Mourning Reynolds Price, "Outlaw" Christian

Carolyn Disco asks a significant question, as bloggers at the America site mourn Reynolds Price: she asks,

I can't help but ask: And the church characterizes him as 'intrinsically disordered?'

And blogger David Power replies,

His sexuality but not him Carolyn. 

I wonder what those folks who keep defending the language of intrinsic disorder when it's applied to someone other than themselves would say if someone told them that their "sexuality" is disordered.  But that naming their "sexuality" as disordered is not calling them disordered--in their nature.  In their personhood.

As if "sexuality" is some garment we can easily take off to uncover the person beneath it.  As if our sexuality is not intrinsic to our personhood and our human nature.

It's always easy to tag someone else as inferior, defective, subhuman, and so forth.  But perhaps much harder to accept that stigmatization when the ones being tagged are ourselves.

And if one of the biggest challenges of a moral education is to prod people to begin thinking about what their life experiences would be like if they lived in the skin of someone else--especially someone demonized and relegated to the margins--then I wonder how we'd grade the performance of the Catholic church and its institutions at this point in history, when it comes to educating folks morally.

Reynolds Price probes these questions in moving autobiographical meditations on his struggle with faith and his encounter with Christ.  But, of course, he does so as a disordered person someone whose "sexuality" was disordered, and so readers who are not intrinsically disordered will perhaps need to be forewarned that his reflections arise out of the experience of disorder and may not have much to offer those who are ordered.  Price's powerful meditations on his experience of God arise from years of struggle to find a place in the world for his gifts and love, and to cling to faith when the church that exercised such formative influence on his life had no tongue to condemn racial oppression, indifference to the poor, and cruelty towards those who are "disordered," as Price famously noted in his description of himself as an "outlaw Christian."

Outlawed by many churches, despite his spiritual depth, precisely because his "sexuality"--and, it goes without saying, he himself--were considered disordered.

Frances Kissling on Benedict's Condom Remark: Procreative Ethic as Crux of Problem

Frances Kissling writes today at Religion Dispatches about Benedict's condom remark and the discussion it has prompted, noting--as I did in my posting focusing on Peter Steinfels' interpretation of the controversy at Commonweal--the way in which even liberal Catholics of the center continue to defend a procreative ethic that does not reflect what graced experience about human sexuality has taught many Catholics.

Kissling writes:

It will be seen as churlish in the face of the Pope’s welcome comments to point to the past (and probably to continuing sins) around making condoms available, but it is not unfair. The Pope’s remarks to Seewald—and the reactions of mainstream clergy, even those who are progressive—still centers on what for many is the crux of the problem: a sexual and procreative ethic that is based on long abandoned fallacious understandings of “natural law,” and a fixation on heterosexual marital intercourse for the purpose of procreation as the only legitimate expression of human sexuality.

As she notes, in official Catholic discourse about human sexuality, which is dominated by celibate men who ostensibly have no experience of the issue about which they make pronouncements, there is a fixation on "ordered" and "disordered" sexuality, "rather than . . . on the range of loving, justice-seeking relationships."  Kissling notes that, in their graced experience, Catholics who are not married but engaged in intimate relationships, who have been divorced and are not permitted to remarry, and who are married but using contraception have long since worked out a more adequate--a relational and justice-oriented--approach to these issues than has the magisterium, with its fixation on natural law, biology, and "disordered" acts.

And so she asks what would happen if a really open and free discussion of human sexuality now took place in the Catholic church, following the pope's condom remarks.  I don't think that conversation is going to take place.  If it did, however, it would have to focus on the obvious but never-discussed injustice apparent when married heterosexual Catholics of the intellectual center of the church call for latitude in using contraceptives, while they continue to promote a procreative-centered natural law ethic that reads every action and relationship--and the very nature--of their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters as disordered.

Belgian Primate Léonard Continues Careening Down Wrong Side of Highway: Disingenuousness of Catholic Conservatives' Attempts to Deny Implications of Rhetoric of Homosexual Disorder

I've noted repeatedly on this blog that there's a strong strategy among conservative Catholics today to deny that the Catholic magisterium says precisely what is says about homosexuality as a disorder.  As Catholic homophobia is placed on the defensive both by shifting cultural consensus and by strong opposition from within the lay ranks of the church itself, the claim is being made that the magisterium does not define gay and lesbian persons as disordered, but only gay and lesbian acts.  Note that claim in the thread following the America posting to which I've just linked.

This claim is disingenuous at best, dishonest at worst.  As I've noted previously, the 1986 pastoral letter that the current pope wrote as Cardinal Ratzinger when he headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, specifically states that the "homosexual condition" is disordered, and that those who are homosexual exhibit disordered "inclinations."  The 1986 document notes, in fact, that it is correcting misunderstandings of a 1975 CDF document that was taken to mean that the "homosexual condition" is either morally neutral or good.

The 1986 CDF document is now replicated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states that the "inclination" of those who are gay is "objectively disordered."  While it is true that these definitions of disorder depend on a natural-law view that all homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered, because the goal to which homosexual sex moves is not conception, the magisterium has never suggested that, when heterosexuals engage in "disordered" sexual acts, they exhibit a disordered "condition" or disordered "inclinations."  

The definition of disorder--a disordered condition, disordered inclinations--is applied by the Catholic magisterium exclusively to those who are gay and lesbian.  As I've previously stated, it's interesting to note that the 1986 CDF document that began the language of disorder as applied to gay and lesbian persons did so in response to a 1975 CDF document that sought to address the consensus of professional medical bodies--including the influential American Psychiatric Association in 1973--that a homosexual orientation is not a mental disorder.  The language of disorder in the Catholic magisterium keeps alive, in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus to the contrary, the suspicion that those who are gay or lesbian are mentally disordered.

And so the attempt to deny that the magisterium defines gay and lesbian persons as intrinsically disordered, but speaks only of their acts as disordered, is an attempt to disguise and soft-sell what the magisterium actually says about those who are gay and lesbian, while continuing to capitalize on a cultural suspicion deeply held by social conservatives that gay and lesbian human beings are mentally aberrant, disordered in their natures, a threat to the well-being of society.

What is at stake in the current Catholic two-step about magisterial teaching re: homosexuality is apparent in a fascinating exchange recently involving the beleaguered Catholic primate of Belgium, André-Joseph Léonard.  As I've noted, Léonard's statements suggesting that AIDS provides ''a sort of intrinsic justice'' for those who have engaged in homosexual sex are now eliciting outrage.

Archbishop Léonard is under fire, as well, for having stated that homosexual love is a travesty of nature.  When pushed on this point, the archbishop denied that he had sought to imply that homosexuality is "abnormal." 

But his qualification of this denial is fascinating, for the reason I have sketched above: while scurrying away from the language of disorder, he wishes precisely to keep alive the suspicion that homosexuality is, indeed, disordered and aberrant, a threat to the health of society.  Léonard states that 

there is in the homosexual tendency and practice an orientation that is not coherent with the objective logic of sexuality.

Homosexuals have a "tendency" that issues in practice, and which is "not coherent with the objective logic of sexuality."  I'm denying that gay and lesbian persons are disordered.  But I'm also saying that their "tendency" moves in the direction of practices that contravene the objective logic of sexuality, which it is the business of a society that desires health to enforce.  

It would be hard to find a clearer picture than this of what those promoting the papal language of disorder at present intend to accomplish with that language.  Though they are quickly distancing themselves from the claim that gay and lesbian persons are disordered, they insist on keeping alive a language of disorder referring to inclinations, tendencies, and conditions--none of which can exist apart from a person who has these inclinations, tendencies, and conditions.

It is intellectually dishonest to claim that this language does not, indeed, define those who are gay and lesbian as disordered.  The statement to which I've just linked by Lieve Halsbergh, Belgian director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) rightly challenges Léonard's claim to have been "misrepresented" and that his words about gay and lesbian persons have been "twisted."

As Halsbergh notes, Léonard is a smart, highly educated man with other smart, highly educated men under him.  He knows perfectly well what he is doing and what he is suggesting with his statements about AIDS as intrinsic justice and homosexuality as a "tendency" that is "not coherent with the objective logic of sexuality."

Catholic Right Continues to Deny Magisterial Teaching about Intrinsic Disorder of Gays: I Respond Again

Because I was censored at America's "In All Things" blog recently, I don't intend to comment at that blog site any longer.  Why should I, I wonder, when my honest comments intended to be civil contributions to a civil conversation are censored with no explanation provided to me, while comments such as the following are permitted to stand:

Mareczku and others...Please stop distorting Catholic teaching to comply with your idealogy.
The RCC does NOT label homesexual PERSONS as "disordered"...or defective! It views sexual ACTS "not ordered" to reproducing as "disordered" (it says that contraception is disordered too!) It does NOT deny Holy Communion to homosexual persons (it was denied because people were hijacking the Eucharist for a political statement)...It demands compassion, respect and sensitivity for people with same sex attraction.

You are either ignorantly or willfully being dishonest in your criticisms.

Since Mareczku was responding to me, and my comment to which Mareczku is responding states that we cannot address bullying of gay teens without critically engaging Catholic teaching that gay and lesbian human beings are disordered, I am clearly among the "others" to whom Robert K. Pengel is responding here.

I'm among the "others" whom Mr. Pengel is accusing of ignorance or dishonesty.

I have to admit, I have grown weary, indeed, of this tactic of Catholics who want to defend magisterial teaching on homosexuality--a tactic of denying that the magisterium teaches that gay and lesbian persons are disordered in their very natures, and of claiming that anyone who hears such a conclusion in magisterial teaching is lying.

I'm tired of the lies being disseminated by defenders of magisterial teaching who want to misrepresent what the magisterium says about gay and lesbian persons, even as they call for total and literal fidelity to every utterance of the magisterium.  As I've noted in numerous postings here, the 1986 letter on the pastoral care of homosexual persons that the current pope, then Cardinal Ratzinger, issued as head of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, states explicitly that gay and lesbian persons are disordered in their inclinations and exhibit an intrinsically disordered "condition."

The 1986 document also explicitly states that it is correcting an overly benign misreading of a 1975 document issued by the same office before Cardinal Ratzinger was at its helm, which concluded that the "homosexual condition" is morally neutral or even good.  As a corrective to the assumption that people who are made gay or lesbian are born with a morally neutral or even a good "condition" vis-a-vis sexual orientation, the 1986 document declares that those born gay and lesbian are "intrinsically disordered"--in their inclinations.  In their "condition."  In their human natures.

The 1975 document was issued two years after the influential American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from its manual of diagnostic disorders.  Because numerous studies have failed to demonstrate any correlation at all with a gay sexual orientation and mental illness.  

The 1975 document was, in other words, a response to a well-substantiated psychological finding now considered standard by professional psychiatric and medical organizations throughout the developed world: that sexual orientation is established either at birth or very early in the life of a human being, and that a gay sexual orientation is a neutral psychological reality, not an indicator of moral defect or psychological disturbance.  The 1986 document on the "pastoral" care of gay and lesbian persons wishes to keep the language of disorder alive in the face of that growing consensus among professional organizations throughout the developed sectors of the world, and of increasing numbers of educated people in those parts of the world.

The 1986 document wishes, in short, to continue speaking of gay and lesbian human beings as disordered in their "inclinations," as intrinsically disordered in their "condition"--as disordered in their very natures, since it is impossible to imagine inclinations and conditions walking around in the absence of persons--in order to counter the conclusion of contemporary science that 1) sexual orientation is innate or established early in one's life, and 2) sexual orientation is morally and psychologically neutral.  

From a theological standpoint, the growing consensus of the psychiatric and medical professional community that sexual orientation is innate or established early in life and is psychologically neutral points to the conclusion that the creator God makes some human beings gay or lesbian, that gay and lesbian people have a role to play in God's plan of salvation in the world, and that being gay or lesbian is good.  The sexual orientation of gay and lesbian persons is God's gift to them, and is essential to God's plan of salvation for those who are made gay and lesbian, as well as to God's plan of salvation for the entire world.

Not only is the definition of gay and lesbian human beings as intrinsically disordered in their very natures established by the 1986 CDF "pastoral" letter, that definition has now entered the highest levels of magisterial teachings in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states (¶2358), "The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible.  This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial."

Those now accusing their brother and sister Catholics who cite these magisterial teachings of lying--of misrepresenting magisterial teaching to say that gay and lesbian persons are objectively disordered--are themselves lying about what the magisterium says.  They are doing so because 1) there is a long-standing tradition in some sectors of the Catholic church of excusing falsehoods told to defend the church as necessary lapses serving the common good; 2) there is also a tradition, applied frequently to gay and lesbian persons as purported enemies of the church, of asserting that sin has no rights, and therefore falsehoods told about or to sinful persons are permitted; 3) these defenders of the faith do not intend to permit critical analysis of magisterial teaching, since they regard a critique of any aspect of magisterial teaching as a threat to the entire body of Catholic teaching; and 4) they recognize the increasing untenability of Catholic magisterial teaching that gay and lesbian persons are intrinsically disordered, and want to divert attention from what the magisterium actually says for apologetic reasons.

And so it is now becoming commonplace in right-wing Catholic circles first to deny what the magisterium actually says about this topic (though these same Catholics are louder than any in swearing fidelity to every aspect of magisterial teaching), and then to attack Catholics who accurately represent magisterial teaching about homosexuality as political activists who are being dishonest about what the church teaches.  It is also becoming commonplace in these same circles for right-wing Catholic apologists to claim that, even if the church does teach that gay and lesbian persons are disordered in their inclinations, the church teaches the same thing about heterosexual persons.

But it does no such thing.  And it never has done so.  The category of intrinsic disorder is reserved exclusively to describe the inclinations and "conditions" of those who are gay and lesbian--to describe the very nature and personhood of gay and lesbian persons.  It has never been used at any point in church teaching this way to describe heterosexual persons as a group, even when they engage in activities like masturbation or use of artificial contraceptives that the church regards as intrinsically disordered.

As I say, I don't intend to respond to Mr. Pengel's implicit attack on my integrity and/or intellectual ability at the America blog, but since I have my own blog and am free to write the truth here--if not at some of the blogs of the Catholic center--I have decided to respond to his statements here.  As I do so, I do have to wonder, however, how the blog sites of the Catholic center imagine they are serving the church and fostering helpful conversation, when they allow such bold lies to stand while censoring those being slammed by untruths like those Mr. Pengel is spreading.

San Antonio Archdiocese: No More Gays at Weekly Mass

Right in the middle of intense concern about the exodus of Catholics from the church in the U.S.--one in three adults raised Catholic leaving the church, one in ten American adults now former Catholics--this story breaks: "San Antonio Archdiocese Says No More Gays at Weekly Mass."

After more than 15 years in which a Catholic parish in San Antonio offered a weekly liturgy hospitable to members of the gay community, pastoral officials of the archdiocese are shutting this Mass down.  And showing their gay brothers and sisters the door.

And those brothers and sisters hear the message loud and clear.  Fred Antonio Garza, president of the local Dignity chapter, says that members of the gay community who have been attending this weekly Mass will look for "a more welcoming environment" elsewhere.

As I've reported on this blog in the past (e.g., here and here), the purge of openly gay and lesbian folks from Catholic parishes in the U.S. began with the current pope's 1986 "Halloween letter" issued when, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he headed the Vatican office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  This "pastoral" letter took the fateful step of defining gay and lesbian people as disordered, something the Catholic tradition had not done prior to Ratzinger's Halloween letter.

The letter sparked a purge in which Dignity chapters, which had been meeting on Catholic premises across the U.S., were informed that they were no longer welcome in any Catholic setting.  As I've also noted, in my own city, the entire Dignity chapter responded to its expulsion from Catholic premises by converting to Episcopalianism, since our local Episcopal church is far more welcoming of openly gay folks than the Catholic church is.

From the 1986 Halloween letter forward, the message of the Catholic hierarchy to gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in Christ has been unambiguous: you are not welcome.  Not as you are.  Return to the closet if you expect us to welcome you.

And to Catholic priests and nuns seeking to build pastoral bridges to their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, the message has also been clear: stop what you are doing.  You will be punished if you engage in this pastoral outreach.

The result has been a massive silent exodus of gay and lesbian persons and of those who love and stand in solidarity with gay and lesbian persons from Catholic churches since 1986, an exodus that research now indicates (as sources I've cited in recent postings demonstrate) is now extending to younger Catholics in general.  The primary reason younger folks are now walking away from churches in general is that they cannot any longer accept the cruel message of unwelcome the churches are giving to those who are gay and lesbian.

One in three American adults raised Catholic has now left.  One in ten American adults is a former Catholic.

And one of the last Masses in the U.S. welcoming openly gay Catholics affiliated with Dignity has now been shut down, as the San Antonio archdiocese informs Catholics attending that Mass that they are no longer welcome in the Catholic church. 

While we talk, throughout the American Catholic church, about how to deal with the shocking attrition.

Does not make sense, does it?

Kate Childs Graham on Making American Catholicism a Welcoming and Safe Space for Gay Persons

I blogged yesterday about a recent article of Peter Steinfels at Commonweal discussing the alarming attrition rate in American Catholicism (and here): a Pew Forum study in February 2008 found that one in three American adults raised Catholic have left the Catholic church, and one in ten American adults is a former Catholic.  As this happens, the pastoral leaders of the American Catholic church, its bishops, have been totally silent about the problem, its causes, or a solution to the problem.  Though the gospels are insistent that one who walks in the footsteps of Jesus as a good shepherd seeks each and every sheep that has strayed from the flock . . . .

My postings yesterday focused on the facet of the attrition that grabs my existential attention: the signal of pronounced unwelcome given to gay and lesbian Catholics by the church's magisterium, its pastoral leaders, and by lay Catholics who defend the magisterium and support the behavior of the pastoral leaders in this regard.  Though some of our brothers and sisters defensively insist that we who are gay and lesbian are imagining the message of unwelcome we are being given, that message is loud and clear--to anyone with ears to heart it.

I keep citing Michael O'Loughlin's recent enumeration at America's "In All Things" blog of the message of unwelcome the church gives to gay and lesbian Catholics, beginning with the statement, "Something is wrong with you," and ending with the statement, "You are a threat to human existence."  Is it possible, I wonder, to give any group of human beings a more unwelcoming message than the message for which these two statements constitute the alpha and omega?  You are made wrong, and you are a threat to my existence and that of everyone else in the world.

O'Loughlin builds on a posting of Fr. James Martin at America about a year ago,  in which he asks what a gay Catholic who remains with the church is to do, given the "welcome" messages the church offers to us who are gay.  As Fr. Martin notes, the church tells us that we who are gay cannot )1 enjoy romantic love, 2) marry, 3) adopt a child, 4) enter a seminary, or 5) work for the church and disclose our gay identity.

Is it any wonder that, given this message by a community that portrays itself as all about welcoming all of God's children at its table, as offering love and salvation to everyone, many gay and lesbian Catholics simply remove themselves from the source of such dehumanizing messages and of the inner turmoil that ensues when one is told simultaneously that one is loved and welcomed, and that one is disordered and a threat to human existence?  When the church's message to gay and lesbian persons is framed by the affirmation that every gay or lesbian person ever born is disordered--"Something is wrong with you"--and when that message moves to the conclusion that every gay and lesbian person in the world is a threat to human existence, is it any wonder that many gay and lesbian persons simply choose to walk away from the Catholic church?

And when our brothers and sisters of the center, the intellectual class that shapes the opinion of tchurch leaders, either remain silent about this problem or tacitly (and even overtly) defend those giving their gay brothers and sisters this message . . . ?  When there is, as a result, no dialogue about these issues in the publications of the powerful centrist opinion-making sector of the church, even if the topic on the table is the question of why attrition is occurring and what to do about it?

Given my preoccupation with these issues and my attempt--at the risk of appearing obsessive--to foster dialogue about these issues in American Catholicism in the past several years, I'm delighted to see that National Catholic Reporter published a first-hand statement by one courageous lesbian Catholic writer yesterday, shortly after I posted my two postings about the problem of unwelcome of gay and lesbian Catholicsin the U.S. (and the problem of eliciting honest conversation that takes seriously the testimony of gay and lesbian Catholics).  

NCR's essay is by Kate Childs Graham, a graduate of Catholic University of America (CUA). The essay is powerful, honest, valuable testimony about Childs Graham's experiences in the church, particularly at CUA, where she was told, when she entered, that CUA provides a welcoming space for gay and lesbian students, but found out immediately that the reality is quite different: she was called a fag in class, hounded by the ministry staff of the school, barred from participation in campus ministry activities, and forced to resign as leader of a women's prayer group.

As I wrote yesterday, "the Catholic church is one of the least welcoming social spaces in American society right now for those of us who are gay and lesbian."  And Childs Graham provides corroboration of that claim, though, as she rightly points out, there is a large and increasingly vocal group of American Catholics who push back against the attempt to demonize and exclude their gay brothers and sisters, and this pushback points the direction of hope.

Out of her experience of being made unwelcome at one of the flagship universities of American Catholicism (an experience that, based on my own experiences with the Catholic academy in the U.S., is likely to be very common for students in American Catholic universities), Childs Graham appeals to the leaders of the church to craft a welcoming church, to make the Catholic church and its institutions safe spaces for gay and lesbian people (and especially gay and lesbian youth) today.  And to speak out against bullying of gay youth.

She also addresses bloggers and those commenting on gay issues at Catholic blog sites, and asks that Catholic bloggers refrain from online bullying, from spreading messages of hate and condemnation of their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters at Catholic blog sites.  Check any thread at any Catholic blog site today, from the center to the far right, and notice the poison that Catholics feel free to inject into these discussions--free in the name of God to inject into the veins of their gay brothers and sisters--and you'll quickly conclude that Childs Graham is on target to issue this appeal.

To Catholic youth, Childs Graham says, "It does get better."  And,  there are safe and welcoming spaces in the American Catholic church: seek them out.  To Catholics in general, Childs Graham's message is simple and clear: "Standing together, we can create a church that is truly welcoming of all people."

This is a very important piece of testimony, and I'm delighted that NCR chose to publish it.  If nothing else, the appearance of this testimony in one of the major publications of the American Catholic center represents a new level of willingness on the part of the center to make room for openly gay voices, and to hear the first-hand testimony of  those voices.

This is an indispensable first step, if we really do care about why so many Catholics are walking away today, and if we want to do something about that problem.  Certainly, the reasons for the exodus go far beyond the question of how gay and lesbian Catholics are received by the Catholic community.  But this is also not an insignificant question to discuss, when the topic on the table is who is leaving and why they are leaving.

As I've noted in previous postings, when the 1986 Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith letter of the current Pope Benedict, then Cardinal Ratzinger, on the pastoral care of gay and lesbian persons, was issued, that pastoral letter began a purge of gay and lesbian Catholics from the church that has  never stopped.  The letter broke new ground by defining gay and lesbian persons as objectively disordered--a statement that had never been made by the magisterium in the past, and which is never applied to heterosexual Catholics even when they engage in "disordered" sexual behavior such as use of artificial contraceptives or masturbation.

The assault on the human dignity of gay and lesbian persons represented by the teaching on disorder, which has now been enshrined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, was followed by an immediate, savage purge in which the Vatican urged bishops to bar groups engaged in pastoral outreach to gay and lesbian persons from Catholic facilities.  The message of this purge was clear: you are not wanted.  You are not welcome, with your disordered lives.

As I've noted a number of times on this blog, in my hometown of Little Rock, when this purge took place--when the local chapter of Dignity was barred from meeting on Catholic premises--the entire chapter chose, en masse, to join the Episcopal church.  In our area, the Episcopal church has been conspicuously welcoming to those who are gay and lesbian.  The Catholic church has not.

Much hard work remains to be done, if the courageous appeal of Childs Graham to the Catholic community in the U.S. to create safe and welcoming spaces for gay and lesbian persons is to have any real effect.  Despite the claims of apologists that the church does not practice discrimination, openly gay and lesbian persons are unwelcome--almost across the board--as employees in Catholic institutions throughout the U.S.

In late August, the U.S. Catholic Bishops' Conference sent a letter to Congress demanding, in fact, that Congress continue to uphold the "right" of religious groups to discriminate in hiring and firing practices.  This letter seeks protection for Catholic institutions, quite precisely, to continue longstanding practices of barring openly gay persons from employment, and from legal liability if they choose to fire a gay employee simply because he/she is gay.

And, though Anne Hendershott challenges my report that openly gay or lesbian leaders on faculties of Catholic universities in the U.S. are almost nowhere to be found (and here),  I have seen no credible evidence to support the contention that most American Catholic universities are welcoming spaces for openly gay or lesbian faculty members, or to discredit the conclusion of scholar W. King Mott that "[t]here is no way the current hierarchy will allow a gay person to hold a position of authority [in a Catholic university] unless they are closeted and self-loathing."

As I am writing this posting, the Catholic bishops of North Carolina are lobbying to prevent legislation that would crack down on school bullying, as these bishops maintain that such legislation would be a Trojan horse to bring a "gay agenda" into schools.  And the Catholic bishops of Minnesota have accepted a sizable donation from a hidden donor to send a video attacking gay marriage to every Catholic household in the state, on the eve of an election in which only the Republican gubernatorial candidate is campaigning against same-sex marriage.

When the Catholic diocese of Portland, Maine, worked actively against the right of gay citizens of that state to have civil marriages, Catholic bishops from across the country sent money to Maine to assist in this battle.  That money was taken from donations given by Catholic parishioners in the expectation that the donations would be used to keep churches and schools open, to feed the hungry, tend to the sick, etc.--not to fight political battles in a state in which these Catholic donors did not even live.  Those donating these funds diverted to political use were not asked about the political diversion of their donations, or told that the funds were being used for this political purpose.

In the archdiocese of Denver last year, a Catholic school informed a same-sex couple who are practicing Catholics that their children are not welcome in Catholic schools.  When Catholic charitable organizations like Catholic Charities have been challenged to place children for adoption in households headed by same-sex parents, bishops have threatened to close those organizations and stop all their charitable work rather than to comply with requirements to place children in such households.

There is much work to do.  And the work goes right to the top, to the pastoral leaders of the Catholic church, who, over and over again, belie their claims to be interested in welcoming and loving all sons and daughters of God through their mean-spirited, unjust, harmful attacks on gay and lesbian persons--and, now, their refusal to speak out against bullying of gay youths.

I share Childs Graham's hope that the Catholic laity can make a real difference in this situation.  If they do so, it's clear to me that the path to real change lies in fiscal pressure by the laity, whose money funds these mean-spirited attacks, on the pastoral leaders of the church.  And the path to real change lies in the willingness of the powerful opinion makers of the center of the American Catholic church to admit, finally, that the church has a real problem on its hands, with its treatment of its gay and lesbian sons and daughters, and that no solution to the problem of attrition in American Catholicism that ignores this problem will be productive.