Viewpoint Gathering needed for gays, bishops
By CHUCK COLBERT
When the Rev. Jerry Falwell has
dinner next month with 200 gay people, the table talk will be anti-gay rhetoric
and violence.
This unusual gathering resulted from the efforts of the Rev. Mel
White, a former ghostwriter for Falwell and author of Stranger at the Gate:
To Be Gay and Christian in America. White asked Falwell: Can we talk?
Mel sincerely wants to lower the rhetoric on both sides.
That is exactly what we want, Falwell told the Lynchburg, Va., News
& Advance.
No doubt about it: Anti-gay rhetoric and violence abound. The
murders of Billy Jack Gaither (Alabama) and Matthew Shepard (Wyoming) and that
of Pfc. Barry Winchell (Fort Campbell, Ky.) exemplify an increasingly hostile
climate.
This dinner discussion -- a hopeful sign on the political and
spiritual landscape -- holds potential for stemming a shameful national trend:
Ugly, inflammatory rhetoric and its companion, violent actions and in some
cases homicide against people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered,
or even perceived to be so.
At a recent academic forum at Northeastern University, Fr. Robert
Nugent, the priest whom the Vatican ordered to cease a 28-year gay-affirming
ministry, had plenty to say about violence.
One of my road-show sound bites, Nugent told 400
people, was, Homophobia is manifested from silence to
violence.
Silence is a kind of violence, he said. We
cant restrict violence just to physical violence. Emotional and
psychological violence is also an issue.
For gay Roman Catholics like me, the churchs violent
language is four words: intrinsically evil, used to describe
homosexual orientation and objective disorder, used to describe
homosexual acts.
In an apparent effort to impose a hard-line dogma of chastity --
mandatory, life-long celibacy for gays -- this contemptible language prevails
in the 1994 version of the Catechism and other texts, including a
revision to the U.S. bishops essentially gay-positive 1997 pastoral
letter, Always Our Children.
Most recently, the Vatican Catholics have insisted that Nugent and
his ministerial partner, Sr. Jeannine Gramick, sign a written profession
of faith containing words like intrinsically evil,
depraved, and intrinsically disordered.
Such language, especially in a pastoral setting, is at best arcane
and irrelevant. At worst its counter-productive, insulting, and
enraging.
One priest told me: Its spiritual abuse.
Every time I hear those ugly words assault my ears, I feel
battered.
The truth is, though, I know that I am neither evil nor disordered
per se in my fundamental sexual orientation and expression. Lesbians tell me
the same thing about the experience of their sexual orientation and expression.
More of us are mustering the courage to speak. We only wish that
church officials would take us seriously and listen to our stories that must
inform any honest teaching about human sexuality.
During his recent talk, Nugent quoted from a critique of
Always Our Children, addressed primarily to Catholic parents of gay
sons and daughters. That critique, written by Ed Ingebretsen, a Jesuit priest
and tenured English professor at Georgetown University, focuses on a
contradiction in teaching on homosexuality -- that curiously Catholic tension
of affirming Gods love revealed in gay people, while simultaneously
asserting a thoroughly shaming, guilt- and (in some cases) violence-producing
doctrine of vile, disordered homosexual expression.
But we do not love those whom we do not touch. Nor do we
care for those to whom we will not listen, regardless of what our words
declare. To espouse love for a person while repudiating that person in subtle
and not so subtle ways is the worst kind of emotional anorexia, said
Nugent, quoting Ingebretsen.
Surely, homophobia manifested among the faithful -- from silence
to violence, with varying degrees of psychological and spiritual abuse and
emotional anorexia in between -- cannot be denied.
Dont you think that White and Falwell will demonstrate true
Christian courage if they follow through on their agreement to discuss the tone
and tenor of public discourse on homosexuality?
I do. Thats why I am asking my regular dinner companion, a
conservative Catholic activist, to request a similar gathering with our
spiritual leader, Cardinal Bernard Law.
And I urge other gay Catholics nationwide to request up-close time
with their local bishops.
Such a dinner gathering of faithful lesbian and gay Catholics, our
families and friends and the cardinal here in the archdiocese of Boston is not
only long overdue, but also potentially healing. What a grace-filled
opportunity for all to listen and learn, safely and respectfully.
Such an up-close and personal ministerial initiative demonstrates
real gospel values. After all, when Our Lord touched and healed people with his
message of compassion and love, didnt he teach us most effectively by
example?
Chuck Colbert, who serves on the board of the National Lesbian
and Gay Journalists Association, is a graduate student at the Weston Jesuit
School of Theology.
National Catholic Reporter, October 1,
1999
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