Do We Welcome the Sinner and the Stranger?

Friday, Jun. 05, 2020

I am a sinner.  So are you. So are we all.  Some days, my sins feel overwhelming, some days very tiresome.  I, thus, usually enter my parish with the intent to find guidance and forgiveness from a loving God in communion with others seeking something similar.

In conversation with some LGBTQ friends and supporters, they too go to Mass in the hope of finding the same direction and solace.  However, for gay Catholics, the experience is far too often one of being judged as the worst sinner in the room, based on the unjust presumption that the mere fact of being gay is sinful. Is it any wonder our LGBTQ brothers and sisters feel so unwelcome in our church?

Nothing in our Catechism condemns any individual for having a particular sexual orientation. Similarly, nothing excuses the kind of rush to judgement and condemnation that a gay person may encounter when he or she walks into a parish. 

Resisting that kind of hostility week after week, particularly in a place where perfect love is being preached, requires levels of faith and courage we might aspire to, but none of us should expect to need this fortitude in order to face our fellow parishioners on a regular basis.  It is also the kind of experience that contributes to higher rates of suicide among gay youth and discourages gay adults from continuing in their faith.

Fortunately, we are a church that firmly believes in the dignity and sanctity of every life, leaving us well positioned to better truly welcome our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. Gay or straight, all are born in the image of God and belong to God, and belong in the pews next to us.    

The reality, however, is that homophobia means that a gay Catholic, no matter how deeply religious and no matter how important their Catholic faith, rarely feels truly welcome in a Catholic church.  That reality harms the gay individual, whose basic human dignity is being denied.  It also harms our entire faith community. A Eucharistic community is one that joins together to receive the Body of Christ with a firm understanding that we all belong to each other through our shared Baptism. Absent our LGBTQ brothers and sisters (and all who are marginalized), our Communion is less.

Catholic teaching challenges each of us in multiple ways. We are pushed to focus on the needs of others, not just in our parishes, but globally. We are urged to be counter-cultural, foregoing a consumerist lifestyle and reaching out to the vilified.  Being Christ-like is not  easy. Loving your enemies? Turning the other cheek? Following all 10 of the Commandments?  We all struggle to live up to the standards of our faith.  

When we consider all of these challenges, recognizing a fellow human being as another person created by God shouldn’t be that difficult. Being authentically welcoming to someone who may have a different sexual orientation (or race or gender or background) than ourselves is actually one way to both experience and share the fullness of God’s love.  

Being gay is not a sin. Failing to welcome the stranger, on the other hand, is one of the things Jesus warned us would be considered in God’s final judgement of us.  If we spend our time falsely and needlessly labeling and judging others as inherently sinful, rather than in simple welcome, we just may be rendering ourselves the biggest sinners of all.