Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities

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Catholic Church: It's time to re-evaluate
our views on human sexuality
by Michael J. Bayly
St. Paul Pioneer Press, 8/12/03

One could choose to dismiss the July 19 letter from Catholic Parents Online vice president Phyllis Plum as a comical rant. Has she, for instance, inspected every long-term committed gay relationship in order to declare that each and every one is also "open"? When Plum declares, "Parents continue your watch. Our work is worthy," one visualizes a whispering cartoon spy disappearing down a darkened alley — no doubt on the trail of another gay couple and their "committed (but open)" relationship.

Yet there is a decidedly disturbing aspect to Plum's rhetoric. Hers is the voice of fanaticism and intolerance, the mindset that, according to Nigerian writer and human rights activist Wole Soyinka, "feeds on a compulsion to destroy other beings who do not share (one's) beliefs."

In Plum's view, gay people must be opposed as they are the bearers of immorality and thus threaten civilization. In a recent open letter to Archbishop Harry Flynn, the Suspend Abortion Compact, another reactionary Catholic group with ties to CPO, expressed similar sentiments when it railed against "the deadly sodomic attack" on the Catholic church by the "orchestrated diabolical campaign" of "forces of abominable and terminal evil" manifested by "assorted deviants and perverts."

This is the language of war, the mindset of intolerance that, according to Soyinka, "destroys the creative or adventurous of any community." Those who are consumed by such thinking, he notes, seem "permanently in the dark ages, in the darkest ages of superstition." The minds of such people are set "not on questions, but on the mantra, 'I am right, you are wrong.' " When it comes to issues of human sexuality, members of CPO and, unfortunately, much of the leadership of the Catholic church, base their "right" understanding on a worldview no longer relevant in light of contemporary findings in the human sciences. Accordingly, just as church teaching has changed on issues such as cosmology, the procreative process, slavery, usury, democracy and capital punishment, so too must the church re-evaluate its understanding of human sexuality.

At the grass-roots level — the level of church as people of God — such re-evaluation is well under way. Yet until the church as an institution joins the spirit-led journey of re-evaluation and renewal, groups such as CPO will continue to declare themselves guardians of the "Absolute Truth."

Such absolutists operate from a model that sees truths handed down from on high — complete and unchangeable. Yet as Pope John XXIII reminded us, "We are not on Earth to guard a museum but to cultivate a flowering garden of life." Such a statement implies that revelation filters upwards through human life and experience, that revelation is ongoing. It's a concept that is both wondrous and unsettling. Yet for fundamentalists and absolutists, it is a concept that is extremely threatening. Embracing the reality of ongoing revelation propels us out of our comfortable ghettos of formulated answers and into compassionate, and at times challenging, engagement with the world.

It is through such engagement that we are called to discern and incarnate the reign of God in every aspect of life.

Therefore as Catholics, as people of faith and good will, as spirit-filled beings in a universe infused with the power of the sacred, we must reject any theology that reduces God to a series of doctrinal formulas and scriptural verses. Accordingly, we must reject the narrow theology of CPO that denies and obstructs the Spirit of God alive and afoot within the vast and varied arena of human relationships.
Bayly (e-mail: hangingrock@hotmail.com), of Minneapolis, is the co-president of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities, a grass-roots coalition dedicated to creating just and safe environments for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people within the Catholic church and society.

A Related Response to Phyllis Plum's
July 19th Letter to Editor in Pioneer Press

To Phyllis Plum and Other CPO Members:
Please Stop Spreading False Information
About GLBT Persons
by David J. McCaffrey, 8/10/03
CPCSM Founder and Board Member

There are so many points that Phyllis Plum makes in her July 19th letter that are scientifically incorrect or are based on information that is no longer supported by the majority of mainstream health professionals that I don't know where to begin with a reaction. For example, if we consult the mainstream scientific community today about homosexuality, most sexologists are saying things like one's sexual orientation is not based upon choice since it is pretty much determined in the earliest years of childhood, primarily by biological factors.

Health professionals have also been saying that GLBT persons are not disordered "intinsically" or otherwise -- for more than 25 years, when they removed homosexuality from their lists of disorders. Therefore, today's leading human services professionals oppose reparative therapy and assert that it has many potential risks. More than 10 mainstream professional medical, mental health, and educational organizations representing hundreds of thousands of professionals have endorsed such statements in a publication of the American Psychological Association, entitled Just the Facts About Sexual Orientation and Youth: A Primer for Principals, Educators, and School Personnel, 1999.)

Ms. Plum's position is understandable if we assume that her worldview, as appears to be the case, is based on medical and psychoanalytical information, as well as the myths and stereotypes, commonly held in the 50's about homosexuality. Then, we could understand why she believes that GLBT persons solicit "at-risk adolescents" in schools or form relationships, always non-monogamous, that are never anything more than mere sodomy . Then we could understand why she and other members of CPO believe that GLBT lifestyles are "self-indulgent and non-life giving" and in need of reparative therapy.

Please acquaint yourselves with the human sciences of the last quarter century, Ms. Plum and other CPO members, and stop spreading your erroneous and outdated misinformation that only leads to despair and self-hatred among GLBT persons, disharmony and confusion among their families, and spiritual violence in our churches. Mainstream scientific information about GLBT persons has drastically changed since you and other members of CPO apparently last consulted reputable professionals rooted in the current health sciences.

How about if parents who hold such outdated beliefs had a child with a heart condition? Would the parents consult physicians whose training was based primarily on medical information from 25 years ago? Or would the parents seek out physicians who continually update themselves on the scientific findings endorsed by professional organizations in the area of pediatric cardiology? Then why does Ms. Plum not recommend that parents follow the same logic when considering how to help their GLBT children?

Hello! The medical and mental health communities have long held that GLBT persons are not disordered! The highest law of the land has recently said that GLBT persons can no longer be considered criminals because of whom they love! We can only hope and pray that Ms. Plum, CPO, and other right-wing religious groups will one day soon follow the example of growing numbers of mainstream religious groups that also no longer consider GLBT persons to be sinners.

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