female deacons, which some say would signify a return to early church practice and others call a break with tradition, the document simply acknowledged that women experience inequality in the church but left any decision to already existing commissions created by Francis, promising theological study in time for the next synod assembly.

Participants also asked for further discussion on the issue of celibacy for priests.

In its final section, the document took up the problem of clergy sex abuse, which Catholics around the world, meeting to air their concerns in listening sessions in their dioceses, had asked the synod to address. But apart from recognizing the need to listen to victims of clergy abuse, it did not offer specific proposals on how to prevent abuse or increase clergy accountability.

The document will now be circulated back to those dioceses for consideration by Catholic leaders and congregants. According to German bishops who attended the synod, “It is now up to the local churches, and thus also up to us, to use these spaces which the synod has opened up in order to continue to work on a synodal church, to advance along the synodal paths, and thus to translate the momentum into concrete reflection and action.”

Despite its multitude of proposals and challenges, the first synod closed with more questions than answers. Regarding those Catholics who might be left still “in a situation of solitude” if they obey the church teachings on “questions of marriage and sexual ethics,” the synod’s participants offered “closeness and support.”

“A profound sense of love, mercy and compassion” was shared by participants for those who “feel wounded or cast aside by the church, who desire a place to return ‘home’ where they can feel safe, feel listened to and respected, without fear of feeling judged.”

But the participants declared themselves often caught between the Christian principle of mercy and the need to defend the doctrinal beliefs of the church.

“If we adopt doctrine harshly and with a judging attitude, we betray the gospel,” the document read, “If we practice cheap mercy, we don’t transmit God’s love.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!