Catholic Church Can Overcome
Fear of GLBT People
By Michael J. Bayly
Star Tribune, 12/18/2004

In response to an act of vandalism at the Cathedral of St. Paul last month, church officials have declared that an "anti-gay exorcism" involving the "ritualistic sprinkling of oil and salt" was the action of a "deluded" individual.

Yet for many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) Catholics, it is difficult to separate such delusional anti-gay behavior from the increasingly anti-gay rhetoric of the Catholic Church -- rhetoric that is so contrary to the lives of GLBT Catholics that it seems equally delusional.

When the church hierarchy labels GLBT people's longing for relational intimacy as "intrinsically evil" and "objectively disordered," it gives subtle permission for anti-gay behavior. If such behavior on the part of an individual is going to be denounced by the church as "misguided" and "deluded," then so too should the church's language and theology that fuel and justify it.

The hierarchy needs to recognize the direct connection between its own anti-gay language and how the internalization of this language leads to anti-gay behavior.

Some within the hierarchy have made the connection. Thomas Gumbleton, bishop of Detroit, has described the church's language concerning homosexuality as "cruel" and "unjustified." He goes on to advise: "I would never expect a parent to say [such words] to his or her child."

As a gay Catholic man, I respectfully challenge the leadership within the church to prayerfully reflect upon Bishop Gumbleton's words, as well as those of Dr. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury. Williams recently declared to the world's Anglican churches, "Any words that could make it easier for someone to attack or abuse a homosexual person are words of which we must repent."

GLBT Catholics and their families who know and declare that their lives and relationships are a gift from God are accused of wanting to "change the church." Fueling this accusation is the erroneous belief that the Catholic Church is somehow unchanged and unchangeable, somehow incapable of growing and developing. If this were the case then not only would the Catholic Church still be teaching that the sun revolves around the earth, but it would also be ambiguous on the moral issue of slavery and hostile to the idea of democracy.

Catholics open to the development of church teaching have also been accused of basing their morality on cultural trends. Such suspicion of culture denies the reality that it is through a range of relational contexts that the church as the people of God has always experienced God's transforming presence.

For example, in the past women were judged to be incapable of many of the things men could do. That view has been nearly erased due to the dramatic emergence and involvement of women in church and society.

Those of us -- gay and straight -- within the Catholic Church who embrace a theology of sexuality that is reality-based and scientifically supported, understand our efforts as revealing God's love in the lives and relationships of all people -- gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people included. We're doing what our brother Jesus did -- making visible the reign of God already in our midst but so often hidden by oppressive structures and by ignorance and fear.

History shows that the overcoming of such fear and ignorance takes time. Nevertheless, with a growing number of Catholics, I look forward to the day when the church's teaching on sexuality joyously proclaims God's presence in the lives and relationships of GLBT people, as it should for all.

Michael Bayly, Minneapolis, is the coordinator of the Twin Cities-based grass-roots, independent coalition Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (www.mtn.org/cpcsm).

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Catholic Church: It's time to re-evaluate
our views on human sexuality
by Michael J. Bayly
St. Paul Pioneer Press, 8/12/03

One could choose to dismiss the July 19 letter from Catholic Parents Online vice president Phyllis Plum as a comical rant. Has she, for instance, inspected every long-term committed gay relationship in order to declare that each and every one is also "open"? When Plum declares, "Parents continue your watch. Our work is worthy," one visualizes a whispering cartoon spy disappearing down a darkened alley — no doubt on the trail of another gay couple and their "committed (but open)" relationship.

Yet there is a decidedly disturbing aspect to Plum's rhetoric. Hers is the voice of fanaticism and intolerance, the mindset that, according to Nigerian writer and human rights activist Wole Soyinka, "feeds on a compulsion to destroy other beings who do not share (one's) beliefs."

In Plum's view, gay people must be opposed as they are the bearers of immorality and thus threaten civilization. In a recent open letter to Archbishop Harry Flynn, the Suspend Abortion Compact, another reactionary Catholic group with ties to CPO, expressed similar sentiments when it railed against "the deadly sodomic attack" on the Catholic church by the "orchestrated diabolical campaign" of "forces of abominable and terminal evil" manifested by "assorted deviants and perverts."

This is the language of war, the mindset of intolerance that, according to Soyinka, "destroys the creative or adventurous of any community." Those who are consumed by such thinking, he notes, seem "permanently in the dark ages, in the darkest ages of superstition." The minds of such people are set "not on questions, but on the mantra, 'I am right, you are wrong.' " When it comes to issues of human sexuality, members of CPO and, unfortunately, much of the leadership of the Catholic church, base their "right" understanding on a worldview no longer relevant in light of contemporary findings in the human sciences. Accordingly, just as church teaching has changed on issues such as cosmology, the procreative process, slavery, usury, democracy and capital punishment, so too must the church re-evaluate its understanding of human sexuality.

At the grass-roots level — the level of church as people of God — such re-evaluation is well under way. Yet until the church as an institution joins the spirit-led journey of re-evaluation and renewal, groups such as CPO will continue to declare themselves guardians of the "Absolute Truth."

Such absolutists operate from a model that sees truths handed down from on high — complete and unchangeable. Yet as Pope John XXIII reminded us, "We are not on Earth to guard a museum but to cultivate a flowering garden of life." Such a statement implies that revelation filters upwards through human life and experience, that revelation is ongoing. It's a concept that is both wondrous and unsettling. Yet for fundamentalists and absolutists, it is a concept that is extremely threatening. Embracing the reality of ongoing revelation propels us out of our comfortable ghettos of formulated answers and into compassionate, and at times challenging, engagement with the world.

It is through such engagement that we are called to discern and incarnate the reign of God in every aspect of life.

Therefore as Catholics, as people of faith and good will, as spirit-filled beings in a universe infused with the power of the sacred, we must reject any theology that reduces God to a series of doctrinal formulas and scriptural verses. Accordingly, we must reject the narrow theology of CPO that denies and obstructs the Spirit of God alive and afoot within the vast and varied arena of human relationships.
Bayly (e-mail: hangingrock@hotmail.com), of Minneapolis, is the co-president of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities, a grass-roots coalition dedicated to creating just and safe environments for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people within the Catholic church and society.

A Related Response to Phyllis Plum's
July 19th Letter to Editor in Pioneer Press