Bob Shine yesterday at New Ways Ministry's Bondings 2.0 blog, commenting on Detroit archbishop Allen Vigneron's recent "welcoming" conference for LGBT Catholics, at which he compared destroying committed gay relationships with Moses leading the chosen people out of Egypt:
Detroit experienced three violent crimes against trans* people in recent weeks, including two murders. These are tied to an uptick in LGBT hate crimes in the United States, a situation that requires the church to stand in solidarity with those suffering.
Instead of reacting to this terrible trend, Archbishop Vigneron welcomed some of the world’s leading anti-gay Catholic voices to his archdiocese and personally affirmed their views. When will he and other church leaders host a conference on anti-LGBT hate crimes?
By contrast, here's Dan Stockman reporting at Global Sisters Report on an open-mike session at the meeting of the Leadership Conference of Religious Women this past week:
It happened during what was supposed to be an open discussion of the morning's keynote address by Divine Word Fr. Stephen Bevans. The plan: Tables drawn randomly would send a representative to the mic to share what their table had talked about while processing Bevans' presentation.
But one sister approached the microphone, saying that her table hadn't been called but they wanted their voices heard anyway.
"We think it's time we stood for the gay and lesbian community. These people are suffering profoundly," she told the group. "They are coming to our churches, our programs — when are we going to stand for them?"
It's as if there are two distinctly different churches in American Catholicism today, isn't it? And somewhere Jesus . . . ?
(The asterix is in Bob Shine's text, but I don't seem to find anything to which it points — though I may well be missing something.)
