The Catholic Church has made no secret of the fact that they condemn anything that might humanize or grant dignity and rights to the GLBT community. And in fact the more progress that is made on gay rights, the more shill, ugly, and hurtful the Catholic Church becomes on this subject.
I cannot help but think that the day is fast approaching when the only people left sitting in the pews of their big beautiful churches will be those who welcome the Catholic Church's convenient religious cover that allows them to be bigots.
Does not the Church realize that GLBT people have mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, and extended family? The anti-gay ugliness that emanates from the rank and file of the Church wounds wide swaths of their congregations. Many walk away and those that remain cannot help but look to the Church's hierarchy with a lot less respect.
With the impending vote in the Minnesota state senate next week and the very real possibility that gay marriage will become legal there, I am reminded of the controversial anti-gay marriage DVDs Minnesota Catholic Bishops sent out to all their parishes in 2010. Could that decision have been a miscalculation that has caused festering wounds? Maybe, but I can guarantee one thing for sure, Catholics who are gay or who have friends or family who are gay certainly have not forgotten the pain those nasty DVDs caused. So it will be interesting to see how the Minnesota Catholic Church handles a victorious outcome for the pro-gay-marriage forces.
Hopefully they will do a better job than the Rhode Island Bishops did when Gay Marriage passed there making it the 10th state to enjoy a big win:
That was a brief honeymoon, Rhode Island. Just hours before becoming the 10th state to approve marriage equality, the slim, pocket-sized state — which also happens to be the nation’s most Catholic — received a stern warning from the Bishop of Providence.
In a seriously buzzkill message, Bishop Thomas Tobin issued a pastoral letter to his brothers and sisters in the Ocean State suggesting they might want to decline invitations once same-sex marriage becomes official in August. “It is important to affirm the teaching of the Church, based on God’s word, that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered,’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2357),” he writes, “and always sinful. And because ‘same-sex marriages’ are clearly contrary to God’s plan for the human family, and therefore objectively sinful, Catholics should examine their consciences very carefully before deciding whether or not to endorse same-sex relationships or attend same-sex ceremonies, realizing that to do so might harm their relationship with God and cause significant scandal to others.”
Well, if anybody would be an authority on significant scandal, I’d bet it’d be a Roman Catholic priest.Good going Bishop Thomas Tobin. You basically gave Rhode Island Catholics a choice: their gay child or the church.
Well I made my choice years ago and it was a no-brainer.
2 comments:
Years ago, the Mormon church was excommunicating gays. At BYU, students were encouraged to report gay students and the "reparative therapy" (read: abuse) these kids were forced to undergo is as shameful a part of the church's history as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, polygamy, or the barring of blacks from holding the priesthood. The parents would a)sweep the whole thing under the rug and sort of "tolerate" the gay child, b)kick the gay child to the curb for fear they would "corrupt" other family members--Utah has a disproportionately high number of homeless teens, most of them gay-- or c)choose their gay child over the church and leave the faith.
Today, gay members are still stigmatized, but as long as they pretend not to be gay, they can participate in church activities and even hold positions (except scoutmaster, of course). But where heterosexual singles are "allowed" to date, to bring their boy/girlfriends to church, etc., the gay member is not "allowed" to have a relationship--even one that doesn't involve sex--without being sanctioned by church leaders. The most open secret in the world is the Mormon financing, at the urging of church leaders, of Proposition H8.
It's been fun watching the dominoes fall and seeing church leaders with egg on their faces.
A couple months ago, Alan Osmond (yes, from "those" Osmonds) tried to stage a "pro-family rally" at the Utah State Capitol. Only about 100 people showed up to support Mr. Osmond, while over 300 showed up in rainbow t-shirts and carrying signs in support of gay friends and family. The church just might have to cave on this--LDS Inc. is hemorrhaging members, many of whom cite Prop H8 as the last straw in their apostate basket.
The leaders will probably fake some kind of "revelation" like they did back in 1978 and change their scriptures again. But for this ex-Mormon, it will be too little, too late.
Lynne! It is so good to hear from you again. I've missed your commentary on the Mormon church. What behemoths of hate and homophobia the Catholic and Mormon church have been and still are. The damage they have done to glbt children is unforgivable. I, for one wish I'd said good riddance a lot sooner than I did.
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