Related News Coverage of the
New Ways Symposium, March 8-10, 2002

Rome's 'no' doesn't stop Mass at New Ways
conference
National Catholic Reporter, March 22, 2002
By Chuck Colbert, Louisville, Ky.

In the 25 years since its founding, New Ways Ministry has never been informed by any church officials that it was under investigation or sanction by the church. So its endorsers greeted with astonishment and anger the news that a Vatican official had requested the local bishop here to forbid the celebration of the Eucharist during the group's fifth national symposium, whose theme was, "Out of Silence God Has Called Us."

New Ways Ministry describes itself as a national Catholic ministry of justice, dialogue and reconciliation for lesbian and gay Catholics and the wider church community. But according to Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, secretary of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, New Ways "does not promote the authentic teaching of the Catholic church."

So Bertone wrote to Louisville's Archbishop Thomas Kelly directing him to forbid eucharistic celebrations during the March 8-10 gathering. "Because of the confusion and scandal which will inevitably arise from this event, this congregation asks your excellency to inform organizers of the symposium that they do not have permission to celebrate the Eucharist as part of their conference," Bertone wrote.

New Ways Ministry leaders, after conferring with canon lawyers, decided to celebrate the Eucharist at the conference with retired Bishop Leroy Matthiesen of Amarillo, Texas, presiding.

"I was not given any instructions from the Vatican or Archbishop Kelly not to do the Mass," Matthiesen said. "The example of Jesus was not to exclude but to include." He added that presiding "seemed such a natural thing to do."

Kelly, who did not attend the symposium, encouraged participants to attend Mass at the Cathedral of the Assumption, located a few blocks from Galt House, the hotel where the conference was held.

After consulting with canon lawyers, New Ways leaders determined that, in accord with Lumen Gentium, a Second Vatican Council document, they did not need permission to celebrate the Eucharist. "The local ordinary [bishop], not the Vatican, is the regulator of the Eucharist in a particular diocese," the group said in a news release.

The congregation "was trying to deny permission" when such "permission was not needed," explained the organization's executive director Francis DeBernardo.

A number of symposium endorsers and participants expressed anger that the Eucharist was used as a "weapon" or "reward," DeBernardo said. He explained, however, that intercessory prayers would be offered during the Mass for church unity. DeBernardo said that it was the organization's hope that all church members, "specifically gay and lesbian Catholics, will always feel welcome at the table of Jesus."

More than 500 persons attended the Mass at the symposium, and most received Communion.

It did not go unnoticed that Matthiesen wore a rainbow-colored alb, or that rainbow-colored banners graced the background of the conference stage. Rainbow colors are a symbol of the gay and lesbian community and gay pride.

"I experienced a feeling of unity and solidarity," said Fr. Richard P. Lewandowski, pastor of St. Camillus de Lellis Parish, Fitchburg, Mass., and campus minister at nearby Fitchburg College.

Hailing from the Worcester, Mass., Lewandowski said he has been deeply affected by the continuing saga of clerical sexual misconduct in the Boston archdiocese.

The situation in Boston was indeed on the minds of symposium participants, with many expressing sadness and astonishment as the ever-expanding scandal of clerical sexual abuse of children spreads outside the New England region to other parts of the country.

"Something has to be done," Lewandowski said. So throughout the symposium, he asked dozens, if not hundreds, of attendees to sign two pledges of "Catholic solidarity."

One is for "our solidarity, prayers and support to the priests and people of Boston." The other solidarity poster pledged similar prayer and support to all "gay bishops and priests" during this "defining moment for the universal church," he said.

Like Lewandowski, many of the symposium's participants were priests. Some of them are gay. One symposium focus session was on the issue of gay men in the priesthood and religious life, a timely topic, given the recent statement of Vatican spokesman Joaquín Navarro-Valls on the ordination of gays. Navarro-Valls told The New York Times that "people with homosexual inclinations just cannot be ordained. That does not imply a final judgment of people with homosexuality. But you cannot be in this field."

Nevertheless, Franciscan Fr. Ralph Parthie oversaw two workshops sessions in which priests, gay and non-gay alike, discussed everything from "how to deal with a homophobic bishop," to coming out of the closet to one's self, to fellow priests, families and friends and even parishioners. Parthie has ministered to and with gay priests and religious for 20 years.

A similar focus session dealt with lesbian nuns and their struggle to "integrate their lesbian members more fully." The focus of the New Ways conference was to address gay and lesbian ministry in the church, with the aim of developing wide-ranging programs and policies of interest to lesbian and gay Catholic and their families.

Another highlight of the symposium was New Ways' issuing a 12-point strategic plan called "Lesbian and Gay Ministry in the Catholic Church: A Vision for the Future," which can be found at www.NewWaysMinistry.org.

"Gay and lesbian ministry has grown in the church," said DeBernardo. "It can no longer be a marginalized concern."

In releasing the strategic plan, DeBernardo said that New Ways would undergo a yearlong process of seeking endorsements from Catholic organizations and individuals.

The purpose is to demonstrate a sensus fidelium or "sense of the faithful," he said. "We hope to show church leaders that the Catholic people want their church to be a more welcoming place for its gay and lesbian members."

The schedule of workshop sessions covered a substantial range of topics. Through plenary sessions and workshops, for example, the symposia organizers targeted teachers and principals, campus and youth ministers, seminary leaders and parish workers.

Topics of discussion concerned parish-based programs that welcome gay people, including church employment policies that protect lesbians and gay men who are public about their sexual orientations. Another workshop explored the development of a Catholic safe-schools program. Yet another discussion called for a theological re-visioning of the church's condemnation of same-sex marriage.

A major constituency at the symposium was Catholic parents with gay and lesbian children. Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, who has become an increasingly visible and outspoken advocate for compassionate pastoral ministry with gays, addressed parents' concerns.

During a Catholic pre-symposium conference organized by New Ways associate director Linda McCullough, Gumbleton acknowledged that the "church has a long way to go." Gumbleton also addressed what for many Catholic parents are the four most difficult words to understand in Catholic church teaching about their sons' and daughters' homosexuality and its same-sex expression -- "objective disorder" and "intrinsic evil." With regard to such terminology, which hints at gay people's moral dysfunction, Gumbleton said those words are, "such an extreme thing to say about anyone."

Gumbleton also made a case for primacy of conscience in matters of sexual morality. "We don't put people out of the church for following their conscience," Gumbleton said in reference to a recent acknowledgement by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at Georgetown University that he disagrees with church teaching on the death penalty. "No one is suggesting that he shouldn't receive holy Communion," Gumbleton said.

Eugene Kennedy, a syndicated columnist, psychology professor emeritus at Loyola University-Chicago and author of The Unhealed Wound: The Church and Human Sexuality, spoke poetically, mythically and metaphorically about the church's difficulty with human sexuality. By using the Arthurian myth of the Grail King, Kennedy explained the church's discomfort with sexuality in terms of an "unhealed wound." According to the myth, King Anfortas was "wounded in a joust, by a poisoned spear through his testicles, so severely he could not be healed."

Unhealed people who are sexually wounded, Kennedy said, abuse and victimize others. "The sexual abuse of children is the same pattern the church uses in relation to its own people," he said.

Kennedy also took aim at the institutional church. "Church as hierarchy has collapsed," he said, comparing the nationwide clerical sexual abuse of children to the collapse of World Trade Center towers.

NCR's Rome correspondent John L. Allen Jr., spoke about the Vatican and homosexuality in a talk titled, "From Stonewall to Stonewalling."

Dominican Fr. Bruce Williams, a moral theology professor at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome, reflected on the pastoral implications of the case of Sr. Jeannine Gramick and Fr. Robert Nugent, who were silenced by the Vatican and prohibited in 1999 from pastoral ministry with gay and lesbian Catholics. Gramick and Nugent are the founders of New Ways Ministry. Williams served as their theological adviser during the Vatican investigation of their ministry and writings.

"For any pastoral ministry worthy of the name, honest conversation is the fundamental requisite," Williams said. "The politics of pastoral ministry," he said, "seems clear. We must do all we can to promote honest conversation in the church about matters of concern to lesbian and gay members, as well as to bring about the kind of free and open church climate in which that conversation takes place."

A final plenary session featured Gregory Baum, religious studies professor emeritus at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Baum, a key figure in the Second Vatican Council, focused on homosexual love and the church's natural law tradition.

He said, "the entire teaching of sexuality must be reviewed" before the church undertakes any serious consideration of homosexual love and marriage or "holy unions" for gay couples.

"Rethinking the role of sexuality and the role of sex in the context of marriage" is key, Baum said.

Freelance journalist Chuck Colbert writes from Cambridge, Mass.

Vatican denounces conference on gays;
Controversial Louisville forum will include Mass
The Courier-Journal: March 8, 2000 (Louisville, Kentucky)
By Peter Smith psmith@courier-journal.com

A national conference promoting the acceptance of gays and lesbians in the Catholic Church that begins today in Louisville has drawn a denunciation from the Vatican.

Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, secretary of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is responsible for promoting and defending Catholic doctrine and morals, has gone as far as forbidding any Masses to be held at the conference.

But the conference sponsor plans to celebrate Mass tomorrow, contending that it is permissible under church law.

New Ways Ministry, the sponsor of the conference at the Galt House, ''does not promote the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church,'' which teaches that sex outside of marriage is sinful, Bertone wrote to Archbishop Thomas Kelly, head of the Louisville archdiocese.

''Because of the confusion and scandal which will inevitably arise from this event,'' Bertone asked Kelly to tell participants they ''do not have permission to celebrate the Eucharist as part of their conference.''

Kelly relayed Bertone's comments in a letter to New Ways Ministry, but he also invited conference participants to attend regularly scheduled Masses at the Cathedral of the Assumption, a few blocks from the Galt House.

But Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways, said Mass would be celebrated by Bishop Leroy Matthiesen, a bishop emeritus from Amarillo, Texas. DeBernardo said the organization checked with canon lawyers and determined that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith cannot forbid such a Mass, and that Archbishop Kelly himself did not ban it.

DeBernardo said the Mass would not be a protest but would emphasize prayer for the unity of the church.

''There's a sense of energy that people are able to claim their rights as Catholics, and to do so peacefully without anger and without malice,'' he said.

In addition to Matthiesen, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of the Archdiocese of Detroit and several scholars and authors will speak to the gathering of 500 people. Organizers plan to issue a 12-point call for more dialogue and education on homosexuality in all aspects of the church.

New ways Ministry -- a private group founded 25 years ago -- holds national conferences every five years. It has been indirectly involved in other conflicts with the Vatican.

In 1999, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ordered the group's founders -- the Rev. Robert Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick -- to end their work with gays and lesbians because they refused to condemn homosexuality as intrinsically evil.

DeBernardo disputed Bertone's statement about New Ways' teaching as conflicting with that of the church. That's ''a rumor that has been around for 25 years,'' DeBernardo said.

New Ways conforms to teachings by the Vatican, bishops and the catechism, DeBernardo said. Co-founders Gramick and Nugent were censured, but they have not been affiliated with New Ways since 1984, he said, and the organization has never been under church sanction. ''No church official has ever contacted New Ways Ministry to see if what we're doing is or is not in line with church teaching,'' he said.

Kelly will not attend the conference, and he is neither encouraging nor discouraging local Catholics to attend. In a written statement, the archdiocese said it is not promoting, sponsoring or supporting the
conference. It said Maryland-based New Ways scheduled the conference without consulting it. Kelly said he supported the Vatican directive on the Mass at the convention ''as coming here with Papal authority, and I had hoped for its acceptance.'' ''I think that New Ways Ministry is trying to do good work, but it has to do that work within the context of the Church's teaching,'' he said in the statement. ''That is not always easily achieved.''

The official catechism of the Catholic Church says homosexual acts are ''contrary to the natural law'' and that ''under no circumstances can they be approved.'' It does call for acceptance of people with a homosexual orientation. ''The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible,'' the catechism says. ''This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives.''

One of the conference speakers -- Helen Deines, interim director of Spalding University's School of Social Work -- said she was disappointed with the Vatican's stance on the Mass. ''I can't believe (in) using the Eucharist as a weapon,'' said Deines, who will lead a workshop on promoting gay acceptance in parishes. ''That would be a very strange thing to do, particularly at an event endorsed by so many religious communities (and) where bishops are speaking.''

''Gay and lesbian Catholics are everywhere and are making themselves known, and so every corner of the church needs to respond,'' DeBernardo said.

The conference brochure lists dozens of organizations throughout the country endorsing the event. Locally, they include the social responsibility committee of the Church of the Epiphany in Louisville,
the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Ky., and the Denver-based Sisters of Loretto, who have strong Kentucky ties. Gramick joined the Lorettos last year, transferring from the School Sisters of Notre Dame.

DeBernardo said organizers would issue a 12-point strategy plan at the conference's conclusion on Sunday. While not revealing specifics, DeBernardo said the plan would call for more education and dialogue
on the subject, involving bishops, educators, lay persons and others.

DeBernardo said that when his organization formed in 1977, there was much opposition to gay and lesbian ministries in the Catholic Church. ''Homosexuality was not addressed in the church because not much was known about it,'' he said. ''There's a lot known about homosexuality today.'' He said many Catholic priests, teachers and others
''want to be welcoming of gay and lesbian people but are unaware of the best approaches.''

A number of Catholic churches across the country have adopted programs to reach out to gays and lesbians. At the Cathedral of the Assumption, the Rev. Bill Fichteman said that while the parish does not have a specific ministry to homosexuals, they are welcome to participate in all activities.

''Basically, we want gay and lesbian Catholics to know they are welcome at the cathedral,'' he said. ''It's a welcome and an invitation to be incorporated into the community like anybody else.'' He said that people's personal lives and relationships are important but that the church needs to deal with them ''pastorally.'' ''I doubt there are too many people that come to our cathedral church that are absolutely perfect in adhering to church teaching,'' he said. ''If we made that a criterion for membership, we would have a pretty empty church.''

In a statement, Kelly said: ''I have been very pleased with the mature developments that have occurred in our ministry to the homosexual community. Members of the homosexual community have found acceptance and support in our parishes. The church's teaching about homosexual activity remains clear, but it is often difficult to accept. As we struggle to achieve this acceptance, the support of our parishes is essential.''

Deines said she has been working to promote acceptance of gays and lesbians in churches since the AIDS crisis erupted in the early 1980s. ''Doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals would say these people are evil, they got what they deserved,'' she said. She and a colleague decided ''we've got to be working with faith communities.''

In her talk, Deines hopes to draw on her experiences in helping other parishes address homosexuality. Often, she admits, ''I was really offensive'' in talking to church groups, being insensitive to people with
different views on sexuality. ''I'm hoping to use some of the things we did wrong'' in helping other parishes address the issue, she
said.
Top

500 urge Catholics to accept gays
Participants resist Vatican, take communion
By Peter Smith psmith@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal: March 10, 2000 (Louisville, Kentucky)


Retired Bishop Leroy Matthiesen conducted a Mass
yesterday. Bob Comiskey of Washington, D.C., assisted.
Photo by Sam Upshaw, Jr.

With a backdrop of rainbow-colored banners and the accompaniment of a folk guitar band, some 500 advocates for gay Catholics clapped their hands and sang a salute to ''voices that challenge.''

And in a Galt House ballroom-turned-sanctuary, they mounted a challenge yesterday to the highest reaches of their church's authority, defying a Vatican effort to prohibit them from taking communion during a three-day national conference on Catholicism and homosexuality.

Conference sponsor New Ways Ministry, which advocates greater acceptance of gays and lesbians in the Catholic Church, decided to go forward with the Mass after concluding it was permissible under church law.

With a retired Texas bishop presiding, participants sang songs with titles like ''All Are Welcome'' and read Scriptures about God blessing seemingly powerless people. They shared bread and wine while seated at their small, round tables.

''We're voices that challenge, and we are the voice of God,'' Elsie Miranda of Coral Gables, Fla., said after the Mass. ''It's so important not to be silenced.''

Miranda, a conference speaker and a lesbian who has taught theology and worked in ministries for homosexual people, said Vatican efforts to take the service ''hostage'' made it ''that much more powerful and meaningful'' that the Mass took place.

While the Mass was not designed as a protest, controversy arose when the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- which defends Catholic teaching and morals -- got wind of the conference.

In a letter to Louisville Archbishop Thomas Kelly, congregation secretary Tarcisio Bertone said that New Ways Ministry ''does not promote the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church'' and that the conference would spread ''confusion and scandal.''

Bertone asked Kelly to tell New Ways it could not have Mass. Kelly relayed the message and suggested conference participants go to a regularly scheduled Mass at the nearby Cathedral of the Assumption instead.

Kelly, who has a doctorate in church law, said he interpreted Bertone's message as a ban carrying the weight of papal authority.

But New Ways organizers said they consulted other church lawyers who said the congregation did not have the authority to stop the Mass and that Kelly himself did not ban it.

Participants at the conference enthusiastically applauded the decision to hold the Mass.

''We are the body of Christ,'' said Gene Corpuz, president of the Honolulu chapter of Dignity, an advocacy group for gay Catholics. ''To deny people the sacrament because of who they are and what they believe in is definitely not what Jesus would do.''

Retired Bishop Leroy Matthiesen of Amarillo, Texas, agreed to preside.

''The most important thing to me was I was not given any instructions'' from the Vatican or Archbishop Kelly not to do the Mass, he said.

Presiding ''seemed such a natural thing to do,'' he said. ''The example of Jesus was not to exclude but to include.''

Matthiesen said he did not expect to face any disciplinary action as a result of presiding over the Mass. He said he's used to controversy -- recalling that some constituents called him a communist for helping lead the American bishops' call for a nuclear freeze in the early 1980s.

Kelly has given no indication he would pursue any disciplinary action, according to his spokeswoman, Cecelia Price.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality is sinful and that the only acceptable sexual activity is between married couples with the possibility of having children.

It also teaches that gays and lesbians should be loved, accepted in church and protected from discrimination.

However, New Ways has run into controversy. Its founders, Sister Jeannine Gramick and the Rev. Robert Nugent, were silenced by the Vatican in 1999, accused of failing to teach church doctrine that homosexual acts are wrong.

While no conference speakers defied church teaching at forums attended by a reporter, the emphasis was entirely on those teachings calling for acceptance of gays and lesbians.

Bertone's efforts to bar the Mass were not the only intervention from Rome. New Ways Executive Director Francis DeBernardo said another Vatican office contacted the superiors of four members of religious orders who are on the conference program, asking them to make sure the speakers do not contradict church teaching.

The conference concludes today.
Top

Catholics at Symposium on Gay Issues Celebrate Mass Over Vatican Opposition
By Mark F. Barnett, Associated Press Writer
Tampa Bay Tribune, March 9, 2002

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Catholics attending a conference examining issues of faith and homosexuality celebrated Mass on Saturday over the objections of the Vatican. At least 550 people attended the Mass during the New Ways Ministry's fifth national symposium, "Out of Silence God Has Called Us: Lesbian/Gay Issues and the Vatican II Church."

The group discusses issues like accepting homosexuals in the church, what the Bible says about sexuality, and same-sex marriages.
Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, a representative of the Vatican, wrote a
letter to Archbishop Thomas Kelly of Louisville asking that the archbishop forbid the celebrating of the Eucharist by participants in the symposium.

Retired Bishop Leroy Matthiesen led the liturgy."They have the right to be parishioners and not to be condemned," Matthiesen said. "There needs to be more openness in the church." Matthiesen, the retired bishop of Amarillo, Texas, said he does not make judgments about the participants in the conference.

"I'm here to celebrate the Eucharist. This doesn't imply judgment," he
said. With clasped hands and bowed heads, the participants joined in the modern liturgy as the elements of bread and wine were brought to them after a blessing by Matthiesen.

New Ways Ministry was founded in 1977 by Sister Jeannine Gramick and the Rev. Robert Nugent as a nonprofit group devoted to gay and lesbian concerns in the Catholic faith. Frank DeBernardo, executive director for New Ways, said most participants reacted to the decision to celebrate Mass in one of two ways. "They were excited or blasé. For some it was like water off of their backs," DeBernardo said.

Joseph and Mary Byers, of Broomall, Pa., said the ministry helped them
learn about homosexuality. The couple have three gay sons, and said the ministry was trying to let everyone worship freely. "They were not out to defy anyone," Mary Byers said. "This is a ministry of love and enlightenment."

Please note: a .pdf version of the Symposium's brochure is available by clicking here.