Some gay Catholics are criticizing Baltimore’s new archbishop for taking what they call “ignorant” and “absurd” stances on gay issues.Archbishop Edwin O’Brien, who was named last week to succeed the retiring Cardinal William Keeler, staunchly opposes gays becoming priests.
“I think anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity, or who has strong homosexual inclinations, would be best not to apply to a seminary and not to be accepted into a seminary,” he told the National Catholic Register in 2005.
O’Brien also has suggested that gays fail to provide “a strong role model of maleness,” and are therefore unfit to become priests.
“That shows a very ignorant understanding of homosexual orientation,” said Francis DiBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministries, a Maryland organization that advocates for the inclusion of gays in the Catholic Church.
“He would be a better archbishop in Baltimore if he would broaden his views concerning lesbian and gay people.”
Baltimore’s archdiocese, which serves 510,000 Catholics in the city and nine counties in central and western Maryland, is the nation’s oldest diocese.
Gay Catholics said O’Brien could significantly change the archdiocese, which welcomed gays during the 18 years Keeler led it.
In contrast to Keeler, whom DiBernardo said allowed gay Catholic groups to celebrate Mass on church grounds and kept an office for gay ministries, O’Brien has spoken negatively about gays.
“We don’t want our people to think, as our culture is now saying, there’s really no difference whether one is gay or straight, is homosexual or heterosexual,” he told NewsHour on PBS in 2005. “We think for our vocation that there is a difference, and our people expect to have a male priesthood that sets a strong role model of maleness.”
O’Brien, who leads the Archdiocese for the Military Services, coordinated the Vatican’s evaluation of U.S. seminaries in 2005 and 2006 after the church sexual abuse crisis.
That review included an investigation to “look for evidence of homosexuality,” leading many critics to accuse the church of an anti-gay witch hunt. O’Brien said at the time that even gays who have been celibate for 10 or more years should not be admitted to seminaries.
When he moves to the Baltimore archdiocese Oct. 1, O’Brien will gain control over St. Mary’s Seminary and Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, the nation’s first two training grounds for priests.
Rev. Michael Seneco, the gay presiding bishop of the North American Old Catholic Church, said he hopes O’Brien will not bar gay students from joining the school.
“I think that it’s absurd that any one fact of a person automatically should blankly disqualify them from any service to the people,” Seneco said. “It’s like saying people with red hair shouldn’t be chefs.”
Seneco, whose church broke from Roman Catholicism during the First Vatican Council and is comparatively more liberal, challenged O’Brien’s handling of gay issues.
He said the archbishop was wrong to say gay men are unfit to become priests.
“In order to be a priest, you have to love people, accept people and forgive people for who they are,” Seneco said. “None of those are skills that are reserved only for masculine, heterosexual men.”
Seneco, who lives with his partner in Washington, also opposed O’Brien describing same-sex attractions as “homosexual inclinations.”
“I’m not inclined to be gay, I was born gay,” Seneco said. “I’m inclined to have McDonald’s for lunch.”
Debbie Weill, former executive director of the gay Catholic group Dignity USA, has criticized the seminary review as a “witch hunt.”
“With the recent offensive against gay seminarians, and by extension all gay priests, Benedict XVI secures his spot among the many religious leaders of all denominations who continue to demonize LGBT people,” she wrote in a Washington Blade opinion piece last year.
O’Brien did not respond this week to a Blade interview request. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops also did not respond to a request for comment.
But in an interview with the Baltimore Sun last week, O’Brien said homosexuality is “not conducive to a healthy view and living out of celibacy” because “there’s secrecy involved.”
He also told the paper that the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy “seems to be working.”
DiBernardo said Catholic leaders are increasingly using the term “homosexual inclination” when speaking about gays.
“But that’s not a view that holds up well in view of current science or in view of how people experience their sexuality,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a view that Catholic leaders should continue to propagate.”
O’Brien also has drawn criticism for his role in helping to found Courage, a New York group that ministers to gays and instructs them to be celibate.
The group, founded by O’Brien and others in 1978, now has 110 chapters worldwide.
“I think that Courage, in the way it was originally conceived, could be a helpful ministry for people who want to remain celibate,” DiBernardo said. “There are some people who choose that as their lifestyle.”
But he said the group has moved away from its founding principles and now regards same-sex attractions as a “psychological defect” and “a problem to be overcome.”
The organization’s web site says it fosters fellowship among gay Catholics so that “no one will have to face the problems of homosexuality alone.”
DiBernardo and Seneco said Courage does not practice conversion therapy, or treatment that purports to make gays straight, but some chapters have recommended such therapy to its gay members.
“Courage doesn’t try to convert you,” Seneco said, “but it does try to relegate gay Catholics to second-class status.”
DiBernardo said such an approach is antithetical to church teachings.
“One is not in sin if one finds one’s self to be homosexual,” he said. “The Catholic Church still teaches that, although bishops like Archbishop O’Brien don’t seem to understand that very well.”
Potential for change?
DiBernardo said O’Brien, who was a military chaplain in Vietnam and led the U.S. military archdiocese for 10 years, might change his views after spending time in Baltimore.
“I think that having been involved in the military for so long has probably given him only one perspective on homosexuality that hasn’t been very positive,” he said.
“That’s why I think being in Baltimore, where there has been a lot of good ministry with gay and lesbian people, that there’s a possibility for him to open up his mind.”
DiBernardo said O’Brien might learn from the Baltimore parishes that have welcomed gays and talked openly with them about their lives and experiences.
“This is a real instance of the bishop stands a lot more to learn from the grassroots in Baltimore than the other way around,” he said.
“So if the Holy Spirit is showing any wisdom in this decision, it’s that the decision is to help educate Archbishop O’Brien.”
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