RITE AND REASON: Just how is it possible to be gay and Catholic? Michael Kelly outlines his experience of trying to be both
How can anyone be gay and Catholic? Those who ask this question - and many do - tend to focus on a few lines of current Church teaching. They often miss the ordinary lives of countless gay men and lesbian women who love and serve within the Church community.
Gay Catholics exist. We work as teachers, cleaners, nurses, scholars, truck-drivers, psychologists, doctors, musicians. We are uncles, cousins, sisters and brothers, nieces, godfathers, and even mums and dads
Without our contribution the Church as we know it would cease to exist; without us Catholic thought, ministry and worship would be deeply impoverished.
Those working within Church structures usually know, or at least suspect, that this is true. Gay people serve in every area of Church life, increasingly with the tacit support of their superiors and the tolerance of their communities.
As long as nothing is said too loudly the whole arrangement appears to work. Homosexuals can continue to be judged "objectively disordered" and "oriented towards intrinsic evil", and their love-making denounced as "grave depravity", while the Church benefits from their gifts, hard work and commitment - and depends on their invisibility and silence.
For 17 years I was a partner in this unspoken agreement. I spent some time with the Franciscans, completed a theology degree, a master's in spirituality and a Diploma in Education. I was a teacher, liturgist and lay chaplain in Catholic schools and universities on two continents, and since I offered youthful creativity and commitment I was a valued employee. Then, in 1993, I made a simple public statement: "I am gay", and my career was finished.
The Church does not employ "publicly self-avowed homosexuals" - especially not as teachers and chaplains. The fact that my College President and my colleagues already knew I was gay was irrelevant. I had broken the unspoken agreement, and if the official teaching about homosexuals were to be publicly maintained then I would have to go.
This sad scenario has been played out repeatedly in Church life - often accompanied by nervous breakdowns, ruined families and suicide. For myself, I knew what the cost would be, and I experienced coming out as a spiritual call to claim my dignity and challenge the Church to be the community of integrity, justice and liberation that Christ intended. All the same, the rejection hurt.
It also hurt the first time I was refused the Eucharist. For the past four years I have been spokesman for a group of Catholics who publicly call the Church to conversion of heart in its treatment of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and trans-gendered people. Occasionally we attend Mass together in our local Cathedral - St Patrick's, Melbourne - wearing a rainbow-coloured sash. This symbolises that we are gay Catholics who embrace and celebrate our sexuality as a sacred gift. We line up to receive Communion in the usual way - reverently and prayerfully - and we are all refused the Eucharist. Family members who wear the sash with us are also refused.
My 78-year-old mother has been refused three times. The justification given by bishops in both Australia and the United States has varied over the years and appears confused. What is clear is that the hierarchy cannot tolerate this expression of gay dignity at Christ's table. It is also clear that the bishops are afraid.
Catholic sexual teaching is like some rambling, cracking old building, and its foundations lie in a quagmire of ancient fear, misogyny, rejection of the body and denial of pleasure. The whole structure is so unsound that a threat to any part of it is perceived as a threat to the whole.
Therefore contraception must be repeatedly denounced, women kept away from the altar, remarried people excluded, and gay people silenced or sacked.
Our Church desperately needs a conversation that has never taken place. The whole People of God must engage in a searching discussion around the full spectrum of human sexual desire, expression and diversity.
Those who have been demonised and condemned must be particularly welcomed and listened to, for always amongst the marginalised the Spirit moves with unexpected grace.
I have seen this grace in the lives of gay and lesbian people - in our attempts to build lives and communities out of the ashes of condemnation, in our honest exploration of touch, intimacy and pleasure, in our unmasking of the sanctified status quo.
Grace, too, is inexorably revealing that all our wounds have been wounds to the very Body of Christ. Through those wounds, I dare to believe, healing may one day flow into our faltering, heart-breaking Church.
• Michael Kelly is an Australian writer and speaker who visited Dublin recently. He is the international spokesperson for the Rainbow Sash Movement. He may be contacted by e-mail at mbkell@ozemail.com.au