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IV. LGBTQ+ Lay Catholics Co-Creating the Church
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 June 2022
Extract
As the other articles in this roundtable suggest, Catholics in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century were able to draw upon a long tradition of lay involvement in various lay apostolates, the renewed teaching on the role of the laity proclaimed at the Second Vatican Council, and the worldwide presence of forms of international lay organizations, including Pax Romana and Catholic student movements. Additional contributions to this discussion could easily include some of the other official and institutionalized forms of lay involvement that proliferated in the twentieth century—the rise of various new ecclesial movements such as Opus Dei, Focolare, and the Communità Sant'Egidio; the Catholic Family movement and other forms of lay-led renewal at the national and parish level that pursued the conciliar vision of the universal call to holiness with enthusiasm and persistence; the entry of thousands of laypeople into ministries and teaching roles previously restricted, in practice if not always in statute, to the ordained and to members of religious communities; and the particular roles of lay Catholics with historically oppressed or marginalized racial and ethnic identities in finding a voice in postconciliar Catholicism.
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References
135 LGBTQ+ meaning “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer, and more.” I use this term consistently throughout the article, despite two possible inadequacies. First, a more detailed enumeration of queer sexualities and gender identities would include specific mention of intersex and asexual Catholics, and those questioning their sexuality; I have chosen to use “LGBTQ+” as hopefully pointing toward that inclusivity while maintaining brevity of expression. Second, I have chosen to use “LGBTQ+” to describe members of those communities even in historical periods in which gay male and lesbian Catholics were dominant voices, sometimes to the exclusion or marginalization of transgender and other queer identities. A fuller treatment of this history would delineate more clearly the diversity of identities and experiences of these Catholics and how they intersect with other gender, racial, and other identities, but I use the fuller category throughout both for ease of understanding and to point to the continuity between early gay male and lesbian Catholic activism with the developments that have, happily, led to a world in which transgender and other queer Catholic voices are beginning to be heard more clearly.
136 Godfrey, Donal, , SJ, Gays and Grays: The Story of the Inclusion of the Gay Community at Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Parish in San Francisco (Landham, MH: Lexington Books, 2007)Google Scholar. For a full treatment of the concept of narrative ecclesiology, see Imperatori-Lee, Natalia, Cuéntame: Narrative in the Ecclesial Present (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2018)Google Scholar.
137 Jeffrey Burns, “Beyond the Immigrant Church: Gays and Lesbians and the Catholic Church in San Francisco,” U.S. Catholic Historian 19, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 79–92.
138 Howell Williams, “Homosexuality and the American Catholic Church: Reconfiguring the Silence, 1971–1999” (PhD diss., Florida State University, 2007).
139 See Thomas F. Rzeznik, “The Church and the AIDS Crisis in New York City,” U.S. Catholic Historian 34, no. 1 (Winter 2016): 143–65; and Michael J. O'Loughlin, Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear (Minneapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books, 2021). See also O'Loughlin's podcast Plague, accessible at https://www.americamagazine.org/plague.
140 For only a few examples among many others, see James P. McCartin, “The Church and Gay Liberation: The Case of John McNeill,” U.S. Catholic Historian 34, no. 1 (Winter 2016): 125–41; Brian McNaught, On Being Gay: Thoughts on Family, Faith, and Love (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989); Nancy Manahan and Rosemary Keefer Curb, eds., Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence (Midway, FL: Spinsters Ink, 1985).
141 Dugan McGinley, Acts of Faith, Acts of Love: Gay Catholic Autobiographies as Sacred Texts (New York: Continuum Books, 2006).
142 See, for instance, the history of Dignity/USA at https://www.dignityusa.org/history and of New Ways Ministry at https://www.newwaysministry.org/about/history/.
143 See Dignity/USA at https://www.dignityusa.org/history.
144 John J. McNeill, SJ, The Church and the Homosexual (New York: Sheed, Andrews and Macneel, 1976).
145 See John D'Emilio, Queer Legacies: Stories from Chicago's LGBTQ Archives (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2020), 58–59.
146 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,” October 1, 1986, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19861001_homosexual-persons_en.html.
147 See O'Loughlin, Hidden Mercy, 67–73, and Rzeznik, “The Church and the AIDS Crisis in New York City,” 155–57.
148 O'Loughlin, Hidden Mercy, 72.
149 See McCartin, “The Church and Gay Liberation.”
150 See Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Notification Regarding Sister Jeannine Gramick, SSND, and Father Robert Nugent, SDS,” May 31, 1999, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19990531_gramick-nugent-notification_en.html.
151 See, for instance, Jeannine Gramick, “Lesbian Nuns: A Gift to the Church,” in More Than a Monologue: Sexual Diversity and the Catholic Church: Inquiry, Thought, Expression, ed. J. Patrick Hornbeck II and Michael Norko (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 62–78; and Jamie L. Manson, “The Prophetic Life of Lesbian Nuns: A Response to Jeannine Gramick,” in More Than a Monologue, 80–85.
152 I first learned about Nickie Valdez from Jason Steidl, in his paper “Queer Latin@ Narrative as Ecclesiology: The Church Life of Nickie Valdez,” presented in the Ecclesiological Investigations Unit at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, TX, November 2021, and am grateful to him for sharing his paper with me. Further information on Valdez can also be found in a tribute by Marianne Duddy-Burke and Mary E. Hunt, “Nickie Valdez, Pioneering Catholic Lesbian Advocate, Inspired a Diverse Community,” National Catholic Reporter, January 9, 2021, https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/nickie-valdez-pioneering-catholic-lesbian-advocate-inspired-diverse-community.
153 Steidl, “Queer Latin@ Narrative as Ecclesiology,” 5.
154 Rachel Donadio, “On Gay Priest, Pope Francis Asks, ‘Who Am I to Judge?’,” New York Times, July 29, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/world/europe/pope-francis-gay-priests.html.
155 Cf. Claire Giangravé, “When it comes to LGBTQ Catholics, What Pope Francis Giveth, the Vatican Taketh Away,” Religion News Service, July 8, 2021, https://religionnews.com/2021/07/08/when-it-comes-to-lgbtq-catholics-what-pope-francis-giveth-the-vatican-taketh-away/.
156 See Robert Shine, “Pope Francis Phones Prominent Gay Theologian and Priest James Alison, Restores Him to Ministry,” New Ways Ministry Bondings, September 29, 2019, https://www.newwaysministry.org/2019/09/29/pope-francis-phones-prominent-gay-theologian-and-priest-james-alison-restores-him-to-ministry/.
157 See Jim McDermott, “Pope Francis Praises Sister Jeannine Gramick's 50 years of L.G.B.T. Ministry in Handwritten Letter,” America Media, January 7, 2022, https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2022/01/07/sister-jeanine-gramick-letter-pope-francis-242157.
158 James Martin, Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity (New York: HarperOne, 2017).
159 A 2019 Pew Research Center survey reported that 61 percent of US Catholics—the same percentage as Americans taken as a whole—support same-sex marriage. See Pew Research Center, “Majority of Public Favors Same-Sex Marriage, but Divisions Persist,” May 14, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/05/14/majority-of-public-favors-same-sex-marriage-but-divisions-persist/.
160 Mark Jordan, The Silence of Sodom: Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 3. Many of the most important essays that James Alison has written on gay clergy, clericalism, and silence around homosexuality can be found at http://jamesalison.com.
161 See Richard Gaillardetz, “How Does the Holy Spirit Assist the Church in Its Teaching?,” Duquesne University Holy Spirit Lecture, January 31, 2014, esp. 11–13, https://www.duq.edu/events/holy-spirit-lecture-and-colloquium/2013.
162 For a crucial recent introduction to the concept, see John J. Burkhard, The “Sense of the Faith” in History: Its Sources, Reception, and Theology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2022). See also the International Theological Commission document “Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church,” 2014, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_20140610_sensus-fidei_en.html; Jerome P. Baggett, “Becoming Absence-Minded: Sociological Reflections on the Sense of the Faithful,” CTSA Proceedings 70 (2015): 1–26; and Susan K. Wood, “The Sensus Fidelium: Discerning the Path of Faith,” CTSA Proceedings 70 (2015): 72–83.
163 See Thiel, John, Sense of Tradition: Continuity and Development in Catholic Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 125Google Scholar.
164 See Boeve, Lieven, Interrupting Tradition: An Essay on Christian Faith in a Postmodern Context (Louvain: Peeters Press, 2003)Google Scholar.
165 See James Alison, “Following the Still Small Voice: Experience, Truth, and Argument as Lived by Catholics Around the Gay Issue,” November 18, 2013, http://jamesalison.com/following-the-still-small-voice/.