As the organ backed a spirited choir, a gay man carried the Eucharist down the aisle of a troubled church to the altar — an altar at which he can no longer serve. It was a sign of reconciliation between a celibate but openly gay man, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Peterborough, which he had earlier taken to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal over allegations that his rights were trampled by a bishop and 12 parishioners whose actions, he said, led to his removal from his voluntary role as an altar server at St. Michael’s Parish of Cobourg.
Moments earlier during Sunday’s Mass, James Corcoran, the 51-year old former altar server, sat among those same 12 elderly men and women as they listened to the Bishop of Peterborough preach of the virtues of tolerance.
“Nobody has the right to humiliate or slander their brother and sister,” Bishop Nicola De Angelis told the parishioners, some of whom are still calling for the transfer of their priest, Father Allan Hood, to another church over the whole Corcoran affair.
It was a homily that seemed to address the “hateful and discriminatory will” and “distaste towards homosexuality” that, Corcoran alleged in his complaint, was rampant among the 12 men and women who objected to his presence at the altar.
“We are all equal in our dignity, but different in our roles,” decreed the Bishop.
“Great in society is the one who is capable to respect the dignity of each person regardless of our differences in language. Regardless of the colour of our skin . . . regardless of our sex or sexual orientation.”
“You can turn the other cheek . . . this is the teaching of the church,” De Angelis told the attentive congregation.
The bishop’s homily came a week after he announced that he and Corcoran had resolved the human rights dispute at a meeting at the bishop’s Peterborough office. Corcoran has subsequently withdrawn his complaint to the tribunal.
Neither party will speak publicly about what led to the reconciliation.
Corcoran, who owns a high-end spa near this small town of 18,500 people, launched his complaint in June 2009, two months after he and his same-sex partner of 20 years were removed from their positions as altar servers at the church.
Corcoran and his partner are not married.
Corcoran’s complaint indicated that he became an altar server in December 2008 at the request of Hood, St. Michael’s resident pastor.
“I enthusiastically agreed to serve as I had been feeling a recent renewal of a strong, life long calling to a vocation in the Catholic Church,” Corcoran wrote in his complaint.
But in a subsequent meeting four months later with Hood, the priest “was clearly agitated and under duress,” Corcoran said in his complaint.
“He told me that a group of 12 parishioners had been conducting a letter-writing campaign to the Bishop objecting to many of the changes Father Hood had implemented since taking over St. Michael’s parish in the summer of 2008.
“In their most recent letter to the Bishop this group had threatened to go public with their complaints if the Bishop did not remove the two gay servers from the altar,” the complaint noted, adding: “In their letters the group has tried to establish that I am married to my same-sex partner, that I am an active homosexual leading an openly homosexual lifestyle and they implied that I may be in a relationship with Father Hood.”
“Based on the group’s letter, the Bishop told Father Hood to inform me that I was no longer to serve on the altar.”
Corcoran, who continued to attend Mass every week after being removed from his altar role, said he feared he and his mother were being seen “as outcasts who have been chastised by the bishop, for no reason other than the way that I was born and live my life.”
In their response to the complaint, the 12 parishioners said they became aware that Hood had knowingly appointed “two homosexual men” as altar servers in April 2009.
“(We) understood that the Catholic Church had a policy that only Catholics in good standing, living in accordance with canonical law, were permitted to participate in the liturgy,” the 12 parishioners wrote to the tribunal.
The 12 denied ever insinuating that Corcoran may have been in a relationship with Hood and rejected the allegations that they threatened the bishop with a public scandal.
They also said they did not call for the removal of the men as altar servers, but merely raised their concerns in a letter to the bishop.
In that letter, the 12 parishioners described “a groundswell of discontent” and “a state of disillusionment and parishioner unrest” within their parish.
“Our fear is that this information that is floating around will find its way to the media and the last thing St. Michael’s parishioners need is another scandal in our paper,” the parishioners wrote.
The 12 also indicated the church was sending a conflicting message to its flock, who had previously been urged to lobby the government against legalizing same sex marriages — only to suddenly learn that a same sex couple was serving on their altar.
Officially, the Catholic church accepts homosexuals and says they should be treated with respect and compassion — but also calls homosexual sex an act of grave depravity.
Corcoran had asked that each of the 12 parishioners named in his complaint make a $20,000 contribution to a charity of his choice “as a deterrent to each of them from slandering the reputation and trampling on the human rights of others.”
He also asked that the Bishop publicly restore his role as a server at St. Michael’s and preach a special homily at the church on the “consequences of practicing discrimination and the slanderous spreading of rumours, hate and innuendo.”
Though Corcoran will not be restored to the altar, the bishop’s homily touched on many of the points requested by Corcoran.
News of the settlement between Corcoran and the bishop came as a relief to Margaret Leighton, counsel to the chair of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.
“I’m very happy,” said Leighton. “If the parties can reach their own resolution then that’s great.”
Had the complaint remained in the tribunal’s hands, the question would have arisen, does the tribunal have any jurisdiction over the church.
There is no martyr to this story, except perhaps, for Hood, whose presiding over St. Michael’s is still resented by members of the parish — and who continue to ask De Angelis to have the priest removed from their church.
None of the 12 will elaborate on the reasons why they want Hood removed.
Some parishioners say they still stand by their signatures on a petition sent to De Angelis in April 2009, sating: “We are of the very firm opinion that St. Michael’s Parish cannot return to a position of Christian peace and tranquility without the transfer of Father Hood to another area.”
Following Sunday’s Mass, De Angelis said he hoped the parishioners of St. Michael’s would be able to “turn the page and reconcile” with their priest, just as Corcoran has reconciled with the church.
But, the bishop concedes, he doesn’t know how that part of the story will end.
SIC: TTS