Julius' Office - Fr Bernárd Lynch

A Story – Al – AIDS Pandemic 1984

The city had not shaken off as yet some garb of grey when my telephone

rang. "Good Morning", I answered.

"Good Morning", the voice shyly responded at the other end of the line. "My name is Al, and I was told by Gay Men's Health Crisis that I could call you if I wished to talk to a priest about being gay and stuff ... It would help if you could meet with me as soon as possible".

Julius’, the most famous and oldest gay bar in New York, is located on West Tenth in Greenwich Village. I recognized Al by his High School sweatshirt, and after the usual 'How do you do?’ "I hope you don’t mind meeting me in a Gay bar", Al uttered. "No, not at all", I answered. This place has become my unofficial office since the beginning of the AIDS crisis. I live in the North West Bronx and it is too much of a haul to get people who ask to see me travel there. The staff here know me and couldn’t be more gracious about my work and using the space to chat in confidence. Let’s have a beer.  

I was taken aback by Al’s youthful appearance, and later on in conversation I was to discover that he was nineteen on his last birthday. He was tall, over six feet in height, with a slender, athletic build. My guess was that he was probably of Italian-lrish family background, with jet-black wavy hair, penetrating blue eyes and slightly sallow skin. He smiled easily and had that wonderful gift of incandescent warmth that makes one feel at ease right away.

There was one lesion (Kaposi Sarcoma) showing through his open-necked shirt which immediately confirmed what I already knew: that Al had AIDS. He was diagnosed two years ago, he told me, and at first went through the usual denial, bargaining, depression, that I have seen so many of my friends and associates go through in New York and London. "You don't sound like a priest to me", Al quipped after I said that part of the Godhead is possibly gay.

"Well,", I said, "if there is a God, it is us believers that are going to be most surprised at what He/She looks like; and on what grounds would you want me to assume that God is only heterosexual? After all, we hold that all people are made in God's image and likeness - gay and non-gay alike."

"Now you, like most gay people I know, had to reject the Church and society's definition of who God is in order to accept yourself as God made you to be. Through this painful metamorphosis comes the realization that the homosexual condition, like the heterosexual condition, is a gift of God, and if only we could accept that basic fact, so much pain would be obliterated. Everyone who cares to know, knows that people have as much freedom in choice of their sexual orientation as they do of the color of their eyes. There is no reputable psychiatrist or psychologist that would postulate otherwise.

"I know it must have been terrible for you when your parents asked you to leave after you came out to them as gay. I come across this all of the time. Metropolis’ like New York are for so many gay people their home away from home. In fact, only last week a young Irish chap who is in hospital with AIDS asked me to pick up his Mum at JFK and brief her with regard to his orientation and medical condition. "Per usual she quoted religion to me and gave me the much-too-familiar routine which she had been taught, to buttress her prejudices. But she is coming around. She loves her son, and that is a great plus to begin with. I encourage gay people to come out to their parents and families, for I do believe coming out of the closet at this particular time of Pandemic is quite possibly the greatest singular act of faith any human being could make - in himself, in others, in God. I would much prefer to be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not. The closet is such a lonely place.” ...

As his eyes filled with tears, Al said, "Yes, growing up gay is some trip, man. You know, as far back as I can remember I was always attracted to people of my own sex. At home, when I would be watching TV with my brothers, they would be raving about the beautiful chicks, whereas I was always turned on by the guys - but of course, couldn't admit it to myself, less still anyone else. In junior high and high school, I went out with some girls and tried to do it, but I felt really disgusted with myself. I remember there was this one girl on the swimming team with me, and she was always following me around. Everywhere I'd go she would suddenly appear out of nowhere. She was very pretty and not easy, if you know what I mean. Well, this one day before a meet, the other guys on the team started teasing me about when I was going to shift her and so on .... or was I a fairy or something other than a real man? I was sixteen at the time, and although I knew that the only one, I had the hots for was a guy named Bryan who was on the swim team with me, I decided to take Cathy out to prove how manly I really was!!! She ended up telling her friend that I was gay, and when word got to my friends, I didn't deny it. I couldn't deny it anymore.

"My parents eventually got the word of it and sent me to a shrink, which was a waste of my time and their money; but I played along until I finished high school. I told them then that my therapist wanted to see them to confirm what I had known from the beginning: that my sexual orientation could not be changed. They refused to see him, and instead called my uncle, a priest, in San Diego. He is a Monsignor - one of those prairie puritan types." I howled laughing at Al’s description of his uncle.

"Well, he wasn't much help. He told me homosexuality was an aberration, that if I could, 'meet the right girl’ that would 'set me straight'." We were both laughing at this point about "being set straight.” "How would your uncle like it", I said, "if someone tried to set him gay?". Al had left home shortly after his parents' request that he go for Aversion Therapy. One way or another he has been on the road since.

"Do you believe God is punishing me for who I am or what I did by giving me AIDS?” he asked. "Al, the idea of a just God waging germ warfare on the homosexual community (male homosexuals at that) together with millions of third world peoples, without including warmongers, drug dealers, wife beaters, slum landlords, etc. is absurd. This is not only distorting the faith; it is deserting it. That we all desire to be desired by one we desire is the one uncontested human proposition.” "What do you mean?" Al asked. “Well,", I answered, "did you ever stand in a gay bar cruising someone and not have your obvious interest in the guy returned?" "Yes, every gay person has experienced that", Al smiled.

"Well, I believe, in a certain manner of speaking, that everyone who bears the name, 'human', at some point in his or her life cruises God. In other words, all of us naturally and necessarily love to be loved, and if we had the possibility to be loved in life through death by a Supreme Being, we would ordinarily jump at it. Religious conversion - which is the experience by a person of the certainty that God loves him or her - is seen as the release, through knowing that the person I love loves me. The hunger for God's approval is built right into the human heart and cannot be gotten rid of.

"Precisely because the greater majority of gay people are so overwhelmed by main-line religion's rejection of them, their experience of God who is Love is destroyed. 'Hate the sin but love the sinner’. I am sure you have heard certain churchmen and women make statements about homosexuals? Well, in my ten years of working with the gay community, I have yet to meet someone who has experienced this statement as anything other than, 'hate the sin and hate the sinner."

"The facts, as you and so many gay and lesbian people have experienced them, are that in the Church there is little, if any, affirmation or acceptance of gay people. Yes, you can and will sometimes get an odd priest or religious who is genuinely pastorally concerned, but by and large the Church and religion are part of the problem rather than the solution to gay peoples' self-acceptance.

Sex is the mysterious and beautiful vehicle of procreation. It is, equally, the supreme, sublime expression of affection, love, and friendship – things, which are God-created, things which are good. And heterosexuals have no monopoly of affection and love. They are God's gifts to all. Any expression of our sexuality which exploits people, treats them cheaply, and excludes love and responsibility, is suspect. But any human tenderness, any warmth, any gentle kindling of mutual understanding, causes gladness in the Godhead."

"I believe there would be more freedom to be gay, not less, in a perfect world. A world as God intended would overflow with love. It is our sins and weaknesses which stifle natural warmth and spontaneity and love – and produce hatred, loneliness and lovelessness. But with envy, rivalry, and jealousy banished, every shade of friendship, tenderness warmth, comradeship, affection, companionship, sympathy, unity, and love would flourish. "Instead of issuing half-hearted and confusing reports, it is time the Church took its courage in both hands and asserted - loud and clear - that our varied sexuality is of God, and it is good. Homosexuality is not an aberration; it is not even second-best: it is part of the whole, part of the truth about human sexuality."

"You see, Al, faith in God's love can only come by contagion. Only carriers can truly give it to others. The love of God cannot, strictly speaking be taught to people - it must, if it is to be believed in, be first experienced as acceptance of all people as co-equals under God. The only way to give you, as a gay man, the experience yourself of being dignified and graced, is to treat you with dignity and be graceful to you.”

“No wonder you and so many gay and non-gay people ask, ’Is AIDS God's punishment?’ Coming out in Church, for the many gay and lesbian Christians, has, unfortunately, meant coming out of Church. Coming out of the closet – a process which the Church should be enabling and ennobling - is a process which must be experienced more often in the secular world rather than what passes for Christian community. If medical science does not know the answer to the AIDS pandemic, you can be sure theologians and priests don't either. AIDS is a virus, spread, in so far as we know, through the exchange of blood and semen. To venture to say more, either from God's point of view or our own, is to bask in the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

"I've gone on a bit and forgive me, but ..." but Al interrupted, "I get the message. I have always believed deep down God loved me as I am, but then everywhere I turned in the straight world I heard 'No'. So, naturally, when I was diagnosed with AIDS over a year ago now, all my Catholic guilt and fear started welling up and I began to believe that ‘they’ might be right. You remember back there when you said, ’We learn to love, not by being told to love, but by being loved.’, Well, I am going to need a lot of help in that. Do you think I can be part of the AIDS Ministry support group you run in St Francis?”  

"Sure", I replied as I finished my beer and zipped up my sweatshirt, indicating a move. The sun was peeping through the concrete jungle as Al and I said our farewell at the Sheridan Square subway station.

A kid passed by and shouted, "Faggots! Queers spreading AIDS!" Amidst tears of laughter, we broke our embrace, and as I boarded my train, I thought chuckling to myself, maybe Oscar Wilde was right in thinking that, "God, in creating us, somewhat overestimated his ability".

Al's condition was a roller coaster over the next couple of years. He participated in our AIDS ministry program and was privileged to officiate at his funeral service at St. Francis Xavier’s. His parents would not even accept his ashes. While on vacation in Ireland the year of his death I buried his ashes in my mother’s grave. He is with the Angels.  

See AIDS A Priest’s Testament for more information.