Sister Zhannin Gramik marches with people in Prague pride in faith and inclusion, holding with a banner with the inscription “LGBTK Vhange” (“LGBTK believers”).
(New methods of ministries)
Sitting on the border of Maryland and Washington, the district of Colombia, on a suburban street shaded by lush green trees, there is a small two -story ministry. As a physical and digital sanctuary, the new ways that the ministry works to teach Catholics all the identity for the propaganda of LGBTK+. From religious leaders seeking to expand their knowledge about LGBT+ people to LGBT+ people who seek safety in their faith, this ministry is one of the unpromected religious groups seeking to train, protect and equip leaders for the construction of bridges between the church and civil society. Quir -Catholics and their allies change the church from the inside, restoring the values that, as Francis Debernardo from the new ways of ministry says, “at the heart of the Epistle of the Gospel.”
Religion for many years was armed against LGBT+ people in the United States, which continues today with numbers such as JD Vance. Vice -President used theological concepts as The order of loveOr the idea of “rightly ordered love” to justify the policy of antimigrants, claiming that Americans owe moral duties to their families to “outsiders”. This thinking led to criticism from Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV, which insisted that Christian love should be universal and should be applied to all people, especially with marginal communities.
But what does this mean when the strange Catholics and their allies within the church begin to use the same institution to repulse, leaving it, but changing it from the inside? At a time when our policy is openly hostile to LGBT+rights, religious communities offer something quietly radical: offering a vision of religion not as judgments, but as a sanctuary.
New ways of service have existed since 1977, when it was founded by Sister Jeannin Gramik and father Robert Nugen, nuns and priest who learned to protect LGBT+ people in the Catholic Church through conversation and society. Based on the Mount Rainir, Maryland, where he primarily performs his advocacy work, the new methods were one of the earliest groups trying to expand the ways in which Catholics solve problems with LGBTK+. His mission is to train church leaders, and protect LGBT+ persons through non -kastoral work.
Despite the fact that in the state, based in Maryland, with the second largest Catholic population per capita, new methods of the ministry sponsor regular meetings with priests and ministers who serve in parishes outside the region, including Boston, Chicago, Denver, Tennessee and Florida. This work consists of educational, spiritual and pastoral programs, from communication sessions to the retreat. Thanks to this mission, these regions were able to see progress, parishes, Catholic schools and other institutions become more friendly for LGBT+ people. Conversation and expansion are success.
In January 2024, the Ministry of new ways gathered a group of more than a dozen US bishops for a private meeting at St. Louis University. The participants listened to the trans -people and their families, theologians, medical workers and those who are in the church ministry. “We all encountered pastoral situations related to transgender persons, and for the most part felt inappropriately prepared for them,” said one of the participants, Bishop John Stou from Lexington, Kentukka National Catholic reporterThe field “And if we all stop and hear the struggle through which people survived, we would understand that this is not just the problem of the theory of gender theory; This is the life experience of the people. ”
Current number
Francis Debernardo was an executive director at the Ministry of New Methods of the Ministry, starting to work as a volunteer in 1992. His work includes promoting programs for teaching communities on LGBT+ and Catholicism in religions and non -religious spaces. “I always knew about the Catholic groups of social justice,” Dobernardo said. “I grew up in a very progressive Catholic environment, so I always knew about new ways of service,” he said. Catholicism was not always predominated by conservative political demography. Debernardo reached the age of majority in the diocese of Brooklyn in the early 1970s, where there were many progressive ideas in the Catholic Church in the Catholic Church. “Only in the early 1990s, I began to realize how much the Catholic Church affects the damage to the LGBT -loves.”
Conflicts in the Catholic Church around the rights of LGBTK+ stem not only from theological debate, but also from the growing gap between the institutional hierarchy and the life experience of Catholics. “Leadership in the Catholic Church and Catholic bishops in the United States, since, at least the mid-90s had a very conservative bend for them,” Debernardo said. So, we are trying to do it, so in our work, we try to be trusting in a Catholic voice to support initiatives in the pro-LGBTQ. ”
As the people of LGBTK+ came out in larger numbers during the 1980s and 90s, Catholic communities, such as new methods of service, increasingly recognized their common humanity, quitting stereotypes and changing perception. The era was a time when lighting in the media around AIDS and HIV offered the negative and slanderous images of gays in society and led to an increase in homophobic rhetoric associated with the AIDS crisis. The lack of scientific understanding of AIDS caused an increase in hatred of the LGBTK+community. Despite the hostile public climate, personal relations and mass ministries have become more important than when, in the efforts to change the heart in Catholic communities.
The new methods of ministry were very involved in the debates about the equality of early marriage, publishing a booklet called Equality of marriage: a positive Catholic approach This explained why Catholic thinking caused them to support same -sex marriages. This booklet was distributed among legislators and Catholics throughout the country. The booklet also claimed that the Catholic tradition gives to the laity and theologians, many of whom support the same -sex marriages equal to power as bishops to speak on this issue. “Catholic people living in the real world of meeting with gay and lesbein, and awareness of their struggle … They ignored what the bishops said,” recalls Debernardo. This shift was not a separation from Catholic values; It was their expression.
The booklet is aimed at the key state of the battle, Maryland, where Catholic identity was politically influential. At that time, the new ways in which the ministry invited data on surveys showing that 49 percent of Maryland Catholics supported the equality of marriage, compared with 47 percent of all voters. The framing of the booklet helped to entertain the Maryland campaign around SB 116 (the Law on Freedom of Religious Freedom and Civil Marriages). Catholic lawmakers, including lesbians -Catholic delegate, which is legal, and the Catholic governor promised to sign it in case of adoption.
In 2021, the ministry released House for all: Catholic call for non -discrimination of LGBTKAn application approved by more than 250 outstanding Catholic theologians, clergy, scientists and writers. It states that Catholic social education calls for the support of laws on civil non-discrimination that protect LGBT people in areas such as housing and employment, creating equality as a moral and reliable necessity.
Today, when Anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric pops up on politics and in religious life, many Catholics continue to rely on the same values in order to advocate for inclusion in the church. Groups such as Dignityusa, which supports LGBTQ+ Catholics since the early 1970s, and the information and propaganda initiative, founded by the father of James Martin, work to develop a dialogue, create a community and promote the vision of the church, where people of LGBTK+ are completely welcome.
However, since this tension between the church and civil society remains unresolved, it fuel a movement that encourages the church to something more inclusive. New ways by which the ministry “described [them]Polui as the Ministry of Building of Bridges, as well as the ministry of justice and reconciliation and as a ministry of education, said Debernardo. “The way we are trying to resist the discriminatory traditions and positions in the church is the training of Catholics, Catholic leaders and Catholic people in the bench about why Catholic learning supports what we will call, possibly liberal or leaders.
Popular
“Specify to the left to view more authors”Little →
Instead of being an exception instrument, religion in these cases becomes the power of protecting the rights and proposals of the sanctuary for these groups. It is important to support religious communities and institutions that lead this work from the inside. “Religion helps people realize their responsibility to other people on this planet,” said Debernardo. The purpose of faith is not to impose a doctrine, but to promote a bunch and unite people around common values, such as compassion, justice and, above all, love.
“We heard LGBT+from people who are angry, scared and disappointed,” said Francis Debernardo. “While the policy of LGBT -+ the Trump administration was odious, we do not find our work in new ways, which the ministry has changed a lot on them.” Debernardo says that faith can be an ally of a strange liberation: “Not despite Catholic, but from a Catholic.”
More from Nation
The recent remarks of Cardinal Dolan about Fox News played the most reactionary elements of the Catholic Church.
In a small speech, the judge of the Supreme Court explained how he thinks that the court should turn back the decisions of the conservatives.
His family says that he went to college happy and healthy. Soon after, he was found hanging from a tree in a campus. Nevertheless, local officials refuse calls for further investigation.
This is a long-standing tradition, to the Vying of all kinds of social diseases for women without any reason.
In the light of new data showing that more than 400 people were held accountable for crimes related to pregnancy, we should be afraid of how Trump's directives can be used against women.
