Bishop Calls for Gay Clerics to ‘Come Out’

A Roman Catholic bishop has challenged gay men and lesbians within the church--including bishops, priests and women in religious orders--to publicly declare their sexual orientation to show the church the crucial role they play.

The dramatic challenge by the Most Rev. Thomas J. Gumbleton, auxiliary bishop of Detroit, comes at a time when attempts are underway to begin dialogues on sometimes painful issues that separate Catholics in America.

“I appeal here publicly to all of us within the church to create the community in which this can happen, but then for those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered, please, come forward, say who you are, be proud of who you are, and share all of your gifts with our church,” said Gumbleton, adding that his own heterosexual orientation does not make him morally superior to gays and lesbians.

Speaking to the fourth national symposium on lesbian and gay issues sponsored by New Ways Ministry in Pittsburgh, Gumbleton told 650 participants that he knew it would take courage to “come out,” as his brother did five years ago. Gumbleton said he has since heard from untold numbers of gay priests who are afraid to step forward.

“What a loss that is to our church,” he said. “Because if they were willing to stand up on a Sunday morning in front of their community as who they really are, our church could much more fully and quickly appreciate the gifts that homosexuals can bring to the whole community of our church and to our society as well.”

The church teaches that a homosexual orientation is itself morally neutral. But it teaches against any sexual activity outside of marriage. The church will ordain any man who is otherwise qualified, whether heterosexual or homosexual, so long as he takes a vow of celibacy.

Gumbleton reminded the conference that the church’s teaching on sex has changed over the years--and could yet change again when it comes to more open acceptance of homosexuality. He noted that Pope Gregory the Great--who reigned from 590 to 604--taught that lawful sexual relations between a husband and wife were sinful because they involved “pleasure of the flesh,” even though they may have furthered God’s plan for procreation.

But in 1981, Pope John Paul II said the sexual act in marriage is a way of communicating love and not just for the purpose, as Gumbleton put it, “of making babies or providing a remedy for concupiscence.”

“Why is there that kind of change? . . ,” Gumbleton asked rhetorically. “It’s because we finally listened to married people and . . . their experience was that the joy and pleasure of sex is good. It’s given by God. . . . I suggest that the same thing can happen when homosexual people share with us their experience.”

Ned McGrath, a spokesman for Cardinal Adam Maida, Detroit’s archbishop, said he had not seen Gumbleton’s text. But McGrath added, “He speaks for Bishop Gumbleton and he does not speak for Cardinal Maida or the archdiocese.”