The only good gay is a ...............?

About two weeks ago, Cardinal George of Chicago, the current leader of the United States Bishops Conference, publicly criticized and derided the work of New Ways Ministry http://www.newwaysministry.org/.  New Ways describes itself as an organization seeking to work for justice for gays and lesbians in the Catholic Church. New Ways is headquartered in suburban Washington, DC.  This was seen by some observers as part of George's efforts to make it clear to everyone that the bishops, and the bishops alone, speak officially on behalf of the Catholic Church. Personally, I also suspect that it was prompted by two other developments in the Washington, DC area. First, a group of gay and lesbian Catholics met in Washington in January to begin forming a group called "Catholics for Equality" that intends to work for equal treatment of gays and lesbians in the Church. http://www.bilerico.com/2010/01/catholics_for_equality.php  Also, the Washington, DC gay marriage law will likely become effective in early March. The Archdiocese of Washington has already withdrawn from its 80 year commitment to the local foster care program, and has transferred its cases and personnel to a non-church entity. The archdiocese has threatened to cut all contractual relationships between Catholic Charities and the District of Columbia government, rather than to have to provide spousal benefits to same sex married couples who work for government funded, but church administered, charities in the district.  It seems that the Church's reactions to the push for gay and lesbian civil rights is heating up in the DC area.


New Ways ministry is a private association of Catholics. Now, Catholic Canon Law permits the faithful to form groups and associations. New Ways Ministry, to my knowledge, has never claimed to speak officially on behalf of the Catholic Church or the bishops. Surely, there is no one in America who is so benighted or so confused on this issue as to think that the Catholic Church believes that homogenital actions are morally acceptable. No one is that uninformed. So why was the clarification necessary? I suspect that it is simply part of a campaign to silence all discussion in the Church about what the proper stance is toward gay and lesbian Catholics, and to push back against the tide of gay rights statutes and court cases. I suspect that, like the king of old who ordered that the tide stop, such efforts will fail laughably in the long run.


Increasingly, one has the impression that the bishops, speaking authoritatively, would wish that the issue would just go away, and that gay Catholics would just go away, or at least not be visible and vocal. It is the existence of others who disagree that the church increasingly finds disagreeable.


All this is made more interesting by Cardinal George's words today, when he addressed a gathering of Mormons at Brigham Young University.  The text is supposed to be online, but I cannot get it to run on the BYU website. There is no mention of it on the Archdiocese of Chicago website. A Utah television station (http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=9788813) excerpts George saying:

"The Cardinal spoke of unity in the fight against poverty and pornography, and standing for the right to life. He talked of the two faiths defending of religious freedom, which he says is not just freedom of worship.

"At stake is whether the religious word will be heard in the public square," he said.

The two faiths are also united against same-sex marriage. What he most regrets, he said, is the overt opposition.

"This happened in Proposition 8 in California ... [to] respond by thuggery, by quasi-fascist tactics [rather] than the common good, our whole society stands in great jeopardy," Cardinal George said. "Mormons and Catholics take pride on our citizenship as Americans and our legacy of service to the nation."

The students gave Cardinal George a standing ovation."

Now, let me be clear. I do not speak for the Catholic Church and he does. But "thuggery" and "quasi-facist" are not words of healing, nor are they fit descriptions of what went on during the Proposition 8 campaign and in its aftermath. Unless, of course, the more than occasional gay bashing by Catholics can also be called evidence of the Church's "thuggery" and "neo-facism." Of course, gay bashing Catholics don't speak for the church officially, only bishops do that.

It appears that one may be in bed with Mormons, whose baptism Catholics do not even recognize, and that's laudable, meet and proper. But being in bed with someone one loves and is committed to, and wanting a modicum of civil, not religious, legal protections as a couple, is a denial of "freedom of religion." The gay marriage issue is, after all, not a dispute about Catholic sacramental theology. It is a dispute about a civil contract.

It is a hard day to be gay and Catholic. Again.