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Cincinnati's
Catholic Ministry to Lesbians & Gays
What's
Behind the New "Ministry"?
(from the May/June
1999 issue)
With great fanfare the
Archdiocese of Cincinnati announced in March that it is
launching a new ministry to homosexual Catholics and
their families. The "Catholic Ministry with Gays and
Lesbians" (CMGL) has been organized under the
umbrella of the Archdiocese’s Family Life Office.
The Most Rev. Daniel E.
Pilarczyk, Archbishop of Cincinnati, and auxiliary Bishop
Carl K. Moeddel, inaugurated this ministry at three
prayer services in the 19-county archdiocese during
April. According to a press release "the ministry
may take various forms, such as prayer groups, days of
prayer and reflection, providing resources, etc. It also
will work at eliminating bias and discrimination and
support inclusion."
The Archdiocese also
announced in March that Archbishop Pilarczyk appointed
Father Raymond C. Kellerman and Father Michael F. Leshney
to provide guidance, leadership and direction for this
ministry. Fr. Leshney, director of campus ministries at
Moeller High School in Cincinnati, served as chaplain to
the Cincinnati chapter of Dignity in the 1980s before the
Vatican ordered bishops to withdraw all support from
organizations opposing Church teaching on human
sexuality.
Dignity is a group of
Catholics agitating for changes in the Church’s
teaching on homosexual behavior. According to the
national organization’s statement of purpose it
believes that "gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgendered persons can express their sexuality in a
manner that is consonant with Christ's teaching. We
believe that we can express our sexuality physically, in
a unitive manner that is loving, life-giving, and
life-affirming." Dignity labors "for the
development of sexual theology leading to the reform of
[the Church’s] teachings and practices regarding
human sexuality."
Fr. Kellerman serves on
the Archdiocesan tribunal. Both he and Fr. Leshney were
ordained by the late Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin in
1973.
Courage
and the "spiritual crisis"
In a March 26 interview with his diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Telegraph, Archbishop Pilarczyk explained
that he initially considered beginning a local chapter of
Courage, a unique ministry designed to help homosexuals
lead chaste lives. Fr. John Harvey, an oblate of St.
Francis de Sales, is founder and director of the
18-year-old Catholic ministry.
Courage has been largely
successful in helping those with homosexual tendencies
lead chaste lives and loosing them from their homosexual
inclinations. Approved by the Vatican’s Pontifical
Council for the Family, Courage has been an object of
derision by many homosexual advocacy groups including
P-FLAG and Dignity. They mainly object to Fr.
Harvey’s faithful adherence to Church teaching on
homosexuality—that the inclination is an objective
disorder—and the ministry’s emphasis on
chastity. Despite opposition from a small but powerful
cadre of gay activists in the Church, Fr. Harvey’s
Courage ministry is now established in 28 U.S. dioceses.
Fr. Harvey speaks of
homosexual inclinations as a spiritual crisis, therefore
requiring a spiritual solution. The Courage methodology,
therefore, offers a spiritual growth plan designed to
lead those who seek help to live lives of "inner
chastity": relax, practice an examination of
conscience, choose a spiritual guide, meditate on the
life of Christ and His teachings, pray, attend Mass and
say the rosary, if at all possible, each day. Courage,
unlike most other Catholic ministries to "gays"
and "lesbians," does not accept mainstream
culture’s embrace of homosexuality as a new
"gender."
When Archbishop Pilarczyk
asked for volunteers to begin Courage locally, Fathers
Leshney and Kellerman came forward. Subsequently, a group
of parents from Cincinnati’s St. Xavier High School
invited Fr. Harvey to town to discuss his ministry.
Although nearly 200 people, including 28 priests from
three dioceses, attended his lecture, Fathers Leshney and
Kellerman were not among them.
When asked by the Telegraph
why the archdiocese decided against the idea of a local
Courage chapter, Archbishop Pilarczyk explained that
Fathers Leshney and Kellerman attended a convention for
people in charge of diocesan ministries to gays and
lesbians. "These are separate from Courage,"
the archbishop explained. "On that basis, from what
they heard and saw, we decided that we would not go the
route of Courage but would start our own on the model of
what other dioceses do."
The chosen path
That model is the National Association of Catholic
Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries (NACDLGM), founded in 1994 by
Father James Shexnayder from the Diocese of Oakland. Fr.
Shexnayder co-owns a home with the former head of San
Francisco’s chapter of Dignity. In June, 1994,
following the Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgendered Parade
in San Francisco, Fr. Shexnayder celebrated a Mass for
Catholic participants, most of whom were self-identified
members of Dignity. In his homily that day he stated:
"We must not let our homophobic society confine our
homosexuality to the bedroom… Our homosexuality must
burst forth from the bedroom and leaven all
society." The Oakland priest currently serves as the
executive director of NACDLGM, and Dignity remains very
active in the affairs of NACDLGM throughout the country.
To illustrate, Pat
McArron, founder of the San Diego chapter of Dignity,
writing in their local newsletter Dimensions, had
this to say: "Recently I had the opportunity, along
with others, to represent Dignity at the [1997] national
conference of NACDLGM. As a member of both Dignity and
the NACDLGM I observed an emerging relationship between
the two groups that is encouraging…
"Whereas Dignity has
chosen to be completely honest about its position on
human sexuality, the NACDLGM has chosen to be silent. It
is a quandary for that organization and one that is fully
understandable when seen in the context of the current
‘official’ teachings of the Church. In order
for the NACDLGM to be able to function with the official
approval and backing of the hierarchy it is necessary for
that organization to publicly adhere to the official
teaching of the Church. That isn’t a bad thing.
Someone said to me at the Long Beach conference at the
beginning of September ‘[NACDLGM] would not be here
today if it weren’t for Dignity.’ At that
conference Dignity was recognized and acknowledged by
those in attendance for its pioneering contributions to
gay and lesbian Catholic ministry."
NACDLGM is recognized as
the official organization which serves as a central
clearing house of information for and about the diocesan
ministries to gays and lesbians. At least 35 dioceses in
the U.S. have such ministries. Although this national
organization claims that it does not seek to set
ministerial standards or develop national
"platforms," the speakers and topics discussed
at the annual conferences each year are revealing.
Speakers —mostly
Church employees— at last year’s NACDLGM
conference in Rochester, New York, betrayed in the most
obvious ways their dissent from and distaste for Catholic
teaching on sexual morality. They spoke of their efforts
to promote homosexuality in parishes, schools, diocesan
offices, and in state legislatures. They ridiculed
Catholic Church teaching on sexual morality, and boasted
how they have achieved power in many important dioceses
(such as Los Angeles, St. Paul-Minneapolis, Rochester and
Richmond, Va.). They explained their methodologies: how
they intimidate and mislead opponents (especially parents
of children in Catholic schools), how they recruit fellow
homosexual activists for Church positions, and how they
incorporate homosexual propaganda in liturgies.
NACDLGM speakers and
listeners alike tossed out hundreds of ideas and
techniques for promoting homosexuality in Church
structures, from how to win approval from reluctant
bishops for promoting Always Our Children, to
sensitizing parishioners to the "gay ideology"
during Sunday homilies, to brainwashing "right-wing
fundamentalist" Catholics who believe that
homosexual activity is condemned in the Bible.
Some speakers, such as
Bill Kummer, an employee of the Archdiocese of St.
Paul-Minneapolis, detailed how to homosexualize the
Catholic schools, to promote "the kind of climate
that can be affirming, inclusive, and so forth regardless
of anybody’s sexual orientation or sexual
identity."
Kummer explained how he
presented his archdiocese with a plan to implement the
gay education agenda in the Catholic high schools. His
agenda, he said, had three objectives:
1. To "present the
accurate and full teaching of the Catholic Church because
many people reduce that to three paragraphs in the
Catechism and we all know there’s much more than
that."
2. To "provide a
respectful and faithful position that unites the
archdiocese through the archbishop, the Catholic
Education and Formation in Ministry office, and community
groups," i.e., homosexual activist groups.
3. To develop a
"strategy to respond to express needs, i.e., kids
presenting themselves [as gay and lesbian]."
Kummer explained that the
best way to accomplish these three objectives is through
faculty in-service programs designed to sensitize
teachers to homosexual issues and then developing and
implementing an "inclusive
curriculum"—taking "gay, lesbian,
bisexual, and transgendered experience and finding ways
to write that into the curriculum" in every subject.
It is interesting to note
that shortly after the Archdiocese of Cincinnati
announced its new ministry to gays and lesbians, Fr.
Leshney and Bishop Moeddel led a faculty in-service
workshop at Moeller High School. The subject: Always
Our Children.
(See sidebar on page 11
for more information on the 1998 NACDLGM presentations).
Not our agenda
The Archbishop of Cincinnati concluded his interview with The Catholic
Telegraph by
assuring that his ministry will be faithful to Church
teaching, and will not have as a goal "to make
homosexual behavior socially acceptable."
"That’s not our
agenda," he reiterated. "Our agenda is to offer
spiritual assistance and [C]hurch teaching and acceptance
to people of homosexual orientation."
In similar terms,
Rochester’s Bishop Matthew H. Clark steadfastly
maintained in public announcements and private letters
that NACDLGM and its speakers at the Rochester convention
are all loyal to Church teaching, with an official liason
with the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Faced
with the irrefutable evidence that these speakers
supported blessing same-sex couples, spousal benefits for
homosexual partners, and other aspects of the homosexual
agenda, Bishop Clark merely reiterated the same words
Archbishop Pilarczyk recently offered: "That’s
not our agenda."
The prayer services
inaugurating the new Cincinnati ministry reflected little
desire or ability to "offer spiritual
assistance" to gays and lesbians. Instead, the
archbishop gave a bantam interpretation of Church
teaching on homosexuality—emphasizing repeatedly
that "homosexual orientation is disordered."
But, to put his own remark into perspective, he added:
"I consider everyone, more or less, disordered
because of sin." Which is worse, he asked, a man who
engages in same-sex acts or a man who beats his wife?
An interpretation of
Church teaching
In his March 26 interview, Archbishop Pilarczyk,
president of the NCCB’s Bishops Committee on
Doctrine, again touched on the subject of the
Church’s teaching on homosexuality. "The Church
teaches," he stated, "that just as some people
are born with an orientation toward avarice or anger,
which is an objective disorder—objectively
speaking—so also some persons are born with an
orientation to homosexual behavior."
It is important to note,
however, that in September of 1997, the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) announced a significant
correction in its presentation on homosexuality in the Catechism
of the Catholic Church, which changed the wording
"homosexual condition" to "homosexual
inclination—intrinsically disordered." This
change in the translation was intended to close what many
considered a huge opening for homosexual activists to
distort Church teaching. The phrase "homosexual
orientation" was never used in the Catechism.
Another catechism revision
eliminated the word "innate" (because of its
connotation of "inherent" or
"inborn") from the paragraph on homosexuality.
As explained by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger: "One
objection was that we made people think homosexual
tendency was innate, that it was already present at the
moment of birth or conception of the person. Many
competent experts said that this has not been
proven."
In short, it would seem
that no teaching of the Church lends credence to the
notion of a "homosexual orientation," as
defined by the Archbishop of Cincinnati.
When asked by a
self-identified gay man during the Cincinnati inaugural
service where he gets his "facts" on
homosexuality, the archbishop responded: "I read the
daily paper." There must be some source material, he
added, to support his information.
Help from P-FLAG
In the same Telegraph interview, Archbishop
Pilarczyk also stated that the new Archdiocesan ministry
"basically arose out of Auxiliary Bishop Carl K.
Moeddel’s workshops on Always Our Children."
Bishop Moeddel held three
regional meetings in the archdiocese last Fall with
homosexual activists and parents of homosexual children
to promote the controversial 1997 document released by
the NCCB’s Bishops’ Committee on Marriage and
Family. The document, which was characterized by Bishop
Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebr. as "founded on
bad advice, mistaken theology, erroneous science, and
skewed sociology," required numerous changes before
meeting with the provisional approval of the Vatican.
During the first meeting,
which was held at St. John Neumann Church in Cincinnati,
Bishop Moeddel, a member of the conference committee that
produced the pastoral letter, said AOC was intended as
guidelines for parents and clergy, not as "an
endorsement of homosexual lifestyles."
Nevertheless, the bishop
shared the podium with a representative of P-FLAG who
distributed literature advertising both her organization
and Dignity, both of which not only endorse the
homosexual lifestyle but affirm it in no uncertain terms.
P-FLAG is the
country’s leading organization promoting the
acceptance of homosexual culture in schools and in the
media. It promotes same-sex marriage as a "basic
human right," actively undermines Biblical and
religious objections to homosexual activity, promotes
"gay pride" and "homosexual lifestyle
awareness" at elementary and secondary schools, and
organizes youth groups for adolescents to encourage them
to "accept" their orientation (see article,
p.13).
Parents and others who
attended the meeting in November, 1998, were also given a
list of therapists "who are
gay-friendly/sensitive," including Kevin Prendergast
at Catholic Social Services. The list was prepared by
Kathy Laufman, a representative of GLSEN, the Gay,
Lesbian and Straight Education Network. GLSEN is a
national homosexual activist organization devoted to
fighting for "sexual orientation rights" in
schools.
P-FLAG also maintained a
presence at the CMGL inaugural services. In Cincinnati, a
P-FLAG promotional brochure was distributed to
participants along with an explanatory brochure on the
relationships of lesbians and gays to the Church,
published by NACDLGM.
The P-FLAG brochure, which
provides an introduction to its Cincinnati chapter,
featured classic homosexual propaganda. Citing statistics
from pedophile sexologist Alfred Kinsey, P-FLAG claims
that "10% of the population is homosexual" and
"gay people and their families represent over one
third of the people in this country." P-FLAG also
asserts that "homosexuality is not chosen, like
selecting clothes or a line of work… The gay child
is most often aware of his/her sexual orientation at a
very early age."
P-FLAG’s goal:
"We must change attitudes. While society has imbued
all of us with misinformed attitudes about homosexuality,
we must not allow these distorted attitudes to go
unchallenged and continue to interfere with the happiness
of parent and child or their relationship to each
other."
Transforming attitudes
It appears from all evidence that the Archdiocese of
Cincinnati, following the path of so many other American
dioceses, is being used as a stooge by homosexual
activists agitating for change in both Church teaching
and traditional Christian attitudes toward homosexual
sex, same-sex marriage and the gay lifestyle.
Remember these buzzwords:
non-discrimination, tolerance, inclusion. These
euphemisms are the mainstay in the semantics game played
by gay activists. Although the explicit goal of the new
CMGL ministry, according to Archbishop Pilarczyk and
Bishop Moeddel, is to provide "spiritual
assistance" to gays and lesbians, there is more than
ample evidence to suggest that CMGL efforts will focus
more on transforming societal attitudes under the guise
of non-discrimination, tolerance, and inclusion.
Judging from recent
NACDLGM history, the bishops will be little involved
beyond offering their inaugural stamp of approval, which
has now been sufficiently well-publicized in
Cincinnati’s case. Heretofore the CMGL will be
turned over to those who will guide its direction.
As a result of this new
ministry can we expect to find more chaste homosexuals
seeking God’s will in their lives, keeping close to
the sacraments? If NACDLGM is to be used as the model,
no. If the ministry intends to continue to align itself
with P-FLAG, no. If the archbishop can do no better than
to appoint a former Dignity chaplain as the spiritual
advisor, no. The fact that the Archdiocese consciously
turned from Courage, a Vatican endorsed ministry
supportive of Church teaching, to the dissident NACDLGM
"model" is a painful reality which bears
further scrutiny by the faithful.
In fact, Courage founder
Father Harvey, recently published (with the approval of
the Vatican), an analysis of the revised Always Our
Children. He has this to say of NACDLGM ministries:
"The advice to seek help from ‘special diocesan
gay and lesbian ministries’ is also cause for
concern as our experience has shown that such
‘ministries’ do not provide a program for
chaste living. Such programs tend to encourage
individuals to define their personhood by their
homosexual attractions, labeling themselves according to
an objectively disordered inclination."
According to a CMGL
promotional brochure, the Archdiocese of
Cincinnati’s Family Life Office welcomes suggestions
regarding this new ministry. Comments, ideas and
suggestions should be directed to: Mrs. Margaret L.
Black, Director of Family Life, Archdiocese of
Cincinnati, 100 East 8th St., Cincinnati, Ohio
45202. Fax: (513) 421-1582.
—Michael
S. Rose
RELATED ARTICLE: 1999
NACDGLM Presentations
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