John F. Doerfler, Catholic Bishop of Marquette, Michigan, just stepped up the American Catholic Church’s war against the LGBT community, and it’s about time we engage and fire back. Before I suggest a plan, here’s what Doerfler did via a document he signed titled “An Instruction on Some Aspects of the Pastoral Care of Persons with Same — Sex Attraction and Gender Dysphoria.”
Bil Browning of LGBTQ Nation summarized the document well: “A Catholic diocese in Michigan has instructed priests to deny baptism and communion to transgender and non-binary people unless they “repent.””
Here’s what else the document stated:
“The Diocese of Marquette said in its guidance that trans people deserve “love and friendship” and compared them to people “suffering from anorexia nervosa.”
“In this disorder there is an incongruence between how the persons perceive themselves and their bodily reality,”
The document also states: “Unlike a man and woman who are cohabitating or in an invalid marriage, the status of same‐sex couples can never be regularized.”
So what the document says very clearly is: LGBT people are mentally and morally ill, and they need to change.
These policies don’t just affect those who follow the Catholic Church; they are meant to be publicized and thereby give ammunition to haters from every religion.
Marianne Duddy-Burke, the executive director of DignityUSA, which advocates for LGBTQ rights in the Catholic Church, said the guidance is part of a larger trend of dioceses’ “making statements that look like they’re trying to be helpful to gay, queer and transgender people but that are really doing harm to the spiritual, emotional and physical health of our community and to families.”
Duddy-Burke is correct, as are numerous Catholic advocates, to rip this guidance apart, but as of now it stands. Now we need to look at where it came from and why. First, the blame and our efforts to fight back must go to the U.S. Conference of Bishops, which encourages this kind of hateful action and allows this campaign to continue. Why do they encourage it? Because they would rather turn the attention away from their own sins: the systematic rape of Children. Institutions such as the Catholic Church in the United States, run by the U.S. Conference of Bishops, are morally bankrupt and criminal. Rather than just allowing their hate against our community and their crimes against children, it is time to fight back.
First, I implore LGBT media to editorialize in the harshest form against this hypocrisy of morals… this also goes to LGBT activist organizations and bloggers. We need to point out the church’s sins. Then for each diocese that puts this kind of garbage out, maybe it’s time to out a member of the U.S. Council of Bishops and their staff. That outting includes those Bishops who are in heterosexual relationships as well as LGBT relationships. There could also be a bounty for outing them, similar to the Texas abortion bounty, which those Bishops supported.
One last point: this hate is isolated to the U.S. Catholic Church and its bishops since Pope Francis and other Church leaders around the world have attempted to find common ground with the LGBT community. The U.S. Conference of Bishops are fighting this change, and endangering our community because of it.