Catholics Look Forward While the Vatican Looks Back

Ed. Note: This post in response to recent news that the Vatican is reaching out to Anglicans concerned about the role of women and LGBT people in their church, comes from Jeannine Gramick, SL, a Roman Catholic nun and co-founder of New Ways Ministry.  See also, Integrity USA’s release.

For almost fifty years, I have served the Catholic Church as a woman religious, initially in the role of a high school and college mathematics teacher. For many more years, I have been a pastoral minister and advocate on behalf of lesbian and gay Catholics and their families.  My life in the church has been blessed by countless grace-filled experiences with the people I have met and worked with.

I have been proud of my Church as it speaks out against tyranny and war, and as it cares for the sick, the poor, and the underprivileged of this world.  Through its members, the Roman Catholic Church has stayed true to the word of God and its mission of bringing God’s love to all.

This week we learned that Pope Benedict and conservative Anglican leaders have made an arrangement to facilitate the disaffected Anglicans’ conversion from the Anglican Church to the Catholic Church because of their objections to fuller inclusion of gay people and a greater role for women in church leadership in the Anglican Communion.  The Catholic Church has not embraced these changes.

In my decades as a pastoral minister, I have learned that the Church community is better served by understanding and welcoming than by condemnation and exclusion.  Over these years, I have known mothers who are as proud of their lesbian daughters as of any of their other children.  I have supported young women striving to achieve lofty ambitions as they struggle with the messages received from the hierarchy of the Church they dearly love.  My call to religious life is a call to serve God by serving all of God’s people—and they are not well-served by exclusion or condemnation. 

There are Catholics in the United States who agree with the views of the Pope and conservative Anglicans about gay people and women as Church leaders.  Our love and respect for them will never waver, even though the members of the U.S. Church have a different outlook.  I speak today for the majority of U.S. Catholics who, according to recent opinion polls, welcome women as priests and support lesbian and gay people who seek to live in love and community. I speak today for the majority of U.S. Catholics who know talented women and dedicated lesbian and gay persons, all of whom wish to offer their gifts to the Church.

Some might say that leading the way toward expanded rights for gay individuals and increased roles for women means abandoning the Church’s core principles.  For many, including myself, the increased inclusion of women and lesbian/gay persons in our Church is not a desertion, but a fulfillment, of the Church’s core principles because the Gospel mandates us to welcome all to the table.

It saddens me that the new members whom the Pope seeks to embrace feel they have no place in their own Anglican Communion.  Like them, I know the value of finding community in one’s own Church.  But the Gospel calls us to learn to live with those whose views conflict with one’s own. The Reign of God is about building communities, not dividing them.

I believe we should be leading our communities toward a welcoming view, rather than creating a false sanctuary for those who fear a broader view. Instead of encouraging a disaffected group to find a haven in another Church, we need to learn how to live with the polarities in our midst.  It is the task of the leaders of all faith traditions to model unity in diversity, not separation into polarities.