Category: Activism

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Catholics United urges gay marriage surrender

The group Catholics United, which until now has avoided directly contradicting Catholic teaching in its defense of Democratic political causes, has now denounced Catholic efforts to defend traditional marriage as a “far right-wing” social issue.

The shift comes in an Oct. 18 statement criticizing Catholic donations to organizations that support marriage and oppose its redefinition to include same-sex couples. Catholics United called for a halt financial support for “anti-marriage equality ballot initiatives” in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington, states where the issue is on the November ballot.

Catholics United Executive Director James Salt said advocacy against “civil same-sex marriage laws” has the effect of “pushing younger generations of Catholics out of the Church.”

“Younger Catholics don’t want our faith known for its involvement in divisive culture wars, we want our faith known for serving the poor and marginalized,” he argued.

Catholics United’s Oct. 18 statement cites a report by Equally Blessed, a coalition of four dissenting Catholic groups: Call to Action, Dignity USA, Fortunate Families and New Ways Ministry. The report criticizes the $6.25 million that the fraternal order the Knights of Columbus has made since 2005 to defend marriage as a union of a man and a woman.

The founders of New Ways Ministry, Sister Jeannine Gramick and Father Robert Nugent, have run into the highest profile trouble of any of the members in the coalition.

In 1999, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said that because of “errors and ambiguities” in their approach, Sr. Gramick and Fr. Nugent were permanently prohibited from any pastoral work involving homosexual individuals.

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago said in a Feb. 2010 statement that New Ways Ministry’s “lack of adherence” to Church teaching on the morality of homosexual acts was the “central issue” in the censure of its founders and continues to be its “crucial defect.”

While Catholics United criticized only the Knights of Columbus for “anti-marriage equality spending,” the Equally Blessed report also blamed the Vatican for opposing homosexual political causes.

The Equally Blessed report also criticized Knights’ support for the pro-life movement. It said the fraternal organization contributes to what it calls “far-right anti-abortion groups”: Americans United for Life, the Susan B. Anthony List and the pregnancy center network Birthright USA.

The political fight over the definition of marriage has resulted in harassment and intimidation of traditional marriage supporters. Some supporters of traditional marriage, including Catholics, have lost their jobs because of activist pressure. Businesses and non-profits which do not want to recognize same-sex relationships have been the target of lawsuits and legal action.

In some states that recognize same-sex unions, Catholic adoption agencies have been forced to close because they could not in good conscience place children with same-sex couples.

In Washington state, the “gay marriage” ballot measure has attracted the support of wealthy donors like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has donated $2.5 million to the campaign.

The known donors to Catholics United also support “gay marriage.”

Tax forms show that the Tides Foundation, whose 2009 newsletter describes itself as “a leading funder of LGBT work,” has given at least $35,000 to the group since 2007. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, whose president praised President Obama’s endorsement of redefining marriage in May, has given at least $32,500. The AFL-CIO has given $5,000 to the group, whose contributions and grants in 2011 totaled about $470,000.

Catholics United also has connections to the White House.

Visitor records from the White House show that the Catholics United leadership has visited it several times, sometimes as part of a large group of faith-based representatives and sometimes for small meetings.

The records show Salt and Catholics United founder Christopher Korzen in September 2010 had a small meeting with Patrick Gaspard. At the time, Gaspard was the Obama administration’s Director of the Office of Political Affairs. He is now the Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee.

On Feb. 10, 2012, Catholics United communications director Chris Pumpelly attended a White House meeting with Joshua DuBois, special assistant to President Barack Obama and executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

White House officials at the meeting discussed the intended accommodations to address concerns about the Health and Human Services contraception and sterilization coverage mandate, meeting attendee Kristen Day told CNA in June.

Alexia Kelley, former head of Catholics United ally Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, also attended the meeting. She is presently director for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

The leadership of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good itself has several connections with the Obama campaign. Board member Stephen Schneck, director of Catholic University of America’s Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies, is also a member of the group Catholics for Obama.

Complete Article HERE!

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Catholics defy bishops to pray for gay marriage

The folk mass hymns and gospels were familiar, the response “And with your spirit” recited Sundays in church by millions of Catholics, but the 120 faithful gathered outside Seattle’s St. James Cathedral on Sunday afternoon were praying for a cause their bishops are campaigning against.

Mobilized by Catholics for Marriage Equality, they celebrated a “Liturgy of Love,” praying for the recognition of same-sex unions and the passage of Referendum 74, which would legalize marriage between persons of the same gender.

“I would just say the God I have come to know is not one to tell people they are not equal,” said Robert Gavino, a Seattle University student.

John House, a parishoner at Our Lady of Sorrows parish in Snoqualmie, added: “Catholics believe Christ’s primary message is one of love, and Catholic social teaching teaches us that God loves everybody. We are standing up for centuries of Catholic social teaching.”

They are also standing against their bishops.

Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain has issued a pastoral letter denouncing Referendum 74, and put three anti-74 videos on the diocesan website. “R-74 jeopardizes freedom rather than expands it: It endangers our religious liberty and the right of conscience,” Bishop Joseph Tyson of Yakima claimed in a particularly strident letter to the faithful.

We disagree, said those on the steps of St. James Cathedral.

“I find (bishops’ claims) perplexing:. Nothing about marriage equality in the state of Washington is any infringement on liberty. This is about civil marriage and civil law,” said John Morfield, a longtime parishoner at St. Mary’s Catholic Church.

And Barbara Guzzo, organizer of Catholics for Marriage, argued that the bishops have brought “anguish, division and sadness” to the faithful, “particularly those with a gay person in their families, the hurt that this has caused.”

Fr. John Whitney, S.J., pastor of St. Joseph Church, has encouraged discussion and helped a recent meeting to promote reconciliation between those who share the bishops’ passionate opposition and those who back Referendum 74. “Authority never supplants conscience,” he told parishoners in a recent “e-blast.”

But stridently conservative bishops across the country have brought politics to the pulpit — and delivered dictates of what belongs in the consciences of those in the pews.

“A properly formed Catholic conscience will never contradict the Church’s teachings in matters of faith and morality,” Bishop David Kagan of Fargo, N.D., said in a weekend letter. The letter contained no mention of social teachings or poverty or human rights, but among things “never acceptable” was “not recognizing the unique and special role of marriage as a unique union of one man and one woman.”

In Washington, however, more than 60 resigned Catholic priests have endorsed Referendum 74. More than 100 retired and former priests in Minnesota have denounced Archbishop John Nienstedt for his efforts to write a one man-one woman definition of marriage into the state constitution.

State Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, present at St. James on Sunday, is a practicing Catholic and chief sponsor of marriage equality in the Legislature. Murray said he was outside the cathedral as a demonstration of his faith.

“I think any time we show solidarity with those on the margins of our society, it is an expression of our faith,” said Murray. “We (gays) are certainly on the margins . . . at least in the hierarchy’s structure.”

The “Liturgy of Love” took place at the same hour as the weekly Solemn Vespers and Benediction inside St. James Cathedral. Earlier this year, the cathedral refused to serve as a collection center for petitions to force a vote on same-sex marriage.

The liturgy outside was familiar.

It featured singing of the Prayer of St. Francis:

“Make me a channel of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me bring your love; where there is injury, your pardon, Lord; where there is doubt, true faith in you.”

Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign — the largest national group campaigning for gay and lesbian rights — spoke at the end of the liturgy. A Georgetown product, he said of his Catholic education: “Nowhere, ever, did it tell me to oppose a right that I might have. Or to support discrimination against my brothers and sisters.”

“The other 49 states are watching,” said Griffin.

Later, in an interview, Griffin noted the long string of defeats for same-sex marriage at the polls. But this year, he predicted, will be different. “Scare tactics, false headlines and lies are not working as they used to,” he said. “It’s close, but I’d rather be where we are than where they are.”

Where gay marriage supporters are is ahead in the polls in three states — Washington, Maryland and Maine — that are voting on marriage equality. In a race where polls are neck and neck, Minnesotans will vote on the constitutional amendment, heavily backed by Catholic bishops, that would write a ban into their state constitution.

Across the North Star state, however, lawn signs have sprouted with the message: “Another Catholic voting No.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Marriage would have made me a better priest

One of Ireland’s best-known priests has revealed the anguish the Church’s requirement of mandatory clerical celibacy has caused him.

Fr Brian D’Arcy admitted: “I would have been a much better priest had I married.”

Marriage would have provided “a companion, a closeness, a friend, someone to call home” as well as requiring “making sacrifices for somebody else,” he told BBC NI. “At the end of my life, I don’t have a home. Ideally religious life is supposed to be a type of home. It isn’t, not now anyway.”

In a BBC documentary, he says he contemplated leaving the priesthood in the wake of his disciplining by the Vatican.

Last April, it emerged he had been told by the Vatican watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, that he must submit his writings and broadcasts to an approved Church censor before publication.

“Is the price of being a priest that you stay quiet, that you don’t be a whistle blower, and that the price of dying a priest is that you don’t speak the truth?”

The documentary makers followed the Enniskillen-based priest for several months as he talked to people within the Church about whether he should stay or leave after 50 years in the Passionist order.

Among those he consu-lted were the dissident Austrian priest, Fr Helmut Schüller, who is actively lobbying for reform of some of the Church’s core teachings, as well as Cardinal Sean Brady, who affirms the priest’s media work.

He is frank about the pain of his experience of sexual abuse, which occurred when he was an 18-year-old seminarian. “I was preyed upon by a member of my own order. Of course, the threat was made that unless I co-operated with this, that I would not be ordained.”

One of his biggest regrets is returning home to Ireland from South Africa in 1994. “I was 25 years ordained in 1994 and I went to Africa to get away from it. The Smyth affair had been going on for a year before and I was so disillusioned with the priesthood that I couldn’t even celebrate my silver jubilee. One of my regrets in life is that I ever came home.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Grand Forks woman to demonstrate against bishop’s election message

Kate Kenna, a lifelong Catholic, career social worker and political progressive in Grand Forks, has mounted a reaction to news of a North Dakota bishop’s call to the faithful concerning voting.

A letter from Bishop David Kagan of Bismarck is to be read Sunday from all the Catholic pulpits in the state urging them to not support abortion, stem-cell research or same-sex marriage when voting.

Kenna bought a “City Briefs” ad in the Herald with a short message: “The bishop is bringing politics to church. Please wear a political button to Mass on Sunday to support the candidate of your choice.”

It began running Thursday online.

Kenna also called Joel Heitkamp at KFGO radio in Fargo, who talked about it Thursday on the air.

And Kenna has organized a sort of demonstration Sunday at her own parish, Holy Family. She and others, including her friend Thomasine Heitkamp, will be standing with others outside the church to show their disagreement with the bishop. The Heitkamps are siblings of Democratic Senate candidate Heidi Heitkamp.

Democrats upset

Kagan was appointed bishop in Bismarck in November and named apostolic administrator of the Fargo diocese this summer until a replacement bishop is announced.

It came to light the past week that Kagan sent a letter to all priests in the state to be read Sunday.

The bishop declined to release the letter pending its being read Sunday in churches. But he announced Thursday he will discuss the letter at 9 a.m. Tuesday on Real Presence Radio at 1370 AM in Grand Forks and 1280 AM in Fargo.

State Sen. Tim Mathern, D-Fargo, released the text of the letter and criticized it in a Forum Communications story Wednesday, saying it went over the line in directing Catholics how to vote.

Although Kagan’s letter does not mention parties or candidates by name, Mathern said it clearly was pointed at Democrats because of the party’s known support for the issues Kagan mentioned.

Plus, Mathern said the phrase used by Kagan telling Catholics not to vote for “the most likable” candidate appears to echo Republican ads referring to Heidi Heitkamp.

Friend of Heitkamps

Kenna said that’s how she sees it, too, especially as a longtime close friend of Thomasine and Heidi Heitkamp.

Catholics are taught to follow their own conscience, she said.

“I think I have a perfectly formed conscience,” said Kenna, who credits growing up going to St. Michael’s Elementary School and St. James High School in Grand Forks. That’s led her to devote her life to social work and to support the Democratic party because she sees it as caring for people.

“We can’t just look at being pro-life as just being pro-delivery,” Kenna said. “Being pro-life means all of life and that means people who are here, also.”

The church is a place where people of all political persuasions should feel welcome and be united in faith, not in politics, she said.

Church response

Christopher Dodson, executive director of the North Dakota Catholic Conference, a public policy and lobbying effort of the two dioceses in the state, agrees that partisan politics doesn’t belong in church. Nor does Bishop Kagan, who does not refer to any individuals or parties in his letter, Dodson said.

“There’s nothing new in the letter, it’s all Catholic teaching on how to form one’s conscience,” Dodson. His office has been sending similar messages to parishes in the state regularly since about Labor Day, he said.

The bishop’s reference to not voting for someone because they are “likable” reflects long-held Catholic teaching that the faithful should look at deeper issues than either pocketbook issues or a person’s personality, Dodson said. It’s not about Heitkamp or anyone in particular, he said.

“It’s not about influencing elections, it’s about the care of souls,” Dodson said. That’s why the bishop has been reluctant to discuss his letter before parishioners hear it themselves in church, not in a partisan debate on radio or television, Dodson said.

“People who are really involved in partisan politics get hyper-partisan around election time and everything they see gets interpreted through those partisan lenses,” he said. “I think parishioners will be pleasantly surprised when they finally hear the letter and see that it doesn’t deal with partisan politics.”

Faith and politics

Kenna long has taken her faith and her politics seriously.

In the fall of 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War, a woman regularly stood across the street from St. James High School, holding a sign protesting the war, Kenna remembers. “She wasn’t allowed to come on the school grounds.”

A junior, Kenna invited the woman to speak to her current events class.

“I got suspended for three days,” she said with a laugh.

Now she feels she must react to the message from the bishop that she might be voting the wrong way.

“I think the bishop of Bismarck has brought this to a new level where he is bringing politics into church and as a responsible voter I have to say that’s wrong, and how do I respond that?” she said.

“I could stand up and walk out of church (while the letter is read) but I think that would be disrespectful to our priest,” she said.

Instead, she and others plan to stand outside Holy Family during Masses on Sunday.

Although she will wear a Heitkamp button, it’s not about campaigning, she said, adding she hopes many wear buttons of all sorts.

“I don’t think it’s a protest; I think it’s just an awareness-building exercise,” she said. “I just want people to examine their consciences and then vote the way they feel is consistent with their beliefs. I don’t want to be told that in church.”

Complete Article HERE!

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The nun who became a sex therapist

Dr Fran Fisher’s latest book blows the lid off the repressed sexuality of convent life. And it’s a subject the former nun knows first hand

By Joanna Moorhead

From nun to sex therapist isn’t an obvious career path but, says the former Sister Jane Frances de Chantal, “when you’ve been starved for a while, you certainly appreciate the feast at the end of it”.

In the Name of God, Why?: Ex-Catholic Nuns Speak Out about Sexual Repression, Abuse & Ultimate Liberation  by Dr. Fran Fisher

Today, Sister Jane is Dr Fran Fisher, a California “sexologist” in US-speak. But she was born and raised in Yorkshire and entered a Franciscan convent in Derbyshire aged 18. She left two years later, met and married an academic, and moved to the US. It wasn’t until she was in her 40s, she says, that she began to understand how much her Catholic upbringing, and her experience of being a nun, had damaged her sexual instincts.

With her children growing up, she saw a course in sex therapy advertised and her interest was immediately piqued. “I enrolled, and what happened next blew my head off. One day the tutor said we were going to discuss our masturbation history and I thought, can I really do this? Somewhere inside I was still a nun even after all these years … I was still sexually naive. I realised that the legacy of my time in the convent was the cause of most of the problems in my marriage. It had been drummed into me as a novice that I didn’t really have ownership over anything, even my own body.”

Fisher decided to combine her new professional direction, running workshops and counselling, with her own past, and to find out whether other former nuns had had similar experiences: the result is a book in which she interviews 28 women who, like her, took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience only to later leave orders. She talked to them about their sexuality before, during and after their time in the convent and discovered many similarities. “Most of the women I interviewed had been raised in strict Catholic families. Many had an alcoholic father. Quite a few had a history of physical and/or sexual abuse. A lot of them described the convent as a safe place to go.”

Fisher, who is now in her early 60s, realised that some of the traits of her own childhood were typical – in particular the fact that both her Irish Catholic parents had wholly negative attitudes towards sex. Her father, she says, almost always described women in pejorative terms; her mother, meanwhile, thought sex was “dangerous, dirty, vile, nasty and filthy”. When Fisher, then aged 14, feared she was pregnant – after an episode of petting that didn’t involve intercourse – her mother fuelled her fears, leaving her with a sense of “never wanting to have anything to do with a man again”.

The convent had the allure of a place where women were pure and mysterious and – most importantly – safe. But once inside its walls, her sexuality began to surface. Fisher became increasingly unhappy, lost a lot of weight, and eventually left the convent one Saturday morning while all the other sisters were at mass. She was, she says, still as naive about sex as she was when she arrived. But that wasn’t the case with all the women she interviewed. “Those who spent decades in a convent had usually experienced a sexual awakening. Some had relationships with other nuns, some with priests, some with laypeople.”

Some of them, too, talked to Fisher about how they were aware of sexual abuse that was going on in the Catholic church – but most, she says, were unable or unwilling to do anything about it. “Very few nuns were whistle-blowers,” she says. “When you’re a nun, you give away your ability to judge a situation.” Obedience meant not taking the lead and not questioning those who were obviously in positions of authority – such as male priests.

Some of the women in the book describe exploitative and unequal sexual relationships with priests – relationships they later questioned but which, at the time, they accepted as “necessary” for the men. As for having a healthy, “normal” sexual relationship, some of the women Fisher interviewed were middle-aged before this happened for the first time. “One woman described having intercourse for the first time aged 52. Another told me that when she first got a boyfriend, aged 50, she had sex every night for the first two or three months. Her partner thought he was going out with an Amazonian – but she said to him: “I’ve waited half a century for this, just lie back and shut up!'”

Fisher, like some of those she interviewed, did eventually experience a happy and more typical sex life. But she is fiercely critical of the Catholic system that allows naive young women (these days, more usually they are from Africa or Asia rather than Europe or North America) to uproot themselves from their families and enter a convent.

“The practice of taking young women (or men) from a childhood of indoctrination and expecting them to make a lifelong commitment to celibacy in their early 20s is clearly wrong,” she says. “And it’s still going on. Not long ago, I saw some young nuns being interviewed on TV. I saw their faces, and I thought: it’s still happening. There are still young women in some parts of the world for whom a convent offers a sanctuary from difficult questions about sex, an education, opportunities. But it’s running away from life, and there’s a huge toll in terms of individual fallout down the line. The church shouldn’t allow it to happen.”

Complete Article HERE!