Tag: Gay Priests

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Catholic priest donated $1000 to gay ‘marriage,’ diocese mum

A Catholic priest’s donation to support redefining marriage in Minnesota has been revealed, deepening a rift between a conservative Catholic hierarchy and more liberal subordinates in the blue state over gay ‘marriage.’

The Duluth News Tribune reported Sunday that Rev. Peter Lambert of St. Louis Catholic Church in Floodwood had donated $1,000 to Minnesotans United for Families, the group fighting a constitutional marriage amendment, in March.

The Diocese of Duluth, where Lambert is stationed, has donated $50,000 to support the traditional marriage amendment. Duluth Diocese spokesman Kyle Eller told the Tribune that Lambert didn’t intend the donation to be a public statement.

“It was my understanding that Father Lambert wasn’t aware that the contribution would be made public, and it wasn’t intended to be a public statement,” said Eller, who declined further comment.

The diocese didn’t immediately respond to an email from LifeSiteNews.com requesting comment Tuesday.

The bishops in Minnesota have ranked among the most outspoken Catholic defenders of traditional marriage in the country in recent years. In 2010, the prelates backed a comprehensive six-week campaign to re-catechize their flock on the Church’s moral teaching on marriage and sexuality.

In January, Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis emphasized to clergy under his purview, which includes the Duluth diocese, the importance of their adherence to Church doctrine on the marriage question.

“The gravity of this struggle, and the radical consequences of inaction propels me to place a solemn charge upon you all,” he said. “On your ordination day, you made a promise to promote and defend all that the Church teaches. I call upon that promise in this effort to defend marriage. There ought not be open dissension on this issue.”

Nienstedt again urged the Catholic faithful this Sunday to support the proposed marriage amendment that will appear on the general election ballot this November.

Supporters of redefining marriage have meanwhile been targeting Catholics with their own message.

An openly homosexual religious priest from St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minn. told a crowd of 200 in June that Catholics are permitted to vote against the amendment as a matter of freedom of conscience.

“I believe this amendment violates an important principle of Catholic teaching, and that as Catholics, we can vote no,” Rev. Bob Pearson said.

Complete Article HERE!

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Catholic Bishop’s Anti-Gay Campaigning May Violate WA Election Law

State workers who track election-law violations are meeting later this morning to discuss the Catholic Church, says Lori Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission.

At issue is a story I reported yesterday: Yakima bishop Joseph Tyson sent a letter this month instructing all priests in his diocese to begin a fundraising drive inside their parishes that directly funds the anti-gay-marriage PAC Preserve Marriage Washington, which is trying to reject Referendum 74 on the fall ballot. While I lamented that Tyson’s effort seems to comply with federal tax rules, it may not be legal under state law.

Here’s why: The church can’t act as an agent that collects money and sends it to the campaign. In his letter, Bishop Tyson asks the priests to circulate Preserve Marriage Washington’s fundraising envelopes among pews, collect the checks, and mail all the checks to the anti-gay PAC. As he put it, “Please place unopened envelopes into the addressed security envelope, and mail them to Preserve Marriage Washington.”

That sort of activity is informally called “bundling,” Anderson explains, and it would violate a state law that concerns collecting contributions on anther’s behalf. “A person, other than an individual, may not be an intermediary or an agent for a contribution,” says the RCW.

“They can hand out those envelopes,” Anderson says, “but they that can’t collect them and send them in.” Anderson says that election workers will try to “head them off at the pass and see that they are complying.”

Bishop Tyson did not respond to a request for comment.

Complete Article HERE!

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Tom Rastrelli: Priests who lie; the dilemma of sexual orientation and the priesthood

People don’t expect their priests and bishops to lie, but as Michelangelo Signorile’s recent post illustrated, clerics do lie. Some even make a virtue of it. I know this from experience, for I was ordained a Catholic priest on a lie.

In spring 2002 I walked with my spiritual director along the blacktop road encircling the seminary. He’d been my confessor and guide for two years, helping me discern God’s presence in all aspects of my life, intimate and mundane. Over our heads, a canopy of newborn leaves rustled in a sunny breeze, a welcome relief from the bitter fog that had engulfed the church and my vocational surety.

For the previous two months an unprecedented number of bishops and priests, starting with Cardinal Law of Boston, had fallen from grace for participation in the sexual abuse of children and the ensuing cover-up. Their duplicity was palpable in my knotted back and abdomen. In a few months I’d be ordained a priest. I didn’t want to do so on a lie.

“I’m coming out of the closet,” I said.

My spiritual director loosened his clerical collar and lit a cigarette. “Where’s this coming from?” he asked. A couple of chattering wrens whooshed past.

I backtracked through six years of seminary formation. At events I had hobnobbed with supposedly holy men, some of whom had been harboring pedophiles. A few had done the deed themselves. By shaking their hands, mine were dirty. I knew the ecclesiology, how the bishops’ authority stemmed from a direct line to Jesus, but they were still criminals. Who were they to declare homosexuals “intrinsically depraved”?

When I’d applied for seminary, the director of seminarians — the priest who’d recruited me — explained that orientation didn’t matter, only celibacy. But on my intake interviews he’d told me to answer “yes” when the archdiocesan psychologist asked if I was attracted to women, and “no” when he asked if I was attracted to men. It was for the greater good, he said. Frightened of being cast out and ashamed of my true nature, I had lied as instructed.

In light of the sexual abuse scandal, lying about my orientation was no longer acceptable. I thought of what a gay friend who’d left seminary had said. His words became my own: “I don’t know if I can separate my private and public selves. Isn’t integration the goal of spiritual direction?”

“Of course it is,” my spiritual director said, more gravelly than usual. He stopped and turned to me. A tree cast a web of shadows over his face. His strawberry nose grew flushed, as he gestured with his hands. “Here’s the thing, Rastrelli. You have to ask yourself: Am I going to be a gay priest, or a priest” — he rolled his fingers and cigarette through the air like a barrel — “who happens to be gay?”

“What’s the difference?” I turned my head to inhale, trying to avoid his secondhand smoke. “Either way I’m gay. It’s a part of me.”

“But are you gay first, and then a priest? Or a priest first, and then gay?” He smiled, satisfied with the distinction.

“Both/and.” I’d hit him with what he’d taught me in class. “Both/and” was the paradoxical answer for every ultimate question in Catholic theology: Scripture or tradition? Faith or works? Is Jesus divine or human? Are we sinful or good? is faith a solo or communal experience?

“Touché,” he said. We walked. He sucked his cigarette. “You’re a smart guy, Rastrelli. Give it some thought.”

I kicked a pebble onto the grass. “I have. I don’t want to lie about my sexuality.”

“It’s not lying if those asking don’t have a right to the information.”

He hadn’t even flinched. I wanted to shake the nicotine from his bones, to scream, “It was that kind of thinking that landed the bishops in the papers!” Still, part of me wanted him to be right. Silence was simpler, easier, and maybe my need to come out was just pride at work. My promise of obedience demanded that I surrender my ego. My vocation was about God, not my orientation. But couldn’t we priests be honest with one another? I had to try.

“Gay Catholics don’t have positive role models,” I said. “I don’t know of a single gay priest that’s healthy. Do you?” I stopped. He kept walking. This was as close as I’d ever come to asking him if he was gay. I suspected he was. He’d lived with another priest for decades. They vacationed and picked out carpeting together. They spoke about their cat as if she were their child. Even if he and his housemate weren’t having sex, they were a couple. I stepped in stride with him. “How am I supposed to be an integrated gay priest when I have no one to look up to? How does celibacy actually work?” I stopped again. “I’m asking you.”

He turned to me. His face became whiter than a funeral pall. “I’m sorry, Rastrelli, but that’s not a conversation I’m comfortable having with a student.”

He resumed his pace. I followed silently.

The breeze picked up. The undulating trees sounded like the ocean breaking on the shore. I choked back the urge to ask, “Are you gay?” I felt like a sinking ship in a fleet that had wandered into a minefield. After laying the mines himself, the fleet commander had ordered radio silence.

I didn’t want to drown alone. I didn’t want to hear him lie. I wanted the truth, but the truth was dangerous. Were I to come out amid sexual-abuse headlines, homophobic Catholics wrongly blaming gay priests for the scandal would demand my dismissal.

My spiritual director was right. Who were they to judge, to put my orientation before my vocation? They had no right to that knowledge. It was safer to be a priest who happened to be gay. Perhaps it was God’s will. The fear accompanying us back to the seminary told me so.

That day, I learned the unspoken rule passed down through generations of priests: the doctrine of justification for lying by clergy. I went on to be ordained a priest. I preached that “the truth will set you free” while living in silence and shame. After a long journey and much pain, I came out. I left the priesthood, finally refusing to live the lies that I’d been taught to venerate.

Complete Article HERE!

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Rainbow Sash Movement challenges San Francisco New Archbishop on Bigotry

Press Release

Rainbow Sash Movement challenges San Francisco New Archbishop on Bigotry

Bishop Cordileone has been appointed the next Archbishop elect of San Francisco. The sad situation at Most Holy Redeemer parish only emphasizes how deeply homophobia is ingrained in the culture of the Church. The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption will be the stage for all the world to see how the Church celebrates in a public fashion this culture of homophobia on October 4, 2012. The Archbishop’s instillation will be used as another launching pad to promote hate directed at the San Francisco LGBT Community,the national LGBT Community and women. The sad reality about this appointment is how far you can get in the church by promoting a closet mentality and hate of women. Integrity will apparently have no place at Bishop Cordileone’s Cathedral Eucharistic table.

People of good will and reason will understand this liturgical service for what it is, and will respond appropriately and non violently. The Rainbow Sash Movement (LGBT Catholics) is inviting San Francisco’s Drag Community, and the Catholic women’s community to stand with us both outside and inside the Cathedral as we witness this betrayal of the Church’s Social Justice Ministry at the installation ceremony at the Cathedral. The dignity of the human person apparently has more to do the with clothing you wear, the medication you use for family planning, and what gender you are than your relationship with God.

As we approach the 50th anniversary of Vatican II the Cathedral clergy and staff should hang their heads in shame over the part they are playing in the demise of Catholic Social Justice. Because justice will not flow from this installation of bigotry at the Cathedral it will not be a valid liturgy, and therefore will not be bound by the norms that guide the liturgical celebration. We will come to witness this abuse of Christ love for all people.

Contact Person:

Bill O’Connor
Rainbow Sash Movement

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Drag Queens Prohibited at Most Holy Redeemer Parish

Nice goin’ (Archbishop) Sal; piss of the drag queens first thing out the gate.

A local gay recovery group will not be holding its annual fall fundraiser in the social hall of the Castro neighborhood’s Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church after officials said that no drag queens would be allowed.

For the past couple of years the Castro Country Club has held its event in the church’s social hall and had drag queens as entertainment.

As a statement issued by the country club’s board of directors explained, the new no-drag-queen policy at the church is simply unacceptable.

“The Castro Country Club had planned to hold our third annual Harvest Feast on October 20, 2012, at Most Holy Redeemer Church, where we have held this and other events in the past,” the directors said in a statement.

But that changed when the club was notified by the church last week that they would not be able to hold the dinner if any drag queens were part of the program, the board said.

“In previous years, we have had Ivy Drip and Heklina, both well-known entertainers and community fundraisers, serve as emcees of the event, and we felt we could not in good conscience abide by the church’s new policy,” the board said.

“It is our organization’s policy to be inclusive and welcoming to all. Drag queens are no exception. We are currently seeking an alternative venue for the Harvest Feast, which provides an important source of revenue for our annual budget,” the board added.

Individual members of the country club declined to comment and referred to the board’s statement.

Most Holy Redeemer’s new pastor, the Reverend Brian Costello, confirmed over telephone on Monday, August 6, that drag queen performers and emcees are no longer permitted to participate in events at the church.

Costello said that during a telephone conversation with a Castro Country Club representative, when the topic of drag queens came up, he told the person, “That is not going to work under the present circumstances.”

“I said work with me. You can still have the dinner. You can have a regular emcee, but not drag queens on church property,” Costello said.

New leadership
It seems the directive is the result of several factors.

“I am the new pastor,” Costello added. “There is a new archbishop. The archdiocese told me straight out, ‘No drag queens.'”

The change of policy at Most Holy Redeemer was greeted with charges of discrimination, homophobia, and calls for compromise, even reconciliation.

“It’s really ridiculous and discriminatory,” said Zachary Davenport in a phone interview. “I mean it’s like, who’s next?”

Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in the Castro has banned drag queens, forcing the Castro Country Club to find a new venue for its fall fundraiser.
(Photo: Rick Gerharter)
The drag queen ban is personal for Davenport, who, in drag as Laybelline has served as emcee for a variety of sobriety-related nonprofit events held at Most Holy Redeemer.

“What constitutes drag?” he said. “If we want to get funny, let’s talk about the priests. Hello.”

Davenport also pointed to a nuanced landscape of gender identity and expression, which the new policy at Most Holy Redeemer seemingly blocks. “There are members of our community who express their gender all the time, and are not necessarily performing, but would say, ‘Yes, I am in drag,'” he said.

“Yes, I realize [Most Holy Redeemer] is a church. But it is in the Castro,” said Davenport. If, “the new archbishop is wanting to do away with drag queens and the gays,” then “look where you are. [The neighborhood] has a history of 30 to 40 years of being a safe place.”

A California native from Watsonville, Davenport, 28, who is not Catholic, added, “I know gay people who go to Most Holy Redeemer and love the church.”

Dignity San Francisco offered its take on the new policy at Most Holy Redeemer.

“This is an unfortunate development between Most Holy Redeemer and the Castro County Club,” said Ernest L. Camisa, treasurer of the Dignity/SF chapter, speaking for the organization by e-mail and over the telephone.

“It looks like the Archdiocese of San Francisco wants to protect its image by not condoning cross-dressers. By doing so they show that they care more for their image than they do for gay people trying to overcome alcohol addiction. Here the church looks like it values its own image more than it does human life. This is not Christian, but callous,” Camisa said.

A couple of Most Holy Redeemer parishioners declined to comment. No one from Castro Country Club was willing to speak on the record.

Reached by phone, George Wesolek, department head for communications and public policy for the archdiocese, said he was not in the policy conversation “loop.” Nonetheless, Wesolek acknowledged, the situation is “difficult pastorally,” particularly in “very divided and fractious church.”

Others weigh in
Meanwhile, across the country, the new no-drag queen policy has struck a chord among gay Catholic activists and those in ministry.

“I think this is a very difficult and complex time for not only the pastor and the people of Holy Redeemer parish, but also for members of the drag community. All three groups are an example of ordinary people being called to do some extraordinary things for their neighbors. The pastor and parish of Most Holy Redeemer have to be very careful not to throw out the baby with the water in the name of homophobia. Jesus, not homophobia, should guide us in this matter,” said Joe Murray, a founder of the Chicago-based the pro-LGBT Catholic Rainbow Sash Movement.

The Rainbow Sash Movement, stateside and abroad, advocates reception of Eucharist by visibly gay persons during Mass. The movement is best known for donning rainbow sashes on Pentecost and approaching the altar for communion during Mass that day.

At the same time, New Ways Ministry Executive Director Francis De Bernardo offered his assessment via e-mail correspondence.

“Drag is a historically-based, time-honored entertainment tradition that has existed, at least, since classical times,” he said.

“Canceling this program without any explanation or substantial reason is simply caving into fear of reprisals from higher authorities. If the [Most Holy Redeemer] community has supported this event for years, there has obviously been a relationship that has developed between the sponsoring organization and the parish, and it would be great if the two groups could work together to find some resolution. Reconciliation is what any and every parish should be about. If the parish does not offer a substantial intervening reason, we can only assume that other forces have had influence,” said DeBernardo.

Located just outside Washington, D.C., New Ways is a pro-gay Catholic ministry of education, healing, and reconciliation for LGBT Catholics, their families, friends, and the wider church.

For his part, Costello said the Castro Country Club event would have been in its third year at Most Holy Redeemer.

“It’s not a 20- to 25-year relationship,” he said.

Nonetheless, Costello lamented the course of events.

“I am big on compromising,” he said. But “[Castro Country Club] would not work with me. It was all or nothing. And they got nothing.”

Costello also said that with respect to drag queens, “We have had bad experiences, not only in church, but also the [social] hall.”

Still, “I feel bad because [Castro Country Club] do[es] good work in the community,” he said.

While Costello did not elaborate on any social hall “bad experience,” one church incident nearly five years ago caused a media stir.

During Sunday Mass on Sunday, October 7, 2007, Archbishop George Niederauer gave communion to two members of the activist group and drag troupe Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an indecent that angered, hurt, and even horrified some conservative Catholics, as well as it grabbed local and national headlines.

Called to task locally by the California Catholic Daily and a “90 years young” priest, the Reverend John Malloy, on A Shepherd’s Voice blog, Niederauer apologized for giving communion to gays dressed as nuns.

Attempts to reach the Sisters for comment on the recent change of policy at Most Holy Redeemer were unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, as recent as April 29, in a Shepherd’s Voice post Malloy blasted the “gay parish” for hosting an April 14 “drag show” to benefit the Castro Country Club, “a substance abuse treatment organization.”

“Hosting a drag show at [Most Holy Redeemer] is the equivalent of sending a case of wine to Castro Country Club,” wrote Malloy. “It is beyond irresponsible for the Archdiocese of San Francisco to allow it.”

And while local conservative bloggers and orthodox Catholic activists may well exacerbate tensions at Most Holy Redeemer, Rainbow Sash Movement’s Murray noted, “The appointment of Archbishop-elect [Salvatore] Cordileone has brought this matter to a head.”

And yet, said Murray, “Let’s be very clear homophobia in the church existed prior to this event.”

He went on to fault the teaching of the Catholic Church, the Catechism, “for saying on the one hand that homosexuals are to be welcomed and every form of unjust discrimination is to be condemned, while saying at the same time saying we are morally disordered for our love.”

“Either gay and lesbian people are welcome at Most Holy Redeemer or they are not. It’s that simple. If the tradition of Most Holy Redeemer is to allow for drag queens to raise money for charity, then to fault those who are raising the money in the name of homophobia, I think, speaks volumes to what type of ministry is going on at Most Holy Redeemer; and that deeply disturbs me. If that is the case, I like the parishioners of Most Holy Redeemer have been misled,” said Murray.

Complete Article HERE!