[Dialogue] {Disarmed} Spong on Dignity

[KroegerD at aol.com]

July 18 2007 
On Spending Three Days with  DignityUSA  

"My name is Sam Sinnett and I am a gay Catholic." These words, reminiscent of 
 the way members introduce themselves at AA meetings, opened a luncheon at a  
gathering of DignityUSA, a national support and advocacy organization for  
homosexual members of the Roman Catholic Church. Sinnett, a retired businessman  
from St. Louis, was completing his four year term as Dignity's national  
president. This conference, drawing some 250 delegates from across the United  
States to Austin, Texas, had assigned themselves the task of charting the future  
for homosexual people in the Catholic Church. This was not an easy assignment 
 since DignityUSA is treated by the hierarchy of this Church as an 
embarrassing  pariah and instead of any recognition or support its members are the 
recipients  of enormous Catholic hostility. By Vatican orders, no Roman Catholic 
Church in  America can allow this group to meet on any Catholic property. When 
Dignity's  leaders picked the Hyatt Hotel in Austin as the gathering place for 
their  national conference, Gary Preuss, a local Dignity leader, as a 
courtesy,  notified the Most Rev. Gregory Aymond, the Catholic Bishop of Austin that 
they  would convene in his See City. The bishop responded with a letter, 
acknowledging  the notification and saying that he would pray for them. There was no 
word of  welcome and neither this bishop nor any of his local Catholic 
priests made an  appearance at the conference. How short the Church sometimes falls 
in the simple  act of showing kindness.  
Catholic opposition to homosexuality is so total and unrelenting that any  
American Catholic priest who says Mass for local Dignity chapters runs the risk  
of discipline at the hands of his local bishop. Under the auspices of Pope 
John  Paul II a statement was issued on October 30, 1986, written by the then 
Cardinal  Joseph Ratzinger, which moved the Roman Catholic Church from benign 
neglect of  gay people into the stance of being a gay oppressor. This "Halloween 
Letter," as  the gay community refers to it, urged all Catholic bishops to 
oppose every  legislative effort, on every level of government, which sought to 
provide equal  rights under the law for homosexual people. This included not 
just official  Church opposition to gay marriage, civil unions and benefits for 
domestic  partners, but also any ordinance that would make it illegal to 
discriminate  against people in the work place because of their sexual 
orientation. When  Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI one of his first acts was 
to  announce his intention to purge gay males from the ranks of the Catholic  
priesthood. When the fine print was read, however, he limited himself to  
preventing aggressive or militant homosexual advocates from becoming priests.  
Even this Pope knew full well that a purge of gay men from the ranks of the  
Catholic priesthood would decimate the clergy, to say nothing of culling  
significantly the members of the College of Cardinals, the archbishops and  bishops of 
that Church. The duplicity and dishonesty surrounding this issue in  the 
Roman Catholic Church is breathtaking.  
Despite this hostility, these gay Catholics still express genuine love for  
their Church and work tirelessly for the change that will enable them to find 
in  their Church a place of welcome. They strive to demonstrate their loyalty 
to the  worship tradition into which most of them were baptized. DignityUSA 
gathers in  local chapters all across America and convenes its National 
Convention once  every two years, to nurse the wounds of gay Catholics, to educate and 
inspire  their members and to make people aware of their gay presence inside 
their  beloved Church.  
Because the members of Dignity know rejection first hand, they have developed 
 a far more accepting and ecumenical understanding of Christianity than that  
which is official in Catholicism. Since their chapters of necessity are 
required  to meet in non-Catholic churches, ties of friendship have tempered 
traditional  exclusive claims. Dignity members understand what Catholic women have 
endured.  In Dignity's closing Eucharist, women were vested with priestly 
stoles while  serving as full participants and co-presiders over the liturgy. These 
women's  hands were raised as they joined with a Graymoor priest to bless the 
bread and  the wine and to utter the words of consecration. Catholic rules 
were clearly  being bent here, but the presence of an ordained priest, whose 
security lay in  that he was answerable only to the head of his order not a local 
bishop,  nonetheless guaranteed the "validity" of the Sacrament.  
I was invited to this gathering to give the keynote address, to conduct two  
workshops and to lead the assembly in a brief liturgy of installing, blessing  
and dedicating their newly-elected officers for the next four years. I was 
also  present to listen as they recounted their struggles against their 
rejection by  the Church they love. In the course of these three days I found myself  
counseling some on vocational decisions, asking God's blessing on some of 
their  committed unions, laying my hands in prayer on one who had just received a  
serious, perhaps fatal, diagnosis and sharing with this incredible group of 
men  and women their study, worship, eating, dancing and leisure. It was one of 
the  greatest assignments of my life.  
This conference offered a number of workshops on such topics as: "Science  
Meeting Spirituality," "The Revolutionary Nature of Early Oriental  
Christianity," "A Gay Man's Guide to Prostate Cancer" and "Challenging  Hierarchical 
Structures." Among the workshop leaders were three people whose  names might be 
recognized outside the borders of gay Catholicism. One was the  Rev. John J. 
McNeill, a former Jesuit priest and scholar, whose book "The Church  and the 
Homosexual" was authorized for publication in 1976 only after a  three-year delay 
for study by the Vatican. That authorization was then removed  in 1978. McNeill 
was among the first voices from within the Christian Church to  challenge the 
Church's attitudes toward homosexuals, refuting that position with  
scientific, psychological and biblical scholarship. McNeill shattered the  inadequate 
and prejudiced definition that upheld the Church's prejudice. All  prejudices 
die when the definition on which the prejudice is based is  challenged. That 
was true in the battle against racism and in the battle for the  equality of 
women.  
McNeill cited new data from science, brain studies and medicine that  
destroyed the foundations of homophobia and started its inevitable retreat into  
death. It was thus a seminal book, which opened the heretofore closed  
ecclesiastical closets and offered incontrovertible evidence that homosexuality  is now 
and always has been a major part of the Catholic priesthood. For most  people 
in the early 70's this was a startling idea. In an interview on NBC Tom  Brokaw 
asked this priest: "Are you gay?" and John McNeill came out of the closet  to 
30 million viewers. He was expelled from the Jesuit Order at the direction of 
 Cardinal Ratzinger, but his influence has been beyond the Church's power to  
control. McNeill began to lead conferences across this nation on 
homosexuality  among priests. One of those conferences, held at the Kirkridge Center in  
Pennsylvania, drew a married New Jersey Episcopal clergyman who, unknown to his 
 congregation, was wrestling with both his vocation and his sexual identity. 
His  name was Gene Robinson and today he is the openly gay Episcopal Bishop of 
New  Hampshire.  
A second Dignity workshop leader was Sister Jeannine Gramick, the nun who  
developed a significant ministry to gay and lesbian people in Baltimore until  
she was forced to resign from her order by the same Cardinal Ratzinger. A third 
 was Daniel Helminiak, a priest, scholar and noted author, whose books have 
given  hope to thousands of gay and lesbian Christians.  
For me, this conference was both humbling and exhilarating. Seldom before  
have I been so warmly welcomed, fully included and graciously engaged by members 
 of this faith tradition. Seldom have I been so moved by worship as I was at 
this  conference. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church needs to understand 
that these  people are dedicated and committed Catholics who can neither be 
expelled nor  driven away. Dignity's members are not threatening to leave their 
Church, they  are threatening to stay! "This is our Church too," they say, and 
"the hierarchy  cannot define Catholicism in such a way as to exclude us." They 
live out their  Catholic lives in faithfulness, not in order to be 
troublesome, but to help to  bring to Catholicism the inclusion that is called for in the 
gospel of Jesus.  They are confident they will win this struggle for the soul 
of their Church and  are encouraged by the incontrovertible fact that changes 
in consciousness are  never reversed. Inevitably every part of the Christian 
Church will lay aside its  homosexual prejudices and embrace its gay, lesbian, 
transgender and bi-sexual  brothers and sisters as the creation of God, the 
beloved of Christ and as those  empowered to be all that they can be in the 
Holy Spirit. Benedict XVI is not the  voice of the Catholic future; indeed, he 
will ultimately be little more than a  negative footnote in Catholic history.  
Every prejudice that is publicly debated is already dying, so this victory is 
 inevitable. Diehard, retrogressive elements in every Christian Church lose  
ground daily. They will not prevail in this struggle. Christians cannot 
continue  to sing, "Just as I am without one plea, O Lamb of God, I come," and not 
live  out that invitation. The embarrassment of the Christian Church in our 
time will  not result from the feared split over homosexuality; it will result 
rather from  those Christian leaders who continue to value unity and 
institutional peace over  truth and justice. Those are the people destined to discover 
that they do not,  cannot and will not own the future. That future will belong 
to DignityUSA, to  John McNeill, Sister Jeannine, Daniel Helminiak and their 
counterparts in every  Christian tradition, who act without fear to make the 
Christian Church whole and  to call it to be a sign of the Kingdom of God in our 
divided world. Indeed we  live today at the dawn of a new era.  
John Shelby Spong  
_Note  from the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores  everywhere and by clicking here!_ 
(http://astore.amazon.com/bishopspong-20/detail/0060762071/104-6221748-5882304)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Kavinci, via the Internet, writes:  
I'm a regular poster on your forum and one of the issues brought up was  
regarding the right to bear arms. Should the government make it illegal for a  
citizen to own a gun? Are more gun ownerships good or not, in your opinion? I'm  
sure you've noticed by now that we often stray from your essays which we so 
look  forward to reading. I'd say you inspire free thought. Thank you so much 
for your  contribution.  
Dear Kavinci,  
I do not think the government ought to violate the Constitution of the United 
 States by making it illegal for citizens to bear arms. I also do not think 
that  private citizens have a need for machine guns, bazookas, ground to air 
missiles  or anti-tank guns. I believe that it is necessary when a citizen is 
convicted of  a crime and is judged to be a perpetual threat to others in 
society, that the  state not only has the right but the duty to relieve that citizen 
of any arms he  or she possesses but also to incarcerate that person forever. 
I also believe  that the state has the right to limit the presence of 
firearms in public to  those who require them in the exercise of their legally 
authorized peacekeeping  duties. No one else should have the right to carry guns in 
public places.  
I think the National Rifle Association goes to absurd lengths to protect the  
Constitutional right to bear arms. I also would disagree, however, with those 
 who want to remove the right of all citizens to protect themselves and their 
 homes or to use guns in hunting activities.  
John Shelby Spong 



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