The growing visibility of gays and lesbians has put before the American Church as never before the need to respond pastorally to those who find themselves with a homosexual orientation. A number of dioceses have already embarked on such an outreach. Others are process of so doing. These efforts on behalf of Catholic gays and lesbians demonstrate a pastoral concern that is admirable. Yet a lot is riding on these initiatives. A misstep can have disastrous consequences for similar efforts in other dioceses for years to come. With this in mind, since I do not have all the answers and I do not know anyone who does, I would like to offer the following four points as the first step in establishing an open dialogue with anyone who feels moved to participate on what should be the basic principles that guide such a ministry.

The First Principle

The meaning of sex needs to be clearly understood. The Catholic Church teaches that sex is a language. It is a way of conveying a message. It says: “I love you - completely, irrevocably, unconditionally, exclusively - for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health, until death do us part.” Sex is linked therefore inextricably to marriage. You can only speak sexually the truth of sex when in reality you have committed yourself publicly to someone in this way and you have the marriage certificate to prove it. Anything less is an equivocation. Some of these equivocations are big lies, others are little lies, but all are lies since they separate in one degree or another sex from commitment.

The Second Principle

The meaning of love needs to be clearly understood. Love conditions our relations with others in such a way that the use of one by the other is excluded. The other does not exist in function of me. The dignity of the human person requires that he always be related to as an end in himself and never as a means to my ends. This means that sex needs a justification to insure that both parties are on a footing of equality so that one never becomes the means for the other’s ends. There has to be a common good to which both parties can submit themselves and nurture their relationship in the pursuit of that common good. Without such a good that transcends any private good, the sexual relationship would become simply the use of the other to achieve one’s private ends. For this reason, marriage is linked inextricably to procreation. The willingness to cooperate with God in bringing new human beings into existence is the guarantee that the sexual act does not turn us in upon ourselves. The willingness to be a father or a mother is what gives sex its dignity and its social significance.

The Third Principle

The meaning of marriage needs to be clearly understood. Only in the relationship between a man and a woman can sex be procreative. What is commonly called “same-sex marriage” is not marriage at all because it cannot be procreative nor can it be a sacramental sign of the marriage of Christ and his Church.

The Fourth Principle

The meaning of homosexual orientation needs to be clearly understood. God does not make mistakes. The cross of homosexual orientation, along with all the other crosses that people have in their lives have been allowed by God in order to bring us to make a saving and life-transforming encounter with his Son on his cross.

Some Comments

As you can see, the principles listed above that are not in fashion in today’s culture. Many, both within and without the gay and lesbian community, object to linking sex with the service of life. What is wrong with separating sex from the service of life, they ask. The answer is very simple. There would no longer be a common good to be pursued in having sex, only a private good, sexual gratification. In order to be rational, pleasure is meant to be a consequence of the pursuit of another good. When it is pursued for its own sake, it always remains a private good. It can never be shared. We easily become addicted to pleasure. The other may or may not have pleasure, but that remains outside the purview of the pursuit of my personal ends, my pleasure. Consideration of the other enters, at best, only as a means to obtain a greater satisfaction for myself. The final consequence of making such a separation is that sex, instead of building a relationship, destroys the relationship since the other picks up very quickly when he or she is being used. This ultimately only increases the sense of loneliness and disillusion.

This teaching about the intrinsic link between love and life is not limited by any means to persons with a homosexual orientation. It applies to everybody, because it supplies the reason why the Catholic Church rejects the contraception lifestyle. This is a lifestyle embraced by the overwhelming majority of our contemporary culture. Gays and lesbians have lots of company. They are not being singled out for discrimination in any way. Many, however, would object to such a claim. After all, they will say, does not the Catholic Church consider homosexuals (to quote a recent article by Andrew Sullivan in the May 2nd edition of Time) as “beset by an inherent tendency toward an ‘intrinsic moral evil’ and are thus by nature ‘objectively disordered’?” An authentic ministry of liberation to homosexuals must not be afraid to speak the truth. The real answer is NO! Why? Because the Catholic Church does not categorize people as “heterosexuals” or “homosexuals.” What is objectively disordered is the sexual inclination toward persons of the same sex, not the person with such an orientation. We all have many inclinations that are in fact objectively disordered. It is the consequence of original sin. These include the inclination to eat too much, to drink too much, and to talk too much. However, it would be a mistake to build a personal identity around such an inclination. We are more than the sum total of our inclinations. It would also be a mistake to paint oneself as the victim of one’s inclinations, as if we do not have the duty to take responsibility for the training of our inclinations in virtue. We are all inclined to be self-centered. As a result, certain virtues do not come easily. Chastity is normally at the top of everybody’s list of difficult virtues to be cultivated. However, we do not solve the problem by denying that chastity is a virtue.

Many think that the problem of a ministry to gay and lesbian people is one of getting them to feel at home in the Catholic Church. To conceive of it in this way would be a major blunder. The real problem that must be confronted by any ministry to the gay and lesbian community is the same problem we have in announcing the gospel to the “straight” community. It is the problem of conversion, a change in mentality that enables me to see that I am not God. To convert means to recognize that, when my way of thinking does not coincide with God’s way of acting, it is not God who needs to change. None of us rejoices in the cross when it appears, yet God allows it. Why? Why does this happen to me? This is the question that confronts, for example, the parents of gay and lesbians who are forced to stand by helpless and see the sufferings and loneliness of their children. The question that can easily torment them is: Where is God? To convert is to have an answer to that question. To have an answer is to have your life and its crosses enlightened.

Therefore, it is critical that gays and lesbians have their crosses enlightened. In this respect, they are no different than the rest of us. He who does not see the love of God in his homosexuality will spend his life reproaching God for being a monster. And if he is scandalized by the thought of God as a monster, he will spend his life defending God against such a charge by painting his mother, the Church, as the monster. That means that whoever is entrusted with the responsibility for implementing this ministry must be a person who is not also scandalized by the cross. Otherwise, this ministry has the real possibility of degenerating into a crusade to force the magisterium to sanction homosexual behavior. Only a person of faith, who has accepted the cross, can announce to gays and lesbians what they are truly longing to hear: Courage! Be not afraid! God does not make mistakes. It is through this cross that you will encounter his love that turns all things to our good.

The desire to make gays and lesbians feel at home in the parish underscores the importance of making the parishes more responsive to their special needs. Since the parish is where most Catholics experience “home,” by making our approach parish centered rather than a specialized ministry emanating from some diocesan office, you avoid the danger to adding to the sense of alienation that many gays and lesbians already toward their parish and their fellow Catholics. By having this ministry based on the diocesan, super-parochial, level, you run the great risk of never involving the priests of the diocese so that they see it as a ministry that belongs to them and for which they have a sense of responsibility. On the other hand, we would run the risk of having a revolt on the part of the priests if suddenly they were asked to take on this ministry without any help or prior experience.

The obvious solution would be to utilize some of the new ecclesial movements that are devoted to establishing in the parishes adult formation communities that follow the lines of a catechumenate. Personally, I am convinced that these groups can be a needed source of leadership for the new evangelization of which the late John Paul II spoke so often. An outreach to gays and lesbians within the context of an adult-centered catechesis, offering to the general parish a kind of novitiate for the formation of parishioners in an adult faith, hits a couple of birds with the same stone. It reaches out to the gay and lesbian community while not putting a label on people, as if they were being singled out in some way from the rest of the parish. At the same time, it includes the entire parish in a common movement of renewal by putting the focus on the need we all have to convert more fully to Jesus Christ.