Rainbow Sash Movement

The Rainbow Sash Movement is preparing itself spiritually for Pentecost Sunday, May 27, 2007. Our focus has become prayer, and daily mass. There are some in the Church who tell us to love it or leave it, others who say we should join other Church communities that are welcoming of GLBT People. Our response is to call these to open their eyes, ears, and have an open heart to understand we love the Church and are only calling its leadership to walk the talk of inclusion and not exclusion

We believe our presence at Cathedrals and parishes across the nation is a response to the call from the Holy Spirit. That presence will speak to our love, faith, and hope for this Church whose focus should be Jesus Christ, and what he did and said. Additionally our presence will test the pastoral abilities of clergy who operate under homophobic guidelines of Eucharistic exclusion.

On Pentecost Sunday we are calling our Bishops to humbly recognize “the signs of the times” and the “signs of the Lesbian and Gay Community at work with the Holy Spirit”. Our presence is an act of merging our faith and social action. There must be a union between evangelization, liberation, faith and life, and pastoral approach. .

The US Bishops Conference must implement the message of love expressed in “All our Children.” They must show the way to make real the sentence of Pope John XXIII “The Church belongs to all, but especially to the poor”. It is our hope that they can be reconciled with the Gospel message of Agape in their actions.

On Pentecost Sunday we are calling on the Bishops to acknowledge the diversity which exists within the Roman Catholic Church, and to encourage Catholic LGBT people to play a full role in the expression their faith.

Finally I call on the Bishops to stress the importance of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council which favors the Church as a community of the People of God. There should be no discrimination among neighbors in this community.

Joe Murray
US Convener
Rainbow Sash Movement

Posted by Joden at 08:55 AM | Permalink

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So many in our Faith have been hurt and alienated by judgmentalism. Gays join divorced Catholics, and Catholics who find nothing in this Church that is relevant. There are the victims of sexual abuse whose only hearing is imposed by courts outside the Church, because courts inside the Church will not listen.

We hear the slogan chanted about pro life and yet life is not at issue it is doctrinal purity. Women are offered up on the altar of dogmatic purity and are forced to have children against their will. Those who judge these women are clueless to the convention of rape. 

The victims of HIV/AIDS are the poor. Poverty knows no borders. Poverty does not care if your white or non white, male or female, gay or straight. The Catholic hierarchy turns a deaf ear to the suffering of so many dying of this disease. As a gay man who is Catholic I can attest to this.

 I will enter Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago on Pentecost Sunday because I believe women, the poor, and GLBT people are important. I will no longer be comfortable in the pew of my parish Immaculate Conception Parish. I will wear a Rainbow Sash because it says so much of whom I am, and who we are that I will not be shamed. Nor will I any longer play the shell game with the bishops. We must enter into a relationship of truthfulness and integrity. For to long this element has been missing from our church, even our priests have been infected by the don't ask don't tell mentality, they have become immune to poverty.

Comfort in the face of poverty is just as sinful as comfort in the face of homophobia, sexism and racism.

I call on Catholics and priests to bring meaning to their faith, and stand for something other than conveniance of worship.

Join us in Cathedrals and parishes on Pentecost Sunday, May 27, 2007 as we challenge the lack of love. 

God Bless

Joe Murray

Posted by Joden at 08:25 PM | Permalink

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