c.1997 Cox News Service
PITTSBURGH—In the ballroom of this upscale hotel sits a pretty staid crowd for a Friday night.
Men in horn-rimmed glasses, button-down shirts, well-creased khakis, a few clerical collars. And women with unremarkable haircuts in modest makeup wearing low-key colors and simple crucifix necklaces.
Not a radical-looking set. But listen in on the conversation.
Nuns chat about homosexuality. A Roman Catholic bishop calls for gay priests to come out of the closet. ``I can't tell you the number of letters I've received from priests who say they are gay but afraid to come out,'' says Detroit Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, an outspoken advocate for gays and lesbians.
``If they were to stand up on Sunday morning and say they are gay, our church could truly appreciate the gifts that homosexuals bring to our community.''
Bishop Matthew Clark of Rochester, N.Y., calls for the church to sponsor an open dialogue on human sexuality, from gay and lesbian issues to birth control.
They are among the approximately 655 or so here on a recent weekend for what is touted as the largest gathering ever of Catholics concerned about homosexuality. They include:
Scores of priests, including a Dominican who just ``slipped away'' from Rome to be here ``because these issues are important to me.'' A Cleveland man whose frail frame is gnawed by AIDS. A sister who is lesbian. A brother who is gay. Two women who would like to marry—with the church's blessing.
Some speak the language of exile:
``I was excommunicated from the church.''
``I'm an ex-nun.''
``I lost everything. It was a crucifixion.''
Several have come from Dayton. Mary Reaman, a member of St. Agnes Church, which has quietly accepted her as a lesbian. Matthew Dunn, an office manager for a local nonprofit organization who attends St. Helen's parish in Riverside with his partner. And Nympha Clark, a pastoral administrator at St. Agnes, who seeks to improve ministry to gay and lesbian persons.
They and the nearly 100 religious orders and Catholic agencies that have endorsed the conference sponsored by the controversial New Ways Ministry are part of a growing middle ground within the Catholic church.
They stand between Vatican pronouncements that homosexual acts are ``intrinsically disordered'' and parishioners who may adhere to those edicts without question.
``The battle is to challenge leadership in the Catholic church to embrace what they really know is truth, that we are all made in the image of God and intrinsically good,'' argues Reaman, a woman with a dimpled chin, a bold, blue-eyed gaze and an unnerving sense of humor about her homosexuality.
``My life'' she says, joking, ``could be more bearable when Ellen comes out,'' a reference to the television sitcom character.
But seriously: ``The fight,'' Reaman says, ``is to educate the average parishioner. Then they will be able to say these are my brothers and sisters and not make a judgment on our morality. Then they can say, `Yes, Eucharist is for them, too,' and invite us to the table where we can break bread together.''
The very presence of so many faithful at a conference sponsored by New Ways Ministry, an organization whose founders are under Vatican investigation for allegedly opposing church teachings, seems an in-your-face rebuttal to Pope John Paul II's stand on homosexuality.
Yet, they say they come not to buck church tradition or hierarchy. In speeches, prayers and Mass, they are reverent to the doctrine, traditions, liturgy and leader of the church they love.
They demand that the church love them back—just as they are: homosexual, a term that takes on a strange reverence of its own here as some refer to themselves ``as persons called to same-sex love.''
In this ballroom that shimmers with mirrors and chandeliers it is impossible to escape one's reflection. Many have gazed painfully into the looking glass and now see themselves as intrinsically good, God-fearing souls.
The 1994 Cathechism of the Catholic Church, sanctioned by Pope John Paul II, took a more merciful posture than in the past: ``The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. They do not choose their homosexual condition.''
At the same time the Cathechism states, ``Tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. . . . Homosexual persons are called to chastity.''
Before a Sunday morning Mass brings this body of Christ to a close, Catholic thinkers, leaders and others will challenge that teaching more boldly than they've ever dared.
Coming to terms
All of their words wash over Matthew Dunn, a baptism affirming his very being.
Dunn, 27 and classically handsome, nods approvingly in a workshop as a scholar makes a case that the Holy Scriptures are ``ethically neutral'' on homosexual sex.
On an overhead projector, the words of Romans 1:24-32 loom large: ``unnatural, dishonorable or degrading, shameless or unseemly.''
But as Daniel Helminiak, a State University of West Georgia professor and author of What the Bible Says About Homosexuality , interprets the Greek, ``None carries an ethical connotation. All refer to social expectation'' of the time.
For Dunn, those are words of liberation, freeing him from biblical sin.
His pilgrimage here is midway on what seems an unending journey. It began subtly in third grade. He carried his books differently, up close to his chest, like a girl.
In high school, interests in young ladies required concerted effort. During freshman year at the University of Dayton, just as things were going hot and heavy with the one girl he ever dated, he said ``no.'' She thought he meant they were going too far too fast. ``She thought I was a nice guy.''
Then in 1989, a brief encounter with another man badly frightened Dunn badly . ``I went completely in the closet, thinking it was wrong,'' he says.
Depression descended, grades plummeted. He neglected student government and fraternity activities. He sat in the dark, listening to Pink Floyd. ``I remember getting in my car and just praying I'd be in an accident.''
A vent blew cold air down his spine in the Ponderosa Restaurant back home in Akron on the night he finally told his mother. A devout and divorced Catholic, she had arrived at her own conclusions about church teachings. She hugged her boy. Tactfully, almost sweetly, she asked if she could ask questions. They stayed up all night talking.
At first, Dunn found little guidance, direction or ``role models'' in the church. ``I couldn't label myself as gay because what I saw as gay on TV were people bound in chains and running around in dresses, or what the religious right wants you to believe. I didn't see a gay person who made me proud of calling myself gay.''
Angry, Dunn rebelled against the church for a while. The lack of support and community was alienating. And church teachings condemning, he thought. But he says, ``I had a strong enough belief that God loved me no matter what.''
That faith and the strong Catholic spiritual tradition, which encourages deep inner contemplation, carried him through.
At the same time, he found bold support. In 1994, when he came out in an article published in the UD student newspaper, the article included a statement from university president Marionist Brother Ray Fitz, which called for a dialogue to discuss gay and lesbian issues.
Dunn found a church home at St. Helen on Burkhardt Road in Riverside. He says he found Father Paul DeLuca's homilies ``very justice-oriented, accepting and respecting life of all people as brothers and sisters.''
Dunn attends church with his partner. They feel comfortable holding hands. And Dunn is known for his contribution to the music ministry.
``In coming out, I realized that church is more than hierarchy, scripture,'' he says. ``A church is where two or three are gathered in God's name. So we're church whether there's even a priest in the room.''
Seeking legitimacy
Unlike Dunn, Nympha Clark, a pastoral administrator at St. Agnes, did not come to the Pittsburgh conference seeking affirmation. Rather, she seeks ways to support the gay and lesbian people who attend the parish on North Paul Laurence Dunbar Street.
As Clark sees it, St. Agnes' quiet acceptance of gays and lesbians is a natural extension of the openness of a church that said yes to integration when other congregations balked.
``I want to be informed,'' she says, serious brown eyes under a fluff of silver hair. ``I am affirming of gay and lesbian people because of the integrity I've experienced from a number who I know.''
Clark is especially concerned about what she sees as the need to consecrate homosexual relationships.
``I'm a married woman for 28 years. It's not easy to do. Sometimes I've wanted to say 'to heck with this' and quit. One of the things that keeps me is I made a public commitment,'' says Clark.
``How are gay and lesbian people ever going to be able to make a commitment without some of the supports my husband and I have had?''
Clark hears stories such as Daniel Vaughn's.
Gaunt, pale, his scalp licked with wispy hair, the Cleveland man says he is living with AIDS, but expecting to die no time soon. He's trying hard to forgive the church.
``I still wonder why in 1971, the church told me that if I was promiscuous as I wanted to be, I could always get absolution,'' says Vaughn through parched lips. ``But if I found someone to live with, I'd be living in sin.''
Clark hears an academic argument for homosexual marriage.
The Yale University ethics scholar contends that ``much of Catholic moral theology'' has done away with procreation as the basis for sexual ethics and marriage.
``Procreation is still extremely important to some sexual intercourse. But new understandings of the whole person, support a radically new concern for sexuality as an expression and a cause of love,'' Farley says.
``The view of homosexuality as fundamentally 'disordered' is therefore also gone from a great deal of Catholic thought.''
Rather than the sex of the partners, contends Sister of Mercy Margaret Farley of Yale University, the marriage covenant should be based on an ``ethic of justice'' rooted in ``respect, equality, free consent, commitment, shared responsibility.''
Clark hears arguments from those who question homosexual marriage.
Says Dunn, ``I'm not sure that duplicating the institution of marriage is necessarily what we need to do to have meaningful and enduring relationships.''
And Clark hears from those who want to say ``I do.''
``We need,'' says Reaman, ``the support and freedom to be a true couple, at home and where we pray.''
Dunn's prayers of acceptance in the Catholic church have been answered at St. Helen's.
(Story Filed By The DAYTON NEWSPAPERS INC., DAYTON, OHIO.)
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