Catholicism and gays: Like oil and water?

Catholicism and gays: Like oil and water? @ Vital Voce

by MICHAEL GETTY

Food, water, shelter, companionship. Many of us need more — a connection to something peaceful and powerful, something that endures. Call it God, or Nature, or a Higher Power.

Many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people meet this need in places of tradition and fellowship that struggle to find their own paths in the long, anger-torn debate over GLBT equality in faith communities.

Few Christian traditions have faced this dispute as dramatically as the Roman Catholic Church, which is thought to be the spiritual home, in one way or another, of half the population of the metro St. Louis area. For today, cultural conservatives dominate the hierarchy of the Church, from the current Pope Benedict XVI to St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke. Officially, that hierarchy has declared that homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered” and that GLBT people who are not celibate are living in sin.

But just under the hierarchy’s radar, out GLBT Catholics and their allies, lay people and clergy alike, carve out havens of acceptance. And within those havens, a quiet revolution is building.

Connecting the dots: Rev. Frank Krebs

For generations, many St. Louisans have grown up in all-Catholic worlds. Frank Krebs was no exception. Now 59, he was raised in a devoutly Catholic family in Brentwood, went to Mass each Sunday at his neighborhood parish, attended a Jesuit-run high school and decided at an early age to join the priesthood, eventually being called as a pastor in the Soulard neighborhood in St. Louis.

“I thoroughly enjoyed being a priest,” he recalls. “We had a wonderful group of people who had so much talent and put together a vibrant worship community.”

After 18 years in the clergy, Krebs fell in love with a man he met at his gym. He knew it was a part of who he was. And he knew he couldn’t follow his heart while keeping his vows as a priest.

“I didn’t want to live as a gay man in a glass house,” Krebs says. He left the priesthood in 1990 and found work in the private sector.

“Raw and exposed”

“Jane” is a devout Catholic and a community outreach worker who spends a lot of her time tending the wounds of GLBT people who grew up within the Church.

“People are hurt so deeply by the rejection from the Church,” she says. “I know bright, successful, educated people who feel so raw and exposed that they won’t go inside a church alone.”

Jane found herself working with one woman in particular who had grown up in the Church but fallen away as she came to terms with her sexuality. The reason?

“She saw disapproval in every stray glance,” Jane says. “She went to church and felt as if people could figure out she was a lesbian.”

Jane helped the woman by stressing a message of self-acceptance she tries to give all GLBT Catholics.

“God created them as they are and loves them,” she says.

“Love feast”

Even as Frank Krebs left the priesthood, he never stopped going to Mass. Like many, he sees in the Church a radiant, unchanging core—the Eucharist, also called Communion.

“It’s a love feast,” Krebs says, adding, “We’re sharing the bread with each other the way Jesus shared his life with us.”

This ancient ritual of sharing bread and wine re-enacts the last supper Jesus of Nazareth shared with his followers.

“And Jesus always, always included the outcasts,” Krebs says.

“The people of God”

Committed GLBT Catholics generally have an understanding of the difference between the hierarchy of the Church and the people within its walls.

Sam Sinnett understands this perhaps better than many. For the past few years, he has been president of Dignity USA, a national organization that advocates for GLBT people in the Church and throughout the world.

“The hierarchy is not the Church,” Sinnett says. “The real Church is the people of God.”

On Sundays, Sinnett attends a Mass organized by the local chapter of Dignity USA. It takes place at an Episcopal church, with pro-equality priests performing the sacraments. Like Krebs, Sinnett sees the sharing of bread and wine as central to Catholicism.

“The Eucharist is the heart of the Catholic faith,” Sinnett says. “And no one owns that.”

“More structure”

A.J. Anglin came to Catholicism in a different way. Raised within the Unitarian Universalist tradition — an open, liberal faith known for being out front on GLBT equality — he converted to Catholicism at age 13, around the same time he was coming to terms with being gay.

“I needed more structure in my spiritual faith,” he says, describing a powerful draw to the definiteness of Catholic teachings and the order of the Church hierarchy.

Ten years later, Anglin is very out and active in his parish. He describes the clergy there as supportive and does not struggle with feelings of guilt or of not belonging because he is gay.

“The Church came to one belief,” he says. “And it is not a belief I share.”

About a year into a committed relationship, though, Anglin feels certain he will never be married in the church.

“Will God recognize my love and be there in my love?” he asks. “Absolutely. But we’ll never have a sacramental marriage.”

Colleen and Mary

Colleen Zink and her wife, Mary, grew up in strict Catholic families and became best friends as fifth-graders at a West County parochial school. Throughout the years, they stayed close to their faith and to each other, even as Zink’s family moved out of the area. After college, Zink returned to St. Louis, and the two became roommates.

But something was different. There was a tension, an attraction neither woman knew what to do with.

“What was happening to us was so frightening,” Mary says. “Catholics are taught from very young that there is a way the world is ordered, and it doesn’t include same-sex couples.”

After wrestling with the nature of their relationship for two years, they accepted the attraction and committed to each other. And for both of them, that meant a religious marriage.

“When you grow up Catholic,” Mary says, “you grow up thinking you’re supposed to be married. And if God created our love, we wanted to honor that.”

By this time, the couple had become members of St. Cronan’s parish in South City, which has a reputation for welcoming out GLBT worshippers. Everyone agreed, though, that holding the ceremony there might draw the wrong kind of attention from the archdiocese. After a wedding at the Metropolitan Community Church, a GLBT congregation in the Central West End, the two women stood before the congregation at St. Cronan’s, as a couple, and received the blessing of their parish.

The coming year will bring the next step — children. Zink and her wife know they can count on the support from St. Cronan’s, where children being raised by a handful of same-sex couples are educated and receive the sacraments alongside the children of traditional couples.

What God feels like

Some outsiders see Catholicism as empty ritualism and superstition. For committed Catholics, though, the Church is a conduit to powerful, very intimate experiences of God.

“I feel a warmth in my body,” Jane says. “I feel surrounded by love and feel love flowing through me.”

“God is personal,” Frank Krebs says, “not just some force. It’s like when you’re connecting with someone and you’re totally in the present moment.”

“It’s like someone who’s always there,” Colleen Zink says. “You know you don’t have to deal with anything alone.”

“You are loved and cherished for exactly who you are right now,” Mary says. “And that love is always present, even when you can’t feel it or aren’t looking for it.”

“On the day I was baptized,” Sam Sinnett says, “God wrote my name on his palm and thundered across the universe, ‘I love this man!’”

The road ahead

Despite a hardening of anti-GLBT rhetoric from the official church, Sam Sinnett reports a sharp jump in activity and membership in Dignity USA over the past few years. Jane has seen a profound new spark at gatherings of clergy and outreach workers in the GLBT equality movement.

For his part, Frank Krebs is taking a different path. After praying for years with a group of gay Catholics, Krebs learned of a movement known as the Ecumenical Catholic Communion, an independent denomination that follows much of the theology and sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church but allows its clergy to be married, for instance. Or female. Or openly gay.

A small but vibrant Ecumenical Catholic community has sprouted in St. Louis, and in February, Frank Krebs was chosen as pastor of Saints Clare and Frances, the region’s first parish.

For Krebs, it’s coming home to a tradition that is so much a part of who he is.

“There’s a lot of it I love,” he says. “And I can’t separate myself from it.”