As we’ve entered into the first weeks of June, you will notice that the news and marketing campaigns for a vast part of Western society are once again celebrating June as LGBTQ “Pride Month.” I feel that this is a topic that should, and must, be addressed from the pulpit. However, I want to be very precise in exactly how I do this, and so I want to give you my a personal history.
I was born and raised Catholic for the first 18 years of my life, and I then left the Church for a 3-year period of time in college. During those 3 years, I started as an agnostic and then moved to being an atheist. I strongly rejected everything about the Catholic Church, especially its unpopular moral teachings. I was very politically liberal in those days, and as I had gotten to know some “out-and-proud” gay people in college (who were perfectly decent people), I quickly concluded that, when it came to the stance on gay rights, this was just another area where the Church was hopelessly outdated and backwards.
Speaking only for myself, I was very drawn to the virtue-signaling aspect of being an LGBTQ ally. There was something attractive about “being on the right side of history” and feeling like you were fighting for a just and noble cause. Doing this gave you the impression that you were a virtuous civil rights activist, with never having to suffer or work for anything. You simply posted about how gay marriage should be legal on Facebook and boom, you’re a good person, and now everyone else knows it!<.p>
Finally, when the nihilism and despair of atheism drove me back to the Church in my 4th year of college, I still “faithfully dissented” from all the Church teachings that I didn’t like for my first year back as revert. For a solid year, I was going to Sunday Mass, receiving Communion, going to Confession, learning to pray, and going to Eucharistic Adoration, all while continuing to reject the Church’s teaching that sex is a sacred and powerful part of humanity that should only take place within the context of the covenant of matrimony.
It wasn’t until the fall of 2012 that I was finally shoved into orthodoxy on this matter and it was a very painful, frustrating experience for me. This conversion happened during the election year. Many of the U.S. bishops were frequently discussing the Catholic teachings on various issues and I distinctly remember that one of them, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield Illinois, explicitly said in one of his public statements “if you are a Catholic and reject the Church’s teachings on abortion or gay marriage, you should not present yourself to receive Holy Communion.”
That infuriated me. I truly hated hearing that because, deep down, my conscience finally started nagging me that he was right and that it was time for me to begin submitting my intellect and will to the Church’s teaching authority. This was truly a painful process for me, one that was filled with sadness, anger, and an almost dehumanizing sense that I was forfeiting my intellect and will to conform to something I didn’t believe in. Nevertheless, I started by simply resolving that I would no longer outwardly dissent from the Church even though I inwardly still disagreed. It was only through the passage of time, years of prayer, studying theology, and growing in virtue that I finally came to see the full truth of why the Church teaches what it does.
The point that I’m trying to make is this: I get it. The Church’s opposition to all sexual immorality, which leads to its opposition to pride month, is probably the most unpopular part of the Catholic faith. Statistically approximately 2/3 of Catholics reject this stance. When you first read the words “pride month” in this letter I’m sure some of your stomachs dropped and tension grew for, to some of you, this is a near and dear issue that you struggle with.
It’s an interesting pastoral dilemma and I have to look at my own life for how to approach this subject. On the one hand, people grow in their spiritual lives very slowly and gradually and you do have to meet people where they are. If, when I first came back to the Church in college, I was presented with a strong, all-or-nothing, “believe everything or get out” approach, I would have almost certainly left and never came back. I recognize that if I make myself the gatekeeper of orthodoxy and demand that everyone “get onboard now or leave”, I’m going to tear up a lot of the wheat with the weeds, and it can do far more harm than good.
On the other hand, self-mastery and chastity bring with them a wonderful freedom and God calls each and every person to this way of life. He will not deny us the grace to attain those values and they are an integral part of the Church’s understanding of the human person. To deny this, or tell people that the Church is in error and needs to change, is a grave injustice to both humanity and God because it sells short the fullness of the gospel.
And so, if you do find yourself in that 2/3 group of Catholics who disagree with the Church on these matters, my advice would be the same that you may have received from your math teachers in school when you were taking tests: “If you get stuck on a problem, skip it, move on to the others, and come back to it later.” Meaning, if you’re at an impasse with the Church on homosexuality, gender, or any other hot issue, I’m not saying it doesn’t matter, but I am saying to focus on the parts of the faith that you do like, and then maybe revisit this topic when you’ve grown in those other areas. During my first year back in the Church, I didn’t like the sexual moral teachings, but I did like prayer, reading about the lives of the saints, and caring for the poor and doing works of mercy. Because of this, I made that my focus and it was only by growing in those areas that the rest of the pieces fell in place for me.
Father Andrew Meng, Parochial Vicar