LGBT Catholics Disappointed on Eve of ‘Liberal’ Pope’s U.S. Visit
Pope Francis has received heaps of adoration for a comment he made in 2013: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” he said.
Context is important. Francis was speaking specifically about gay celibate priests, and he was only echoing the existing position of the Catholic Church, which condemns “homosexual acts” but says “homosexual inclination” is not in itself immoral. Still, his expression of gentle tolerance felt radical given the Church’s history with LGBT issues, and it stood in stark contrast to Pope Benedict XVI’s notorious description of homosexuality as an “intrinsic moral evil.” Many considered the mere fact that Pope Francis had uttered the word “gay” to be revolutionary.
His comments came around the same time that the marriage equality movement in the United States was reaching its tipping point, and many American LGBT Catholics began to hope that the Church might finally recognize the dignity of gay Catholic lives. After all, this is a pope who’s also called the Church “obsessed” with abortion and contraception, referred to unbridled capitalism as “the dung of the devil” and acknowledged humans’ involvement in climate change. Gay Catholic families who feel they could use mercy from the church have welcomed the shift away from dogma and toward the pastoral compassion exhibited by Pope Francis.
Enter the World Meeting of Families, an international Catholic conference held every three years since 1994, with a mission to celebrate Catholic family life. This year’s World Meeting is special because it will be held in the United States for the first time, and because Pope Francis is personally attending. After visits to New York City and Washington, D.C., the pope will spend two days in Philadelphia, where he will conclude the World Meeting by hosting an open-air mass on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. More than a million people are expected to attend the week’s festivities, all planned around the theme of “Love is Our Mission: The Family Fully Alive.”
Gay Catholics from around the country are planning to travel to Philadelphia in hopes of being a part of a historic turn toward LGBT acceptance.
But in recent weeks, that hope has gone sour. With the meeting less than a month away, gay Catholic have been all but blackballed from the event. The ongoing clash underscores the stark divide between the pope’s message of mercy and the cruel way gay Catholics are treated by the U.S. Church — in this case, by way of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Charles J. Chaput.
The tension began when Deb Word, former president of Fortunate Families, a support group for Catholic parents of gay and transgender children, emailed Chaput about hosting an outreach table at the World Meeting, and asked him to include a speaker in the program who could address the grave dangers faced by LGBT kids who are rejected by their Catholic parents.
“Our goal for these kids has been to prevent suicide,” she wrote to Chaput.”One [child] attempted in our home, devastated at his [parents’] response…another took his life a year after staying with us. We were devastated that we hadn’t been able to do more to prevent his death at 19. Our bar was set very low- keep the kids breathing!”
Gay teens are 8.4 times more likely to report having attempted suicide, and 5.9 times more likely to report high levels of depression compared with peers from families that reported no or low levels of family rejection.