A different kind of family portrait
This Year’s Pride Month hits different.
Commentary and opinion from a family member
It’s not just the political atmosphere of our current administration:
Impossible to ignore, no matter the beads and bangles and beat that vie for our attention.
As I help my parish’s LGBTQ+ ministry prepare for our booth at the annual Pride festival Out!Raleigh, I realize Pope Francis won’t be with us.
That is…
The cutout of the beloved, recently deceased leader of the Catholic Church.
For more than a decade, our ministry brought the life-size portrait of Pope Francis to our booths:
At Out! Raleigh,
…As well as autumn’s Durham Pride.
It was a favorite. Young adults, in particular, flocked to the Pope to take selfies. Some were ironically cheeky. Some not.
All were family portraits.
Through the years, what attracted hundreds to that cutout wasn’t church dogma or a particular encyclical.
It was the presence of a pastor, a man whose personality radiated warmth, respect, and the embrace of a father – even grandfather – figure.
Now, Pope Francis has joined my father and grandfathers in the great beyond.
So it’s time to welcome Pope Leo.
I pray our relationship will be as ultimately affirming as our time with his predecessor.
Decades ago, a Catholic cardinal named Avery Dulles wrote a book called Models of the Church.
I read the book in the mid-aughts when I was co-facilitating a faith formation group for LGBTQ+ Catholics.
Although its theological language was challenging, the book helped me see how believers can better understand conflicts within the Church by understanding the different ways people envision it.
It’s safe to say most people – Catholic or not – experience and think of the Church as institution. A source of power, a state whose monarchical and hierarchical roots remain on display, the repository of generations of thought and culture, whose political and social abuses are as known as its teachings.
Representing a Catholic ministry at Out!Raleigh is always challenging yet rewarding.
It’s a chance to reach out and embrace our sprawling family – all wanting love, despite whatever dysfunction gets in the way.
Sometimes, the Church is the source of the dysfunction. As an institution of human beings, it has made its share of mistakes, some of which spurred formal apologies from Pope Francis.
I understood last year when Francis apologized for his use of an Italian anti-gay slur when he was discussing clerical culture.
There was a time when I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear something similar from my father or grandfathers.
Apologies… and Growth
Apologies go both ways.
Four years ago, when the Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released a statement rejecting the possibility of blessing same-sex couples, it upset me to the degree that, while speaking with a newspaper reporter, I made a comment I did not mean.
When the comment was published, I realized my lapse in judgment and apologized to my pastor.
Interestingly, that 2021 CDF statement wasn’t the last word on blessings.
Within two years, the now-renamed Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released the declaration Fiducia supplicans.
It allowed priests to bless couples who are not sacramentally married.
The document made it clear that such blessings – brief and spontaneous – are not equivalent to the sacrament of marriage. But for individuals accustomed to hearing little positive about our lives from the institution, it was a huge step forward.
A different model of the church, one not referenced In Cardinal Dulles’ book, tickled me years ago when a friar at our parish described it in a homily.
He talked about the church as a family:
- Complicated…
- Sometimes messy…
- And full of love.
And in doing so, he referenced Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family.”
I could not believe it.
I mean, the song was then a decade and a half old.
But, still: His model was dead-on.
I think about my family and how, on both my mother’s side and father’s side, I can see my LGBTQ+ community.
Some preceded me; some are my generation; and some inspire me as the generation coming up.
The Church is the same.
There were LGBTQ saints, apostles, and yes, likely, popes.
There are young people desperately seeking a community of faith that accepts them for who, and whose, they are.
And in between, there are those of us ministering to our Church, our community, and our world.
We live in Pride.
And we hope we’ll find, in Pope Leo, someone willing to minister beside us.
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I just checked. There are already at least a dozen different Pope Leo cardboard cutouts available online. The booth can be happily busy again this year!
And in the words of the recently departed Sly Stone, “There is a blue one who can’t accept the green one for living with a fat one trying to be a skinny one. Different strokes for different folks and so on and so on and scooby-dooby-dooby.”
“We got to live together.”
Indeed.
Wise, inspiring and level headed words as ever. Much needed in these times. Thanks Chuck.
Thank you for this, Chuck. Very insightful and inspiring to me. I loved every word of it.
Just got back from my denomination’s annual conference. It was wonderful to be part of a fully affirming group dedicated to healing wounds caused by past intolerance. I think Pope Leo will keep the Catholic Church going in the right direction.
I never until now that you were the one bringing that cutout to the Raleigh and Durham pride events. The more you know. Anyway, thanks again for a superb piece, Chuck!