OSV STORY FOR APRIL 6

Gay first, Catholic later? The pressure is on

After two high-profile national 'gay Catholic' events, questions about how best to help homosexuals

By David Morrison

Efforts by gay and lesbian activists to challenge the Catholic Church's moral teachings on homosexuality took a higher profile last month, with one Catholic bishop calling for gay clergy to "come out" of the closet and another bishop celebrating a highly publicized Mass for gays.

On March 1, Bishop Matthew H. Clark of Rochester, N.Y., welcomed a crowd of some 1,300 "gays, lesbians, their families and friends" into his Cathedral of the Sacred Heart for a special Mass in their honor, and urged them to become more active in the life of his diocese.

Following the event, which some Catholics criticized for legitimizing the homosexual lifestyle, Bishop Clark said that in his 35 years of ordained ministry he "can't remember another [event] that touched my heart so deeply."

A week later, Bishop Clark joined Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton of Detroit and more than 600 others in a forum on "The Church Teaching/ Teaching the Church" sponsored by New Ways Ministry, a 20-year-old group founded by a priest and nun, which seeks to promote "understanding and acceptance" of gays in the Church.

For the last three years, the Vatican has been investigating the ministry of the founders of New Ways, Salvatorian Father Robert Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick, S.S.N.D., which some claim flouts Church teaching against homosexual acts.

The conference, held in Pittsburgh March 7-9, included workshops for lesbian and gay priests and nuns, and speeches alleging that the Church's teaching -- that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered" -- causes emotional and psychological damage to homosexuals.

Although the conference was held in his diocese, Bishop Donald W. Wuerl dismissed it, saying that there was no good reason for any Catholic to attend. He referred people instead to the Catechism's teaching on homosexuality.

Both the gay Mass and the New Ways conference were characterized by appeals for greater "pastoral" understanding from Church leaders and for more "listening" to the experience of gay people.

"Do we know their stories?" Bishop Clark asked in his homily at the Rochester Mass. "Do we know the challenges they face? Do we know the richness of their spirit?"

Bishop Gumbleton, who five years ago at a New Ways conference disclosed that his brother was gay, expanded the spirit of inclusion, urging that "with our Church every gay person, every lesbian person, every bisexual person or transgendered person will come out."

Saying that such a "coming out" would "truly change" the Church, he issued a special invitation to "bishops and priests within our Church" to do so.

Yet both events were remarkable for the fact that they defined the spirit and the challenges facing gay Catholics largely in terms of those Catholics who dispute the Church's teaching that homosexual acts are "contrary to natural law" and cannot be approved under any circumstances.

While the New Ways conference billed itself as an occasion for a "national dialogue on lesbian/gay issues and Catholicism," the program did not include anyone who advocated traditional Church understanding of the homosexually inclined person.

Neither event featured participation from Courage, the most visible and orthodox Catholic support ministry for homosexuals, which helps them live the chaste life called for by the Church.

This lack of any genuine two-sided discussion was highlighted again by media coverage of the two events.

Adopting the organizers' arguments that Church leaders do not listen to homosexually inclined people and has, even lately, ignored their needs, many media outlets reported Bishop Clark's Mass as a kind of landmark occasion -- a Catholic bishop celebrating Mass for homosexuals.

Yet members of Courage pointed out that, over the past eight years, several bishops, archbishops and even a cardinal have celebrated Masses for them. In fact, Mass, spiritual direction and prayer are the staples of the Catholic ministry offered by Courage.

Participants in the New Ways conference also rejected the Church's understanding that the origins of homosexual tendencies and behavior are not conclusively known.

Conference speakers such as Dr. Richard Isay, a professor of psychiatry at Cornell University and a self-described gay activist, seemed agreed that homosexuality is determined by a person's genetics.

Isay told the New Ways crowd that homosexuals need to be helped to "come out" or "homosexualize" themselves -- preferably in adolescence. Homosexu-alization, Isay explained, is the process whereby persons with homosexual inclinations accept their condition as inevitable, adopt a gay identity and begin to participate in sexual activity.

People with a homosexual inclination, Isay continued, particularly men, must abandon any desire for a "conventional" family life and must recognize any such desires as evidence of their "oppression" by bigoted social expectations.

Neither Isay nor any other speaker at the conference discussed the findings of many prominent researchers, who have raised doubts about the biological "roots" of homosexuality, and instead look to issues in personal development.

Nor did they address the Church's more noncomittal stance, as expressed in the Catechism -- namely, that homosexuality's "psychological genesis remains largely unexplained" (no. 2357).

In limiting the "dialogue" to only those who reject the Church's teaching, the conference also neglected the numbers of homosexually inclined men who, based in Catholic theology and with adequate support, manage to live joyful lives as husbands and fathers.

Isay's comments also appeared to be less than helpful pastorally, as one participant was overheard worrying whether, in Isay's view, his ongoing commitment to his wife and children made him "sick" or "self-oppressed."

Mercy Sister Margaret Farley, a professor of Christian ethics at Yale University, distanced herself somewhat from the more deterministic conclusions of Isay's comments. But she did not counter with any endorsement of the Church's teachings on sexual morality.

Instead, Sister Farley proposed "ethical norms" for sexually active relationships, while ignoring the objective morality of sexual acts, which, as understood by the Church, requires that sex only occur within the context of marriage.

In Sister Farley's view, the context of sexual expression, rather than Scripture or Tradition, should form the measure of whether a sexual act is "ethical."

Sexual acts in relationships based on such factors as equality, consent of the partners, commitment and "fruitfulness" (which she defined in ways much removed from procreative fecundity) are ethically acceptable -- others are not.

With regard to their trappings and participants, both the Rochester Mass and the Pittsburgh conference appeared to be Catholic. However, homosexual Catholics such as those in Courage, who are trying to live according to the Church's teaching, saw the events as less than helpful and even as a betrayal.

While recognizing that, for many, their homosexual condition is a "trial" that they "do not choose," Church teaching calls homosexual persons to chastity, and says that through "self-mastery," prayer, the sacraments and grace, they "can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection."

The number of Catholic men and women in the United States who are either homosexually inclined or have a homosexually inclined family member ranges, conservatively, in the hundreds of thousands.

According to the organizers of Courage and others, many of these people do not desire, necessarily, to have their sexual conduct "accepted" by the Church.

Rather, these men and women have expressed a strong desire to have the Church more fully encourage them as Catholics. It is this identity, as Catholics, rather than one based on sexual inclination, which they want the Church to encourage and support.

Morrison is a writer and editor for the Population Research Institute in Arlington, Va.

Copyright Our Sunday Visitor, 1997; from the 4-6-97 edition

HEADLINES FOR APRIL 6

Speaking the truth with compassion (editorial)

Reaching the 'whatever Catholics'

The conversion of the Jews

The apostles' catechism

Fearfully made

A vocation's checkmate

Does the Church surrender unto Caesar too much?