Bishop wants, clergy, laity out of closet - anti-homophobia; Bishop Thomas Gumbleton

National Catholic Reporter, March 21, 1997 by Tom Roberts

PITTSBURGH -- The New Ways Ministry Symposium here opened with haunting strains of a two-note chant, "Veni Sancte Spiritu." The gathering reached an emotional high pitch the following day as a bishop urged all gay and lesbian Catholics, including bishops and priests, to "come out" and called on the church to learn from what they have to say about sexual experience.

Those markers reflected the tension of the conference: between reverence for tradition and challenge to the status quo.

The tension showed in stories of Catholic gays and lesbians who seek solace in any hint of compassion from church officials but always run into the ultimate Vatican assessment that their orientation is "intrinsically disordered." The tension was also reflected by devoted Catholic parents who want acceptance for their gay and lesbian children from the church.

The March 7-9 symposium drew 650 people, nearly half of them nuns, priests or religious brothers, for what was billed as a national dialogue on lesbian and gay issues and Catholicism." The gathering was the fourth and largest of its kind in the 20-year history of New Ways. an independent group founded in 1977 "to promote understanding and acceptance of lesbian and gay persons within the Catholic community."

According to organizers, 51 percent of those attending were lay people. Fifty percent are involved in pastoral ministry, and 16 percent are diocesan or congregation leaders.

Although most talk, were measured presentations on such topics as historical development of sexual ethics or recent scientific findings about the causes and nature of homosexuality, the atmosphere in the main room became charged when Bishops Matthew Clark of Rochester, N.Y., and Thomas Gumbleton, auxiliary of Detroit, took the stage Saturday.

Pushing the envelope

Gumbleton, often described as a maverick, has been a leading, if sometimes lonesome, voice among the bishops on controversial matters of social justice. While a few other bishops have addressed Catholic gay and lesbian gatherings, none has been as passionately outspoken as Gumbleton. At the New Ways gathering this year, his message bore a new challenge -- one that "pushed the envelope," in the words of Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways.

Even church leaders sympathetic to homosexual issues and gay rights, including Gumbleton, generally shy away from speaking openly about same-gender sexual activity -- except to dutifully repeat the church's view of it as sin. But Gumbleton was less cautious in his remarks here, lamenting that the church ignores the experience of homosexual people today just as it once refused to listen to heterosexuals on the matter of sex and marriage, he said.

Quoting a letter by Pope Gregory the Great (540-604), Gumbleton read: "Since even the lawful intercourse of the wedded cannot take place without pleasure of the flesh, entrance into a sacred place should be abstained from because the pleasure itself can by no means be without sin."

Gumbleton commented: "That is the Holy Father teaching, teaching that married people may not have sexual intercourse with pleasure because it is a sin."

Gumbleton contrasted Pope Gregory's words with those of Pope John Paul II who, in an encyclical on marriage, describes conjugal intercourse as a way of communicating love.

"John Paul II rejects the restricted view of the sexual act that made sense to the Christian tradition for more than a millennium," he said. The change, he said, came about because "we finally listened to married people, and their experience was that the joy and the pleasure of sex is good, is given by God and should be enjoyed and rejoiced in. And finally the church was able to hear what its own people were saying.

"And I suggest that the same thing can happen when homosexual people share with us their own experience," their understanding that their sexuality "is a gift," he said.

Gumbleton spoke of being changed by the coming out of his gay brother, Dan, a few years back, and by his experience at a New Ways symposium five years ago. His ministry with homosexuals since has led him to the conviction, he said, that the most important thing bishops and priests can do is to create an atmosphere where "gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people can be truly open about who they are."

"I think it's very, very important that they experience a warmth and openness within the church," to be allowed "to share their gifts with our church,", he said -- "the gift of courage, which is so outstanding; the gift of compassion and caring for others; the gift of creativity, which seems to be so marked within the homosexual community. And I encourage this because I hope that within our church every gay person, every lesbian person, every bisexual person or transgendered person will come out. Because that is how our church is going to truly change."

It takes great courage to come out, he said, adding: "I would say this especially to bishops and priests within our church.

"I can't tell you the number of letters I have received from priests who say they are gay but who are afraid to come out," Gumbleton continued. What a loss that is to our church. If they were willing to stand up on Sunday morning in front of the community and say who they really are, our church would much more fully and effectively appreciate the gifts that homosexuals can bring to the whole community of our church and our society as well."