Why am I involved in promoting a reconciling
conversation that embraces people of all gender identities and sexual
orientations in the full life of the church and of our society? This is not a
work I would have imagined without a long development in my own life. It is a
product of life experience, fundamental convictions, professional involvements,
and theological reflection.
Over the years I have had friends, students, and
colleagues whose lives have been injured, slighted, and excluded because
something was “not quite right” about them. Their many gifts for church and
society have not been recognized or, as so frequently happens, have been
exploited while their own identity was denied.
Many years ago I went through a divorce. The
person who was my closest spiritual friend in this passage was a Catholic
priest whose sensitivity, wisdom, and compassion enabled me to reach solid and
deeper ground. At that time he himself came to the conclusion that he was an
alcoholic and needed to enter treatment. In subsequent years he told me how he
had managed to live out his extraordinary ministry as a gay man in a church
that rejects his “orientation.” My life has been deepened immensely by his
singular counsel and friendship.
My own life struggle to find a true companionship
in marriage has led me to try to cultivate a world in which everyone can find
this deep companionship with another human being that is compatible not only
with their sexual constitution but with their hopes and faith in a loving
Creator.
Experiences like this and many others over the
years have deepened my conviction that the grace crystallized in the life of
Jesus seeks to enfold all of us regardless of our biology, circumstance, or
ancestry. The way we are created as sexual beings is also perfected, to use
Thomas Aquinas’s term, by the gracious love of God in Jesus. Our life is
validated in our love of our Creator and of the creatures flowing from the
Creator’s love.
This grace extends to the way we conceive of our
ordering together in political as well as ecclesial life. That is why I have
tried to move us from organization, worship symbols, and theology rooted in
images of patriarchal monarchy to a life shaped by our equality around the
table where Christ’s gracious spirit presides. It is the essence of this Spirit
to bring all to the table. Thus the
task of reconciliation is intimately tied to our effort to overcome our
hitherto “natural” separations of race, gender, or sexual orientation.
