How Long, O Lord, How Long?
I live in the town of Brewster and subscribe to the Cape Cod Times. I'm coming out of retirement because the following will never be published in the Times' Letters to the Editor section.
In an article on Open and Affirming Churches published in today’s Cape Cod Times, we find this:
“Culturally, the debate around LGBTQ rights issues has been changing, and people on either side need to give those with differing views time to come to an understanding, said the Rev. William Kaliyadan of Our Lady of the Cape, a Catholic church in Brewster.”
“Everyone is going through some kind of education, understanding and acceptance,” he said. “Everyone needs to be more patient, without passing judgment to the other.”
Time to come to an understanding.
Fine. Let’s be charitable and assume that no one knew there were LGBTQ people in their midst until they started marching in the streets. That would be the Stonewall Riots in 1969. That’s also the same year Dignity, an organization of Catholics working for respect and justice for people of all sexual orientations, genders and gender identities in the Church, was formed. People have had 48 years to come to an understanding.
No? Well, how about when the Jesuit priest John J. McNeill published The Church and the Homosexual under a nihil obstat in 1976. That was 41 years ago.
Surely the AIDS crisis beginning in 1981 would have awakened the Church’s pity if not its sense of justice. It didn’t.
Our own congressman for the Cape and Islands, Gerry Studds, came out in 1983.
Massachusetts legally recognized same-sex marriage in 2004. Where was the Church?
Two years ago, the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision guaranteed the right to marry to same-sex couples. Surely people have come to an understanding by now.
Let’s be honest, Father Kaliyadan. There is no understanding possible. The Church has clung to the wrong side of history on almost every social justice question.
In 1866, after the Emancipation Proclamation, Pope Pius IX affirmed that, subject to conditions, it was not against divine law for a slave to be bought, kept, or sold.
The Catholic Church steadfastly opposed granting women the right to vote. To this day, women cannot vote in the Vatican city-state. To this day, no woman may be ordained.
When you say that the Church is welcoming, it must be understood that an LGBTQ person is as welcome to the same extent as a thief or adulterer. Any expression of sexuality other than heterosexual is officially regarded as a moral disorder, contrary to natural law, a matter of grave depravity, and a mortal sin. The Catechism states that the only option available to the homosexual is celibacy.
But hey, no judgement, right?
“And they healed the breach of the daughter of my people disgracefully, saying: Peace, peace: and there was no peace.” - Jeremiah 6:14