Lavender & purple
Bowman, Jim
CHICAGO SYMPOSIUM LAVENDER & PURPLE THE BISHOPS WITH THE GAYS or at least one newly arrived observer, the New Ways Ministry symposium in Chicago last month created, for a while, an uneasy sense...
...At the risk of overdramati zing, it was rather like watching a secret society in session, or entering a ghetto whose people become invisible outside the walls: folks just like you and me on the outside, but in many cases, as the pop hit of the '40s had it, "crying on the inside...
...After his brother revealed to their family he was gay, Gumbleton had refused to visit him...
...Citing major changes in Catholic sexual ethics in this century, including jettisoning of the "procreative norm" by acceptance of the rhythm method of birth control, she asked, "Where's the trajectory...
...the Judeo-Christian culture and "a few Eastern religions" reject gay and lesbian life, while Eskimos and others accord special respect to the bisexual as a wise person who knows both sides of humanity...
...Or Hughes in an interview: "Some want us to affirm [homosexual behavior], but we can't do it...
...However advertised, and whatever the state of the question, the meeting was geared to affirmation of the gay and lesbian experience...
...The new arrival was straight...
...N or is all homosexual activity subjectively sinful for all at all times....No one but God can judge the sinfulness of acts...
...Bishop Kenneth Untener (Saginaw, Michigan) is known for his views on issues affecting women in the ministry, among other issues...
...Bishop Wiliam A. Hughes of Covington, Kentucky, chaired the bishops' task force on AIDS in 1987 and, by his own testimony, has not been the same since in his response to the gay community...
...The bishop was eventually moved from his intransigency by a seventy-year-old widow whose son had died of AIDS...
...CHICAGO SYMPOSIUM LAVENDER & PURPLE THE BISHOPS WITH THE GAYS or at least one newly arrived observer, the New Ways Ministry symposium in Chicago last month created, for a while, an uneasy sense of being an intruder...
...clearly implying that the best (or worst) is yet to come...
...Their very modest message was to reach out and affirm gays and lesbians as individuals while refraining from explicit comment on the issues raised by other speakers...
...Three of the symposium speakers were bishops, and that provided the meeting with an éclat that only purple can give...
...And he quoted: "The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected" (this, astonishingly, from the "Halloween document," the 1986 statement of Cardinal Ratzinger's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which led to the clamp-down on Dignity-sponsored liturgies...
...And, without getting specific, he worried about a "drift back to severity...
...a little slow at catching gay in-jokes, not at all used to seeing men greeting other men with hugs...
...6: 24 April 1992 Commonweal...
...Commonweal 24 April 1992: 5 And Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, auxiliary in Detroit, has spoken out on issues of peace and justice...
...We must be careful what we say...
...she asked...
...Or Untener 's: "It was not entirely easy for me to come...
...We are to make "no judgments about a person because we know his or her orientation...
...A number of his examples came from twelfth-century Ireland, where "brawny warriors" tied the knot with benefit of clergy...
...The next day, the complexity issue was the topic of a few wry, even somewhat mocking comments...
...It was an upbeat, downhome weekend, the third sponsored by New Ways Ministry, which was founded in 1977 as an "educational and bridge-building ministry of reconciliation" between the homosexual community and Catholic institutions...
...The symposium was endorsed by seventy-plus religious communities (mostly women's orders) and other organizations, including the National Federation of Priests' Councils...
...Gumbleton was more personal...
...Quoting McCormick, who has done some way-paving in his day in heterosexual morality, she characterized several of his arguments opposing homosexuality as simple assertion...
...she asked...
...And answered, "probably...
...John E. Boswell, a Yale historian and author of the widely acclaimed Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, reported on his current research and the subject of his next book, same-sex marriage ceremonies in the Christian church...
...Now this was cutting to the bone...
...In this setting, the three bishops were odd men out...
...JIM BOWMAN Jim Bowman, former religion editor of the Chicago Daily News, is now a free-lance writer...
...Sister Fran Ferder, a clinical psychologist from Seattle, noted that only (only...
...Sister Margaret A. Farley, ethicist, and also of Yale, offered argument and analysis pretty much paving the way for the acceptance of homosexual behavior—no matter, as she asserted, what Richard A. McCormick and other liberal moral theologians may say in criticism of homosexual behavior...
...We must deal with them as individuals in a pastoral way...
...How can we know...
...Other general-session speakers addressed psychological, historical, and ethical issues...
...No person is a category," said Hughes, like Untener emphasizing that the church has room for all types: "Jesus ate and drank with publicans and sinners," he said...
...So was Gumbleton's opening remark: "Certain church authorities are not happy we bishops are here today...
...The theme was "Lesbian and Gay People and Catholicism: The State of the Question...
...But not, perhaps, at this meeting...
...Participants ranged from church professionals, lay and religious, to leaders of Dignity, a national Catholic gay and lesbian organization which was denied the use of church property after a 1986 Vatican statement—referred to among them as the "Halloween document...
...Citing a dozen statements on the matter from all points on the (narrow) episcopal spectrum, Untener pointed to the complexity of the issue...
...Can we learn something from this...
...According to the organizers, one-third of those attending were priests or religious, another third were lay church workers, and the rest were "other" (lay people not employed by the church, members of Dignity and other organizations...
...They had no brave new world to offer, like Farley, nor a surprising old one to describe, like Boswell...
...All are "pastoral" rather than doctrinal types (though Untener is a theologian), and their task at the meeting was to talk about "the pastoral reality" of the gay and lesbian question...
...Like the up-to-date Kansas City residents in Oklahoma, these three bishops went about as far as they could go...
...The meeting was evenly divided by gender...
...A waggish commentator from the floor observed in a slight brogue that this may help explain why, when Irish eyes are smiling, the world is bright and gay...
...She helped the bishop become "more accepting" of his brother and his brother's partner, and made it possible for him to console his own mother, "trained well in the teachings of the church," about her gay son, for whose salvation she feared...
Vol. 119 • April 1992 • No. 8
