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NACDLGM’s predictable response to bishops’ homosexuality doc
Still catching up on posts and news from before the holiday. Amy Welborn had some trenchant observations regarding the reception of the US bishops’ recent document on homosexuality by diocesan ministries to gays, especially the National Association of Diocesan Ministries to Lesbians and Gays (NACDLGM), led by Fr. James Schexnayder. I’ve written about the NACDLGM before, most recently regarding its national conference this past September in Brooklyn. Even the descriptions of the speeches, seminars, and workshops showed a definite bias against the Church’s teachings on homosexuality. Schexnayder has also been prominent in the news as openly dissenting as this article from San Diego News and Notes about another NACDLGM conference shows.
In a Catholic News Service article, Schexnayder’s response indicates that any statement of the Church’s teaching will be regarded as hostile and unacceptable, and even moreso, that diocesan gay ministries are often merely shills for gay activists, dismissing the Church’s teaching, while continuing to take a paycheck from that Church.
“For more than 25 years, diocesan ministries have welcomed in the church gay and lesbian Catholics who understand and affirm their sexual orientation as intrinsic to their identity,“ he wrote. “It is profoundly sad that many of them and their families will be unnecessarily alienated by the tone of this document.“
Technorati Tags: Catholic, dissent, doctrine, homosexuality, USCCB
What is profoundly sad is that Schexnayder and his fellow-travelers will discount a priori any document that upholds the Church’s teaching on chastity and sexuality. Amy points out that the dissenters are protesting a straw man. That homosexuals would make their sexual preference intrinsic to their identity is sad enough, but they are wrong to claim that the bishops in this minimalist reformulation of longstanding Church doctrine are alienating homosexuals, since all the bishops are saying is that homosexuals—like the rest of us—are sinners who must strive for holiness. The difference is that people Schexnayder is talking about are so attached to a certain sinful act that they make it the touchpoint of their existence.
Where else has an official diocesan ministry become so co-opted that promotion of what the Church calls sinful has becomes its purpose? Of course, I’ve long wondered why the Church has whole ministries dedicated to a tiny minority like homosexuals when those precious resources are need elsewhere. At the very least every bishop needs to take a look at his own diocesan ministry and see if it is affiliated with NACDLGM and take steps to end that association because they are undermining Church teaching, not upholding it.
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