Rainbow Sash Movement

Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Trangender (GLBT) Catholics are often not heard in the halls of Vatican bureaucracy. None the less, we understand that “without love, you are a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” Many of us feel alienated from the Church because of statements that run contrary to diversity that is our Church. We feel self identification in the Church is a call to integrity.

Why fear the Gay face of Christ? Why fear integrity, and embrace dishonesty? Questions that I believe need to be answered by the Pope. There is even a question as to whether he is hiding his own sexuality. The light of self identification is the pathway to truthfulness.

The Holy Father is coming to the United States not to visit, but on business. He comes to address the culture of change that is taken place in the Catholic world in the US. He sees as troubling various social issues that include Gay Marriage, Abortion, and Stem Cell Research. Absent on his Papal radar will be the Clergy Sexual Abuse scandal, and the troubling financial issues that are plaguing various Arch/diocese that are destroying the Church’s moral authority in the secular world.

The Vatican’s spin artist, the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Sambi, is busy trying to re-image the Pope, worrying association with Cardinal Ratzinger the Pope’s other persona, might remind people of days when Dogma was conceived of as an external shackle under his unrelenting rule of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. To put in plan terms, ether my way, or the highway.

It would appear that Joseph Ratzinger’s enduring agenda — rooted in Bavarian Catholicism and his experience of Nazism — has been modernized to fit his present reputation of a closed and narrow-minded individual. Perhaps the most difficult situation for the Holy Father will be his inability to engage people like Pope John XXIII. Isolated in his academic citadel, he prefers closed and controlled meetings.

One of those closed door meetings will be a meeting with all the Bishops of the United States, at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, on April 16, 2008. He will  attempt try broker unity between the progressive bishops, and the non progressive minority. Clearly two of the major issues that will most likely be discussed is the wafer wars with politicians, and how to reign in errant Catholic Universities.

There is no private meeting planed for the victims and families of clergy sexual abuse. The Pope does not want to bring to much attention to this issue on his US PR trip. This is a shameful example of how clericalism, and not pastorial outreach guides this Popes actions. Ego not love is the order of day.

I hope and pray the Pope respects the American political process, and that he will not try to influence our political landscape like he has done in Italy & Spain, and is presently trying to do in the UK. This is not a feudal political environment, he should behave as a guest, and not the long arm of the Vatican privilege.