At pallium Mass, Cupich calls for mercy toward nontraditional families

Archbishop Carlo Viganó formally presented the pallium to Archbishop Blase Cupich during a ceremony in Chicago on Aug. 23. (John Pham / Saint Joseph College Seminary)
Archbishop Carlo Viganó formally presented the pallium to Archbishop Blase Cupich during a ceremony in Chicago on Aug. 23.

By Michael O’Loughlin

CHICAGO – Catholics must avoid being rigid, embrace change, and show mercy, not harsh judgment, toward nontraditional families.

That was the message from Chicago’s Archbishop Blase CupichSunday afternoon after receiving his pallium, a wool stole that is a piece of liturgical regalia symbolizing his connection to the pope, from the papal ambassador to the United States.

In a 15-minute homily, Cupich said bishops and other Catholics should avoid “absolutizing one particular era” by remembering the richness and diversity of their faith.

At the same time, the Church should be “open to new avenues and creativity when it comes to accommodating families, particularly those who are broken, those who have suffered” and “not settle for solutions that no longer work, expressions that no longer inspire, and ways of working that stifle creativity and collaboration.”

He cited St. John XXIII, a reformer pope credited with ushering the Catholic Church into the modern era with his launch of the Second Vatican Council, and Pope Francis, highlighting his calls to protect the environment and to find new approaches to pastoral ministry.

Cupich said that John XXIII, canonized by Francis last year, “called the entire Church to a fresh appreciation of the ancient teaching of the medicine of mercy in an era when many in the Church preferred the narrow path of severity and condemnation.”

Cupich’s remarks were delivered just weeks before Pope Francis’ visit to the United States next month and the Synod on the Family at the Vatican in October, to which Cupich is expected to be named a delegate by Pope Francis.

It’s at the synod that bishops will continue a discussion of family life, including hot-button topics such as Communion for divorced-and-remarried Catholics, contraception, and sexuality — discussions that began last fall.

It was against this backdrop that Cupich described the Church today as “a community that goes after the lost sheep.”

“The task is not just to find them and bring them home,” he said, “but to lift them up high, to shoulder level, where they can begin to see and live a new life, a life of faith.”

Speaking to nearly 20 other bishops, dozens of priests from across Illinois and from his former diocese of Spokane, Wash., and to hundreds of worshipers gathered in the pews, Cupich said the Petrine ministry reminds us “of the whole story of God’s mighty deeds, which continues to develop in every age under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”

Sunday’s nearly two-hour ceremony marked a new way of conferring the pallium — a white wool stole — on archbishops.

For more than three decades, newly appointed archbishops traveled to Rome to receive the stole each June 29, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, but Pope Francis announced changes earlier this year.

Although Cupich and other newly appointed archbishops received their palliums when they traveled to Rome in June, they do not don them until the pope’s US ambassador, or nuncio, presents the stole formally during a ceremony in the bishops’ home archdioceses.

The pallium contains six black crosses, three of which are adorned with gold pins symbolizing the nails used in Jesus’ crucifixion. Some of the wool is taken from lambs the pope blessed on the feast of St. Agnes, and the ends are colored black to mimic a lamb’s hoof, symbolic of an archbishop’s role as shepherd.

Archbishop Carlo Viganó, the nuncio, called the pallium “a symbol of unity of your archbishop with the Holy Father.”

Cupich was appointed by Pope Francis to lead the nation’s third largest archdiocese — the Chicago area boasts more than 2 million Catholics — last November. The two met for the first time during a lengthy tête-à-tête in Rome in June.

Complete Article HERE!

First Baptist Church in South Carolina hit for allowing same-sex union, gay ministers

By  Andre Mitchell

While most Christian churches across the United States are strongly opposed to homosexuality and same-sex marriage, the First Baptist Church of Greenville in South Carolina has taken a totally different route: It has decided to allow not just gay unions, but also the ordination of gay and transgender ministers.

The 184-year-old church, which is the home of the first Southern Baptist Convention, reached this decision after conducting a dialogue with its members for six months.

first-baptist-church
Worshippers attend service at the First Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina.

The discussions centred on the question: “Can you worship and live with the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in the church?”

In the end, a consensus was reached to allow homosexual unions and ministers, with each member present giving a public affirmation.

Senior Minister Jim Dant said the Baptist church ultimately favoured “embracing the complexities of gender identity.”

“What I heard was, ‘We need to do the right thing, regardless of what anybody thinks or says about us. There were a few people who said, ‘Are they going to start calling us the gay church in town?” Dant said.

He added that members of his church acknowledged that “being open and welcoming to all people is part of the essential nature of our community of faith.”

Dant further said that those who didn’t agree with the church’s decision to allow homosexual marriage and ministers still chose to remain in the congregation.

The congregation’s decision, however, was met with opposition from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF), an umbrella coalition of 2,000 moderate Baptist churches.

“The foundation of a Christian sexual ethic is faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman and celibacy in singleness,” the CBF said in a statement.

It added that its “organisational value does not allow for the expenditure of funds for organisations or causes that condone, advocate or affirm homosexual practice.”

Complete Article HERE!

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!

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!

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!