"GLBT Pride/Twin Cities Presents the 2004 Community Pride Award to Church of St. Joan of Arc."

"GLBT Pride/Twin Cities Presents the 2004 Community Pride Award to Church of St. Joan of Arc." This distinctive award inscription honored St. Joan's for their committed support of their GLBT members. To show that support, over 150 members of the parish marched in this year's Ashley Rukes GLBT Pride Parade held June 27 and attended the "Dreaming Out Loud GLBT Prayer Service-A Celebration of Pride and Community” held in SJA's church on June 23rd.

In a time when right wing conservatives of many churches condemn the lifestyle of homosexuality, some excluding gays and lesbians from worship while perpetuating a message of hate, St. Joan's has been steadfast in welcoming their GLBT parishioners. A monthly potluck support group run by Ron Joki and Theresa Healy allows for an outreach of connectiveness. An annual GLBT spiritual retreat explores biblical readings, meditations, rituals, play and musical skits with guest performers and speakers that confront negativity, challenges exclusivity and affirms acceptance and healing. This very website includes a GLBT section devoted to updates of relative news, GLBT families, same-sex adoption and potluck meetings. And SJA continues their presence in marching in the Pride parade each year.

Ron Joki, SJA parade organizer For the prayer service, SJA Prayer Partners Healy and Pat Stevens hosted a beautiful evening filled with joyous music, readings, prayer wishes and the celebration of St. Joan's Community Pride Award. In Healy's introduction she expressed gratitude that she and her "partner Sue always have been welcome with open arms by St. Joan's community." Established folk singer and proud member of the GLBT community Ann Reed fittingly led the service with her composition "Every Long Journey." Representing other churches in attendance were St. Stevens, Catholic Sexual Minorities, Minnehaha United Methodist Church and Pax Christi. Pat Stevens delivered the opening prayer with "God of all life, teach us that the many ways we love one another are ways that we also love you." His first reading "Mystical Wedding" from Embracing the Beloved by Steven and Ondrea Levine followed. Healy read from the second reading taken from the book "Coming Out to God" by Chris Glaser: "When we cry, Christ cries. When we pray, Christ prays. When we act, Christ acts. Our tears, prayer and actions are God's. Jesus calls GLBT Christian Family supporters. Together we may manifest the body of Christ."

The next section of the service "Visions or Dreams Ritual" asked attendants to write down their own visions and dreams on paper and, if so desired, read them aloud. I wrote and read the following: "I dream of GLBT acceptance in all religions of faith. For we are born the way we are out of Christ's love, not of indifference and division." The dream requests were then gathered into a basket and placed on the altar.

Stevens recited a hymn of Thanksgiving: "Thanks for what we are. We are a rainbow. We are precious [in a world] where we celebrate, not tolerate." Reed followed with an a cappella version of "Over the Rainbow" while dancer Julie Kerr-Berry performed a lovingly supple interpretative dance and finishing it with whisking the basket of dreams away with her.

Stevens provided a blessing for all parade participants and Healy completed the evening with a closing prayer as Reed aptly sung her signature tune of courage, "Leap of Faith." For hospitality, Julie Madden(above right) offered a gathering of wine, apple juice, fruit and cheese.

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Ron Joki and Theresa Healy coordinated SJA's participation in the Pride Parade issuing hand-colored rainbow sashes to 70 SJA parishioners. After running out, about 80 more picked up balloons and whatever they could find and joined the proceedings including our Associate Pastor Jim Cassidy(right). Because SJA won the Community Pride Award, many combined their talents to build a festive red, yellow, green and white colored float.

To get to the massively congested meeting spot on 3rd Street and Nicollet down town Minneapolis by 10:30 AM, many took advantage of the free light rail service offered by Metro Transit. Joki lead a meaningful prayer just before we took off in the wet, cold 56-degree weather. As soggy rain conditions prevailed through out the march, our damp spirits were soon warmed by the more than 100, 000 people in attendance. Being #15 in almost 300 units in this parade, we were grateful to be near the beginning of the parade. Shouting "St. Joan of Arc. St. Joan's welcomes you" met cheering approval by the umbrella-donned crowd who seemed not only quite familiar with whom St. Joan's is but affirming and thankful as well.

The parade route began at Hennepin Avenue and Third Street at 11:00 AM and continued until Spruce and Hennepin where the floats dismantled. As rain showers cleared, the 32nd Annual Twin Cities Pride Festival followed in Loring Park with three stages of all-live entertainment, three food courts, a beer garden, a Children's & Family area and the GLBT History Pavilion. New this year was the festival's very first Mass Commitment Ceremony officiated by state Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, and state Rep. Karen Clark, DFL-Minneapolis on the Loring Stage where nearly 100 same-sex couples were married. Though the marriages have no legal standing, Ann DeGroot, executive director of OutFront Minnesota, a gay-rights advocacy group, said, "They're really a symbolic action of the commitment that two people are making to each other." She added that some same-sex couples enter into a relationship contract that can offer some legal protection if the couple splits or if one of the partner dies."

Those SJA participants marching were witnessing first hand not only the GLBT Twin Cities Pride Committee bestowing us with their community award but also love and acceptance from the GLBT community and their allies. It was a show of appreciation of our church, St. Joan's, who truly practices what they preach: We welcome you wherever you are on your journey.

Boat Cruise 6/16 ..... 350 Art Show 6/18 ..... 350 Picnic 6/20 ..... 450 Block Party 6/25 ..... 1,000 Festival Sat. 6/26 ..... 65,000 Festival Sun. 6/27 ..... 230,000 Parade Sun. 6/27 ..... 100,000 ______________________ Grand Total ..... 397,150

Michael Reinbold, a continuing web reporter, freelances as a writer and banquet caterer. A passionate believer in SJA's mission of social justice and collaborative ministry, Michael is an SJA Choir member, mass reader, Team Oz AIDS rider and Grace House volunteer cook. With an extensive background in theater, photography and fundraising, he relishes all aspects of the arts, staying fit and inspiring and working with people.

Rick Spaulding is a photographer specializing in digital photography for the theater and works for National Camera Exchange. He is also an antique dealer and eBay afficianado who enjoys collecting marbles but his true joys in life are his two boys and his beautiful wife, Tinia.

http://www.danschutte.com/home.htm

You know Dan Schutte: he's the composer whose music you hate to hear at Mass. And just think, every time you sing one of his copyrighted songs, published in the hymnals or monthly missalettes by Oregon Catholic Press (among others) in a half-dozen different languages, including Vietnamese, (e.g. "Glory & Praise," and Today's Missal), you are generating revenues for Dan's gay lifestyle.

There really oughta be a law against Catholic publishers publishing the songs and other writings of former priests living what most Catholics consider a scandalous lifestyle. (Dan, by the way, is also supported by the (Jesuit) University of San Francisco, where he is "composer in residence" and "director of music" for university ministries.

Schutte's most famous song, "Here I am, Lord" is the anthem for the gay rights movement within the Catholic Church, as the Los Angeles Tidings' Brenda Rees reported on February 9, 2001:

"'Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go Lord if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart.'

"The refrain of Dan Schutte's familiar opening refrain that filled St. Dominic Church in Eagle Rock Feb. 4 set the tone for the warm, almost-summer evening, where more than 400 people gathered to celebrate 15 years of the Ministry with Lesbian and Gay Catholics (MLGC).

"'Here I am, Lord' is, in ways, an unofficial motto for the ministry that has grown and found its place within not only the Los Angeles Archdiocese but also the cities and parishes where it has taken root. The MLGC encourages gay and lesbian Catholics to remain (or return to) their parishes to fully participate in the service and life of the church [sic].

"For all those involved in the MLGC - including supportive pastors, religious, lay members and leaders - the evening was indeed a celebration of endurance, strength and commitment. At the end of the Mass, the ministry's director, Carmelite Father Peter Liuzzi, thundered to the crowds, 'We have passed through the door. This is our jubilee year!'

"San Pedro Regional Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Sartoris presided at the Mass where more than 30 priests concelebrated....."

http://www.cruxnews.com/ftm/ftm-02july04.html

No more Mr. Nice Gay
There was reason to celebrate at Pride, but it’s time to step up our protests of the latest anti-gay attacks from Bush, Catholic bishops and Virginia lawmakers.
Friday, June 18, 2004

GAY MEN AND lesbians certainly have had much to celebrate at Pride festivals around the country this year.

Last June during Pride season, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the nation’s sodomy laws. Since then, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legalized same-sex marriage and the Episcopal Church ordained an openly gay bishop.

Despite all the good news of the past year, there were some noteworthy setbacks. President Bush declared his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would ban gay marriage across the country.

Some bishops in the Catholic Church began a campaign of denying communion to parishioners who support abortion rights and same-sex marriage. And, closer to home, the Virginia Assembly, in a shocking and cold turn, voted to ban even basic contractual relationships between gays that resemble marriage rights.

Now, as those of us who care about gay rights look to the year ahead, it is instructive to look back — to the civil rights movement — for direction and tactics in dealing with the many threats to gay equality now taking shape.

Fed up with the segregation of city buses in Montgomery, Ala., African-Americans there didn’t hold a black-tie dinner or throw an awards luncheon. They organized a boycott of the bus system that ultimately led to its desegregation.

When black college students in Greensboro, N.C., had enough of eating at segregated lunch counters, they didn’t politely excuse themselves to the back of the room and wait for equality to come. They staged sit-ins, and sparked a movement that led to the desegregation of grocery stores, shops, movie theaters and other businesses.

Nearly 50 years later, we are faced with the question of how to respond to the latest assault on gay rights. In the aftermath of Bush’s FMA endorsement, gay Republicans should not make excuses for their party leader and vote for him anyway. They should march out of the Republican National Convention and renounce the party until it is no longer beholden to the fundamentalist Christian right.

BY LEAVING THE D.C. Republican Committee (though not the party), gay D.C. Council member David Catania has bravely set the example other gay Republicans should follow.

D.C. GOP Chair Betsy Werronen refused to certify Catania as a delegate to the party’s convention following his criticism of Bush over the FMA issue.

Catania has appropriately renounced Bush, even after raising $80,000 for his campaign. Catania, along with members of the Log Cabin Republicans, have rightly described Bush’s FMA support as a watershed moment.

Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman recently declined to say whether he or other senior campaign officials are gay. But if Mehlman or others working to re-elect Bush are in fact gay, they should take a lesson from the activists of 50 years ago and stand up to those who would cast them as second-class citizens in the U.S. Constitution.

“Inclusion” may win, as LCR’s motto boasts, but right now gays are not included, nor are they welcome, in the GOP of Bush, Rove, Ashcroft and even Cheney, whose own daughter is gay. It’s time for gay Republicans to recognize reality and defect — at least until more tolerant and truly conservative leaders take over the party.

Gay Catholics face a similar quandary: keep attending mass while prominent U.S. bishops threaten to deny outspoken gays and their most vocal supporters the sacrament of communion, or stage a boycott of the church until things change.

There are plenty of inclusive, gay-friendly religious services out there. This newspaper’s “Spiritual Calendar” (on pp. 44-45) boasts two full pages of such listings each week. We should patronize those churches and synagogues that value equality, rather than continue to tolerate the abuses of the Catholic Church, which can scarcely afford a large-scale walkout of parishioners.

In cities around the country, attendance at Catholic churches is dwindling and parishes are being forced to close. It’s high time America’s Catholic bishops sat up and took notice of a long silent block of parishioners who help fill the pews — and the collection plates — each week.

A wave of boycotts and sit-ins in America’s Catholic churches protesting the politicizing of communion could not go unnoticed by the bishops. And given the large number of gay priests out there, protesters would certainly find many in the church sympathetic to their cause.

MEANWHILE, GAY RESIDENTS of Virginia are facing an onslaught of discrimination that must be answered with action. Lawmakers this year banned recognition of civil unions, as well as any “partnership contract or other arrangement between persons of the same sex purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage.”

Virginia is also the only state where private companies are not permitted to contract with their health insurance providers to cover the domestic partners — gay or straight — of their employees.

The mounting injustices in the backward state of Virginia are too much to ignore. Gay residents should organize, sell up and move out. Businesses should relocate to D.C. and Maryland and teach the bigots in the Virginia Assembly that there are consequences for their actions.

Gay employees of companies based in Virginia should organize and demand action from their corporate officers. The anti-gay climate in Virginia might begin to shift if Virginia-based companies begin to hemorrhage valued gay employees and neighborhoods see an exodus of responsible gay property owners.

Gays and leaders within the gay rights movement have much to celebrate this month. But it’s important to remember that there exists a powerful and vocal minority desperate to roll back our advances of recent months and years.

In responding to those attacks, it’s time for more direct action aimed at raising awareness and delivering consequences to lawmakers and others who work against our equality.

Look at the homily I found at good old St. Joans. For God's sake, pray. Pray for this man! The Devil has his claws in him, but its not too late. Pray!

"The Good Samaritan Revisited"
Fr. George Wertin
Sunday, July 11th, 2004

The famous parable of “The Good Samaritan” is deceptively profound. Its message seems so simple: do good like the Samaritan and don’t follow the hypocritical priest and Levite. (Priests always take it on the shins!) But the Bible is from another time and a culture very different from our own. Let’s do a little Scripture study together.

In the Hebrew Bible the Israelites were called to become like God – to imitate God. One way of doing that was to create a world of compassion, justice and love. That’s what the prophets – Isaiah, Amos, Micah, Jeremiah and the others – were all about: challenging the status quo and reforming society.

There was another way to imitate God: the call to holiness through the purity codes. These were outlined in great detail in the Book of Leviticus (cpts. 17-26). Purity codes became very important to a people who had been in exile. Following prescribed rituals and behavior gave the people a sense of identity and fidelity to God.

In Jesus’ day the dominant religious paradigm in Israel was based on the purity system: “Be holy as God is holy.” And holiness was based on separation from what is impure, unclean, defiled. There were multiple criteria and degrees of being pure or impure: birth status, gender, behavior, physical integrity, prosperity, paying tithes. Men were more pure than women. The righteous were pure and sinners were not. Contact with blood or dead persons was defiling. Paying the temple tax and observing the Sabbath were necessary for purity – and therefore, for holiness.

In our parable the priest and Levite are conscientiously following the purity code. They are not totally cruel and insensitive to the man beaten by robbers. But he might be dead – the Gospel says he is “half dead” – and to touch him could very well make them impure and, therefore, not acceptable to perform their temple functions. The Samaritan, on the other hand, is moved by compassion, breaks the taboo of touching a Jew – and helps the wounded man breaking down the barrier. As the parable concludes with the question, “Who was neighbor to the one who was injured by robbers?” the definition of neighbor is stretched. The one who is a non-Jew and, therefore, an enemy is recognized as a neighbor because of his compassion. Thus, the definition of neighbor is broadened and universalized.

Jesus undermines the purity system. He says, “Be compassionate as God is compassionate.” Unfortunately this is often translated as “Be perfect as God is perfect” or “Be merciful as God is merciful” which weakens its meaning. In other words, for Jesus compassion is the central quality of God that we must imitate.

Compassion is challenging and demanding. It demands that we identify with others in their suffering and pain as well as their joys and celebrations. That’s where Alice Walker’s remarkable book “The Color Purple” gets it right when Shug tells Celie, “When I bleed, God bleeds. And when anybody bleeds we all bleed.” Compassion unites and is inclusive. Purity divides and excludes.

In Hebrew the word for compassion is rich in meaning. It is derived from the word for “womb.” In other words, God’s concern for us is like a mother’s concern for the child of her womb. Compassion is more than just an intellectual understanding. It is to feel the feelings of another in a visceral way – from the heart. God is the one who gives birth to us. And so, again, we see the feminine face of God. If God’s love extends to all her children, then so must our love.

Jesus, as a radical reformer, attacked the purity system: “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. “ (Mark 7:15). What distinguishes Jesus and his followers is their acceptance of others. Jesus shares table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners (read ‘the impure’). Jesus associates with women in public and treats them as equals. He reaches out to poor people and the destitute as well. He breaks down the barrier between neighbor and enemy and calls all to be equals. He heals – and act of compassion – on the Sabbath – breaking the purity code of holiness.

Very little of this seemed important to me when I was ordained a priest 40 years ago. What was important was to follow the rules and have a strong personal relationship with God, to be a good conforming Catholic, fearing God and keeping free from sin. This was the purity code of the pre-Vatican II church. It was what I was taught in the seminary. Reaching out with the politics of compassion was something that I learned through disillusionment with the established system and through some wonderful mentors who helped me to follow Jesus rather than the church.

Today we live in a society with a secularized purity code system. It is based on ambition and affluence. It says that you respect people for their appearance and achievements. Yes, it says that some people are better and superior to others. It challenges people to be competitors, consumers and to put self-interest before the common good.

But Jesus has it otherwise. Yes, God is like a mother – passionate for her young. And we are called to be like the mothers mentioned in the reading earlier: the Black grandmothers in the ghetto, the mothers of the disappeared in Argentina, the women in the refugee camps who are moved to action. We are called to a politics of compassion. It is touching the pain of others that becomes the key to changing the world and being compassionate like God our mother.

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