Gay Catholics In Sydney Get a Shock
Filed under: Nic, Politics & Issues, Totally GAY!
Author: Nic
Date: Mar 2, 2010
So for gay Catholics living in Sydney, St. Joseph’s in Newtown has helped LGBT people of that faith to have a place to worship and take communion. Every Friday night, with the help of the usually conservative Archbishop of Sydney, they’ve gathered to worship their God and their religion for years. They got quite a shock when they all showed up for Mass last Friday evening the 26th to find a protest outside the church where they clearly weren’t welcome anymore.
A facebook group had been set up, and rather quickly, identifying the LGBT worshippers as a “sacrilegious” problem, vowing to stop them from attending St. Joseph’s. Big surprise right? Except for the fact that local priest of the church Father Peter Maher said “there is nothing in the Catholic faith that says gays and lesbians don’t have rights to take communion”. I’m sorry are we talking about the same religion here? Aren’t you the priest? Isn’t it your job to know the rules on gay sex and homosexuality?
My problem is this. People can’t be brainwashed into learning serious rules and general rhetoric for hundreds of years, only to be told it’s wrong. Not only that but have it come from the people in charge who have devoted their lives to serving a common purpose. I mean what is it? Do you like gays or don’t you? I have a lot of experience with a religious background, and as far as I was concerned, when I realized I was gay, there was no room for me in the religion. I understood. I didn’t agree, but I understood. Nor did I WANT to try to associate myself with it after that. Why would I purposely be somewhere where I wasn’t wanted when there were so many other accepting positive places to be?
The catholic church is built on some pretty intense bloody massacres in history, killing everyone and everything in their path that didn’t follow their rules and religion. It’s always been like that. It’s what they’re always going to do, they just can’t legally murder at will now. So why, oh why, do these LGBT people need to try to force a puzzle piece into a place that it doesn’t fit. They don’t belong at the church. They don’t belong in the Catholic religion. The Catholic religion is not the be all and end all of belief systems, and for those that need a religious sense of god in their lives, there are so many more accepting religions that would be happy to have them. Not to mention the people that protested who are only doing what they’ve been told their whole religious lives to do, only to be told that it’s wrong. How crazy can one system be?
So how is it that I have this opinion on gay people trying to force themselves into religious systems that don’t want them, without sounding like a hypocrite when I’m an activist for a change in the institution of marriage, that has also never included gay people? Well I don’t really fight for marriage necessarily. I think it’s a silly outdated system too. What I do fight, when I fight for the idea to be changed, is hate, and situations that cause it. Marriage’s brickwall is slowly being broken down brick by brick. The very source of the hate is going to be legally and indefinitely changed. The brickwall of Catholicism and most religion, is just TOO thick. So to me, the answer is disassociation. You can create a sect that is all inclusive, but that source, the very center where the hate truly exists, is unreachable.
I hope the LGBT people of St. Joseph’s open their eyes to other options when it comes to worship and that need for a deeper cause. It’s out there. And if I rubbed a lamp and a genie popped out, my first wish would be to take that whole goddamn sickening system down as hard as possible, fly my ass out to the Vatican, and embarrassingly parade that puppet the pope around like a moldy popsicle. But maybe that’s just me? ‘Nuff said.
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TJ Lawson
March 2nd, 2010 at 3:07 am
I understand your feelings, but should we leave an institution, identity or an association that denies us our rights (including our citizenship), or should we fight and reclaim what that is ours (for many of us the Catholic faith is also our cultural tradition and what we’re born into). The church, like all institutions are run by human beings, the teachings of Jesus to love our enemies and our neighbours as we love ourselves is timeless and ageless, the church doesn’t belong to those bigots either, it’s perhaps worth fighting for- for many of us. Just a point of thinking
Stew
March 2nd, 2010 at 10:21 am
Alright… So you say that the brick wall that is the Catholic Church is too thick to break down. Well there appears to be a priest who is helping in taking that wall down. The Catholic Church does change and evolve believe it or not. Women use to have to cover their heads to enter the church, the mass was said in Latin, girls couldn’t be alter servers, you couldn’t eat meat on any Friday. All of these traditions have changed over the years. Being raised Catholic I know that gays are not the demographic the church wants. However this priest holding a special mass for gay people is a step in the right direction. No matter who you are you should be able to practice whatever religion you chose to no matter what you’re (Nic) thoughts on that religion are. If going to church does something spiritually for you then you should go, if it doesn’t then you should stay home. To say that you fight hate and then make the comment “…embarrassingly parade that puppet the pope around like a moldy popsicle.” makes no sense to me. That comment comes from hate so maybe you should fight the hate in yourself before you even attempt to fight the hate in others.
Brandon
March 2nd, 2010 at 11:38 am
With all due respect Nic, not every gay and lesbian person has experienced discrimination or hate at the hands of the Catholic Church. For a number of people, the church is a storied family tradition that invokes good memories instead of negative ones. Not saying that I’m necessarily a part of that, but I was raised Catholic – not devout mind you. My mom was the “black sheep” in a very Catholic upbringing, so we didn’t attend church regularly or anything. But we went enough that my siblings and I were christened, and took communion, and still take communion today if we go (for family events – weddings, funerals, etc). More than anything, it’s out of respect for family traditions and ceremonies honouring my family members. Having said that, do I buy into the beliefs of the church? No, but members of my family do, and I have respect for them and their right to “buy in”. Not everybody that attends the catholic church feels as hardline on social issues as the more conservative religious figures do. As an example, nobody in my family is against the notion of gay marriage, and everybody in my extended family has embraced my boyfriend as one of them.
I think for many of these gay and lesbian Catholic worshippers, maybe this experience is similar to what they’ve experienced in their own families – so your idea that they need to leave the church and find somewhere more welcoming is a bit baseless and premature. If a bunch of a protesters came up and told you that you couldn’t fuck your boyfriend anymore, would it diminish your resolve to have a healthy intimate relationship with your significant other? Probably not – if anything it would make you wanna go do it even more. The same idea applies for these asshole protesters telling these worshippers that they can no longer worship there.
Nic
March 2nd, 2010 at 12:58 pm
I understand what you’re saying Brandon, and everyone for that matter. I also realize I have a lot of religious biases, and that my last sentence (although hateful Stew, you’re right) was more for colour and to be the spark in this conversation. I don’t see how people can be part of a religion and only obey PART of it. I mean Christians who follow the bible aren’t even supposed to be eating shellfish according to the scriptures but they ignore that part and decide to adapt the scripture that says men shall not lie with men. Why? What’s the difference between one scripture and the other? Why wouldn’t you obey all of them? I can’t honour a system where people are only paying attention to what they want to pay attention to. And I realize that’s shooting myself in the foot and barring off a belief to myself included because I’m gay and they don’t accept gays. My point is that all those people who call themselves Catholics and then, like your family Brandon, accept your partner and accept homosexuality, aren’t actually following the rules of Catholicism. If they want to be CHRISTIAN in the TRUE sense of the word and love your neighbour and love every brother as yourself, and really deliver the epitomy of what Jesus preached, then all the power to them. But Catholicism, in the very center of it’s creation and being, does not accept homosexuality. Catholicism and the sects following said that. NOT Jesus. Being a true and good Christian as per Christ, is really just being a good loving human being. But these postures and gestures and communion don’t help you be a proper good accepting human being. They’re hocus pocus that no one needs. Just like no one NEEDS to be a Catholic despite your background and tradition.
Timothy
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Well written Brandon, but I’m afraid I have to disagree with your first sentence. I think it’s safe to say that YES all LGBT people have experienced discrimination bordering on hate at the hands of the Catholic church.
Great discussion boys keep it up!
Russ
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:34 pm
When I was at one Catholic Mass, I heard that I’m allowed to be gay, but not act on my feelings. (ie, have sex with another man) Maybe that’s the grey area that’s causing some of these problems? Gay people are okay, just not gay sex? It’s a confusing situation.
Adam
March 3rd, 2010 at 1:49 am
Hahaha, okay, I didn’t want to comment but somehow dono’s idol article spurred me to: Nic, you got out just in time.
Knowing even a TENTH of the history of this religion- interestingly enough, apart from history class, I learned about this faith through art history education and that showed me enough of the craziness- and you ought to know better as a gay.
Nothing against those who follow what their parents taught them to love for 20 years … but, yikes… nic is right, the scriptures and demands and commands etc of this religion is enough to make my head spin :P
(To put it in context though, I don’t HAVE clue how women even follow this faith- forget us homos… so boys, you’re not alone in my “you crazy file ;)
Mordecai
March 8th, 2010 at 11:58 am
The Catholic church is not a true reflection of Jesus or his teachings. The house churches which sprang up in the meditteranean were governed by Paul, who never met Jesus. It’s business, and it was Roman development in a time when their Empire was weakening. Oh, and it was not until three hundred years after Jesus death that he was established in the Bible as god’s son. Who cares what modern priests are saying/doing/fucking, it’s all just fake. Whoever Jesus was, or who his image was made up from, the christian churches and their sects do not represent him.
Scott Fineman
June 14th, 2010 at 11:27 am
OK lets try and put religion into perspective here I know that this is going to be hard to grasp on both sides of this argument in saying that this is a very logical explanation to who where when why how this is not a faith, but nothing more than a set of rules and teachings of an ancient civilisation looking back in the earliest civilisation which is and was Mesopotamia you find that the so called church at the time had a harem of prostitutes to fund the government of the time but with all things man-made the government seek counsel from the “church” (wise elders) to help keep order in their governments now this knowledge need to be collaborated over time to prevent any extinction and prevent sickness and disease and so forth look at the sins and the teachings of your bibles and all it is showing are lessons and lifestyle choices of a history so far back that now we have grown up since then and have technology to counter some of these old rules of a past civilisation some reform is needed on the book called the bible so that the people as a whole still have these teachings with the faith that they have in the word so that we can all come together as one………… would like to hear what people think… thanks.
Nick
November 1st, 2010 at 8:55 am
It’s not that we want to kick homosexuals out of the Church, or keep them from attending mass. Everyone is to be loved and welcomed. But the Church teaches something marvelous, that God Himself is present under the form of bread and wine in the Eucharist. To recieve the Eucharist in a state of sin is considered an even greater sin (quadrupled, teachnically). I believe that the protesters were not acting in hate of homosexuals, but in protecting of the Eucharist, which is the center of our faith and an object of deep, deep love for many Catholics (the serious practicing ones). That being said this protest was probably not the best course of action. But that priest put them in an odd situation.