Breaking: LGBTQ Catholics in Michigan Barred from Sacraments

Most egregious anti-LGBTQ move in living memory

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Marquette, which administers all parishes in the state’s Upper Peninsula, serving roughly 300,000 Catholics, has just issued “pastoral guidance” that bars LGBTQ people from meaningful participation in worship, restricting gay people in relationships and transgender people from most Church sacraments and almost all Church roles.

Dignity USA, an organization representing the majority of U.S. Catholics who “support justice, equality, and full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in the Church and society,” is urging U.S. Catholics to protest this move, which executive director Marianne Duddy-Burke told me this morning, “is the most egregious thing I’ve seen since doing work at the national level since 1985.”

As a gay writer of Catholic heritage deeply invested in covering Church LGBTQ issues, I’ll go further: This is the most egregious anti-LGBTQ move taken by a U.S. Roman Catholic diocese in living memory. LGBTQ Catholics in upper Michigan have just been told they aren’t welcome in their parishes. This elevates the U.S. Catholic hierarchy’s war on LGBTQ people to new heights.

Let me break down a few details to drive this home —

• Priests in upper Michigan are now forbidden to give gay or trans people blessings for the sick. Seriously. You did not misread that.
• If a devout gay man in a committed partnership is dying in hospital, his UP priest is barred from giving him last rites. Ditto for trans people living as their gender. You didn’t misread that either.
• Gay and trans people may not be baptized or confirmed, which means gay and trans people cannot convert to Catholicism in Michigan’s UP.
• Trans and gay people may not act as sponsors to children being baptized or confirmed. That means if you’re a Catholic who wants your gay/trans Catholic friend to be your child’s godparent, you’re out of luck. The Bishop of Marquette just prohibited that.
• If you’re a gay or trans person in Michigan’s UP, you may not stand up during services to receive communion, perhaps the most stigmatizing of all these new regressive policies.

Barring LGBTQ people from communion is stigmatizing and intensely toxic

Communion as a sacrament is so critical for Catholics that a few bishops even insisted church services had to continue without restriction during the worst of the covid-19 pandemic. (The Vatican urged Catholics to follow public health guidance and urged bishops to take sensible precautions.)

Being barred from receiving communion is for Catholics something like a sentence of private spiritual death. Worse, it’s a very public stigmatization. Not standing up to take communion tells the rest of your congregation that you consider yourself to be living in a state of unconfessed or unrepentant sin.

Barring LGBTQ people from sacraments uniquely stigmatizes and sets aside freedom of conscience

Catholics are supposed to have freedom of conscience about confession and sin. For example, data indicate that the vast majority of Catholic women of childbearing age use artificial birth control, which the Church calls sinful. But Catholic women do not in general refrain from taking communion if they’re on the pill or use a diaphragm. Catholic men who use condoms or have a vasectomy don’t generally refrain either.

No movement in the Church is urging the withholding of sacraments from Catholics who use artificial birth control. Traditionalist Catholic priests and bishops often preach against the practice, but it remains widespread among Catholics, who say they reserve the right to exercise their own moral consciences.

The Bishop of Marquette has just proclaimed that such individual moral choices do not apply to LGBTQ people and has thus set us apart as especially and particularly morally broken.

Denying sacraments teaches children that discriminating against LGBTQ people is appropriate and even desirable

Publicly condemning LGBTQ people as uniquely immoral often has disastrous public consequences. Last week, 12-year-old Eli Fritchley killed himself in the wake of pervasive bullying in his Tennessee school. His schoolmates tormented Eli on religious grounds after he told them he was gay. They were modeling the behavior of respected (Protestant) Christian adults in their lives, who believe, like the Bishop of Marquette, that gay people are worthy of unique moral condemnation.

The bishop would undoubtedly object if he read the last paragraph, citing passages from the Catholic Catechism that call on Catholics to treat LGBTQ people with “respect and sensitivity.” He would say that barring LGBTQ people from almost all participation in the Church, publicly branding us and making us unwelcome, is religiously necessary.

I would respond that he clearly misunderstands the meaning of “respect” and “sensitivity.” I would tell him that he is willfully disregarding the very real consequences of his own behavior, which to my mind is so contrary to the teachings of Jesus that it rises to a level of sinfulness the bishop should confess before he receives communion again. If he chooses not to do that, that is of course a matter for his own conscience.

As for LGBTQ people and our family and beloved friends, we have consciences too, and we must have the right to exercise them without being tossed out of our communities.

LGBTQ people are valued members of their Catholic congregations

When beloved Brooklyn Catholic school teacher and parish music director Matthew LaBanca was fired from both jobs last October, his bishop offered him a $20,000.00 severance package on the condition he never tell anyone he was fired for being gay. Matthew turned the money down so he could be free to exercise his conscience and speak his truth to his community.

His congregation stands with him. In a heartwarming display of public acceptance a few weeks ago, almost all the members of his parish church wore rainbow colors to a Sunday service, where Matthew stood up proudly to accept communion and the loving embrace of his spiritual community.

If Matthew lived in Marquette or anywhere else in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, that loving embrace, that spiritual succor, would be denied him. That must not stand.

I join Marianne Duddy-Burke and Dignity USA in calling on Catholics of good will to protest. All Catholics have the right of individual conscience, and LGBTQ Catholics must be included rather than stigmatized and rejected. Sign their petition:

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James Finn is a former Air Force intelligence analyst, long-time LGBTQ activist, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, a frequent columnist for the LA Blade, a contributor to other LGBTQ news outlets, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].