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Has God Been Outed?

MIXED MESSAGES AT ARCHDIOCESAN GAY AND LESBIAN CONFERENCE

By Alcibiades Sanchez

A recent Los Angeles Times article, "Catholics are Reaching Out to Gays While Standing Firm on Abstinence" posed the question: "[H]ow does the church reach out to gay men and women without bending the rules?" Father Peter J. Liuzzi, head of the Los Angeles Archdiocese's Gay & Lesbian Ministry, responds by musing that the cardinal insists that "people understand exactly what our teaching is..."

During the weekend of September 5-7, the Los Angeles Archdiocese hosted the Fourth Annual Conference of the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries. The event, called "Unconditional Love," was held at the Sheraton Hotel in Long Beach. Cardinal Mahony was the principal celebrant at the Saturday night Eucharistic Liturgy. In his homily, the cardinal did state that the Church forbids homo-genital sex, but was quick to add that, although this teaching was binding "upon all of us," the Church cannot be more demanding of homosexuals than of heterosexuals. The cardinal urged the congregation to read the Church's Christian Anthropology and Homosexuality to get a perspective of the Church's teachings on homosexuality.

The music at the Mass was provided by homosexual activist Bob Hurd and his orchestra. Perhaps because of the Vatican's investigation of her writings, Sister Jeannine Gramick was not a featured speaker; instead, she read the first reading at the Mass. (When this Mission reporter had called the Archdiocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministry office asking for a list of speakers, the receptionist there immediately offered that Jeannine Gramick would be a participant, as if she expected the news would delight the caller.) For Communion, the cardinal chose to use bread instead of communion wafers. This Mission reporter witnessed one young woman attempt to receive on the tongue only to have the cardinal tell her: "No, this isn't done here!" Many members of Dignity (distinguished by their T-shirts) went up to receive communion, seemingly without any qualms on the cardinal's part.

Many members of the radical homosexual group Dignity were present at the conference. All members wore colorful T-shirts with the group's signature rainbow emblazoned across the front. Dignity's philosophy was the only philosophy promoted during the conference. Whenever a conference participant asked about Courage (the Church-approved ministry to Gays and Lesbians which promotes chastity for homosexuals), he was told that this group was not good: "they just want to change us, they don't accept us as we are." Asked about Courage, Carol Clark, the RCIA coordinator at Saint Andrew Church in Pasadena said, "We don't want to send people to Courage--they try to change you." A reporter from the National Catholic Reporter, Leslie Wirpsa, also expressed disapproval of Courage.

Jim Maier, the head of the Dignity chapter in Los Angeles, is a laicized Jesuit priest who now runs the AIDS Project Los Angeles. Maier facilitated one of the sessions for Hispanic Gay and Lesbians in the Los Angeles Archdiocese. The seminar, Conversacion en Español (Conversations in Spanish), seemed for the most part to center on the subject of young Hispanic gays and lesbians. Given the fact that most of the conference participants were older (50 years old plus) and homosexual, it is of little wonder that in order to continue, this group will have to recruit elsewhere if they are to survive. The Hispanic participants were all very young and seemed confused. Many were from Latin American countries where the Church still promotes her authentic teachings.

Dignity had a booth set up in the reception hall where they distributed their literature to conference participants. A review of the literature reveals what Dignity teaches about homosexuality. One Dignity brochure was, Catholicism, Homosexuality and Dignity: Questions & Answers about being Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgendered and Catholic, written by a Catholic priest, Reverend Daniel A. Helminiak of Atlanta, Georgia.The brochure, drafted in a series of 15 "questions," poses such queries as: "What options are opened to a person who is homosexual and Catholic?" The answer: "Official Catholic teaching requires that homosexual people abstain from sex. But the Catholic Church also teaches solemnly that people are obliged to form their own conscience carefully and responsibly and to follow it as the bottom line in every moral decision." The brochure goes on to mention the 1986 Vatican Directive, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastrol Care of Homosexual Persons. Dignity's published 1987 reaction to this directive is that "lesbian and gay people may indeed engage in loving, life-giving and life-affirming sex, always in an ethically responsible and unselfish way." The members of Dignity at the conference admitted that several bishops throughout the United States have banned the group from their dioceses.

Father Kenneth Waibel, Pastor of Saint Mark's Church and St. Stephan the Martyr Church in Richmond, Kentucky facilitated the seminar on "Gay and Lesbian Spirituality." Father Waibel freely alluded to his homosexuality and homosexual lifestyle. His thesis is that "the only authentic spirituality is gay spirituality." He stated that this concept, coupled with current understanding of homosexuality, will lead to changes in the institutional church. "Learned people are dangerous to the hierachy," he stated. Father Waibel went on to praise the example of the Catholic feminists whose challenge to the hierarchy had been so sucessful due to the fact that they were "learned." "These women went out and got Ph.D.s and challenged the bishops and changed things." This example was held up as an ideal for the homosexual community. Father Waibel talked about how homosexuals use the word "family"; we are all "family." He remarked that if he sees a car with the Dignity rainbow he instinctively greets them because they are "family." Father Waibel described how through fear and repression homosexuals have created a community and ultimately a "family."

Father Waibel was very disparaging of heterosexuals. "Heterosexual men," said Father Waibel, "cannot fall in love with Jesus Christ because of their own homophobia. Jesus wants us to be erotically in love with him, and that's not possible with the homophobes." He spoke about the heterosexual couples he prepares for marriage and how the rituals he performs for them emphasize disunity. On the other hand he had nothing but praise for the same-sex "union blessings" he has witnessed.

Father Waibel said God's "presence is in the closet, out of the closet and in the doorway." He often asked about "who we are as gays and lesbians" and how the homosexual lifestyle is a challege to the paradigm that opposites attract. Father Waibel called for a deconstruction of the idea of the seperateness of male and female. His most radical statements were reserved for the end of his talk-- "God doesn't care about sex but cares about how we care about the person we are having sex with." He also said that the Catechism of the Catholic Church is on a collision course with itself because it made a "big boo-boo" in dealing with homosexuality.

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