Well, it seems we are now unambiguously back to, My God, no! We can't bless same-sex couples. And, No, I didn't say yes. Even when you heard yes . . . .
And you know what? I don't really care. I can only ask all over again, And you want to build a bridge to THAT?! As I said yesterday when I asked that question about the bridge-building project,
Lay LGBTQ Catholics who are caught up in the "bridge-building" project are on board with a clerically defined church: that's clear to me. I'm not. If the price one has to pay to be Catholic and LGBTQ is to buy into that definition of the church, I can't pay it.
Those lay LGBTQ Catholics who are caught up in the "bridge-building" project and who are on board with a clerically defined, clericalist church will throw the rest of us LGBTQ (former, alienated, hurt) Catholics to the wolves in a New York nanosecond if we raise our voices or try to enter "their" conversation about these issues. Please do not doubt what I am telling you here, if you're an LGBTQ Catholic who has been harmed by the Catholic institution and expect those clericalist-thinking LGBTQ lay Catholics to sympathize with you, reach out to you, stand with you — build any bridge at all to the likes of you.
Their time and energy is spent talking exclusively among a very tiny circle of people who, like themselves, have strong institutional ties and entrée the rest of us have never had — because we don't live in the right places and know the right people. Much of their information network is, in fact, within the clerically defined Catholic church. Where they get perks and privileges and tips . . . .
And this is, of course, quite clearly why the "bridge-building" project remains and will always remain a pipe dream. The LGBTQ (former, alienated, hurt) Catholics whom it needs to reach do not live within that communications network and have no access to it. We're very far removed from it, and to the extent we were ever connected to it, it beat us up and threw us away. It certainly does not accord us the few pitiful little crumbs for which the clericalist-leaning lay Catholics working to build LGBTQ-Catholic bridges are willing to settle — for themselves.
For the rest of us — and our numbers are constantly increasing — I suspect the resounding answer to the question about whether we want to build bridges back to the church that has placed is in the outer darkness, the one that can freely bless dogs and cats and dirt and boats and electric appliances but my God, no! not a same-sex couple, will remain, You want to build a bridge to THAT?!
