During his recent annual Christmas address, Pope Benedict charged the world's gays and lesbians, along with transgendered persons, with destroying the "very essence of the human creature." If satire is the weapon of the powerless, surely defamation is the weapon of defanged religious leaders. Ensconced in his papal enclave, without the raw geopolitical power that popes once held, Benedict XVI, along with hangers-on like Vatican newspaper columnist Luccetta Scaraffia, are increasingly resorting to brute rhetoric in the hopes of rolling back the gay rights movement. (Scaraffia has drawn linkages between gay marriage and communism.) A small fraction of Catholic priests and consecrated Catholic religious, many already affiliated with progressive causes, have publicly sought to offset the political cannon fire coming from the pope, the bishops, and the gays-as-commies types by emphasizing compassion for LGBT people.
Their dissent from the harsh rhetoric of their Catholic overlords goes a little something like this: Jesus loved the lepers, and so the church should love the gays.
While gays who actually like their sex lives may find this brand of dissent patronizing, it's hardly surprising coming from the minds of not so few men and women who may think themselves the sexual equivalent of lepers. Spanish media personality, and former Catholic priest Alberto Cutie of Miami, now an Episcopalian priest, claimed in his 2011 book that gay priests are so prevalent in the Roman Catholic church that the church would not be able to function without them.
If you think only gay priests are willing to be controlled by a church that proactively fosters global contempt for LGBT people, think again. When I asked Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, one of the most established gay organizations that seeks greater Catholic church acceptance of gays, if the religious orders of Catholic nuns who helped to sponsor one of his organization's symposiums had written, identifiable non-discrimination policies for LGBT people, as now countless corporations, universities and other have, DeBernardo replied, "I do know that a number of the orders who sponsored the symposium are in open dialogue with their lesbian members to learn how better to support them and to make sure the community is welcoming to them. I know a number of them are happy to accept, and have accepted, openly lesbian women as candidates for vows."
Yet if the pope and the bishops are worried that a band of lesbian nuns are undermining the church's core teaching on homosexuality, namely that homosexual acts are"intrinsically disordered," they need not worry: It's actually quite possible that people who may think themselves the equivalent of sexual lepers really do want compassion, and only compassion, not acceptance of homosexualitytheir own or anyone else's.
Last April, the Vatican issued a notification to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the largest grouping of Catholic nuns in the U.S. Among other complaints, the Vatican notification faulted some LCWR nuns for sending the Vatican letters on behalf of the aforementioned New Ways Ministry. Yet the letters to the Vatican in question merely expressed concern that New Ways Ministry was barred from having the Eucharist celebrated at one of their annual conferences; the letters did not in any way challenge the Catholic church's core teaching that homosexual desires and acts are "intrinsically disordered."
Subsequent to the Vatican's Notification to the LCWR, New Ways Ministry itself confirmed that "the content of these letters questioned the Vatican's denial of the Eucharist without addressing the other issues of pastoral care of lesbian and gay people or Catholic teaching on human sexuality." In other words, there was nothing in the American nuns' letters of support on behalf of New Ways Ministry that in any way departed from the Catholic church's teaching that homosexual desires and acts are "intrinsically disordered." By sending the letters of complaint over the denial of the Eucharist to New Ways Ministry, the LCWR nunssome of them open lesbians themselves according to New Ways Ministrywere simply trying to love the lepers, including themselves, not change church teaching on homosexuality.
Although the LCWR nuns eventually got dunked in the hot water tank with the launch of the Vatican's investigation and subsequent takeover of their organization, their deft linguistic maneuverings on the issue of homosexualitymaneuverings that keep them in line with church teaching on homosexuality yet allow them to ingratiate themselves to progressives gay and straighthave not hindered their positive press coverage in the slightest. Too bad Fr. Bryan Massingale, a progressive priest from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, never took an LCWR nun course on how to maximize your "gay compassion brand" withoutsimultaneously making an ass of yourself in front of reporters.
In 2006, Fr. Massingale, a professor of theology at Marquette University, gained notoriety for penning an article in the Milwaukee Archdiocesan newspaper calling on Catholics to reject the same-sex marriage ban that was on the state's ballot that year. Massingale argued that the gay marriage ban could potentially damage"the welfare of individuals and their children."
Five years later, in March of 2011, Fr. Massingale tied himself up in knots at a Capitol Hill press conference of Equally Blessed, a coalition of gay Catholics and allies advocating for LGBT rights. When asked by reporter from the conservative outlet, CNSnews.com, about the oddity of appearing at a press conference in favor of gay rights, all while being an active priest in a church that teaches that homosexual acts are "contrary to natural law," Massingale put forward an argument that is anything but a service to gay and lesbian Americans.
Massingale told the reporter, "So, for example, I as a Catholic can say that I disagree profoundly with murder. However, I also still want to be in favor of the fair treatment of felons. So I think that regardless of one's stance on behavior and that is the discussion that's going on in church, indeed to enter into Congress' purview. I think that the fundamental thing that I want to emphasize is the need to respect the human dignity of people regardless of our moral judgments on behavior."
There are two possible explanations for Massingale's comparison of homosexual acts with murder: First, he simply had no interest in saying anything that would endanger his canonical status, specifically by rebuking the official teaching of the Catholic church that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. Or secondly, he simply meant what he said: he supports gay rights as a matter of human dignity, even though he profoundly disagrees with homosexual acts. In this case, to ponder whether or not Massingale is gay himself is beside the point: Like the LCWR nuns, including the openly lesbian ones, he simply wanted to make it known to a gathering of Capitol Hill reporters that he loves the sexual lepers too. Along with the murderers, that is.
Yet there is probably no other Catholic priest, also a Catholic religious, who has made a name for himself in the "Compassion For The Gays Department" than the Jesuit priest, Jim Martin, a writer at America Magazine. Not only has Martin written blog post after blog post expressing his unending well of compassion for gays, he even participated in columnist Dan Savage's widely publicized It Gets Better video campaign: a video campaign intended to support LGBT youth struggling with bullyingsome of the youngsters even contemplating suicide.
In the YouTube video of Fr. Martin for It Gets Better, the Jesuit priest can be seen for three straight minutes offering platitude after platitude about human dignity, even suggesting gay and lesbian teens seek out support communities.
Yet when I asked Fr. Martin how he would counsel a hypothetical gay teenager, who also happened to be a devout Catholic, and who no longer wanted to have the sexual inclinations that the Catechism of the Catholic church firmly teaches are "intrinsically disordered," Martin offered a reply that would simply delight every right-wing advocate of gay conversion therapy, inside and outside the Catholic church.
Martin wrote this about how he would counsel the hypothetical gay Catholic teenager in question: "Ah well, I would say this. The church teaches that all people, no matter who they are, are created in the image of God. So first I would encourage the person to remember his (or her) innate dignity as a human being, and as a beloved creation of God. Part of that includes accepting oneself as "wonderfully and fearfully made," as the psalmist says, in all one's complexity. That's the main stumbling block for many gays and lesbiansthinking of themselves as truly loved by God. Sometimes their families (and their churches) make it more difficult for them. As for the more difficult problems with sexuality. I would usually suggest that a person sees a professional counselor or psychologist."
How would a vulnerable gay or lesbian youth, who may have taken comfort in Fr. Martin's expressed compassion for their plight in the face of bullying, cope with the fact that the priest who claims to be so incredibly devoted to their human dignity in fact agrees with the bullies who bash them: namely, that to live life as a sexually-active gay person is "intrinsically disordered" and can be blunted with outside intervention? Human beings are built differently, some with thicker skin than others. But does the LGBT community, religious and secular, really want to blindly embrace expressions of sympathy and compassion from a Catholic priest who seeks to proactively win the trust of gay youth, through the use of mass media, only to tow the Catholic bishops' line that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered?
Given our nation's history with religious intolerance, especially the more recent history of the rise of the Religious Right thirty some years ago, it is understandable why so many liberal and moderate peopleof all faiths or no faithwould find succor in Catholic priests and Catholic religious who support equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans, even though such priests and nuns adhere to Catholic teachings that gays and lesbians are the equivalent of sexual lepers.
Yet all gay peopleand gay Catholics in particularought to face a basic question: Is trading one's sexual dignity and psychological well-being for a trite expression of compassion really a worthwhile trade? Put it this way: Does any gay or lesbian couple really want a sexually self-loathing priest or nun, with a big smile on his or her face, throwing rice at their weddings as they shout, "Congratulations! Now I'll pray that your sexual leprosy is healedbefore the honeymoon begins!"
The fact of the matter remains: The Catholic church teaches that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. The legal rights and sexual dignity of gays and lesbians will likely continue to be under attack from the pope and Catholic bishops. If a Catholic priest or a nun for whatever reasonpersonal beliefs, brimming self-hatred, a need for ecclesiastical status or ecclesiastical power trippingchooses to place primacy on their canonical standing over and above publicly rejecting the Catholic church's teaching that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered, it would behoove the broader gay community to demand far more truth in advertising from these priests and nuns who enter the public square supposedly on our behalf.
By not demanding that truth in advertising from these Catholic priests and nuns, the LGBT community could well be inviting a Trojan horse into the far broader global movement for gay and lesbian liberation: namely, a horse full of people who know full well that we've made progress in fostering compassion for LGBT people on a global scale, and who are strategically adapting their language to the new landscape, for no other genuine purpose than to urge us to squelch our sexual expressionand get others to urge the same.
Timothy Villareal is a Miami-based writer. He writes regularly at timothyvillareal.wordpress.com .