You Have Heard of the "Dear John" Letter?

You Have Heard of the "Dear John" Letter? Well, this is my “Dear Sean” letter. It’s a perfect inversion. Instead of being about break-ups, it’s about reconciliation. And leper kisses. That part is important. Dear Cardinal Sean O'Malley, Archdiocese of Boston: Remember me? Well, not just me. Thousands of people, including Catholics. A year ago today, June 14, 2007, responding to the lobby of the Religious Coalition for Freedom to Marry and other well-intentioned people of faith, the Massachusetts legislature dissed you. No amount of your personal phone calls to legislators, letters read from the pulpit, pronouncements by the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, or appearances with the Concerned Women for America was going to stop the march for justice. The legislature soundly defeated a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage that you vigorously supported.

You were remarkably ungracious in your Massachusetts defeat, issuing a statement calling the vote “tragic,” and claiming that “Today the common good has been sacrificed by the extreme individualism that subordinates what is best for children, family, and society.” You also hinted at unfair backroom political pressure and decried the supposed influence of “powerful special interest groups.” This estranging language – like the language you used to address gay adoption and gays in the seminary – drove many LGBT Catholics from the pews over the years from 2003-2007. (I know: I was headed inbound and nearly got crushed by the stampede.)

Since then, we’ve seen some softening. Your Vicar General has met with gay groups at area churches. Your lieutenants helped find a new home for the gay community that worshipped at the now shuttered Jesuit Urban Center. Your personal secretary assured me that you stand firmly against using the Eucharist as battle ground and won’t ban anyone from receiving it. And on your blog, you graciously included a photograph from a talk you gave at an Irish Pub that shows a six-inch sliver of my bald pate sticking out among the heads of the more pious. (Not that all is well: the Archdiocesan newspaper The Pilot printed a piece a few weeks ago comparing adoption by gay parents to “throwing [the adopted] children off the roof” and waiting to see the bodies pile up.) But with the proverbial sky still intact (and no bodies piling up that I have seen), I ask you to set a new tone. Here are a few steps you can take to start the process of reconciliation with the state’s gay and lesbian Catholics:

• Issue a statement acknowledging the existence of families headed by same-sex couples and gay individuals and state firmly, like your brother bishops in California in response to that state’s recent Supreme Court decision, that “Every person involved in the family of domestic partners is a child of God and deserves respect in the eyes of the law and their community.”

• Assure your brother bishop, Allen Vigneron, who this week broke from the neutral stance of his fellow bishops and issued a statement asking California voters to overturn California’s fledgling marriage equality, that the Church’s entering into the political fray is both a misuse of its power and undermines its authority. Just as many pastors refused to make available your statements against gay marriage here in Massachusetts (50% according to the Diocesan newspaper, The Pilot), already priests in California are refusing to read Archbishop Vigneron’s letter. If you cannot get your priests to support you, a play for the faithful is futile.

• Hold an amnesty assuring your celibate gay priests (estimates of gay priests run as high as 60% of the entire priesthood) that they may come out of the closet and present themselves to the world with integrity. After all, their orientation is no sin in Catholic doctrine, so why not let them serve openly with dignity intact? That’s how Bishop Clark of the Diocese of Rochester responded to Father Fred Daley, a priest who outed himself publicly in 2004. Ditto for Father Jim Morrison and his bishop in Louisiana in 2006.

• Continue to send your vicar general Father Richard Erickson to meet with gay and lesbian Catholics at Boston’s welcoming Roman Catholic churches and communities as you have done since before the June 14 vote.

• Following the example of your Pope, consider meeting with gay and lesbian Catholics to hear their stories of faith.

• Give me a big, wet leper’s kiss to acknowledge that gay people are the lepers of the age and you, like Saint Francis, can experience conversion.

These six steps do not require you to abandon Catholic doctrine. Indeed, your brother bishops have already started down the road. Rather, these simple, largely cost-free acts would help put in the rearview mirror the intemperate words from the Archdiocese concerning same-sex marriage, gay adoption, and gays in the seminary, and would re-assure LGBT Catholics in this Gay Pride month that they have a place at the Eucharistic table as children of God.***