Response Is Positive to Bishops’ Outreach to Gays

A new message from U.S. Roman Catholic bishops urging parents to love and accept their homosexual children was welcomed this week by gay and lesbian leaders and marks the second recent outreach effort by church leaders.

Last month, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles addressed a gay and lesbian ministries conference in Long Beach and exhorted Catholics to embrace homosexual Catholics who feel “estranged and alienated” from the church. “You do well to care for a forgotten minority and for their family and friends,” Mahony said.

But although Mahony’s remarks were aimed primarily at church ministries, the bishops’ message released Wednesday was directed at parents of teenage and adult lesbian and gay children.

Often, the bishops said, a child’s declaration that he or she is homosexually oriented leads to a family crisis and a breach of relationships.

“Your child,” the bishops wrote, “may need you and the family now more than ever. He or she is still the same person. This child, who has always been God’s gift to you, may now be the cause of another gift: your family becoming more honest, respectful and supportive.”

The bishops cautioned parents not to break off contact with a child and warned that rejection can lead to substance abuse or suicide.

Five years in the making, the statement was written by the bishops’ committee on marriage and family and approved by the bishops conference’s administrative board. As such, it is considered a “message” rather than a more authoritative pastoral letter, which would have to be approved by a vote of the all the nation’s bishops.

The message stressed that Catholic teaching against sex outside of a traditional marriage remains.

The church’s position is that homosexual orientation is not sinful in itself. That view is codified in the new catechism of the Catholic Church. The church has also over the past several years upheld the civil rights of homosexuals and said that everyone is entitled to human dignity.

The bishops’ statement, titled “Always Our Children,” drew praise from secular and Catholic lesbian and gay organizations.

Kim Mills of the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign, which lobbies Congress on gay and lesbian causes, said the message might encourage some people to return to the church.

“I think it will touch the hearts and minds of a lot of gay Catholics and formerly Catholic gays,” said Mills, who said she left the church. “We still have a ways to go. I would not be surprised if some gay people got more involved in the church as a result of the message in this letter. I do think it’s very affirming.”

“It’s in families where people experience the greatest love and understanding, but also sometimes the greatest hurt and rejection,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a gay and lesbian organization based in Mt. Rainier, Md. “That’s particularly true for gay and lesbian people.”

Dignity/USA, the nation’s largest organization of Catholic lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and trans-gendered individuals, welcomed the bishops’ “greater pastoral sensitivity.”

But Dignity President Robert Miailovich said the distinction between homosexual orientation and homosexual activity “makes little sense to us and will be a stumbling block in the way of any effective pastoral program.”

Nonetheless, there have been protests. Helen Hull Hitchcock of the St. Louis-based Women for Faith and Family, said she was troubled by the statement and maintained that the bishops’ message was “heavily influenced” by gay and lesbian advocates within the church. She also predicted that it will disturb “a lot” of bishops.

The Family Research Council in Washington, a spinoff of Christian broadcaster James Dobson’s Focus on the Family organization, called the bishops’ statement “a welcome reiteration of a central Christian teaching--love the sinner, but hate the sin.”

What makes this week’s statement new is the emphasis on the need for both parents and priests to reach out with love and acceptance to gays and lesbians.

“This is a good example of the sort of delicate balance and the tension which is always present in the church between respect for its moral teachings and its response to pastoral situations,” said Father Thomas Rausch, chairman of the theology department at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. “It does it very well.”

The statement did not address the often-contentious argument over the cause or origin of homosexuality. It simply observed that multiple factors may be involved.

“Generally, homosexual orientation is experienced as a given, not as something freely chosen,” the bishops wrote. “By itself, therefore, a homosexual orientation cannot be considered sinful, for morality presumes the freedom to choose,” they said.

The bishops offered practical advice to parents as well as pastoral encouragement. They urged parents to seek “appropriate help” for themselves and their child, while respecting a person’s right to choose or refuse therapies.

The bishops also said counselors should appreciate religious values, understand the complexities of sexuality and be skilled at helping clients discern the meaning of early sexual behaviors, sexual attractions and sexual fantasies in ways that lead to more clarity and self-identity.

“In the course of this, however, it is essential for you to remain open to the possibility that your son or daughter is struggling to understand and accept a basic homosexual orientation,” the bishops wrote.

At the same time, the bishops told parents that even as they remain in a loving relationship with a child, their acceptance “does not have to include approving all related attitudes and behavioral choices.”