Resigned Priests Come Out For Marriage Equality

Resigned priests are starting to emerge as a strong moral voice in support of marriage equality. Earlier this year, 80 resigned priestsmade a statement in support of marriage equality. This week, a group of 63 resigned priests in Washington State have made a public statement in support of the referendum to legalize marriage for gay and lesbian couples.

Reuters quoted from the statement to explain the group’s reason for making their views known:

“We feel the bishops are abusing their power in attempting to direct Catholics on how to vote on this civil matter and impose their position on all citizens, Catholic and non-Catholic.”

Pat Callahan, a church-goer who had been a priest for 15 years, organized the effort, and explained another motivation to Reuters:

“Progressive-thinking Catholics need the reassurance that there is more than one authentic Catholic position.”

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer cites a passage from the resigned priests’ statement:

“Nothing in this legislation infringes on religious rights or restricts the Catholic Church from maintaining its own standards for sacramental marriage: It simply provides the protection of civil law so that same sex couples may enjoy a set of civil and human rights involving health, financial and end-of-life decisions,” said the former priests, who remain active Catholics.

“We regret that our Washington State Catholic bishops have chosen to oppose Marriage Equality and attempt to impose what we feel is a very narrow point of view on all society.”

A separate Post-Intelligencer article reports that the former priests’s statement comes right after one of Washington State’s bishops issued a pastoral letter against the referendum:

“In the latest pastoral letter, Bishop Joseph J. Tyson of the Diocese of Yakima told his 41 parishes that Referendum 74 ‘jeopardizes freedom rather than expands it” and “endangers our religious liberty and the rights of conscience.’

“ ‘Once marriage is redefined as a genderless contract, it will become legally discriminatory for public and private institutions such as schools to promote the unique meaning of marriage . . .This law will challenge our right to educate about the unique value of children being raised by his or her own mother and father in a stable home,’ Tyson wrote.

Tyson’s letter was directly countered by Catholics for Marriage Equality Washington:

“We are shocked when we read the language and examples used by our bishops to incite fear in our Catholic brothers and sisters if Referendum 74 passes. The message of Jesus is love and compassion, not fear.”

The former priests’ letter comes from a perspective with an immense amount of moral credibility: 1) they are men trained in theology and years of pastoral experience under their belts; 2) many of them are married and have raised families–perhaps even some with lesbian and gay children–and so they know the practical realities of love and relationship; 3) they are men who have been marginalized by church structures, so they know what it means to be excluded.

Their witness is a powerful testimony to both love of the church and the cause of justice and equality.

–Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry

63 Former Roman Catholic Priests to Release Statement Supporting Marriage Equality in Washington (towleroad.com)
63 ex-Catholic priests in Washingon: We back gay marriage – Blogs (seattlepi.com)
WA & MN Bishops: Fighting A Losing Battle? (dgsmith.org)
Minnesota Priest Donates $1,000 to Support Marriage Equality (newwaysministryblog.wordpress.com)

Loyalty Oaths Are Sprouting Up Across the U.S. Catholic Church

Jul14 by D Gregory Smith

From New Ways Ministry:

Loyalty oaths seem to be coming into fashion in Catholic churches, as more and more bishops are using this instrument to require that Catholics working in the church, even on a volunteer basis, pledge total fidelity to the magisterium, including official directives about LGBT people.

The issue was sparked this week by a Washington Post article on Bishop Paul LoVerde, of Arlington, Virginia, who has instituted such an oath for religious education teachers there. Four teachers have already resigned because of the requirement. The Post report states:

“The Arlington Diocese, which includes nearly a half-million Catholics across northern and eastern Virginia, is one of a small but growing number that are starting to demand fidelity oaths. The oaths reflect a churchwide push in recent years to revive orthodoxy that has sharply divided Catholics.

“Such oaths are not new for priests or nuns but extend now in some places to people like volunteer Sunday school teachers as well as workers at Catholic hospitals and parish offices.

“One in Baker, Ore., reiterates the sinfulness of abortion and says, “I do not recognize the legitimacy of anyone’s claim to a moral right to form their own conscience in this matter.” One in Oakland, Calif., requires leaders of a group doing outreach to gay and lesbian Catholics to say they “affirm and believe” official church teaching on marriage, hell and chastity. [For the Bondings 2.0 report on the Oakland oath, click here.]

“The Arlington ‘profession of faith’ asks teachers to commit to “believe everything” the bishops characterize as divinely revealed, and Arlington’s top doctrine official said it would include things like thebishops’ recent campaign against a White House mandate that most employers offer contraception coverage. Critics consider the mandate a violation of religious freedom.”

The article quotes Rose Zagarri, one of the resigned teachers:

“Zagarri said the oath was a “slap in the face” to Catholics who have remained active and close to the church despite controversies.

“ ‘Although I fully understand the authoritative role of the Catholic hierarchy in defining the teachings of the faith, in my view only a person who is willing to abandon her own reason and judgment, or who is willing to go against the dictates of her own conscience, can agree to sign such a document,’ she wrote to Arlington Bishop Paul Loverde.

“ ‘This is not in the spirit of what people go to a Catholic church for, which is community and a loving, welcoming environment. It’s exclusionary, a suppression of dissent, let’s all line up and be the army of God,’ Zagarri said in an interview for this article.”

A Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog reports that the loyalty oath in the Baker, Oregon, diocese (mentioned above) states that some of the teachings that the oath includes are:

“the sinfulness of contraception, the evil of extra-marital sexual relationships, the unacceptability of homosexual relationships, the wrongness of co-habitation before marriage.”

According to the Post-Intelligencer, the Baker diocese oath goes even further on the issue of abortion, with the statement:

“I do not recognize the legitimacy of anyone’s claim to a moral right to form their own conscience on this matter.”

A wise warning against such loyalty oaths was raised by Rev. Ronald Nuzzi, Rev. Ronald Nuzzi, director of the leadership program for Catholic educators,University of Notre Dame. The Washington Post article concludes with:

“Nuzzi said he keeps a photo on his desk from the 1940s that shows all the German bishops in their garb, doing the Nazi salute.

“ ‘I keep it there to remind people who say to do everything the church says, that their wisdom has limitations, too.’ ”

–Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry

Modern loyalty oaths vs. all those ancient doctrines? (getreligion.org)
“Fidelity oaths” in Catholic dioceses, not Seattle (seattlepi.com)
Gay ministry group refuses to sign oath (queerchurchnews.wordpress.com)

Catholics and Gays: Joel Connelly Calls Out The Church

Jan18 by D Gregory Smith

The Seattle PI’s Joel Connelly has an illustrious history of commentary in Seattle. I’ve enjoyed him for years. But in Monday’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer, he makes one of the best cases for the Catholic Church to give up the paranoid same-sex marriage rhetoric- and his seasoned, well-reasoned thoughts beg to be shared. Excerpt:

The bishops see themselves as shepherds, but American Catholics are not sheep. They think and act independently. A recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found that nearly three quarters of Catholics favor letting gays and lesbians marry (43 percent) or form civil unions (31 percent).

“Catholics are more supportive of legal recognitions of same-sex relationships than members of any other Christian tradition and Americans overall,” the survey concluded.

The church is also hurting itself: Its social activism, defense of human dignity and witness to peace should make it a beacon for all who seek justice. Instead, the church is pilloried as an instrument of reaction.

Its wounds are self inflicted, a classic case of clerical error. As the National Catholic Reporter put it, editorializing after New York legislators approved marriage equality last spring:

“Even if the bishops had a persuasive case to make and the legislative tools at their disposal, their public conduct in recent years — wholesale excommunications, railing at politicians, denial of honorary degrees and speaking platforms at Catholic institutions, using the Eucharist as a political bludgeon, refusing to entertain any questions or dissenting opinions, and engaging in open warfare with the community’s thinkers as well as those, especially women, who have loyally served the church — has resulted in a kind of episcopal caricature, the common scolds of the religion world, the caustic party of ‘no’.”

Connelly is taking a fair and balanced approach, using the Catholic tradition of social justice and charity to argue for the reality of human experience- in this case the reality of same-sex relationships. The very reality of them flies in the face of the “Natural Law‘ argument:

“Jesus befriended those who were marginalized because He knew it was only in the security of loving, unconditional relationships that hearts and lives are healed,” argues writer Justin Cannon, reflecting the Christian faith as taught to us by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Not only healed, but enriched. I’ve witnessed a warm, very traditional moment over the years. A goofy, dreamy smile crosses the face of a friend, who after years of playing the field announces “Well, I met this woman (or guy)!” It signals a readiness to settle down. My natural reaction is to say, “You lucky dog!” and to be there, in affection and support, when the knot is tied.

Life together is a natural passage in life. Yet, according to “natural law” the Catholic church frowns on my friends who fall in love with somebody of their own gender. It violates nature, according to a U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops statement, because such “inherently non-procreative” relationships “cannot be given the status of marriage.”

The church’s positions are, as state Sen. Ed Murray put it Friday night, “hurtful” as well as contradictory.

Out of one side of its mouth, the church condemns “all forms of unjust discrimination, harrassment and abuse” against gays and lesbians. At the same time, the Cathechism of the Catholic Church describes “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” as “objectively disordered.”

As my critical thinking professor at Carroll College taught me, the Church’s argument is flawed. It can’t have it both ways. It either acknowledges the reality of same-sex relationships- the reality of the complexity of human love as a gift from God- or it becomes the ubiquitous symbol of fantasy, its credibility falling off the edge of its own absurdly flattened earth.

Connelly’s brave, full essay is here.