UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage
William D. Lindsey
As anyone reading this blog for some time now may have realized, I tend to read the news with a pair of rabbinic spectacles on: I like to juxtapose news stories that make me think about this hand and that hand. On the one hand, it appears this way. But on the other hand, there’s this perspective.
Here are two one hand, other hand articles that catch my eye this morning:
At the New Ways Ministry blog Bondings 2.0, Francis DeBernardo reports that yet another teacher in a Catholic school has just been fired for choosing to marry his same-sex partner. This time, the story is taking place in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, where Michael Griffin was informed by Holy Ghost Catholic Prep School that he’d been fired after he obtained a license to marry Vincent Gianetto.
Another week, another Catholic school firing a gay teacher. Frank DeBernardo’s posting ends with a list of those fired by Catholic schools in the past two years, several of whom are new names for me.
People–gay people–are seeking to find ways to live in honest, committed, loving, stable relationships, and the Catholic church is doing all in its power to prevent that from happening. The implicit message the Catholic hierarchy keeps giving to those who are gay is that it would be preferable for us to lie about who we are, to remain hidden, to be ashamed of ourselves, to avoid forming honest, committed, loving, and stable relationships, because these make our identities known.
Better to engage in furtive, dangerous one-night stands than to live honestly, openly, in committed, publicly acknowledged relationships . . . .
And then there’s the other hand: for Minnesota Public Radio, Madeleine Baran reports on the list of priests with credible accusations against them for having abused minors that the archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis has just released under duress. The list shows that the archdiocese has for years kept secret at least seven names of priests it has credible reason to know to have abused minors. And though archdiocesan officials have said most priests on its list of credibly accused priests are dead, the current list of 34 priests includes only 11 who have died.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.