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VATICAN HOMOPHOBIA / PATRIARCHAL ABUSE–PART 2

Joe Mulvaney • 15 April 2021

The Lord be with you and bless you

Please do not fear when the holy men in the Vatican refuse to bless same-sex unions. God is not contained or controlled by any small group of patriarchs, witchdoctors, druids or priests. It is wrong when a small group of high priests denigrate LGBTQ+ persons on dubious grounds. Pray your blessing on all in the Vatican. Then, in the absence of a vote, walk calmly away from the patriarchs who refuse to bless or share power. Walk joyfully with the Risen Lord Jesus Christ in the 21st century. Creation, in all its wonder, variety and abundance is the Original Blessing. Our core faith is that we are all blessed daughters and sons of a loving Creator God whose Presence is everywhere. Jesus invites us to love and bless our neighbour as we esteem and love ourselves. There are many lay people, families, pastoral priests, and bishops bearing love, wisdom, new knowledge, and service. The patriarchs are invited to listen, discern, and journey with us on a new way of being church.

Sadly, warlike men in Syria, Yemen and Myanmar wreak havoc. Misguided males in the Taliban, Isis, Boko Haram and Al Shabaab bring death and destruction. Small, unbalanced groups of well-meaning holy men who claim entitlement to control can lead us down wrong roads. We have had far too much of Crusades, Inquisition, Homophobia and Abuse of women and children. Good people worldwide must find constructive and effective ways to halt, divert, enlighten, and convert patriarchal control groups. There is a better chance of wholesome outcomes when all women and men are involved in democratic mode to determine governance, vision, ethos, narrative and ministry in every country, religion and church.

God’s wonderful Creation is awesome, diverse, complex, and blessed with variations and unique individuals, species, families, and religions. It was an imperial arrogance to claim for too many years that there was no salvation outside the Roman Catholic Church and subjection to the Pope. It was wrong to persist with the tradition of anti-Semitism in our clerical teaching and liturgy by praying for the “perfidious Jews” many years after the horrors of the Holocaust. It was primitive and wrong that some Irish children were beaten in schools in the 1950’s for the “intrinsic disorder” of being lefthanded just because a majority are righthanded. The human family is majority heterosexual with a glorious rainbow minority of LGBTQ+ persons. God saw that it was good. All of God’s creatures have a place in the choir. All human beings can celebrate, love, marry, form family, and raise children. It is dangerous and wrong for the Vatican clerics to persist with their dogmas of “intrinsic disorder” decades after medical science and enlightened people in many countries have concluded that homosexuality is a non-pathological, minority variant within the broad spectrum of human sexuality.

On June 22nd, 1633, ten Cardinals of the Roman Inquisition convicted the scientist Galileo Galilei for asserting that the Earth is not the centre of the Universe and that it revolves around the Sun. This was contrary to Holy Scripture and clerical tradition. This was almost as “heretical” as the later development of doctrine in Vatican II that the loving union of marriage between two people is about far more than procreation. Under torture threat, Galileo was forced to deny the new findings in astronomy. He was condemned as a heretic and imprisoned until his death in 1642. 359 years later, in 1992, Pope John Paul II acknowledged that the cardinals had erred. The lethal combination of unleavened patriarchal groupthink allied with outdated biblical interpretation plus rejection of modern science leads surely to error with cruel consequences for innocent people. This shows that, despite the false programming that the Roman Church never changes, change can and does happen. 

Vatican II brought monumental change in liturgy, ecumenical dialogue, and teaching on religious freedom to name only three issues. There has been a complete turnaround on important moral issues to do with usury, slavery, and anti-Semitism. Teachings on Limbo, capital punishment and just war have evolved. The women do not have to be “churched” any longer post childbirth. Misogynistic and homophobic clerical doctrines must change too as a matter of extreme urgency.

Will we have to wait another 359 years for the Vatican clerics to repeal their outdated homophobia and patriarchal denial of equality and justice for women? People will not wait. It is understandable that millions of Catholics over the past many decades have walked and are walking away from elements of Vatican homophobia, misogyny, patriarchal monarchy, medieval narrative, warped teaching on women and sexuality as well as refusal to share power. The above issues and variants thereof are among the major concerns of Irish Catholics if the bishops arranging the forthcoming Irish Catholic Synod genuinely wish to listen, change, and reform.

Can we practising Catholics continue to collude in the persecution of the innocents as the homophobes today use the clerical weapon words of “intrinsic disorder” and “sin” to assault our LGBTQ+ sisters and brothers? Thank God that the majority of the Irish People of God in 2015 rejected the Vatican obscurantism and voted firmly for love, respect, inclusion, and marriage equality. It was indeed Good News that we gave our Christian blessing to LGBTQ+ persons.

Joe Mulvaney,
Dundrum, Co. Dublin

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A reflection by Soline Humbert for the Women’s Ordination Conference Retreat “Hidden Springs, Holy Radiance” 9 February 2025 [ see recording on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szP5h1kzEsU ] We have been gathering over the past three days in the presence of Brigid of Kildare, and I am sure she has brought gifts to each one, for my experience is that she is attentive to our needs and very generous with her help. At this stage I just want to share some of my own life journey with Brigid. I first encountered her in 1969 when I came from France to Ireland as a child on holidays to learn English. I went to a small Irish town called Tullow. As it happens it was in Tullow that on the first of February 1807 the order of nuns of St Brigid which had been dissolved at the Reformation, had been refounded by a far-sighted bishop. Symbolically an oak sapling had been brought from Kildare Town, from the church of the oak, to Tullow and planted in the grounds of the Brigidine convent where I took English classes. It was by then a majestic oak tree. It still stands to this day. Coincidentally and somewhat ironically, 1969 was also the year that Pope Paul the 6th removed St Brigid, along with 193 other saints, from the Universal Roman Calendar of saints. The reason being that there wasn’t enough evidence for her existence! That despite the fact she was the most mentioned Irish person in the writings of several centuries after her death... What was true was that her flame had been somehow extinguished, and her importance diminished in a deeply clericalised and patriarchal church as Ireland was at the time. She was in the shadow of St Patrick and very much the secondary patron Saint, reflecting the secondary position of women in general. But change was slowly happening. Having discovered in myself a vocation to the priesthood I eventually co- founded a group for women’s ordination and launched a petition to open all ministries to women in February 1993. At the very same time, which I consider providential, the flame of St Brigid was rekindled by the Brigidine sisters in Kildare Town. Women were stirring after a very long wintertime in the church and in society and becoming more fiery. Brigid with her torch was blazing a way for equality. It is then, and only then, that I came across the story of her ordination as a bishop and I remember my astonishment for I had never read anything like that before, or since, for that matter. Of course, while this fact was mentioned in many of the lives of Brigid going back to the first millennium it had been quietly left out of the pious descriptions of her life which were fed to the people. The way the story is recounted makes it clear that her ordination was considered to be very much the doing of the Holy Spirit. Objections about her gender were voiced but powerless to negate what God had done. It reminds me very much of the passage in the Acts of the Apostles when St Peter is amazed to discover that the Holy Spirit has descended on Cornelius, a gentile, and which leads him to conclude that “God has no favourites”. Brigid’s episcopal ordination at the hands of a bishop overcome by the Spirit is also a powerful affirmation that when it comes to ordination God has no favourite gender. Her ordination’s divine origin shows that Brigid was a bishop because God ordained it, and her. A very subversive truth our Church has yet to learn... As we campaigned for women’s ordination we made sure that this episode from Brigid’s life was brought into the open, again and again, despite clerical efforts to dismiss this dangerous historical memory as pure legend and keep it buried. Interestingly when the Anglican Church of Ireland, (Episcopalian) ordained their first woman bishop in 2013 it was to the diocese of Meath and Kildare! A very symbolic act. I have often gone to St Brigid’s Well in Kildare, a little oasis of peace, to spend some time with Brigid and re-source myself by the gently flowing water. After the First Women’s Ordination Worldwide Dublin international Conference in 2001 I went there again on the anniversary of my baptism and I hung my purple stole on a tree overlooking the well. I had worn that stole for many years as a sign of waiting. From now on I would wear stoles of other colours. And a few years ago, I found myself back in Tullow, as a guest speaker at the invitation of the Brigidine sisters for an international celebration. It was very moving to be able to speak of my calling to priesthood in the place where the order of St Brigid had been revived and where I had first come as a child half a century beforehand! That day I sensed very much the presence of Brigid the bishop and I was filled with joy and gratitude. In some ways we can say St Brigid has risen up and is leading the way for women to rise up. Although a woman in what was very much a man’s world and a man’s church, Brigid exudes a remarkable confidence in her being, in her words and in her actions. No doubt that confidence was rooted in a deeply contemplative life nurtured by prayer. “From the moment I first knew God, I have never let him out of my mind, and I never shall”. She embodies the authority which stems from being filled by the Spirit and a leadership at the service of peace, justice, hospitality to the strangers, charity to the poor and marginalised, reconciliation, healing and harmony with creation and care of the earth. The two Scripture readings we have just heard are very fitting for she was renowned for her practical care and generosity to those in need or suffering. Like Christ, she went around doing good. I must not be the only one who saw and heard in Episcopalian bishop Mariann Budde’s recent words the spirit of St Brigid as she used her God- given authority to plead for mercy for the people in vulnerable situations in the face of unbounded cruelty. Brigid is a bold, dynamic presence. She is said to be a woman of the threshold, of liminal places, and she is a sure guide for our times when we also are in transition on the threshold of a new church and a new world too. She calls to us to step boldly forward with our torches burning brightly, bringing the light and warmth of God’s Love to a world gone cold in the grip of darkness and despair. Her life reminds us that with “God nothing is impossible” and to expect miracles. I shall end on a light- hearted note: I went on pilgrimage to St Brigid’s Well and Solas Bhride in Kildare last Tuesday to prepare for this retreat. On the way back from the well and driving through the wide expanse of the Curragh where thousands of sheep graze freely I started seeing a multitude of rainbows. It reminded me of one of the many whimsical stories about Brigid: Caught in a rainstorm, she hangs her mantle on a sunbeam to dry. Dripping from its edges, colourful rainbows form in the water droplets, and her mantle is ‘bright’ with colour. Lady, from winter’s dark, Star of Imbolc, rise! Dance across our threshold: Scattering warm laughter Seeds of hospitality, Tolerance, forgiveness! Return again to the folk: You the Spring we yearn for! (Tom Hamill)
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