<div class=page><div class=layoutArea><div class=column><p style=text-align: right;>Panel: The Theological Mandate for LGBTI Justice Work <br>Global Network of Rainbow Catholics<br>Chicago IL<br>4 July 2019</p><p style=text-align: right;><span>Bryan N. Massingale</span><span> S.T.D. <br>Fordham University <br>New York USA </span></p><p style=text-align: left;><span>I come to this conversation as a Black gay priest and theologian. I am informed not only by my sexuality my faith and my study of the Churchs ethical beliefs but also by the traditions of Black freedom struggles in the US struggles which at their core are matters of the soul and the spirit. </span></p><p><span>I share this because I cannot stand before you as a hybrid car that runs now on gas and then on electricity. The headline is not A Priest Comes Out. This is what happens when people use only that part of my (or your) identity that makes them comfortable while bracketing the other concerns and facets that are integral to who we are. For example even though I spend my life dealing with race and racism in LGBTI settings most people do not want to deal with that; they want to deal only with my writings and thoughts on sexuality the sex stuff. </span></p><p><span>But for my emotional and spiritual health I cannot and for my moral and ethical integrity I will not bracket my Black self in order to be gay so you can take what makes you comfortable. You have to take all of me or none of me. I dont want to spend my energies building a church or world where only part of me is welcomed valued and loved. Because if you accept only part of me then you are not accepting </span><span><em>me</em>! </span></p><p><span>Moreover if you arent willing to accept all of me then you arent serious about LGBTQI inclusion and equality. Because as the African American lesbian poet and activist Audre Lorde reminded us many LGBTQI persons cannot engage in single-issue struggles because we do not live single-issue lives. Racism/white nationalism is an LGBTI issue; it often determines who is accepted and who is ostracized even by us. Gun violence is an LGBTQ issue. Immigration is an LGBTI issue not only here in the States but globally as in South Africa and in Europe asylum seekers who are sexual minorities face compound hurdles and stigmas. If we are to be effective advocates for LGBTQI persons we must be concerned about the </span><em>entire </em><span>community and not only those who can best approximate the white European middle-class heterosexual norm. </span></p><p><span>With that background the major theological idea that I wish to share with you is this: The chief problem we face as LGBTQI persons is </span><em>not </em><span>a problem of sexual ethics. The most challenging problem we face is that of </span><span><em>idolatry</em>.</span></p><p>Let me make this clear by offering an autobiographical testimony. I will structure my reflection around the classic three-step framework used in Catholic social reflection and analysis: See Judge and Act.</p><p style=text-align: center;><em>See: Whats Happening?</em></p><p><em></em>I made my first Ignatian retreat a silent directed retreat as a seminarian in 1982. One of the passages I was given to pray over was the first creation story in the book of Genesis where God creates the cosmos in six days. In my meditation I pictured myself as an observer watching the beauty of creation as it unfolded according to Gods word. I saw the stars come to be; the dry lands appear; the earths animals and creatures filling the land and the sea; and finally human beings emerge as the fulfillment of creation. I looked at creation and saw friends and people I knew. It was wonderful.</p><p><strong>Except</strong>. As I looked at creation and the worlds people I noticed that when creation was finished there wasnt a single Black person. Nor were there any gay people. As I looked at humanity at all those created in the image of God there were none that looked like me. Or loved like me. There was nothing in creation that mirrored me.</p><p>This deeply profoundly shook me. My spirit ached. As the English would say I was gutted. Because it meant that despite eight years of Catholic grade school education four years of Catholic high school four years of Catholic university as a theology and philosophy major and three years of graduate seminary training in theology (and being an honors student too!) that despite what I had been taught about how all human beings are created in Gods image and likeness at some deep place within me I didnt believe it. I didnt believe it. My own prayer betrayed that I didnt believe it. I didnt believe that God could be imaged as Black. Or as gay. And certainly not as both simultaneously.</p><p>When I reported this prayer experience to my retreat director she wisely said Well I think you have some work to do. So she gave me other passages to meditate on passages that spoke of Gods love. She invited me to pray with these. But I couldnt pray with them. I didnt want to hear about Gods love. Because I was angry. I was furious at God for making me Black and gay.</p><p>I remember one night waking up and beating my pillow in rage and sorrow saying over and over: WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME? I didnt ask for this! WHAT KIND OF GOD ARE YOU? Why would you make me like this to endure all of this pain and hurt and rejection? I screamed and yelled shaking and sobbing with angry bitter sad burning tears.</p><p>It was only after I cried and moaned and screamed and yelled and exhausted all of my hurt and anger my fear and pain my outrage it was only then that God could break through the cracks of my soul. Then I could hear God when I read these words <em>You are precious in my sight and I love you</em> (Isaiah 43). I wept again crying tears of joy. A joy that was inexpressible. And then I could pray the second creation story from the second chapter of Genesis. The one where the earth creature is formed out of the ground. I saw&nbsp;myself as that original human being and felt God blowing life <em>Gods</em> life into me. I was at last truly part of Gods creation.</p><p style=text-align: center;><em>Judge: Faith Reflection</em></p><p>The major challenge we face as sexually minoritized persons is not a problem of sexual ethics. We tend to think and we are told that our problems in church and society stem from our nonconformity with the churchs moral code.</p><p>But the church has a solution for that issue. If you sin you can go to confession. You receive forgiveness and absolution. Many of us know that story. Weve confessed a lot of our sins and failures to live up to official church teaching on sexual morality.</p><p>But thats not our deepest issue or struggle. Our deepest problem the one that causes us the most pain alienation and self-estrangement is that weve been told a false story about God and have been given false images of God. <em>Thats</em> our problem.</p><p>Underlying all of the struggles we endure around the world and the stories that weve heard throughout this assembly stories of being kicked out of parishes ostracized from our families and in general being not welcome underlying all of these experiences is a story that Catholicism tells about itself.</p><p>At the heart of this story is that to be Catholic is to be straight. Catholic = straight. Official Catholicism tells a story where <em>only</em> heterosexual persons heterosexual love heterosexual intimacy heterosexual families only these can unambiguously mirror the Divine. Only these are truly sacred. Genuinely holy. Only these are worthy of unreserved acceptance and respect. All other persons and expressions of love family life intimacy and sexual identity are sacred (if at all) only by toleration or exception.</p><p>In effect we are told that we are afterthoughts in the story of creation not part of the original plan. In other words we are children of a lesser god.1</p><p>(And thats if we are even included in what is holy. Most often we are actively rejected as carriers of evil who embody all that is not holy sacred and of God).</p><p>I know this is heavy and difficult to hear. But we have to be honest. We have to be deep. Yes we certainly need to rethink our churchs official sexual ethics. <em>But even more we have to rethink God.</em> We have to get the false god out of our heads. Because this false god is the deepest reason for both our social persecution and our inner estrangement and struggles with self-acceptance. For how can we love ourselves if we dont believe we&nbsp;<span style=background-color: transparent;>are worthy of Gods love? If we believe we dont belong in creation or that God never intended for us to be gay? If we believe that at best God only tolerates us and our pursuits of love?</span></p><p><span style=background-color: transparent;></span>But that god is a false god an idol: a human construct made to justify exclusion and injustice. This is why the issue of idolatry is not a matter of interest only for theological geeks like me or for those nostalgic for childhood Bible stories about golden calves being dramatically destroyed by Moses.</p><p>Idols as Gustavo Gutierriez reminds us are murderous gods.2 Idols demand sacrifices: the sacrifice of our integrity of our intelligence of our love and even of our lives. Death threats the public humiliation and torture of gay people the killing of trans persons the epidemic of suicides among us and the silence of the Church regarding these (e.g. the 2016 Pulse massacre in Orlando Florida) all attest to the murderous implications of the idolatry that legitimates homophobic violence. Because people dont do evil so cheerfully as when they do it in the name of God.</p><p>As the Uruguayan liberation theologian Juan Luis Segundo put it so well Our falsified and inauthentic ways of dealing with our fellow human beings are allied to our falsification of the idea of God. <em>Our perverse idea of God and our unjust society are in close and terrible alliance</em>.3 Wherever you find social injustice idolatry is in the neighborhood just around the corner.</p><p>How religious believers image God has significant social effects and influences their understanding of justice. By idolatry I mean the pervasive belief that only heterosexual persons loves and relationships are standard normative universal and truly Catholic. That only these can mediate the Divine and carry the holy. That God can be imaged only as straight. That this white heterosexual God sacralizes social exclusion and stigma. This is idolatry that is the divinizing what is not God.4</p><p>Thus Catholic reflection on sexual justice must summon the honesty and the courage to challenge the Churchs bondage to an alien god more forthrightly. To put it bluntly idolatry is the fundamental theo-political struggle that faces us as believers theologians and faith-based activists.</p></div></div></div><div class=page><div class=layoutArea><div class=column><p></p></div></div></div><div class=page><div class=layoutArea><div class=column><p style=text-align: center;><em>Act: Implications for LGBTI Ministry and Advocacy</em></p><p><span></span>So what then are we to do? Sisters and brothers I offer three suggestions for our reflection.</p><p>First <em>we must refuse the lie.</em> We need to assert without apologies the precious value of LGBTQI lives. Of our lives. We need to confidently and insistently proclaim that we are equally redeemed by Christ and radically loved by God. <strong>We are equally redeemed by Christ and radically loved by God.</strong> We can never say that often enough. We need to tell ourselves and one another over and over again: You are loved. You are lovable. You are sacred. Because you are Gods image. We must refuse the lie.</p><p>Second <em>we need to cultivate a culture of courage in our church.</em> I am going to quote St. Thomas Aquinas (because as a Catholic you never get in trouble by quoting Aquinas!): Courage is the precondition of all virtue. That is to exercise any virtue you must possess courage. If you dont have courage you cant have virtue. We need to create a new church where obedience is not the primary virtue but where courage is the primary virtue.</p><p>This is entirely orthodox. We need courage in order to speak our truth in a church that is all too often in bondage to a false god. As Dignitys founder challenged those who gathered for their first assembly fifty years ago If we will not stand for the beauty holiness and integrity of our loving relationships who will? We must have the courage to stand for the value our love. And the courage to refuse to be silenced.</p><p>Finally <em>we must cultivate a sense of hope.</em> Hope is not the same thing as optimism. Optimism is an American virtue. The American myth is that good always prevails over evil the good guys always win and sooner rather than later. Optimists believe that the victories are low-cost. Optimists believe that all difficulties will work out well.</p><p>Hope is very different. Hope believes that good <em>ultimately</em> triumphs over evil . . . but not always. And that the victories often come at a terrible cost; in the process many will pay a very high price. In the words of Arthur Falls an African American civil rights activist and a member of the Chicago Catholic Worker in the 1960s when asked what gave him hope in the struggle for justice he replied: <em>When you work for justice you dont always lose.</em></p><p>You dont <em>always</em> lose. Thats Christian hope. Christian hope is grounded in the resurrection. The resurrection was not the last minute rescue of Jesus a narrow escape from death or a close brush with tragedy. Jesus died as too often Black trans women die and as LGBTQI asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants too often die. The resurrection is about what God can bring forth out of tragedy failure and death. Thats the faith which sustains us in this slow frustrating and even dangerous work for a more just world and a holier church. Thats what gives us hope.</p></div></div><div class=layoutArea><div class=column><p><span>&nbsp;</span></p></div></div></div><div class=page><div class=layoutArea><div class=column><p><span>So my sisters and brothers: it is good to be here. Because when we work for justice we have Christs assurance that we wont always lose . . . and that </span><em>ultimately </em><span>we will triumph.</span></p><p><span>FOOTNOTES</span></p><p><span>1 This phrase is the title of an 1986 American dramatic film. It means that people who belong to ostracized and disdained groups must have a lesser god who created them not the God who created the socially dominant and privileged.<br></span></p><p>2 Gustavo Gutie?rrez El Dios de la vida 40.</p><p>3 Juan Luis Segundo&nbsp;Our Idea of God&nbsp;trans. John Drury (Maryknoll NY: Orbis 1974) 8.</p><p>4 See the&nbsp;Catechism of the Catholic Church #2113: Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. . . . Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God.</p><p><span>&nbsp;</span></p><p></p><p></p><p></p></div></div></div>