Documents reveal growing criticisms, concerns about Knoxville bishop’s leadership

— A former diocese organist filed suit in February 2022. Some laity and priests are unhappy with Stika’s staunch defense of a seminarian accused of rape.

Bishop Richard F. Stika waves to the congregation during his during his episcopal ordination March 19 at the Knoxville, Tenn., convention center. Bishop Stika, a St. Louis native, is the third bishop to lead the Diocese of Knoxville, which was founded in 1988 and is home to almost 60,000 Catholics.. At left is principal consecrator Cardinal Justin F. Rigali of Philadelphia.

By John North

Knoxville Catholic Bishop Richard Stika is facing increasing criticism and scrutiny over his leadership, including how he’s handled accusations that a former seminarian raped a church musician, newly gathered documents show.

The musician is suing Stika and the Catholic Diocese of Knoxville in Knox County Circuit Court. Judge Jerome Melson is expected to hold a hearing Friday for the musician’s lawyers and diocesan attorneys.

The hearing comes as local and national attention grows about the diocese, the boundaries of which stretch from Chattanooga to Knoxville and on up to the Tri Cities. An online publication called The Pillar has published numerous stories critical of Stika’s leadership since 2021.

Complaints against him gained even greater prominence May 11 when the National Catholic Reporter published a lengthy story about the bishop and his leadership.

WBIR previously has reported about the ex-organist’s February 2022 lawsuit as well as a federal complaint filed in November 2022 against the diocese by a Honduran woman who alleges a Gatlinburg priest sexually battered her.

In recent weeks, however, numerous internal documents including emails, reports and handwritten notes from 2021 and 2022 have surfaced as the organist’s lawsuit slowly advances through the legal system.

They show priests in the Knoxville Diocese expressing increasing complaints about Stika, 65, and his handling of a rape allegation made against the Polish seminarian. They’ve been baffled by his persistent support of the seminarian, records show.

Bishop Stika at a past ceremony at the cathedral.

Many of the documents appear to serve as the basis or source of allegations in the musician’s February 2022 lawsuit, which alleges defamation and negligence. The organist is suing the diocese and Stika; he is not suing the seminarian.

Records and two secret audio recordings from 2021 also show Stika steadfastly defending the now former seminarian and at times scolding and criticizing those who have questioned him.

“Bishop Stika has a history of intimidating people he does not agree with or like,” one priest wrote in October 2019 as tensions mounted within the diocese.

“We humbly ask for appointment of a new Bishop who we can believe in, put our faith in, and who can appropriately guide us in our Catholic lives,” a 2022 petition on change.org from a lay member and Chattanooga area attorney states.

Appointed in 2009 to come to Knoxville, the bishop previously has told priests that he is staying right where he is.

“I ain’t going anywhere,” Stika told the men during a meeting May 25, 2021, after controversy over the Polish seminarian arose. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

In May, three priests in the diocese also met with WBIR to express their concerns.

The diocese said it could not comment because of the ongoing litigation.

HOW IT STARTED

The organist worked in the diocese from 2015 until August 2019.

WBIR is not naming him because he alleges he is a rape victim. WBIR is not  naming the former seminarian — whose name is widely known within the diocese — because he has not been charged with a crime.

In January 2019, the freshly arrived seminarian struck up a friendship with the organist.

According to the lawsuit, the musician alleges the seminarian sought a sexual relationship. He states in his complaint that he was “pressured into brief sexual touching and oral sex on isolated occasions. Plaintiff did not feel particularly attracted to (the seminarian) and was not interested in a sexual relationship with someone so forceful and aggressive.”

The Polish man would at times forcefully kiss the organist, the lawsuit alleges.

The organist is seven years older than the seminarian, Stika has said.

The seminarian wanted to keep his physical relationship with the musician secret, according to the lawsuit.

According to the complaint, the musician kept up his association with the Polish man “because he felt bad for him as a gay seminarian.” He also alleges he felt obliged to stay on good terms because the seminarian had a close relationship with Stika, who had taken him in. Stika has said the seminarian came recommended by the late Pope John Paul II’s personal secretary in Poland.

Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in West Knoxville.

On Feb. 5, 2019, the organist alleges, the seminarian came on to him aggressively, pinned him down and raped him to the point that he suffered bleeding.

The musician alleges he went to bed that night “in shock and pain” and that the seminarian spent the night with him in bed.

Five days later, the seminarian left a Catholic prayer book for the organist with an inscription of well wishes from Stika. Four days later — Valentine’s Day — the Polish man handed him a card and a bottle of Champagne. In the card he expressed thanks for his friendship and added, “And for what was wrong — I apologize with all my heart.”

According to the lawsuit, the musician went to the Knoxville Police Department on Feb. 25, 2019, to report the rape. But the lawsuit states that a KPD officer told him if he pursued the criminal case the church would “come after” him and he’d lose his job. It would be his word against the seminarian’s, the plaintiff says he was told.

No rape charge was ever filed.

The musician alleges he tried to avoid the seminarian but the Polish man “stalked” him.

On March 29, 2019, some six weeks after the alleged rape, the two young men had dinner at a restaurant with Stika. Because of Stika’s position as bishop, the musician alleges he felt he had little choice but to go along with the dinner.

A photo — submitted with the lawsuit — was taken of the trio, with Stika on one side of the table and the two younger men on the other.

“At the end of dinner, Stika asked (the organist) if he ever had any trouble with his co-workers,” the lawsuit states. “(The musician) felt constrained to answer no, given (the Polish man’s) relationship with the bishop.”

In August 2019, six months after the alleged rape, the musician moved on to Atlanta. He filed his lawsuit 18 months later in Knox County.

During 2019, the seminarian lived at Stika’s West Knox County house along with retired Cardinal Justin Rigali, a longtime mentor of Stika’s. The seminarian drove the older men around as needed.  Stika would later say — at a 2021 meeting secretly recorded in Knoxville — that he’d lost sight in one eye and didn’t trust his driving.

The seminarian also traveled with Stika and Rigali, including joining them on a trip to the Vatican.

In the fall of 2019, the seminarian went off to Saint Meinrad seminary school in Indiana. By early 2021, however, he’d been dismissed, records reviewed by WBIR show.

Some of his fellow seminarians in Indiana reported that he’d touched them inappropriately or acted inappropriately around them.

Letter to the bishop from Saint Meinrad on March 1, 2021, about the seminarian.

In one encounter in January 2021, he tickled and grappled with a student who was visiting Tennessee from out of town. He also sent unwanted and invasive Snapchat messages about his penis, documents reviewed by WBIR state.

Another seminarian reported that while at Saint Meinrad in February 2021, he caught the Polish man spying into his room from across the courtyard.

The seminarian was dismissed from the Indiana school that month, an email shows.

On March 1, 2019, Meinrad President-Rector the Very Rev. Denis Robinson wrote Stika that the school had decided to dismiss the Polish man because of what his fellow students had experienced and also because of online accusations that had emerged about the 2019 alleged rape.

“While we have no way of adjudicating the reliability of this case, its presence on the internet is very damaging to a seminarian,” Robinson wrote. “Once again, many of the interactions we have had with (the Polish man) in the past have been quite positive, but I do believe that the issues raised by the seminarians need to be addressed and corrected before (the Polish man) can re-enter seminary formation.”

In two years’ time, Robinson wrote, they’d be willing to review his case “if you (Stika) see that as a proper move.”

A QUICK INVESTIGATION

Emails, notes, reports and the two audio recordings from spring 2021 show rising skepticism, even anger, about the way the bishop handled the Polish seminarian.

Reports about the man’s conduct with the organist began circulating in the diocese in early 2021.

On Feb. 26, 2021, after dismissal from Saint Meinrad, Stika sent a note to priests in the diocese stating that the seminarian had entered a “two-year period of discernment,” meaning he would be reflecting on what God wanted him to do. He wrote that the man would be helping him in the Chancery in Knoxville and helping the octogenarian Cardinal Rigali.

His note offended some priests in light of allegations about the seminarian’s aggressive, sexual conduct, documents show. Priests complained Stika was giving him special treatment.

A formal investigation was needed, one priest wrote. Furthermore, he wrote, Stika needed to be held accountable.

A March 11, 2021, email from the bishop to an attorney and senior members of the diocese stated, “I have informed the individual of his need to return home. I am working with his former school on when this would be necessary.”

Any assumption that the Polish man would be sent home to Eastern Europe, however, proved false. Instead, Stika sought to have him go off to Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Mo., Stika’s alma mater and hometown, to enroll at the diocese’s expense, a letter shows.

Carleton E. “Butch” Bryant, a church member and former staff attorney for the Knox County Sheriff’s Office, notified Stika and members of the diocese’s internal Diocesan Review Board that he was calling a March 25 meeting to consider whether they should formally investigate allegations against the seminarian, records show.

The board is a “confidential consultative body” to the bishop, according to the diocese.

An investigation was indeed launched, with George Prosser, a former Tennessee Valley Authority inspector general, tapped to do the investigative footwork.

Stika, however, as he would later say at a May 2021 meeting with area priests, didn’t like the way Prosser conducted the inquiry. He asked questions that confused and upset people in the diocese, he said. Prosser was a nice man, he’d say later, a 75-year-old neighbor, but he wasn’t the man to handle the investigation.

He removed Prosser.

Diocesan Review Board member Christopher J. Manning took Prosser’s place.

Note to board about Manning report.

Manning’s report shows he interviewed the Polish seminarian April 16, 2021. He did not talk with the former church organist or the students in Indiana at Saint Meinrad.

Three days before, however, Bryant sent an email to members of the Diocesan Review Board stating that Stika had informed him the investigation “is closed.” They could all talk about it at an upcoming meeting later that month, Bryant’s email states.

After his interview, Manning prepared an April 16, 2021, report for Stika, Bryant and Vicar-General Doug Owens.

In his interview, the seminarian said he’d been friends only with the musician and that there’d not been mutual sex. He said the musician told him he was gay, the report states.

He alleged that the musician initiated sex with him during a trip in late January or early February to Atlanta, Manning’s report states. The seminarian said he resisted the overture. The seminarian told Manning they shared a king-size bed in Atlanta and that the musician tried to perform oral sex in the middle of the night.

The pair traveled to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon in May 2019, according to Manning’s report. While in their Las Vegas hotel, the seminarian claimed he saw the musician and a young Hispanic man kiss and have sex.

In June 2019, according to his conversation with Manning, the seminarian said the musician told him he was moving to Atlanta. They had dinner and the musician gave him a shirt as a gift, the report states.

The seminarian denied any inappropriate conduct with the men at the Indiana seminary school, the report states.

“There is no indication that Mr. ——— was untruthful during this interview. He did not hesitate (sic) any of the questions and provided specific details when those were requested,” Manning wrote.

Bryant sent the Manning report to the Diocesan Review Board on April 28 ahead of that night’s meeting. Emails show some in the diocese strongly disagreed with the conclusion of the investigation and lack of action against the seminarian. It was one-sided, they said.

Interior of the Knoxville cathedral, the construction of which the bishop considers to be among his most important contributions to the diocese.

One priest wrote that Stika had impeded the investigation. He wrote that the bishop had a history of “intimidating” people who disagree with him, records show. The bishop had even threatened to resign because he thought it wrong to send the seminarian back to Poland, according to the priest.

In a letter dated April 12, 2021, four days before Manning talked with the Polish seminarian, Stika wrote “To Whom It May Concern” at Saint Louis University that the Knoxville Diocese would cover room, board and tuition for the seminarian in the amount of $48,258 for the fall 2021 school year.

“(He) will not in any way be a burden to the United States of America or the State of Tennessee,” the letter stated.

‘DRIP, DRIP, DRIP’

Stika addressed priests in the diocese in meetings in May and June 2021. A priest recorded the gatherings, and they’ve now become part of the allegations contained in the organist’s lawsuit.

The meetings came soon after another critical online piece by The Pillar.

The bishop told the men he regretted having invited The Pillar to come to Knoxville and see the work of the diocese for itself. He warned against speaking to the media because the priests wouldn’t be able to control that outcome.

“He (The Pillar writer) doesn’t care about us. He just wants to sell subscriptions,” Stika said in the June 8, 2021, meeting. “He moves on, and here we are.”

He told the men he believed the musician was the sexual aggressor, not the Polish seminarian.

Draft of letter to Chrisophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio, from 2021.

By September, some priests in the diocese had begun putting together a letter seeking action by Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio in Washington, D.C. They expressed their reservations about Stika’s leadership. The nuncio acts as a liaison and formal representative of the pope.

Multiple priests signed the letter sent to Pierre. They did not get a response, according to three priests who asked that their names be withheld to avoid possible retaliation.

A Vatican investigative team did end up traveling to Knoxville and interviewing various people, according to the priests and several Catholic media reports. But there’s been no obvious action.

In addition, records show, respected priest Father Brent Shelton quietly drafted an email to Stika, circulated among various priests, that questioned him about the church investigation and what Stika was doing to serve the diocese. Shelton ended up leaving the diocese this spring after Stika proposed moving him from his Oak Ridge church.

The “drip, drip, drip” of new allegations was worrisome, the draft email circulated among some priests states.

“We are losing parishioners; parents are questioning whether to entrust their children to our schools and we are given little guidance into how this matter is progressing and when and how it will end,” the email stated.

In October 2022, Chattanooga area attorney and lay diocese member Theresa Critchfield also prepared a letter on her TLC Law stationery about Stika’s leadership. It was uploaded as a petition to change.org.

The Oct. 3, 2022, letter was directed to Pierre in Washington as well as Jose Horacio Gomez Velasco, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and to the Rev. Shelton J. Fabre, the archbishop of Louisville, which presides over the Knoxville Diocese.

According to the letter, members of the Chattanooga Deanery had lost faith in Stika “as our shepherd.” The letter cited among other things church finances and Stika’s handling of the seminarian’s time in Knoxville.

Letter from Chattanooga Deanery lay member, posted on change.org.

LINGERING QUESTIONS

There’s been little movement with the organist’s lawsuit since it was filed in February 2022.

Judge Melson has granted the defendants’ request that the organist amend his lawsuit to identify himself by name rather than as “John Doe”. The amended complaint was filed in January.

The former seminarian moved to St. Louis and is believed to still live there, according to the three priests.

On May 11, the independent National Catholic Reporter, which has reported for decades on the church, published a lengthy story that included an interview with Stika, Critchfield and unnamed priests, among others. The story detailed multiple concerns among parishioners and priests about the state of the diocese. It reported some in Knoxville feel “demoralized” by the ongoing turmoil.

Stika told the newspaper he didn’t practice retribution. He said he also saw great progress across the diocese, which has some 70 priests and more than 70,000 parishioners.

“I see growth, I see financial stability, I see vocations and I see happiness,” he told the paper.

The organist’s lawsuit is the second to challenge Stika’s leadership in recent years. A complaint filed in November 2022 on behalf of a Honduran woman alleges she was sexually battered by priest Antony Punnackal in 2020 inside a Gatlinburg church.

The federal lawsuit names the diocese, Punnackal and the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate as defendants.

The complaint also alleges the diocese tried to discredit her and to silence her when she began making accusations against Punnackal. The complaint is on hold while a criminal case against the priest proceeds in Sevier County Circuit Court.

Punnackal was removed from active ministry in January 2022, according to the diocese. He appeared earlier this month at a court hearing in his case in Sevier County.

The sexual battery trial is set for September.

Antony Punnackal and his attorney, Travis McCarter in May 2023.

Complete Article HERE!

Bolivian bishop calls for ‘optional’ priestly celibacy following clerical pederasty scandal

Bishop Eugenio Cóter

By Simon Caldwell

A South American bishop has called for “optional celibacy” for priests in the wake of revelations that a gay Jesuit missionary sexually abused about 85 boys.

Bishop Eugenio Cóter suggested the rule of priestly celibacy contributed to the abuse of scores of adolescents by Fr Alfonso Pedrajas, a Spanish priest who died in 2009, and said that “changes must be made” in the Church.

A sexual relationship allows for “an integration of the affective, sexual, bodily dimension”, the Bishop of Pando and head of the Communication Commission of the Bolivian Bishops’ Conference told Erbol radio.

He said an end to compulsory celibacy could be a “helpful element” in preventing sexual abuse by the clergy in cases where there were “no predispositions”.

His remarks will inevitably cause controversy because they implicitly endorse same-sex sexual relationships given that Fr Pedrajas was an actively gay man who spent the last four years of his life with his boyfriend.

In support of his argument, according to Catholic News Agency, Bishop Cóter alluded to debates that took place on celibacy within the framework of the 2019 Amazon Synod.

He also referred to the controversial German Synodal Way, which in March backed the ordination of women as deaconesses, the blessing of homosexual unions, and the normalisation of lay preaching at Mass, among other proposed innovations.

Bishop Cóter said: “So it is a subject that is there on the table for reflection that will arrive in Rome in October, with the bishops, the delegates of the bishops of the world in this synodal path that is taking place.”

The abuse crimes perpetrated over decades by Fr Pedrajas came to light after his lover sent a DVD of computer files to the missionary’s brother, who printed them out and kept them in a box.

The priest’s nephew found the diary in the attic and took them to El Pais, the Spanish national newspaper, which published them last month as the “Diary of a Paedophile Priest”.

Fr Pedrajas, who spent most of his life working at a secondary school for children of poor families, where he was known as “Padre Pica”, admits in his writings that “my biggest personal failure [was] without a doubt the pederasty”, which he said began in 1964, and that “I hurt so many people (85?). Too many.”

The revelations have prompted a national investigation in Bolivia and sanctions against eight Jesuits who allegedly knew of abuse but covered it up.

Father Pedrajas’s diary “recounts how the Jesuit order, including at least seven provincial superiors and a dozen Bolivian and Spanish clergymen, covered up his crimes, along with the complaints of several victims”, according to El Pais.

Father Bernardo Mercado, the Jesuit Bolivian provincial, has suspended his predecessors as the investigation gets under way.

El País also said that the late Father José Arroyo, SJ, a priest who assisted in the formation of the future Pope Francis, prepared Fr Pedrajas for his tertianship in 1978 and downplayed the gravity of his abuse when the priest confessed his sins to him.

In his notes on his conversations with his superior Fr Pedrajas makes such statements as: “I shouldn’t feel like a repentant sinner” … “nothing is going to happen to me” … “[these are] isolated cases”.

Priestly celibacy is a discipline of the Latin Church which has emerged from hundreds of years of tradition. It can be changed, though the popes, including Francis, have shown no inclination to do so.

Complete Article HERE!

The Pope’s African pilgrimage

— Does the continent represent the future of Catholicism?

By

As milestones go, the recent sight of three leading men of God together in Africa was quite something — a rare chance for Christian leaders to spread the word and challenge rivals for hearts and minds.

Pope Francis and the Vatican media machine might have led the way, but alongside him went Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, Iain Greenshields. They shared the Papal plane on the way home with the kind of bonhomie and mutual understanding that highlights the importance of Africa in the contest to be the world’s leading faith.

There they were, the three of them, in the war zone of South Sudan, the Christian stronghold that broke away from the Muslim north amid terrible conflict. Today that newest of countries represents a small but symbolically important piece of the continent’s religious jigsaw that will see Christianity grow by more than 40 per cent, the hierarchy believes, by 2050, and so ensure their faith will continue to stay just ahead of Islam in global per centages.

Some walked for days just to see and hear him

Ahead of that historic appearance of a Christian triumvirate, Pope Francis had spent days in Congo, sub-Saharan Africa’s largest country, home to more than 100 million, half of them Catholic, and the crucible of a conflict that has claimed more than five million lives, displacing millions more. It was a grim sign of the continuing murder and mayhem that the Pope had to cancel a trip to Eastern Congo, the epicentre of the war, because of fighting near the regional capital of Goma.

At his main mass in the capital, Kinshasa, more than a million Catholics joined him, some having walked for days just to see and hear him. Everywhere he went, thousands lined the streets and overpasses to glimpse the man many Congolese call simply “Our Father.” Francis, deeply moved, found the voice that has eluded him in recent times.

“This country, so immense and full of life, this diaphragm of Africa, struck by such violence like a blow to the stomach, has seemed for some time to be gasping for breath,” he told followers, clearly energised by the sight of so many worshippers. “But you are a diamond, believe in yourselves, and your future.”

The numbers do tell. According to the Vatican’s news agency, Africa accounts for 265 million members of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics — 20 per cent, and growing fast. The Anglican church is smaller but with significant followers in those countries with a footprint of the British empire: Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa (think the late Desmond Tutu)

“Africa offers Christianity such opportunity, born out of tragedy and suffering maybe, but such potential,” to quote one of the Pope’s advisers, noting that the Pontiff insisted on making the trip despite poor health of late and being now wheelchair-bound. “Francis, better than anyone, knows where we have lost ground, and where we need to work.”

It is ironic to consider it but, yes, the Argentinian Pope does indeed know where Catholicism has seen the faithful flee elsewhere. In Latin America, once the vanguard of his own Jesuit mission and home to the largest Catholic country on the planet, Brazil, Church leaders acknowledge that tens of millions have been lost to rivals, especially the Evangelical and Pentecostal faiths.

Even in the Pope’s beloved Argentina, you can see the exodus and not just in the major cities, Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Rosario. In the foothills of the Andes, in conservative, rural Mendoza, the Catholic church is often half-empty. In contrast the Evangelical arena, often a large, multi-purpose room on the main street, or a schoolroom not used on the weekends, can be packed to overflowing — with the devout outside in sizable numbers.

“Ours is Christianity that speaks to people’s needs, and people’s lives,” says Evangelical minister Jose Hernandez in Mendoza, pinpointing how Rome’s hard line on “social issues” (code for contraception, abortion, and the role of women in the Church) especially during the long years of the Polish Pope, John Paul the Second, opened the floodgates. “Ordinary people have flocked to us.”

The religious battle for Africa has been joined

Fascinatingly, the attempts of Pope Francis to soften the conservative line of his predecessors — taking for example such a relaxed view of homosexuality (“who am I to judge?” he says, “they are children of God too”) — has produced blowback, the likes of which Christianity may not have seen before. Such appeasement seems to have come too late for his Church in Latin America — and in Africa, his open voice on gay life is the seed of clear dispute between his Vatican and some fiercely traditional Bishops, let alone communities, on the ground in the likes of Congo and South Sudan.

“The Pope can have his view on homosexuality, and we have ours,” said one Catholic Bishop in attendance as the Pope celebrated that mega-mass in Kinshasa. “It is a sin.” Justin Welby and the Anglican church heard likewise in South Sudan from their flock. “Better to have two wives than to be gay or lesbian,” according to one Protestant Archbishop there.

The religious battle for Africa has been joined, and Christianity, losing out elsewhere in the Global South, sees the continent as the go-to arena tomorrow. So much so that inside the Vatican — where I was once a young correspondent back in the day when they dared to elect a Pole as Pope — they say the next Pontiff could well be an African.

Complete Article HERE!

Hey Church! Stop Denying People Romance!

— What if someone told you that you were unworthy of romantic love, but instead, God and the Church could provide all the love you need? You’d probably say that was ridiculous. Yet, there are at least four groups of people to whom the church is saying exactly that. For Singles Awareness Day, I want to focus on these groups, upon whom many in the Church want to impose singleness.

By Greg Smith

1. LGBTQ Folks

The first group are LGBTQ folks. Recently, the pope said that it’s not a crime to be gay, but gay sex is still a sin. Many Catholic and Protestant conservatives share this view. Some have finally come around to understanding that it’s not a choice to be gay. They have quit condemning people for having gay thoughts. But “doing the gay thing,” they say, is something else. So, they say you can be a Christian and be gay, but you can’t be a Christian and do gay.

A couple of years ago, a local church offered a discussion about how to love LGBTQ people. I was encouraged that they were even having the conversation, so I attended. Unfortunately, they came to the conclusion that I described above. Still, they wanted to be compassionate. They recognized the fact that human beings are made for love. So, since they believed that LGBTQ folks were created for celibacy, they said that God and the Church could provide all the love that they needed.

They encouraged the Church to offer fellowship groups for LGBTQ individuals. Straight families should invite gay friends to their homes for supper. In other words, the Church should fill in the gap. Christians should make up for the loss that a gay Christian would feel without ever being able to have sex, or a spouse, or children of their own.

Of course, church leaders realized that inviting gay people to fellowship groups to cure their loneliness is like bandaging a wound that the Church gave them. So they justified their statement by saying the Church already has other groups of people who are expected to live a life of celibacy. They insisted that the Church wasn’t asking gay folks to do anything that they weren’t asking of other groups.

2. Unmarried People

The second group is unmarried people. The pastor said, “For me, the only legitimate sexual partner is my wife. Before I was married, God expected me to be celibate. So that’s pretty much the same thing as asking gay folks to be celibate.” Except it isn’t.

The difference is that the Church says that people can (some say “should”) choose to marry. Thus, they can have a blessed and sanctioned sexual partner in their spouse. But congregations and denominations that refuse LGBTQ folks the right to marry deny them romantic and sexual expression for a lifetime.

Perhaps the Church should rethink its ban on premarital sex. This argument has been made by some. It’s not my purpose in this article to weigh in on that. But forbidding premarital sex isn’t the same as denying LGBTQ folks the right to romantic and sexual fulfillment. The first position says, “Not now, not yet.” The second says, “Not ever.”

3. Catholic Clergy

The third group is the Catholic clergy. Roman Catholic priests, monks, and nuns are asked to take a vow to abstain from all acts of sexuality. If priests can do it, Church leaders said, then LGBTQ people can do it too. There are two problems with that.

The first problem is that the church should never ask clergy to take a vow of celibacy, either. God created human beings with a sex drive. It isn’t natural to deny that sex drive your whole life. Denying people the right to sexual expression and romantic love does not make them more holy. It usually turns them into greater sinners.

Since Catholic clergy members are denied the right to marry, they are only left with the alternative of finding illicit outlets for their sexuality. Sex is a biological function that was not meant to be repressed. We have seen the results of clergy who are denied legitimate sexual and romantic relationships. They don’t suddenly become asexual. Instead, they simply get good at hiding their behavior.

The second problem is that Catholic clergy take their vow of celibacy voluntarily. When they enter the priesthood, monastery, or convent, they know what they’re signing up for. Nobody tells them that they are unworthy of sexual love. Nobody tells them that they are a different breed of person who was not created for procreation. Those who take a vow of celibacy realize that they have a right to find love, to marry, to start a family of their own. They simply choose a different path from that of sexuality, romantic love, and family.

But, when the church tells LGBTQ folks that they have to take a vow of celibacy, it’s not the same thing. Conservative churches deny LGBTQ folks their right to romantic happiness. In the case of clergy who take a vow of celibacy, they do that of their own free will. But the church imposes celibacy on gay people. To say, “Roman Catholic clergy takes vows of celibacy, so gay folks should be celibate too” is a false equivalency. One is voluntary—the other is not.

4. Divorcees

Many conservative churches still maintain that divorcees are not allowed to remarry unless their ex-spouse dies and that anyone who marries a divorced person commits adultery. (This is why some say King Charles’ coronation should be invalidated—because Charles and Diana divorced, and because Camilla’s ex-husband Andrew is still alive.) Most moderate to liberal Christians interpret Jesus’ stance on divorce loosely. But many conservative churches dictate that their members cannot remarry once they divorce.

Here’s the problem with a literal interpretation and enforcement of this: it makes divorce an unforgivable sin. Jesus talked about only one unforgivable sin—and this isn’t it. Yet, conservative churches stigmatize divorcees. They not only forbid divorcees from remarriage but sometimes from serving in ministry. Yet, if we believe that God is in the business of second chances, we should recognize that God can bless subsequent marriages. If we understand that God made us for romantic and sexual fulfillment, we should encourage people to find happiness and hope for their future.

We don’t tend to focus that much on divorce as a sin these days. If we did, we’d have to recognize our hypocrisy. If churches are going to be hard-nosed about forbidding gay marriage, then they should enforce this rule about divorcees. However, if they want to excuse divorcees and grant them the ability to remarry, then they need to recognize gay marriage as well. You can’t have it both ways. Instead of saying, “It’s okay for us to deny sex to gays because we deny it to divorcees as well,” we ought to relax about both.

A Cross to Bear?

So, we have four large groups of people to whom the church has denied the right to be sexual human beings: LGBTQ folks, unmarried people, Roman Catholic clergy, and divorcees. For unmarried people, this prohibition is temporary, as long as they marry eventually. For Catholic clergy, at least it’s a choice. For divorcees, churches are becoming more liberal. But for LGBTQ folks, the conservative Church denies them any choice. Conservative leaders insist that God gave LGBTQ people a sex drive just to make them deny it. “It’s their cross to bear,” these leaders say, grateful that they themselves don’t have to carry that load.

Celibacy isn’t what Jesus meant when he said that we should take up our cross, deny ourselves, and follow him. If this were so, then the church would ask everyone to be celibate. Sexuality and the need for romantic love are intrinsic to humanity. Certainly, there are some who identify as asexual—for these people, celibacy is consistent with who they are at their core. But for the majority of the planet—people with sex drives and a desire for romantic intimacy—the Church has no right to ban fulfillment to an entire group of people. What if the Church allowed us all to be faithful to who we are at our core?

Hey Church! Stop Denying People Romance!

Too often, the church tells people, “Don’t worry about love. Give yourself to faith, and love will find you.” As a trite saying, it sounds sweet. As a way of helping people not to perseverate on finding the right partner prematurely, it kind of makes sense. The right person will come at the right time, so to speak. But, in honor of Singleness Awareness Day (February 15), I have to say that if a person wants to stay single, that’s okay, too. While singleness may be a calling for some people, it isn’t something the Church has a right to impose on anyone. But as a way of denying people’s right to romance and sexuality, phrases like this are a crime against basic humanity. Only when the Church recognizes the rights to sexuality and romantic love for all types of people can we embrace the fullness of who God meant us to be.

Complete Article HERE!

Pope Francis sets off a contest over the future of the Catholic Church

— An unprecedented global consultation of the faithful is galvanising rival liberals and conservatives

By

The American priest and author Andrew Greeley once said: “The opposite of Catholic is not Protestant. The opposite of Catholic is sectarian.” But just as secular politics in western countries is a battleground between mutually suspicious conservatives and liberals, so Greeley’s appeal to respect differences of religious opinion is drowning in a doctrinal struggle for control of the Roman Catholic Church.

The contest is all the sharper because Pope Francis turns 86 next month. Even if he does not emulate his predecessor Benedict XVI, who abdicated in 2013, the question of who will replace him looms large.

Papal infallibility, a doctrine proclaimed in 1870, is not rigorously applied these days, but the pontiff’s views carry unique authority. Disputes in Francis’s reign over women’s ordination, the Church’s treatment of divorcees, use of the Latin mass, sex abuse scandals and financial irregularities at the Vatican are therefore conducted with one eye on the cardinals’ conclave that will at some future date select the next pope.

Francis is no darling of progressive Catholics, for whom his approach to issues such as women’s role in the Church and homosexuality is too cautious. Still, conservatives correctly regard him as more reformist than Benedict or John Paul II, whose 1978-2005 pontificate made him the second-longest serving pope in the Church’s more than 2,000-year history. A case in point is Francis’s clampdown on the old Latin mass, which reversed Benedict’s decision to permit the celebration of some sacraments according to ancient rites.

Throughout his reign, however, Francis has emphasised healing the Church’s divisions as much as modernising its outlook and practices. In this spirit, he last year launched a global consultation of the faithful — an attempt to gauge the mood of the world’s Catholics, estimated by the Vatican at more than 1.3bn people, and chart a path for the Church’s future. He may have unleashed more than he bargained for.

From dioceses across the world a torrent of reports has poured in. Many call for reforms, blocked since the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council, to allow married clergy, women priests and acceptance of artificial birth control. A Vatican document last month observed: “Almost all reports raise the issue of full and equal participation of women.” On the other hand, conservative regions of the world — usually outside Europe and North America — are urging the Vatican not to yield to liberal pressure.

Francis’s consultation goes by the unwieldy name of the “synod on synodality”, implying inclusive discussion of pressing issues, though certainly not binding democratic votes. Yet the synod represents uncharted waters for the Vatican — and there is a cautionary historical parallel for Francis’s initiative. It is to be found in France on the eve of the 1789 revolution.

With the monarchy in crisis, Louis XVI summoned the Estates General — the future national assembly — to break the deadlock on reform. All across France, constituencies submitted so-called cahiers de doléance, or lists of grievances, as Catholic dioceses have done over the past year. A sort of nationwide opinion survey, the process prompted delegates meeting in Versailles to conclude that there was a public mood in favour of representative institutions, individual liberty, equality under the law and an end to absolutism. In the second half of 1789, the tide of revolutionary change became unstoppable.

It is premature to expect anything so world-shaking in the Catholic Church, where opinion appears more equally balanced between shades of radical reformism, moderate liberalism, mild conservatism and reaction. To take one example, the US consultation revealed deep splits on LGBTQ inclusion, clerical sexual abuse and the liturgy. “Participants felt this division as a profound sense of pain and anxiety,” the US bishops’ conference reported in September.

However, the central point is that both liberals and conservatives are discovering the force of public opinion. Cardinals, bishops and lay pressure groups frame their arguments for or against change in theological language but, as in France in 1789, notables and activists are seizing on the mood of society to advance and legitimize their causes.

The synod was supposed to end next year, but Francis recently extended it until October 2024. By then, either he will still be pope or an as yet unknown successor will be wearing his mitre. Either way, the struggle over the Church’s direction that has rumbled on since the Second Vatican Council and is being amplified by his synod may well be fiercer than ever.

Complete Article HERE!