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KATHERINE VOLIN
Friday, November 24, 2006
If there’s one thing that the November meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops made clear last week, it’s that being gay and Catholic won’t be getting any easier anytime soon.
The meeting included discussion of a controversial document drafted by the bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, which examines church teachings and ways to implement them. Started in 2002, the document, titled “Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care,” addresses the ways in which clergymen should treat gay parishioners. Bishops overwhelmingly approved the document, which refers to gay sexual relationships as “disordered” and urges gay people not to announce their “homosexual inclinations” publicly.
For gay American Catholics, this most recent decision by the Conference, usually seen as more liberal on social issues than Rome, was a blow to their official position within the church, and once again, they’re left trying to come to grips with a rabidly anti-gay policy.
Gay men and lesbians who want to remain Catholic but would rather not attend a regular mass at an unsupportive parish always have the option of Dignity, a gay Catholic organization not sanctioned by the church.
“Sometimes going to a regular parish is settling for second best,” says Bob Miailovich, a former head of Dignity U.S.A. “One of the great questions is how can you still stay a Catholic? You make decisions in terms of what works for you and what speaks the truth to you. Depending on which parish you’re in, sometimes you can say more or say less. Sometimes in a battle, you have to make compromises.”
SCORES OF GAY Catholics choose to remain at their churches, despite the anti-gay pronouncements made by church officials. Several local parishes offer gay ministries, including Our Lady Queen of Peace in Arlington, Va., St. Matthew’s Cathedral in D.C. and St. Bernadette’s Parish in Severn, Md., widely recognized as a leader in gay ministries.
David Silva, who was born and raised Catholic, is a member of St. Matthew’s Cathedral’s gay ministry, titled “Always Our Children,” a reference to a 1997 pastoral care letter from bishops on how parents of gay men and lesbians should react to their child coming out.
The gay ministry at St. Matthew’s, consisting mostly of a discussion group, provided a way for Silva to meet more gay Catholics, but, facing dwindling numbers, the group has decided to attempt to expand its outreach. “Always Our Children” will hold a planning meeting titled “Catholic and Homosexual: Is there a place in the Church for me?” on Dec. 3 at the parish, located at 1725 Rhode Island Ave., NW.
“It’s to help expand it, to put an awareness out there in the community,” Silva says about the function of the meeting. “St. Matthew’s is not just this big pile of bricks on Rhode Island [Avenue]. We have a lot of communities in the church, and this is one of them. This is something the gay community can hopefully build on with more ideas.”
Miailovich, although not a frequent parishioner in recognized churches, has also been known to attend some of the more liberal parishes in town.
“I am very happy to go to mass at St. Matthew’s or Our Lady Queen of Peace,” Miailovich says. “I happen to prefer to go to mass with my Dignity community, because the sermons are more likely to address my kinds of issues. My existence is recognized more specifically.”
WHILE DIGNITY IS home for some gay Catholics, others, like Silva, still find it important to attend a Catholic church. This decision isn’t something Silva has treated lightly.
“Everything about my culture — my family’s Portuguese — revolves around the Catholic Church,” says Silva, 36.
He left the church in 2000 over several issues, including the treatment of gays, but returned this year.
“I felt like I was missing something, and I looked into other faiths,” Silva says. “It wasn’t working and I went back to church and I realized that’s what I was missing.”
One significant question for Catholics who remain active in the church’s gay ministries is how they reconcile their sexual orientation with the church’s teachings on the matter.
“I know what the church, the hierarchy, the people way up at the top are saying, but for myself it’s a personal issue with me and God,” Silva says about why he chooses to remain a practicing Catholic. “It has nothing to do with what the cardinal, the Pope, the bishops say.”
When he read about the bishops’ plan to vote on the gay ministry document, Silva was dismayed. But placing it in the context of other church teachings on 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.”
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