Nov 24, 2006  |  By: KATHERINE VOLIN  | COMMENTS     

sex, it didn’t seem so harmful, he said.

“They tell straight people not to have sex … without getting married,” Silva says. Discussing the matter is a step in the advancement of gay rights within the church, he says. “It’s a start, it’s a sort of waking up.”

THAT WAKING UP process has created a series of mixed messages from various bodies of the church on local, national and international levels.

“It’s OK to baptize the children of gay parents as long as they promise to raise the children as Catholic,” Miailovich says. “Why it needs to be specially said for gay parents makes you wonder. They’ll baptize your children, but they won’t bless the union or the partnership that are the parents of those children. That conflict is what creates tension. If any individual can be active in one of the officially recognized ministries … you run into a barrier and you say, do I speak out or do I hold my tongue and put up with it?”

For Silva, being in the gay ministry is a way of speaking out.

“I wanted to meet more gay Catholics, but also I know the whole stance with the church and gay [issues],” Silva says about his initial decision to join the gay ministry. “But if everyone is always quiet, nothing ever gets done.”

Miailovich appears to prefer a more direct approach. He made his way to the Baltimore hotel where the bishops’ conference was being held and distributed fliers protesting the gay ministry document, an endeavor met with, he says, “mixed success.”

“I wound up getting us escorted out of the hotel as an unwelcome guest,” Miailovich says.

Despite the criticisms from gay and straight Catholics, Silva still adheres to his faith.

“I hear a lot of the negative stuff, the negative things you read in the paper, the negative things you hear in the media about the church,” Silva says, “but there’s a lot of positive things, also.”

The Catholic Church does not adhere to a democratic model of governing, but Silva remains optimistic that small groups can help foster change.

“It needs some young blood in there and new ideas and maybe a little controversy,” Silva says. “It’s a start. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”