Open Letter to LGBT Roman Catholics in the Chicago Archdiocese
Cardinal Francis George has stated that married gay couples cannot receive communion going forward. The Archdiocesan Gay and Lesbian Outreach ( AGLO ) ministry supports this action. Hate being promoted in the name of religious freedom is wrong.
According to the Washington Post, a Catholic chaplain at MedStar Washington Hospital Center stopped delivering a 63-year-old heart attack patient communion prayers and last rites after the man said he was gay.
Across the Roman Catholic landscape, individuals are being fired from their teaching positions simply because they got married to someone of the same sex.
On the international level, the Nigerian Conference of Catholic Bishops endorsed anti-gay legislation—and not a whimper is heard from Pope Francis. Men and women are being dragged from their homes and beaten because of who they are, and still the Catholic silence is deafening.
Where is the Catholic voice in these matters? Is going along to get along a prudent course of action for Catholics who want to bring about change in the Church? How do you think change will happen if you don't work for it? Do we really think God is present in such a community?
Homophobia is a sin against God, and still there is silence in our Catholic Community.
Our gay clergy are incapable of summoning up the courage to speak out because LGBT Catholics could care less. Yet some of these Catholics will join LGBT political organizations in Chicago going so far as to sit on their organization's board of directors and scream about horrors of homophobia only to go back to their parishes and remain silent. How have we become so immune to this form of hypocrisy?
Even here in the archdiocese, a group that claims to minister to the LGBT community buries its head in a Sunday evening Mass at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel pretending that all is right with the world because they are allowed to have a Mass. The group supports the cardinal's position to deny Communion to LGBT married couples—to do other would get them kicked out of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. How have we come to this? What a sad commentary on hypocrisy.
Forgive me if I have offended any Catholics, but if I have than you know how I feel. Why are we like passive zombies when we leave the Pride Parade and return to our home parishes and sheepishly turn our backs on homophobia?
Where is our faith? Have we lost the belief that we are all children of God? Are we so immune to taking action because to do so would make us feel uncomfortable?
There is absolutely no Catholic organization in the archdiocese that ministers to us; to think otherwise is to be delusional.
Joe Murray
