The U.S. Catholic bishops' new guidelines for pastoral care of homosexuals have drawn praise from some engaged in that ministry and disappointment from others.
The focus of disagreement is the document's emphasis on formation for chastity as the central element of church ministry to people with a homosexual inclination.
Drafted by the bishops' Committee on Doctrine and approved by the bishops at their Nov. 13-16 fall meeting in Baltimore, the document encourages those with a homosexual inclination to live chastely and to be active participants in parish life.
Father John F. Harvey, an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales and founder of Courage, a support program specifically designed to help those with homosexual inclinations live chaste lives, praised the bishops' text and said it would be a boon to those who follow Courage's approach.
"I never had such strong encouragement from the bishops in 26 years" since he established Courage, he said.
But Father Jim Schexnayder, resource director of the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries, said the association's leaders were disappointed that "the guidelines characterize homosexual persons as focused on sexual inclinations, tendencies, acts and behavior without reference to the integrity of the fuller lives of faith, love, commitment, service and spirituality of Catholic gay and lesbian persons."
Father Schexnayder, a now-retired priest of the Diocese of Oakland, Calif., was one of the founders of the association in 1994.
The bishops adopted the 26-page document, "Ministry to Persons With a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care," by a vote of 194-37.
It calls for parishes and dioceses to welcome those with a homosexual inclination, to form support groups for them and their parents or families, to reach out to those who feel alienated from the church, and to make resources such as retreats and referrals for spiritual direction and counseling available to those with a homosexual inclination.
The document stresses the importance of presenting Catholic teaching on sexuality accurately in catechetics, preaching and other formational or educational forums. It says the church should not give leadership positions to those whose behavior violates church teaching and should not let people who are engaged in ministry use their position to advocate positions opposed to church teachings.
Father James K. Graham, pastor of St. Elias the Prophet Melkite Catholic Parish in San Jose, Calif., communications secretary for Father Schexnayder's association, said most gay and lesbian Catholics will find the bishops' document "not encouraging, not welcoming, not reflecting their experiences as people of faith."
"We have to challenge everyone to chastity, but that's not the essential component of any ministry," he said. "If you were ministering, for instance, to prostitutes, then perhaps that would be an essential component of your ministry. But to say you must emphasize chastity in ministry with gay and lesbian people ... is to define them strictly by sexual activity. It's not a consistent way of looking at things."
Franciscan Father Thomas Weinandy, executive director of the bishops' Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices, said the new guidelines do not focus only on the issue of chastity but also on other pastoral concerns. But formation for chastity, even if its achievement is only gradual, should remain a central concern of that ministry, he said.
"If you have a ministry in which you are not really trying to help people live a chaste life, then your ministry isn't really successful or according to the church's teaching," he sais. "If you see living a virtuous life as living a happy life, then until people are making progress in virtue, you're not really helping them live a happy and full life."
"The guidelines talk about support groups and social life and caring for them at many different levels" but formation for chastity remains central, he said.
Acknowledging that some might not like the analogy, Father Weinandy compared such ministry with an organization working to help alcoholics. Whatever else the organization does to assist alcoholics in all other aspects of their lives, "the goal ultimately is to get them to stop drinking…. If you're not addressing the central problem, you're ultimately not going to do them that much good."
As a result of an amendment introduced during the floor debate, a footnote was inserted in the document citing Courage and its companion program for parents of homosexuals, Encourage, as examples of pastoral ministry programs that follow church teachings. They are the only specific pastoral programs named in the document.
Father Harvey, reached by phone in Florida, told Catholic News Service that there are 75 dioceses with Courage groups. He said the more recently established Encourage program "is very weak" by comparison, with fewer than 10 groups formed so far.
He said he finds many church pastoral programs of ministry to those with a homosexual inclination "inadequate" because he finds "no mention of the virtue of chastity" in them.
The most important goal of such ministries is "how to help people with same-sex attractions lead a chaste life," he said.
Father Schexnayder's National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries includes leaders in such ministry in 55 U.S. Catholic dioceses and 130 parishes. In an e-mail to CNS he said the bishops' guidelines "do not in fact reflect the real lives of gay and lesbian people, especially Catholics."
"For more than 25 years, diocesan ministries have welcomed in the church gay and lesbian Catholics who understand and affirm their sexual orientation as intrinsic to their identity," he wrote. "It is profoundly sad that many of them and their families will be unnecessarily alienated by the tone of this document."
He said the association's mission statement calls on those in gay-lesbian ministry to "reflect on sacred Scripture, reflect on church teaching and pastoral practice, study the social and physical sciences (and) listen to and ponder the lived experience of lesbian and gay persons and their families."
In a separate phone interview, Father Graham cited that mission statement and said that beyond it, the association does not set an agenda for the ministries of its members. "We have to let each ministry find its own way. If individual ministries find that talking about chastity almost exclusively is useful in their situation, that's up to them and to the bishop and their pastors," he said.
Father Graham said the 1997 statement, "Always Our Children," issued by the U.S. bishops' Committee on Marriage and Family and addressed to parents of children who are homosexually inclined, "states church teaching and puts pastoral care in the context of church teaching in a much more sensitive way" than the bishops' new document.
He said the pastoral guidelines are generally good, but "the heavy reiteration of the theological stuff is not going to be helpful because it undercuts the pastoral effect."
Paulist Father James B. Lloyd, a retired psychologist who runs a local Courage chapter out of St. Paul the Apostle Parish in New York, said pastoral programs that expressly address sexual abstinence, such as Courage, are "exactly what they (the bishops) were talking about" in their guidelines.
Avoiding or ignoring the issue of chastity in ministering to those with a homosexual inclination is a "misplaced compassion" and is "really hurting people in the long run by falsity," he said.
He said the unofficial Catholic support group Dignity "won't even mention Catholic teaching" on homosexual activity. "I think that's very toxic," he said. "It's bad psychologically, and spiritually it's dynamite."
He described Courage as a "spiritual support group" similar to Alcoholics Anonymous in that "we use the 12-step framework adapted to people with same-sex attractions."
---CNS |