Category: Alliance

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Sister Monica’s secret ministry to transgender people

By Renee K. Gadoua

 

Now in her early 70s and semiretired because of health problems, Sister Monica remains committed to her singular calling for the past 16 years: ministering to transgender people and helping them come out of the shadows.

Sister Monica lives alone in a small house at the edge of a Roman Catholic college run by a community of nuns.

She doesn’t want to reveal the name of the town where she lives, the name of her Catholic order, or her real name.

Sister Monica lives in hiding, so that others may live in plain sight.

Now in her early 70s and semiretired because of health problems, she remains committed to her singular calling for the past 16 years: ministering to transgender people and helping them come out of the shadows.

“Many transgender people have been told there’s something wrong with them,” she said. “They have come to believe that they cannot be true to themselves and be true to God. But there is no way we can pray, or be in communion with God, except in the truth of who we are.”

She spends her days shuttling between e-mail and Skype, phone calls and visits. Since 1999, she has ministered to more than 200 people, many of whom have come to rely on her unflinching love and support.

Although the Catholic Church has issued no clear teaching on transgender people, Church teaching that homosexual relations are a sin suggests a similar view of transgender people. A Vatican document in 2000 said gender reassignment surgery does not change a person’s gender in the eyes of the Church. In 2008, Pope Benedict urged Catholics to defend “the nature of man against its manipulation.”

“The church speaks of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this order is respected,” Benedict said.

Though Pope Francis is credited with a more compassionate and pastoral tone to gays, Sister Monica fears that the Catholic hierarchy would punish her or her community if her work with transgender people became public.

Despite this, she is as committed to her calling as when she gave her life to Jesus straight out of high school.

“I have great love and fidelity for my community, my call to religious life, and obedience to my prioress,” she said.

That calling, as she defines it, is working with people on the margins. To her, transgender people are a part of that margin, and therefore part and parcel of her calling.

Sister Monica began working with gay, lesbian, and bisexual people in 1998 after finishing a term as her congregation’s vocations director.

She had long been pained at how her gay friends and relatives had been treated, she said. The call to minister to them came from God, she said.

Early in her ministry, she met a transgender woman, and her work shifted to helping people find peace with bodies that do not match how they see themselves.

“Here’s what they heard from priests: ‘Look between your legs. What you see is who you are. God will tell you who you are. Do you want to be damned to eternal hell?’” she said, her voice rising.

That attitude only reinforces the scorn and rejection many transgender people experience in the Church, she said.

Early on, she fought this emerging calling.

“I told God so many times: You gave this ministry to the wrong person. I’m not the right person to swim upstream and carry the banner for the cause.”

But these days, she is much clearer about her focus.

“She has a wonderful way of pinning you down and looking at you and reminding you … practically channeling her spirituality that you are a child of God and you are authentic and there is nothing wrong with you,” said James Pignatella, an Arizona-based engineer who transitioned from female to male.

Over the years, Sister Monica says she has received “quiet support” from two bishops and several priests. The end of two Vatican investigations that questioned American nuns’ loyalty to church teaching has also relieved some pressure on her ministry secret.

Still, experience tells her she cannot be completely open about what she does.

She has a quick answer to people who say “God made them man and woman,” quoting the Book of Genesis.

“God made day and night. There was also dusk and dawn and twilight. There’s no light switch,” she said. “There are 2,000 kinds of ants and there can’t be more than two kinds of people?”

Stephanie Battaglino, who met Sister Monica at a 2008 conference for transgender people, said the elderly nun helped her during a painful part of her life.

“I sensed a connection right away,” said Battaglino, a corporate vice president at a large financial institution and a consultant on transgender inclusion. “I knew right there she was kind of like my angel.”

The nun remains her spiritual director seven years later.

“She helped me realize I do not walk this journey by myself,” said Battaglino. “God is with me.”

And that is the heart of Sister Monica’s ministry: pushing her friends to be honest about themselves and their relationships.

“We cannot have a relationship with God if we are hiding from ourselves or God,” said the nun.

The irony is not lost on Battaglino. While she has come out of the closet, Sister Monica lives in the shadows.

But that’s a tension the nun said she can live with because participating in her friends’ suffering is its own reward. Indeed, she said, it is “a gift from God.”

“I love well and I am loved well. What they need, more than anything, is to be well-loved.”

 

Complete Article HERE!

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Fired Gay School Band Director, Catholic School reach Settlement

A band director at a Macon Catholic school who was fired after disclosing plans to marry his same-sex partner, has reached a settlement with the school in his discrimination suit.

Flint Dollar practices organ at First Presbyterian Church in Milledgeville, Ga. He's working there part time while he pursues a legal complaint against a private Catholic school that declined to renew his position after administrators learned he plans to marry his male partner.
Flint Dollar practices organ at First Presbyterian Church in Milledgeville, Ga. He’s working there part time while he pursues a legal complaint against a private Catholic school that declined to renew his position after administrators learned he plans to marry his male partner.

Flint Dollar, who now lives in New York, alleged he was fired in May of 2014 over plans to marry his same-sex partner, claiming discrimination.

Dollar sought back pay, reinstatement, compensation for emotional pain and suffering, and attorney’s fees.

The school, Mount de Sales Academy, stated at the time Dollar was not fired because of sexual orientation, but because same-sex marriage goes against Catholic doctrine.  However, the school handbook makes the claim it is an equal opportunity employer, striving to comply with laws prohibiting various kinds of discrimination, including sexual orientation and marital status.

That statement seemed to undermine the school’s defense, possibly leading to a settlement.  An investigation by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that reasonable cause did exist that Dollar had been terminated due to issues related to his sexual orientation.

Dollar stated in his case that he had fully complied with the school’s Professional Excellence Standards while employed, and that the school’s handbook shows no requirement for teachers to be members of the Catholic Church, nor that they adhere to church teachings and standards related to marriage.

The President of Mount de Sales Academy, David Helms, was quoted in the Macon Telegraph as saying, “the parties have reached a confidential settlement to resolve this matter to the mutual satisfaction of both parties.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Lawsuit filed against ‘homophobic’ bishop

Pink Cross, the umbrella association for Swiss gay groups, has filed a criminal complaint against Vitus Huonder, the Catholic bishop of Chur, for “homophobic comments” made in a recent speech in which he quoted bible verses calling for gays to be put to death.

 

Pink Cross Switzerland
Pink Cross Switzerland said the ‘defamation’ of gays by the church could be tolerated to a certain extent but Huonder had now crossed a ‘red line’

The lawsuit was handed in to the public prosecutor of canton Graubünden in eastern Switzerland on Monday. In addition, the Swiss News Agency said a private individual living in canton St Gallen had also filed a complaint against Huonder on Monday.

Pink Cross, backed by the Swiss Lesbian Organisation, accuses 73-year-old Huonder of “inciting people to crime or violence” with his remarks made at a religious forum in Germany on August 2.

If found guilty, Huonder faces up to three years in prison.

In his 50-minute address on marriage, the bishop quoted two verses from the book of Leviticus, including Leviticus 20:13: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

In response to applause, he continued: “Both of these passages alone suffice to clarify unambiguously the church’s position on homosexuality”.

Following a public outcry, Huonder released a statement in which he regretted that his comments had been misunderstood and interpreted as contemptuous towards homosexuals. “That wasn’t my intention,” he said.

‘Red line’

This wasn’t good enough for Pink Cross director Bastian Baumann, who said Huonder had repeatedly made clear that he interpreted the passages literally.

Baumann said the call for the “reintroduction of the death penalty for gays” had forced the group to seek criminal prosecution.

Vitus Huonder“As a figure of authority within the church, Vitus Huonder accepts that his demand will meet with approval among Christians and other fundamentalists and could be followed obediently,” he said.

Baumann said the “defamation of gays by the church” could be tolerated to a certain extent, but the bishop had now crossed a “red line”.

Some members of the Catholic Church have distanced themselves from Huonder, with Markus Büchel, the bishop of St Gallen, saying people should not be reduced to their sexuality.

“What we know today about homosexuality – that it is a predisposition and not a freely chosen orientation – was not known when the Bible was written,” he wrote to parishioners.

Nevertheless, Büchel still opposes church blessings of same-sex couples, believing they go against the church’s view of marriage as a sacred union between a man and a woman.

Subjugation of human rights

Huonder is no stranger to controversy, having previously opposed issues including women priests and sex education. He believes parents should have the right to have their children exempted from sex education classes in school and that divine law comes before human rights.

Earlier this year Huonder called for a Swiss priest who had blessed a lesbian couple to be sacked.

The priest kept his job after apologising to Huonder for causing him any “inconvenience” and promising not to bless any more gay couples.

Complete Article HERE!

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23,000 sign petition for Catholic teacher’s reinstatement

File under: Seige Mentality

Former Waldron Mercy Academy teacher Margie Winters was not allowed in the building, but an archdiocesan representative accepted the box of signed petitions. CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer
Former Waldron Mercy Academy teacher Margie Winters was not allowed in the building, but an archdiocesan representative accepted the box of signed petitions.

By Chris Brennan

Margie Winters, accompanied by about 50 supporters and carrying a box of petitions signed by 23,000 people who want her reinstated as a Catholic school educator, could not get in the front door.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s Center City offices were on lockdown Monday afternoon. A security guard politely but firmly refused to allow Winters to enter the building.

“Because I’m so threatening,” Winters joked after handing the box to the guard and asking him to deliver it to Archbishop Charles J. Chaput.

Winters was fired June 22 as director of religious education at Waldron Mercy Academy in Merion for being in a same-sex marriage, something she told the school about when she was hired eight years ago.

“We ask for full inclusion at the table and in the church,” Winters told her cheering supporters Monday. “And we ask now for a moratorium on firing any LGBT employee.”

Winters questioned the archdiocese’s repeated claim that it played no role in her firing. An anonymous complaint to the archdiocese in June “very quickly” set in motion her firing, Winters said.

“It wasn’t until the archdiocese was notified that something changed,” she said. “You can draw your own conclusions.”

The petitions, addressed to Chaput, read, “Margie Winters’ firing was unjust and contrary to Catholic values, and she should be reinstated immediately. Please inform the school’s leadership that you will not interfere with their staffing or threaten their status as a Catholic school.”

Archdiocesan spokesman Ken Gavin called the petitions “problematic.”

“It’s wrong for any individual or group to perpetuate the falsehood that the archbishop interfered with the school’s personnel decisions,” he said.

The petition drive was organized by Faithful America, a group that says it has more than 319,000 members.

The group’s website describes it as “the largest and fastest-growing online community of Christians putting faith into action for social justice. Our members are sick of sitting by quietly while Jesus’ message of good news is hijacked by the religious right to serve a hateful political agenda.”

The group’s previous petition drives have pressured Google and MSNBC to cut ties with organizations accused of discrimination against the LGBT community, and targeted a corporation using religion to defend employee insurance plans that did not include birth control.

Chaput, in a statement last month, said school officials showed bishop chaput2“character and common sense” in firing Winters.

The school and the Sisters of Mercy, the religious order that sponsors it, have said Waldron Mercy’s Catholic identity could have been put at risk if it did not follow the church’s teachings on same-sex marriage.

Chaput clearly saw that as a possibility.

“Schools describing themselves as Catholic take on the responsibility of teaching and witnessing the Catholic faith in a manner true to Catholic belief,” Chaput said in a statement last month. “There’s nothing complicated or controversial in this.”

Winters’ firing outraged parents, prompting some to withhold contributions and tuition to the school and others to consider sending their children to other schools.

The school’s board of trustees last month held three “small-group discussions” on Winters’ firing that were attended by about 170 parents, and the board has promised to hold a “larger town hall meeting” as the school year approaches.

Complete Article HERE!

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I Was a Gay Priest for 25 Years

By Bill Dickinson


Catholic bishops don’t have to wait for a change in doctrine in order to help, instead of hurt, LGBT people. Here are four proposals.

 
 
At age 54, and after 25 years as a Roman Catholic priest, I left the priesthood in November 2014, and came out as a gay man.

Seeking to be more honest with myself, and understanding the limitations that come with being a gay priest, this was a choice that was healthiest for me. There is no infrastructure within the Church to support me as a gay man. And the Church is not at her best when speaking to and about people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), or even questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Before leaving, I had a unique role in priesthood in that I provided leadership training, development, and consulting primarily for bishops and priests throughout the country. I served them, I assisted them, and I coached them.

Because I thought I had a credible relationship with bishops, in particular, I invited them to seize an opportunity regarding the LGBT community and the recent Supreme Court decision on marriage equality and October’s Synod on the Family at the Vatican, in which bishops and cardinals will discuss a range of issues related to family and evangelism.

The Church, and the bishops who lead it, have an opportunity to more thoughtfully and sensitively understand who we are as LGBT persons—and to use language that is responsible and respectful when speaking to us and about us. So, this past April, I reached out to the bishops I knew and offered my counsel.

Alas, only one of the 82 bishops I contacted has chosen even to respond. I found the non-response to be a great disappointment.

Still, as someone who was a Roman Catholic priest and who understands my own sexual orientation, I am offering to be a part of the solution for the Church leaders in their struggling relationship with LGBT people.  Here are four things the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church can do, without changing Church teaching on sexuality:

001First, as the Hippocratic Oath holds, they should do no harm: pause the public statements that deny LGBT people’s experience of themselves, that fan the flames of fear regarding religious freedom in America, and that perpetuate misunderstanding. Enter a period of silence and reflection—not hesitation, but consideration.

Second, to open such a period of reflection, bishops should organize an ad-hoc committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) that seeks to understand the LGBT community and persons—hopes, contributions, concerns, and self-identifying language. This understanding, then, influences a common national plan to use language and Catholic terminology that is pastorally respectful and inclusive whenever the LGBT community is addressed or discussed.

The next step would be to revisit the 2006 pastoral document, Ministry to Persons with Homosexual Inclinations, and the Pope John Paul II letter to bishops, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, so as to update recommendations and language. For instance, gay persons are not persons who have “homosexual inclinations.” To refer to our expression of sexual love as “intrinsically disordered,” is neither helpful nor useful.

Finally, put in place an education process, through the USCCB, to enable all ecclesial leadership—ordained and lay—to live a life of ministry and/or celibacy with more authenticity and self-acceptance. Currently, gay and bisexual priests and bishops, for the most part, are quietly closeted, even amongst themselves.

This sort of leadership can reap significant benefits for the Roman Catholic Church, both tangible and intangible:

First, bishops will finally be able to effectively demonstrate pastoral care and relevance to LGBT persons and all those with whom they relate and associate. Many members of the flock, the people of God, are LGBT. They are a part of families, and many of them worship as Catholics. And, of course, many of them have left the Church. This is an opportunity to exercise care and leadership and sensitivity.

Second, understanding LGBT persons and respecting their identities facilitates sensitivity when speaking about issues, concerns, and hopes—whether it applies to the Church or society. In theological terms, it manifests the love of God.

Third, it strengthens episcopal credibility. Ordained and professional ecclesial leaders will better respect bishops, and seek them out for guidance on how to better care for, speak about, and minister to LGBT persons—and how that translates into a holistic ministry for the full people of God.

Even in the absence of doctrinal change, promoting understanding, sensitivity, and proper language, are acts of profound ministry. Through them, all of us become more inclusive, understanding, and respectful—even if we don’t always agree on issues or teachings.

My purpose is to be of service to the Church on this issue. There is a unique opportunity here given the events that are shaping people’s lives in the Church and throughout the nation. The right and responsible thing to do, as an act of leadership, is to understand LGBT persons, and to use language that respects them by listening and seeking to understand the joys and challenges they face in their lives. Everyone benefits, and face of God is experienced more deeply.

Complete Article HERE!