Just a few days after being given a new assignment by the Archdiocese of Boston and a day after giving a softball interview to a local newspaper, Fr. Walter Cuenin is announced as the preacher and honoree at a gay pride event. (Note that contrary to his disdain for his collar in the interview yesterday, Cuenin wears one for his photo in the gay newspaper Bay Windows; apparently it comes in useful sometimes.) Here’s how the newspaper describes the reasons for his being honored:
As pastor of Our Lady’s for 12 years until his forced resignation by Archbishop Seán O’Malley last September, Cuenin went out of his way to make the thriving parish a safe spiritual home for LGBT Catholics. The parish established an LGBT support group, its Justice and Peace Committee marched in Boston Pride and Cuenin regularly preached a message of inclusion for all marginalized Catholics. He also made waves when he offered legislative testimony in 2002 against a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, which had strong backing from the Catholic hierarchy.
And lest you miss the point, Cuenin is not a supporter of the Church’s teachings on homosexuality. He claimed in the interview that he isn’t a dissenter, but this tells a different story.
But the church also holds the positions that homosexuality is “objectively disordered” and the legalization of same-sex relationships is not to be tolerated. Cuenin seems to understand the fine line he’ll walk at the Interfaith Service. “I hope it’s not my last preaching,” he laughs. “It’s going to take a certain tact not to say something that would be totally contrary to the Catholic teachings, but challenging still.”
Catch that? He wants to publicly disagree with Church teaching, but needs to walk a fine line so that he doesn’t say something explicitly contrary.
Once again I have to ask Archbishop O’Malley, why is this guy still being placed in a position to form young minds and souls? In the Scandal, bishops shuffled about sex abusers from parish to parish where they continued to prey on the bodies and souls of young people. Cuenin’s not a sex-abuser, but his heterodoxy poisons the souls of those duped by his word. So why are they shuffling him to a new assignment? Do they never learn?
Technorati Tags: Boston, Catholic, Cuenin, dissent, heterodoxy, homosexuality
…and the band played on.
This is so depressing.
Fr. Cuenin says, “It’s going to take a certain tact not to say something that would be totally contrary to the Catholic teachings, but challenging still.”
How odd.
I, myself, have never encountered a situation in which I had to restrain my impulse to say something totally contrary to [the] Catholic teachings.
I have encountered difficulty in discerning how best to speak Truth (i.e. Catholic teaching) to people in certain situations. I have felt remorse for not having spoken the Truth (ibid.) in certain situations.
But, oddly, I’ve never felt the need to use tact to keep secret my disbelief in the Church’s teaching.
It’s funny how the Church is accused of obsessing over “pelvic issues”, when these accusers go out of their way to welcome, for example, the LGBT community. We’re told that this is meant to welcome the alienated. But why are we obsessed with welcoming the sexually alienated? Why don’t we reach out to the terrorists in America who may feel alienated from Catholic parishes? Or how about members of the KKK who don’t feel welcome in the Catholic Church? Or wifebeaters, or the rich and greedy who don’t care about the poor.
Or how about pedophiles? Who is more alienated than a pedophile? God loves them too. Where are the calls to welcome pedophiles into our parishes, to form groups for them to share their experiences?
Now that would be really “provocative”. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t garner the patronage of the PC elites, so outreach to the “alienated” is reserved for the Sacred Cow of “pelvic issues”.
To be blunt, I think it’s past time some folks got together and decided how best to pull this scumbag out of his pulpit.
I’m thinking, the answer is prayer. It’s almost 3:00 now. Fr. Jim, is there a Mass in time of Pestilence you can offer?
Archbishop O’Malley needs to re-read the Epsitle of St Paul to Timothy where St Paul reminds the bishop St Timothy of the duties of his office. One of these duties is to preserve the faithful from scandal by removing the heretics and rebels from their midst.
Our shepherd should laicize and excommunicate this heretic so he can find his true spiritual home: the Episcopal church.
I’m out here in California, but I just emailed this to Archbishop O’Malley:
Dear Archbishop O’Malley,
I know you are busy, so I’ll make this short. The following link is to a Gay/Lesbian Newspaper, The Bay Window. Fr. Cuenin is interviewed in the paper and makes is abundantly clear that he WANTS to publicly oppose Church teaching at the planned “gay pride” event.
http://baywindows.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=008EC9FBCFF24AD18614290016BE1303&nm=Current+Issue&type=Publishing&mod=Publications::Article&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=56B874A44C6E43B696E0789BFFFC5F53
I humbly ask you to use your authority to solve this ONE problem. The chaos in the Church hurts the flock. Gays and Lesbians are not the only people in this world that need compassion. Seeing the disintegration of the Church, at the hands of those “called” to serve God is extremely painful for those of us trying to hang on. Again, please do the right thing here.
Sincerely,
…..
Hey, it couldn’t hurt.