By David Olson
The Press-Enterprise
February 3, 2008
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_D_gaycatholics04.3319017.html
After Mike Neto came out as gay more than 25 years ago, he couldn't find a way to reconcile his sexual orientation with his Catholicism.
So the Palm Springs man searched for an alternative. He tried Christian Science, the gay-oriented Metropolitan Community Church and nondenominational Protestant churches that had liberal teachings on homosexuality. But he never felt comfortable.
His spiritual journey ended where it began. Neto, 59, again calls himself a Catholic.
"I was baptized Catholic, and I feel I'll always be Catholic," he said. "I still feel the Holy Spirit."
Neto's internal conflict is not unique. It is one familiar to many Inland gays and lesbians who were raised as Catholics and later found themselves pulled in two directions by their sexuality and their religion, which teaches that homosexual activity is a sin.
Neto's solution was to reject church teaching on homosexuality and to join Dignity, a nationwide group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Catholics that sponsors Masses outside the Vatican's authority. The group has a growing chapter in Palm Springs.
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| The Rev. David Fitzgerald concludes a Mass sponsored by a gay and lesbian ministry at St. Andrew Newman Center in Riverside. Photo by William Wilson Lewis III |
Many gays remain within the Catholic Church itself, some attending a monthly Mass that the San Bernardino Diocese sponsors for gay Catholics and their families and friends. Others leave the church for liberal Protestant denominations. One man worships in a chapel he built in a shed behind his San Bernardino home.
Although they reach different destinations, many start on the same path: experiencing years of guilt and self-hatred that tear them apart and a feeling of being shunned by the church they love.
The belief of many gays that the Catholic Church rejects them is based upon a misreading of church teaching on homosexuality, said John Andrews, spokesman for the San Bernardino Diocese, which serves Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
"There may have been a perception in our society that you shouldn't reach out to gays and lesbians, but no, we do reach out," Andrews said. "No matter what your color, your age, your gender or your sexual orientation, you're still made in the image of God ... and deserve love, compassion and respect, which are the Gospel values that we adhere to."
In 2000, Bishop Gerald Barnes asked forgiveness for the diocese's past mistreatment of lesbians and gays, blacks, American Indians and others. He later created the Diocesan Commission for Ministry with Families of Gay and Lesbian Catholics to serve gay Catholics and their families.
The ministry stemmed in part from a 1997 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops pastoral message that states, "The Christian community should offer its homosexual sisters and brothers understanding and pastoral care."
Few Parishes Participate
Yet only about 20 of the nation's 195 dioceses and archdioceses have official gay and lesbian ministries, said the Rev. Ken McGuire, a vice president of the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries.
Conservatives are typically among parishes' biggest financial contributors, and some bishops and priests worry that promoting a gay and lesbian ministry may cause them to stop donating, said McGuire, a retired priest who lives in Palm Springs. He called Barnes "one of the most welcoming bishops" toward gays and lesbians.
Despite Barnes' support for the San Bernardino Diocese's gay and lesbian ministry, most Inland parishes do not publicize it, said Jim Kevany, who sits on the diocese's commission and whose gay son attends the monthly gay-ministry Masses.
Kevany said the commission periodically sends out notices about the ministry to all 97 parishes in the San Bernardino Diocese, but fewer than 20 have published them in their bulletins.
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| Bill LaMarche, a co-founder of Dignity Palm Springs, says the Vatican treats gay people as second-class citizens. Photo by William Wilson Lewis III |
"There's a lot of prejudice within the church," said Kevany, 74, of Sun City. "There are priests who may not be prejudiced themselves, but they're afraid of what their parishioners might think. So we have a problem getting the word out."
The monthly Masses for gay Catholics and their families and friends, and the potluck dinners that follow, build a supportive Catholic community for lesbians and gays and their families, said the Rev. David Fitzgerald, who celebrates the Mass. As many as 50 people attend.
Yet Fitzgerald, pastor of Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church in San Bernardino, said he sometimes also reminds lesbian and gay Catholics that, although homosexuality itself is not a sin, engaging in same-gender sexual activity is. In order for gays to be faithful to church teaching, they must abstain from sex, he said.
Fitzgerald said he does not interrogate gay and lesbian parishioners about their sexual behavior, just as he does not ask unmarried heterosexual couples whether they are having sex.
"We welcome people as Christ did: who they are and where they are," Fitzgerald said. "We don't wait for people to become perfect and only then say you're welcome in the church."
Fitzgerald said he also periodically reminds parishioners at Our Lady of the Assumption that church doctrine forbids heterosexual sex outside marriage, adultery and using birth control.
Church teaching puts same-gender sex on the same moral plane as birth control, premarital sex and adultery, said Professor Jeffrey Siker, chairman of the theological studies department at Loyola Marymount University, a Catholic institution in Los Angeles, and editor of Homosexuality in the Church: Both Sides of the Debate.
All four acts violate Catholic doctrine that sex is meant to unify a couple within a marriage and must have the possibility of leading to procreation, Siker said.
'Only God Will Judge Me'
Richard Pacheco does not agree with church teaching. He believes that one day, it will change to permit same-gender sex within a committed relationship.
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| "I know I can find comfort in God and his forgiveness," says Richard Pacheco, who attends St. Bernardine Church. Photo by William Wilson Lewis III |
Yet, the San Bernardino man said, "until it changes, it is still a sin."
Pacheco, 45, attends St. Bernardine Catholic Church in San Bernardino, and participates in its monthly gay and lesbian ministry, with his partner of nine years.
They do not abstain from sex.
"Even though the act is considered a sin, it doesn't feel like I'm committing a sin," Pacheco said.
He no longer feels guilty, he said.
"What has changed is I know I can find comfort in God and his forgiveness," Pacheco said. "Everyone has their own relationship with God. My fellow parishioners aren't going to judge me in the final judgment. Only God will judge me."
During the first few years of Eddie Weingart's relationship with Phillip Castro, his partner of seven years, Weingart tried hard to obey church teaching. The Victorville man prayed, read the Bible and recited the rosary to try to remain chaste when he was with Castro. He didn't always succeed. Often, he felt guilty afterward.
Today, "I'm not as frustrated and disappointed with myself as I used to be," Weingart said. "We've come to the conclusion that it is God-given and natural as can be."
Weingart, 29, said he has never considered switching to another Christian denomination. He sees the Catholic Church as the original Christian church, and he feels a connection with the saints and the Virgin Mary.
More than anything, he reveres the Catholic Eucharist.
"It's at the center of my life," said Weingart, who serves as a Eucharistic minister at Our Lady of the Desert Catholic Church in Apple Valley. "It always has been and always will be. I'd feel lost if I was too far away from it."
Rejected by Parents
Weingart and Pacheco said their priests and fellow parishioners have always treated them with respect.
But members of the diocese's gay and lesbian commission said they have met parents whose priests had told them to throw their gay children out of their homes or who are convinced that church teaching condemns their gay sons and daughters to hell.
JoAnn Reese said she was 20 when her mother kicked her out after discovering that Reese had a girlfriend. She gave Catholic teaching as a reason.
Reese, 42, now attends First Congregational Church of Riverside with her partner and their two children. It is part of the United Church of Christ, which ordains openly lesbian and gay clergy and supports same-sex marriage.
The mother disparages Reese's church as not a "real church."
"She says, 'You can choose whichever church you want, but you will always be Catholic and you will always be living in sin,' " JoAnn Reese said.
Reese's mother declined to comment. The Rev. Paul Breton founded St. Aelred's Catholic Church in 1989 -- Breton was ordained in the liberal Orthodox Catholic Church of America -- to minister to gays and lesbians and their family members and friends. In 2004, after health problems made it difficult for him to continue leading the San Bernardino congregation, he shut the church down.
Now Breton, who is gay, usually worships in a chapel that he built in a storage shed behind his San Bernardino mobile home.
"The place where we worship isn't important," Breton said as he stood on the concrete floor before a plain, white-painted wooden box that he had converted into a tabernacle to hold Communion wafers and holy oil for blessings. "It's what we put into it."
The altar, which used to be a work table, stands in front of a brown-pegboard wall.
Breton, 67, occasionally celebrates Mass for close friends, but he usually does so only for himself.
"It's how I feel conscious of my religious heritage and of my connectedness to Jesus Christ," Breton said.
Dignity
The Inland worship center for the gay Catholic group Dignity, located in a former medical office next to a storage center near Palm Springs International Airport, is also humble. There are no stained-glass windows or rows of wooden pews. Members sit on blue-cushioned metal-frame chairs and face a wooden crucifix mounted on a cinderblock wall.
Yet the liturgy is almost identical to a Vatican-approved Mass. The prayers and hymns are the same, although sheets of white paper are inserted in the hymnal over some songs to replace masculine pronouns for God with words such as "Creator." Both priests who celebrate Mass, one a married straight man and one a gay man, were ordained in the Roman Catholic Church.
Bill LaMarche, who helped found Dignity Palm Springs, said that, no matter how much some dioceses try to reach out, the Vatican continues to treat gays and lesbians as "second-class citizens within the church."
LaMarche, 50, said to obey Vatican teaching on homosexuality is tantamount "to saying that who I am is not legitimate."
"We're all entitled to love, and with love, there's attraction," the Calimesa man said. "I've been with David for almost 14 years. And to tell me I can't have a relationship to the full extent of what a relationship means, I feel, is very un-Christian."
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| Some parishioners at St. Andrew Newman Center in Riverside say they’ve tried attending non-Catholic services, but none offered the spiritual fulfillment of Mass. Photo by William Wilson Lewis III |
LaMarche said that, even though he no longer worships at a Vatican-approved church and rejects church teaching on homosexuality and women's role in the church, he will always be a Catholic.
"I don't need a person or an institution to say I'm not a Roman Catholic," he said. "I won't let anyone take away my identity."
Reach David Olson at 951-368-9462 or dolson@PE.com
CATHOLIC TEACHINGs ON HOMOSEXUALITY
The Vatican teaches that same-gender sex is a sin, on the same level as using birth control, having sex outside marriage and committing adultery.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
"Homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved."
Gay, lesbian and bisexual people "must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition."
"Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection."
In statements released in 1991 and 1997, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said:
"Homosexual orientation is experienced as a given, not as something freely chosen. By itself, therefore, a homosexual orientation cannot be considered sinful, for morality presumes the freedom to choose."
"God loves every person as a unique individual. Sexual identity helps to define the unique persons we are, and one component of our sexual identity is sexual orientation."
"It is God's plan that sexual intercourse occur only within marriage between a man and a woman. Second, every act of intercourse must be open to the possible creation of human life. Homosexual intercourse cannot fulfill these two conditions. Therefore, the Church teaches that homogenital behavior is objectively immoral, while making the important distinction between this behavior and a homosexual orientation."
"We call on all Christians and citizens of good will to confront their own fears about homosexuality and to curb the humor and discrimination that offend homosexual persons. We understand that having a homosexual orientation brings with it enough anxiety, pain and issues related to self-acceptance without society bringing additional prejudicial treatment."
SOURCES: Catechism of the Catholic Church; "Always Our Children" and "Human Sexuality: A Catholic Perspective for Education and Lifelong Learning"; U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
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