During the recent Faith and Formation Conference held at the Santa Clara Convention Center, an event sanctioned by Bishop Patrick J. McGrath of the Diocese of San Jose, and, according to the web-site, “on behalf of Archbishop Cordileone, Bishop Barber, Bishop Blaire, Bishop Garcia and Bishop Daly,” featured a discussion regarding homosexuality and the Church that was delivered by Mr. David Kennedy and Fr. John Curran, OMI. Shockingly, despite the platform they were given, both men are widely known for their public dissention from Catholic teachings on homosexuality.
Mr. Kennedy, a supporter of the L.A. Archdiocesan Catholic Ministry with Lesbian & Gay Persons,* also has close ties with the pro-gay outreach Fortunate Families; Fortunate Families has openly criticized the Church’s teachings on homosexuality and aligned itself with the officially censured organizations of Call to Action and New Ways Ministry; recently, a Fortunate Families group in Detroit invited a speaker from New Ways Ministry to address their gathering at a local parish - which was quickly banned by Archbishop Allen Vigneron; with regards to Call to Action: “The judgment of the Holy See is that the activities of ‘Call to Action’ …are in contrast with the Catholic faith due to views and positions held which are unacceptable from a doctrinal and disciplinary standpoint...Thus to be a member of this association or to support it is irreconcilable with a coherent living of the Catholic faith;” as for New Ways Ministry: in 2010, Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago and former President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), stated, “I wish to make it clear that, like other groups that claim to be Catholic but deny central aspects of Church teaching, New Ways Ministry has no approval or recognition from the Catholic Church and that they cannot speak on behalf of the Catholic faithful in the United States.” Yet, Mr. Kennedy has been repeatedly featured in newsletters from Fortunate Families that also features artciles from both Call to Action and New Ways Ministry. In fact, Kennedy disparagingly stated in a 2010 newsletter than many gays are driven from the Church by “…something they heard from Rome.”
Fr. John Curran is also a renowned name among pro-gay Catholic dissenters. In fact, when Pope Benedict XVI condemned recent secular movements to legalize gay marriage, Fr. Curran was critical of the Holy Father, he wrote, on the pro-gay site Believe Out Loud: “I am 63 years old and a priest. I have seen the world move from ‘The love that dear not speak its name’ to Gay Marriage by popular vote. It is true that the Church always lags and struggles. Determining the will of God is never easy. I believe we are getting there, I have hope…” More recently, he has organized a series of “workshops,” in which he is often teamed with Mr. Kennedy, where he unequivocally says that “…being in the closet is unhealthy.” He also believes that gays “have been taught self-hate” by the Church. He also lamented that once upon a time, men who suffered from same-sex attraction “…did the ‘right thing’–married, had kids, but, some realized they were living a lie.” First of all, there is no such thing as: “coming out;” for, in fact, it’s a capitulation, a self-surrender to a psychological wound that makes someone believe that they are gay. Fr. Curran’s statements are contradictory to what was affirmed in the Holy See’s 1986 “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Person,” which read: “Therefore special concern and pastoral attention should be directed toward those who have this condition, lest they be led to believe that the living out of this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not.” Furthermore, the same documents condemned such self-identification rituals as coming-out: “Today, the Church provides a badly needed context for the care of the human person when she refuses to consider the person as a ‘heterosexual’ or a ‘homosexual’ and insists that every person has a fundamental Identity: the creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life.” This was echoed in a USCCB statement “Always Our Children,” that cautioned against such concepts as coming-out: “Sexual identity helps to define the unique persons we are, and one component of our sexual identity is sexual orientation. Thus, our total personhood is more encompassing than sexual orientation. Human beings see the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart (cf. 1 Sm 16:7).” Secondly, the Church has never taught anyone to “hate” themselves; on the contrary, with regards to those afflicted with homosexuality, as stated in “The Catechism of the Catholic Church,” the Church calls them to “christian perfection.” (CCC #2359) In addition, the Catechism makes the strongest admonition with regards to the treatment of homosexuals: “They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.” (CCC#2358) Lastly, concerning those men with same-sex attraction, but, nevertheless, chose to marry women and raise a family, whom Fr. Curran believes are living a “lie,” I have had the privilege to council and become friends with many of them. Resoundingly, these men are not sad or tragic figures, in fact: I have found them rather heroic. For the most part, their wives knew beforehand and understood their husband’s struggles. Miraculously, through much prayer and dedication to love, and often along with the care and companionship found through Courage, these men are able to achieve fulfillment in life and to raise beautiful and emotionally healthy children. To dismiss them, as Fr. Curran has done - is arrogant and ultimately faithless.
As a parting shot, Fr. Curran had this to say in a recent interview when asked about freedom of conscious and homosexuality: “Primacy of personal conscience is very important. The Church is not your conscience.” The Saintly Pope John Paul II was keenly aware of such flagrant distortions and attempts to confuse the hopeless and the lost, especially in terms of those afflicted with homosexuality; therefore, from the same aforementioned “Letter” it states:
“With this in mind, this Congregation wishes to ask the Bishops to be especially cautious of any programmes which may seek to pressure the Church to change her teaching, even while claiming not to do so. A careful examination of their public statements and the activities they promote reveals a studied ambiguity by which they attempt to mislead the pastors and the faithful. For example, they may present the teaching of the Magisterium, but only as if it were an optional source for the formation of one's conscience.”
And, this is precisely what Fr. Curran, and Mr. Kennedy do repeatedly: exhort their followers and those they have fooled, to be familiar with Catholic teachings, but not to let them override their own personal conscience. For those two men, the teachings of the Church are just something “from Rome;” they are not from God. Most recently, Pope Francis spoke out against this form of moral relativism, he said:
“The task of appropriating and expressing our identity does not always prove easy, however, since – being sinners – we will always be tempted by the spirit of the world, which shows itself in a variety of ways. I would like to point to three of these. One is the deceptive light of relativism, which obscures the splendor of truth and, shaking the earth beneath our feet, pulls us toward the shifting sands of confusion and despair. It is a temptation which nowadays also affects Christian communities, causing people to forget that in a world of rapid and disorienting change, “there is much that is unchanging, much that has its ultimate foundation in Christ, who is the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”
What I find most fascinating, is Francis’ inclusion of the modern idea of identity, where in which people oftentimes are tempted to identify themselves in terms of what the world expects: coming out as gay; when, going back to Pope John Paul II – our ultimate identity is with Christ.
* The L.A. Archdiocesan Catholic Ministry with Lesbian & Gay Persons is closely aligned with the Catholic Association for Lesbian & Gay Ministry (CALGM), as many of its members often attend the CALGM national conferences. In a 2004 CALGM newsletter, it stated: “Some of the biggest challenges to the ministry do not come from within the parish or archdiocese. They come from the negative language of some church documents on homosexuality and the ongoing publicizing of it by the Catholic and secular media.” Statements such as these forced Bishop Salvatore Cordileone, then of Oakland, to request that CALGM officials sign an ‘oath of personal integrity” to Catholic teaching; which they refused to do.
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