Posted on 09/28/2024 7:00:09 PM PDT by ebb tide
Participants in the Synod on Synodality’s General Assembly are on retreat Monday and Tuesday to prepare spiritually for their deliberations, which formally begin October 2nd. Throughout the month-long assembly, the delegates will be guided by two spiritual assistants , one of whom recently made some LGBTQ-positive remarks.
Pope Francis has appointed Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, OP, and Mother Maria Ignazia Angelini, OSB, to be the Synod’s spiritual assistants. Radcliffe, the former head of Dominicans worldwide, has been welcoming of LGBTQ+ people for decades. Most recently, he wrote on these issues for the Vatican’s newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, and earlier this year, he addressed the LGBT+ Catholics Westminster group, the diocesan pastoral outreach for London, England.
L’Osservatore Romano published the Dominican theologian’s essay on September 19th under the title “Portatori del Vangelo gli uni per gli altri” (Carriers of the Gospel for One Another).
Radcliffe begins his essay by describing the impact a 1986 conference on the Church and AIDS the Dominicans in England hosted, explaining, “I was moved by the love, courage and resilience with which gay Catholics responded to this crisis and what wonderful gifts they bring to the Church.” This led him to begin celebrating Mass with lesbian and gay Catholics in London, which were not a “special liturgy,” but more so a necessary community “in which they are sure of a warm welcome.”
At times, there were protests by Catholics upset with this outreach, who claimed it rejected church teaching. Radcliffe denies that this is what the Masses were about, and then moves in the essay to examine how the institutional church thinks about homosexuality and whether this thinking is sufficient. He writes:
“I am convinced of the fundamental wisdom of the Church’s teaching, but I do not yet fully understand how this is to be lived by young gay Catholics who accept their sexuality and rightly long to express their affection.
“This cannot be just through the negation of desire. For St Thomas Aquinas our passions are the driving force of our return to God. Our desires are God-given. Desire need education, purification, and liberation from illusory fantasy. But in all desire there is a yearning for what is good and for God. The commandments are given not to deny our desires but to point them towards their true end. They are the gateway to freedom.”
Father Timothy Radcliffe, O.P.
Even while Radcliffe admits he does not have all the answers, he affirms the goodness he and others see in same-gender relationships. He quotes English Cardinal Basil Hume, who once wrote that, “Love between two persons, whether of the same sex or of a different sex, is to be treasured and respected.” Radcliffe continues:
“When two persons love they experience in a limited manner in this world what will be their unending delight when one with God in the next. To love another is in fact to reach out to God who shares his lovable-ness with the one we love. The challenge for gay people, as for everyone, is to learn how to express love appropriately, respecting each other’s dignity as children of God. . .
“My intuition is that most gay Catholics in mature committed relationships usually move beyond much interest in sex anyway. What they seek most of all are ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. There is no law against such things.’ (Galatians 5.22f).”
Radcliffe concludes his essay by setting these aforementioned reflections in the context of October’s Synod assembly, emphasizing both the need to listen better and to challenge misunderstandings:
“We shall better discover this desire is to be healed and made holy through conversation with mature gay Catholics who have experienced the journey into serenity and happiness. The synodal way is to talk with people, not just about them. ‘Realities are more important than ideas’ (Evangelii Gaudium 231) Church teaching is already developing as it become refreshed by lived experience. No longer are gay people seen just in terms of sexual acts, but as our brother and sisters who are, Pope Francis believes, to be blessed. . .
“The welcome of gay people is seen in some parts of the Church as evidence of Western decadence. But the Church must fight for the lives and dignity of gay people who are still liable to capital punishment in ten countries and criminal prosecution in seventy. They have the right to live. And Catholics from other continents, who struggle to understand our pastoral outreach of gay people, have gifts which the Church in the West needs, often a deep sense of Ubuntu, ‘I am because we are’, and of the divine life of all creation. They challenge the ‘culture of death’ which haunts the West. The Body of Christ needs all of our gifts. We are bearers of the gospel to each other.”
In May 2024, Radcliffe gave a lengthy, pre-recorded address at a conference celebrating the 25th anniversary of LGBT+ Catholics Westminster’s ministry in London, a community which he has known personally for many years and with which he recalls “happy memories.” In the address, the theologian gave some insights into last year’s Synod assembly:
“When the Synod opened in October, many of the participants shared Pope Francis’ eagerness to affirm that the Church really is for us all! It is where we should all be at ease. It was this message of hope and love which led to the foundation of those Masses in Soho twenty-five years ago.
“At the Synod, this message was repeated, but it was evident that many people were nervous of it. Some participants felt uneasy at even sitting next to Father James Martin SJ, who has been for many years a brave champion of the warm inclusion of gay people in the Church. One person even refused to sit next to him. Others of us too felt the chill as I did. During the Synod, Pope Francis again signalled his welcome by publicly inviting to lunch Sister Jeanine Gramick and Francis DeBernardo, founders of the New Ways Ministry. I had lunch with them the next day and they felt enormously affirmed.”
Still, when LGBTQ+ people were not mentioned in the assembly’s final report, Radcliffe says there was “a certain retreat from the openness we had hoped for.” Much of the opposition was from African and Eastern European prelates, coming from cultures still marked by strong anti-LGBTQ+ bias and discrimination. This reality presents, as Radcliffe frames it, a “double challenge” for the Synod which must express “a proper gospel openness to all with an openness to all cultures.” He asks then, “How are we to live both? This will be a major challenge for the next session of the Synod.”
Radcliffe writes that the synod is faced with the seeming juxtaposition of Western countries’ embrace of LGBTQ+ inclusion and the opposition by some African and East European cultures He offers a challenge to all delegates:
“[The] encounter of cultures is at the heart of many debates in the Synod, and above all the embrace of gay people. And we have to be aware that the encounter of cultures is never just innocent. Other cultures come to Africa, for example, with guns and money. Power dynamics are at work. African bishops shared with us how deeply they feel the humiliation of aid being tied to the acceptance of Western values. Multinationals corrupt and destroy local cultures. Foreign powers do so too. . .
“So working for a Church which truly has open doors is inseparable from addressing the ways in which countries in the Global South face unjust economic exploitation, ecological devastation and cultural destruction. No wonder we of the North are thought of as decadent. We all advance on the path to liberation together or not at all.”
The Dominican leader has an LGBTQ+ record dating to the 1990s. In 2016, Radcliffe said Catholics should focus less on what others were “doing in bed” and more on helping people find God along their own path, though he also objected to marriage equality. In 2014, conservative Catholics boycotted a conference at which he spoke because of the priest’s LGBTQ+ pastoral work. Radcliffe responded with these words about same-gender love: “Certainly it can be generous, vulnerable, tender, mutual and non-violent. So in many ways, I would think that it can be expressive of Christ’s self-gift.”
In 2013, he wrote an essay about “A New Way of Being Church” in view of Pope Francis’ leadership, suggesting the pope had opened up a new path on LGBTQ+ issues. In 2006, Radcliffe called on the church to “stand with” gay people by “letting our images be stretched,” which means, “watching ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ reading gay novels, living with our gay friends and listening with them as they listen to the Lord.” In 2005, Radcliffe defended gay priests after a Vatican instruction barring gay men from entering seminary was released, saying, “I have no doubt that God does call homosexuals to the priesthood, and they are among the most dedicated and impressive priests I have met.”
Radcliffe concluded his address to LGBT+ Catholics Westminster with a simple prayer in which all Catholics should join as the assembly begins: “that the Synod may open all of our hearts minds and challenge all of our prejudices.”
Sin-Nod Barf Alert
Hercules cleaned out King Augeus’ filthy Aegean Stables by diverting the Alpheus and Peneus rivers to flow through them and wash the accumulated fedes of 3,000 cattle away.
I believe there’s a river somewhere near the Vatican?
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