Martin - Building a bridge: how the Catholic Church and the LGBT community can enter into a relationship of respect, compassion, and sensitivity

A welcome and much-needed book that will help bishops, priests, pastoral associates, and all church leaders more compassionately minister to the LGBT community. It will also help LGBT Catholics feel more at home in what is, after all, their church.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Prefect of the Vaticans Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life

Sexuality, gender, and religiona volatile mix. With this book, Father Martin shows how the Rosary and the rainbow flag can peacefully meet each other. After this must-read you will understand why New Ways Ministry honored Father Martin with its Bridge Building Award.

Sister Jeannine Gramick, SL, cofounder of New Ways Ministry and longtime LGBT advocate

The Gospel demands that LGBT Catholics must be genuinely loved and treasured in the life of the church. They are not. In Building a Bridge, James Martin provides us with the language, perspective, and sense of urgency to undertake the arduous but monumentally Christlike task of replacing a culture of alienation with a culture of encounter and merciful inclusion.

Robert W. McElroy, Bishop of San Diego

If you think a call to build bridges is a letdown because you wanted some more confrontational form of resistance, dont be fooled: being a peacemaker in this field is delicate and costly, and Father Martin, who has been building such bridges for many years, packs more of a punch than appears at first reading. He, like Pope Francis, knows that it is by drawing dangerously close and entering into relationships that we learn mercy, equality of heart, and love of enemies. If, and only if, we can be Christian in those things, then the scandal at the heart of the relationship between LGBT believers and our churches is well on the way to being undone.

James Alison, author of Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Gay and Catholic

In too many parts of our church LGBT people have been made to feel unwelcome, excluded, and even shamed. Father Martins brave, prophetic, and inspiring book marks an essential step in inviting church leaders to minister with more compassion and in reminding LGBT Catholics that they are as much a part of our church as any other Catholic.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin, Archbishop of Newark

Dedicated to all the LGBT people and their families and friends who have shared their joys and hopes and their griefs and anxieties with me

For it was you who formed my inward parts;

you knit me together in my mothers womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

that I know very well.

PSALM 139:1314

I n the summer of 2016, a gunman stormed into a nightclub popular among the gay community in Orlando, Florida, and killed forty-nine people. It was, at that time, the largest mass shooting in U.S. history.

In response, millions in this country grieved and voiced their support for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community. But I was concerned by what I did not hear. Although many church leaders expressed both sorrow and horror, only a handful of the more than 250 Catholic bishops used the words gay or LGBT. Cardinal Blase Cupich, of Chicago; Bishop Robert Lynch, of St. Petersburg, Florida; Bishop David Zubik, of Pittsburgh; Bishop Robert McElroy, of San Diego; and Bishop John Stowe, of Lexington, Kentucky, all spoke out strongly in support of the LGBT community and against homophobia. Many, however, remained silent.

I found this revelatory. The fact that only a few Catholic bishops acknowledged the LGBT community or even used the word gay at such a time showed that the LGBT community is still invisible in many quarters of the church. Even in tragedy its members are invisible.

This event helped me to recognize something in a new way: the work of the Gospel cannot be accomplished if one part of the church is essentially separated from any other part. Between the two groups, the LGBT community and the institutional church, a chasm has formed, a separation for which a bridge needs to be built.

For many years, Ive ministered to and worked with LGBT people, most of them Catholics. My ministry has not been primarily through classes or seminars, but rather through more informal channels. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people as well as their parents and friends have come to me for advice, counsel, confession, and spiritual direction. After Masses, lectures, or retreats, they will ask advice on spiritual and religious matters, pose questions on church-related issues, or simply share their experiences.

During these times, Ive listened to their joys and hopes, their griefs and anxieties, sometimes accompanied by tears, sometimes by laughter. In the process, Ive become friends with many of them. Most priests, deacons, sisters, brothers, and lay pastoral workers in the church could probably say the same thing.

Ive also worked with and come to know many cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and other church officials and leaders. After thirty years as a Jesuit and twenty years working for a Catholic media ministry, Ive come to know members of the hierarchy through a variety of ways, from speaking events to dinner-table conversations. Ive become friends with many church leaders, and I rely on their wise counsel and pastoral support.

Over the years, then, Ive discovered a great divide. I lament that there isnt more understanding and conversation between LGBT Catholics and the institutional church. I would rather not refer to two sides, since everyone is part of the church. But many LGBT Catholics have told me that they have felt hurt by the institutional churchunwelcomed, excluded, and insulted. At the same time, many in the institutional church want to reach out to this community, but seem somewhat confused about how to do so. Yes, I know it seems that there are some who dont seem to want to reach out, but all the bishops I know are sincere in their desire for true pastoral outreach.

For the past three decades as a Jesuit, part of my ministry has been, informally, trying to build bridges between these groups. But after the shooting in Orlando, my desire to do so intensified.

So when New Ways Ministry, a group that ministers to and advocates for LGBT Catholics, asked just a few weeks after the Orlando tragedy if I would accept their Bridge Building Award and give a talk at the time of the award ceremony, I agreed. The name of the award, as it turned out, inspired me to sketch out an idea for a two-way bridge that might help bring together both the institutional church and the LGBT community.

The bulk of this book is that talk, which has been expanded into a longer essay. The essay urges the church to treat the LGBT community with respect, compassion, and sensitivity (a phrase from the Catechism of the Catholic Church) and the LGBT community to reciprocate, reflecting those virtues in its own relationship with the institutional church.

Let me say something important at the outset. I understand the difficulties that many LGBT people have faced in the church. They have shared stories with me about being insulted, slandered, excluded, rejected, and even fired. I dont want to minimize that pain. Still, I believe its important for the LGBT community, for everyone in fact, to treat others with respect, even when their own church at times feels like an enemy. That is part of being a Christian, hard as it is.

This does not mean that one cannot critique and challenge the church when it needs to be critiqued and challenged. But all of that can be done with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. In fact, respect, compassion, and sensitivity are undervalued gifts for dealing with conflict and disagreement in general, gifts that can be shared with the wider culture. These virtues can help not only Catholics and Christians, but all people of goodwill who seek unity.