Cleveland Diocese Linked to Radical Lesbian Group

The following email has been flying around the Cleveland area since this weekend. It appears that the Diocesan contact for a recent Cleveland Diocese Gay and Lesbian Retreat is also the contact for the Egg Moon Farm, a lesbian compound described at Lesbian.com as "Land Dykes."

If you thought the Cleveland Diocese Gay and Lesbian group was out of control before, you will not believe this one. The gay group at the diocese, futurechurch, and those who hate the church remain one big incestuous mess. I apologize in advance for the disturbing nature of this e-mail, but before it is stopped it must be exposed. Please forward it to others who care about our Catholic Faith.

The Gay community has it easy in Cleveland. If you want to attend a Gay and Lesbian Day of Prayer sponsored by the Cleveland Diocese, the diocesan website will direct you to contact Judy.

If you want to attend a Land Dyke compound ( http://www.lesbian.com/landdykes/landdykes_intro.html ) at the Egg Moon Farm, you can simply call the same Judy.

Judy describes the Egg Moon Farm as follows on her homepage: http://my.en.com/~judb/ (also note the futrechurch link on her website) :

I am very involved in my community and a participate in just about every kind of group imaginable. Kimbilio Farm and the womyn's land collective, Egg Moon Farm are my favorite places and where I hang out with my favorite womyn. Egg Moon Farm has been a real adventure, moving from a funky cow pasture infested with poison ivy and thorn bushes to a comfy campground within a few years . This a testament to the hard working and dedicated womyn who believe that the ideal of community without hierarchy is possible. It has been great fun creating this place, and it even has a cozy camping cabin. I was deeply touched when a good friend made a sign for a particular corner of the collective was named for me. Camp Jud' was my first step into transforming some uninviting outdoor space into a place where we could cook food, enjoy meals and sit under the protection of a tarp to tell stories, share our lives and discuss the state of our universe. Even though we now have a first class picnic pavilion and kitchen with all the amenities, the sign remains and Camp Jud' is still a place for wimmin to gather for any kind of chores and great conversation.

The story so far...of our dream of a place in Holmes County, Ohio where women can work and play and build community.

MISSION STATEMENT...The Land Collective maintains rural land to create community without hierarchy and to create a space which is accessible to all women and where each woman is empowered and valued.

We are about 50 women, mostly lesbians, all woman-identified, who fromed a collective in 1995 to purchase land in Holmes County, Ohio. We range in age from 20 to 70+; most of us live around Cleveland. We are diverse across race and class; however, most of the women at meetings are middle class and euro-american. We want to be more inclusive and are working to get there. About the only thing we all have in common is that we believe in miracles - we somehow gathered enough women, money and hope to buy a chunk of land. We believe that we are limited only by our imaginations.

We strive for open decision-making without hierarchy, using various forms of consensus process and committee work. We feel we are custodians of land for women-not just for collective women. We are strongly committed to eliminating racism, classism, and other forms of oppression withinthe group and as they affect women's access to this land.

From the beginning, we have held the collective open for any woman willing to make a commitment to the land and the group. This commitment can take any form - perhaps contributing skills, tools, work shifts, monthly payments, or a lump sum payment toward a building project.

Our primary goal is to create safe, nurturing space for women. Each of us has a different vision of what that will be. We question the fear of scarcity, assuming that there are love, land, and resources enough to meet every collective woman's needs.

In October 1995, we bought 85 acres of farmland off TR 501, across from Kimbilio Farm, an established womens land community. We've planted trees, camped, put up a small shed, built a picnic palace, built a small cabin for women who aren't into camping, made a wildflower field, held successful womens festivals, LandFest 97,98, 99, 00 and leased land to a neighbor for organic farming. Several of us have also built tent platforms. We've held regular meetings, working through decisions on everything from getting liability insurance to planning anniversary celebrations.

In the rush to buy the land and make the payments, some important things got set aside. We want to make a land trust or non-profit legal structure to hold all or part of the land. Each season, new issues come up:will we lease land for farming this year? Will we allow hunting on the land? How will we get some space mowed for camping? And, we have big and fabulous ideas in the works. We see gardens, and gatherings, and workshops, and artisans, and space for spirituality, and...

Every day, at every meeting, during every visit to the land, we are inventing women's community. It is wonderful, difficult, invigorating, draining, important work. We are asking for your input, your vision, your wisdom, your time, your experiences, your energy, your skills - yourself. Call one of the women below and talk. Come to a collective meeting or check out a committee project. Join us for a work day on the land. You are limited only by your imagination.

For more information call Sally at 216-932-0977 or Judy at 216-227-1243 or you can email at EggMoonFarm@hotmail.com

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Advent Prayer Service 2nd Sunday of Advent, 2003 East side Parish >More Information Coming Soon<

Letter to The Wanderer (August 22, 2002):

With rapt attention, I read about Brian Halderman and his vocation to the congregation of the Marianists. (The Wanderer, May 20, 2002). I am a friend of Brian’s, I am a charter member of Gay and Family Lesbian Ministry, Diocese of Cleveland, and a co-founder of the gay and lesbian faith-sharing community of Ascension, known throughout the diocese as a very affirming parish. I am also a volunteer for and patron of North Coast Men’s Chorus, identified as “Gay Men’s Chorus.”

Bizarre indeed that, on the one hand, The Wanderer decries some chorus members who attended a private party dressed as clergy or religious. On the other hand, it indulges, even lionizes, the likes of Bernard Law who, in a vain effort to maintain the illusion of sanctity that once veneered e institutional Church, colluded in the felonious sexual behavior of clergymen and, in so doing, became a felon himself. The Wanderer would do well to verify its deposits because its reality checks, though intentionally infrequent, invariably bounce.

Nonetheless, The Wanderer claims incisive knowledge of the Magisterium and of disposition and conduct requisite to identify oneself Catholic. Given this knowledge and the baptisimal responsibility for combatant status in the Church Militant, I urge carpe diem. In fact, otherwise indeed is the sin of omission.

Then again, notwithstanding its being self-proclaimed champion of the Vatican, The Wanderer has an undistinguished record in effecting the official censure, let alone removal, of prelates whom it deems transgressors. After all, Roger Mahoney, Mathew Clark, and Howard Hubbard are all still ministering to their respective sees.

Either The Wanderer is not as connected as it thinks or the Vatican authority itself has been infiltrated by the liberal agenda. In either case, The Wanderer is being dissed big time, and from the main office no less.

However, I am not one to bring glad tidings bereft of hope. Since attempts at bagging big game have failed, better to get practice on more accessible varmints or critters, like me. From Honolulu to New York City, I have a paper trail of contacts with hierarchy and subordinates that provides empirical evidence of my dissent from much of the magisterial preaching and policy.

Not the least of which is the origin of my same-sex orientation. It is a gift of divine beneficence, no less in value and integrity than the sexual orientation of my heterosexual brothers and sisters in Christ. God’s other gifts of Catholic faith, of my loving and successful 20-something daughter, and of my good health have distinctive and all the more profound meaning because of God’s gift of gay orientation. Therefore, I again admonish to seize the day by bringing my name and my record of dissent to the attention of Church authority, specifically to its inveterate power to excommunicate.

Among practicing Catholics, I am about as rank and file as the Church has, and to bag small game like me is doubtless a facile matter for The Wanderer. With trophies like me, and perhaps a few more my size, The Wanderer can more confidently set its on the ouster of dissident prelates and other big game. I hasten to remind that even Christ started out lowkey. Changing water into wine at Cana much preceded raising Lazarus from the dead. While well and good The Wanderer’s ambition, mismanaged, it becomes hubris.

Kenneth Dayson
Lakewood, Ohio

(Editor’s Note: Kenneth Dayson should read The Wanderer more often and carefully. “Indulges” and “lionizes” are not words that come to mind as regards The Wanderer’s treatment of Cardinal Law.

As for Dayson’s alleged paper trail, we would be delighted to have him provide it to us - including names, dates, places.

Dayson is right about The Wanderer’s lack of success in persuading the Holy Sea to remove certain prelates, but to paraphrase Fox News, “The Wanderer reports; the Pope decides.”)

A radio interview given by Kevin Dayson and Brian Halderman.

http://www.wcpn.org/spotlight/news/2002/0517faith-1.html

News Out Of Faith - Part 1: Catholic & Gay Aired May 17, 2002

Stories of clergy members sexually abusing parishioners have fueled a high profile scandal for the Catholic church, but they’ve also renewed an older controversy. Gay Catholics are protesting recent statements by members of the church hierarchy in regard to the presence of homosexuals in the clergy. 90.3 WCPN®’s David C. Barnett reports.

David C. Barnett–Illinois Bishop Wilton Gregory threw down the gauntlet last month. The President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops minced no words when American Catholic Church officials gathered in Rome. Wilton Gregory–There is a homosexual atmosphere in some of our seminaries which keeps some candidates away because they don’t want to be associated with that or they are afraid of being harrassed.

Ken Dayson–I was disappointed in the Bishop’s statement. It was totally inappropriate.

DCB–59-year-old Ken Dayson describes himself as a “Cradle Catholic” - raised in the faith all the way up through his college days at John Carroll University. He’s also a gay man who has spent years reconciling his sexual and religious lives.

KD–My sexual orientation is a gift of God just as much as it is for any heterosexual. The Church just doesn’t see it that way.

DCB–Gay and Lesbian Catholics find themselves up against centuries of church doctrine. Sexual intimacy is only sanctioned for the purpose of procreation. If a relationship isn’t going to yield children, the Catholic Catechism labels it as “objectively disordered”. But some argue that the Church has made efforts to soften that description.

Laurie Jurecki–The church is very clear that there’s a difference between orientation and activity.

DCB–As a pastoral associate at Ascension Church on Cleveland’s Westside, Laurie Jurecki helps conduct a ministry for gays and lesbians. She says the Church has made some strides in reaching out to homosexual parishioners.

LJ–I’s still not acceptable to everybody, but it’s a huge leap. We were able to say to people being gay isn’t a sin. It’s not “evil," “immoral" - all those words that have been attached to being homosexual.

DCB–In 1997, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a pastoral message aimed at further easing a long-standing alienation. Titled Always Our Children, the document offers advice for parents and priests . 25-year-old Brian Halderman likes what it says - as far as it goes.

Brian Halderman–It calls for parents to accept your children. We as a church should accept that. I want to be able to say that I’m a gay man and a Catholic and I have just as much a place here at the table as you do.

DCB–The church is a daily presence in the life of Brian Halderman - he works in the Education Dept. of the Cleveland Diocese. He says recent news stories only accentuate a disconnect he sometimes feels.

BH–It’s difficult. In coming to work here, one of the things I was never going to compromise was who I was. But, my experience here has been welcoming. This Diocese respects the dignity of a person.

DCB–Laurie Jurecki of Ascension Church is concerned that the church hierarchy is taking some steps backwards.

LJ–The most difficult thing at this point for those of us who work with gay and lesbian community is the very unfortunate statements made by some of our Cardinals which have, right from the get-go of this clergy abuse crisis, connected pedophilia with homosexuality. It’s a power issue. It’s like rape. It’s not about sex. It’s not about gender. Somehow this community becomes the scapegoat for another horrible issue.

DCB–Based on the comments of Bishop Gregory, Ken Dayson wonders if there will be other ramifications.

KD–Now they’re talking about there being more screening of young people entering the priesthood. They might even try to screen out gay candidates, but it’ll never work. Look at the dwindling number of men entering the clergy. They’re in dire straits for numbers. They can’t afford to start excluding gay people.

DCB–We made several unsuccessful attempts to get comments from local seminary officials, but national numbers indicate that seminary enrollment has dropped 80% in the last 50 years.

BH–I can tell you there are a number of gay priests in Cleveland. And it’s difficult for them. They’re feeling very put-upon right now. And they do such wonderful work.

DCB–Next month, Illinois Bishop Gregory, Cleveland Bishop Anthony Pilla, and church leaders from across the country will meet in Dallas to discuss new policies regarding such things as zero tolerance for sexual predators. Brian Halderman says the time is ripe for an overall dialog about sexuality in the church, though he doubts it will happen. Still, both he and Ken Dayson say that even the recent lurid headlines have left them unshaken in their devotion to a faith that rises above the current scandal.

KD–If I choose to leave, they’ve won. I won’t let them win. I’m sorry, they will never convince me that my sexuality is a “fundamental moral disorder”.

DCB–In Cleveland, David C. Barnett, 90.3 WCPN News

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