As Pride parades gear up around the world, a slew of Catholic parishes will be hosting “Pre-Pride” Masses to kick off the festivities.
Among the most popular of these Masses over the last few years in New York City has been the one celebrated at the parish of St. Francis of Assisi in Midtown. The church’s 2019 description of the Mass told us that even though “identifying as Catholic and gay or lesbian can sometimes be a challenge, we accept you #AsYouAre … Decorations will festoon our beautiful church and reflect our signature LGBT+ Ministry colors that have a deep meaning behind them.” Green symbolizes safety, yellow acceptance, blue inclusion, and pink support.
If recognizing Christ’s unconditional love for people with same-sex attraction (SSA) were truly the intention of these celebrations, then why not actually present them with agape — Christ’s sacrificial love on the cross? Why give them a Mass dressed up with secular buzzwords? They don’t need to waste their time going to church to get that — they can simply go to pre-Pride celebrations at Chelsea Piers or in the West Village, which I’m sure will be much more “fabulous” than watching a middle-aged priest sashaying down the aisle to House music (as did a previous year’s pre-Pride celebrant).
This discrepancy reflects the larger hole in Fr. James Martin’s project of “building a bridge” with the LGBT community. Most Catholic LGBT ministries attempt to mimic his model, and Fr. Martin has been the main celebrant of St. Francis’ pre-Pride Mass several times. The bridge seems not to extend all the way to the real needs of same-sex attracted people, nor does it extend to the fullness of God’s love. (READ MORE: ‘She Looks Like She Just Went to Sleep’: Thousands Travel to Visit Incorrupt Nun)
Rarely does his book, Building a Bridge, mention that God’s love reaches into the concrete realities of our daily life through the Body of his Church. It largely ignores the practical, moral implications of being a Christian. This implies a distrust that the full embodiment of Christ’s love — made “flesh” in the Law of Nature written on the hearts of all men and women, and in the Communion of His Church — is enough to satisfy the desires and needs of all people.
It’s as if the actual implications of Christ’s love are your embarrassing grandma that you hide in her room when guests are over. Don’t talk about doctrine! It will scare them away! Quick! What other euphemisms can we find for “intrinsically disordered” before they skip out of Mass early to go see the latest stars of RuPaul’s Drag Race at Stonewall?!
Rather than giving them mere tolerance and acceptance, why not let them in on the Church’s understanding of real beauty and real intimacy.
The assumption that all gay people “really” need is to be accepted and tolerated shows how disconnected St. Francis Parish is from the actual array of gay and same-sex attracted Catholics. Surely many people who have faced extreme homophobia in the name of God need to be reminded that God loves them and desires a relationship with them as they are. But not all gays have been ostracized by Church members, or want to be fed the postmodern illusion that “love is love.” Some actually thirst for the fullness of Christ’s love. And some actually desire to live chastely.
Of course, these same-sex attracted Catholics are missing from Martin’s book and from these pre-Pride celebrations. There is no mention of people involved in Eden Invitation, the Courage Apostolate, or the Spiritual Friendship movement. Eve Tushnet, one of Spiritual Friendship’s most prominent writers, described her experience attending a Pride parade and Corpus Christi procession back to back, coming to the conclusion that “the Catholic Church offers a more compelling alternative: the possibility of shockingly chaste same-sex love.”
Tushnet argues that most pastors spend their time harping on either a permissive, watered-down doctrine or on all the things gay people aren’t allowed to do. “I’d be shocked if anyone had ever even suggested a vision of a world where God, Church, family, and community could celebrate [our] love while still requiring that this love express itself as chaste friendship or mystical approach to God rather than as gay sex.”
A closer look at Pride parades will reveal a confused attempt to celebrate the beauty of the human body and of same-sex friendship. In her juxtaposition between Pride and Corpus Christi, Tushnet points to the more rich and truthful representations of the body and beauty in Catholic worship, art, and theology. If St. Francis insists on having a “Pre-Pride Mass,” they should take a step beyond the buzzwords du jour and offer a proposal that surpasses the reductive (and ultimately nihilistic … insofar as it turns the body into a commodity for use) vision offered at Pride.
As Tushnet mentions, the Church offers plenty of examples that can help people with same-sex attraction live their desire in a more fulfilling way (I’ll list a few at the end). Catholic art, specifically, depicts the body in a way that imbues it with a sacred meaning that a Pride parade can only attempt to. Consider the Pieta in the back chapel of St. Francis of Assisi itself. The graceful, maternal Virgin embraces the sparsely clothed, dead body of her Son. His bare flesh speaks to the true beauty of the male body — not the exaltation of aesthetics and carnal pleasure, but of kenotic agape ordered toward life-giving communion.
Perhaps this year’s celebrant would like to suggest that Mass goers spend some time meditating on those bodies, rather than ogling at cheap versions of beauty like those at Pride.
As much as such ministries are to be commended for their sensitivity to the pain and alienation faced by the LGBT community, their approach seems to constantly evade the question that all people — gay, straight, and every other color of the identity rainbow — must face: What can fully answer the needs of the human heart? Where can we find a promise of eternal love that doesn’t fade with time?
Pride tells gay people to “be yourself, follow your feelings” and that love is whatever you want it to be. But what happens when this illusion starts to fade, and the thirst for a love that surpasses the scope of sentimentality, sexual pleasure, and goodwill rears its head?
When removed from the ambit of God’s design, the sincere attempts we humans make to love one another will not hold up in the long run. Most people attending Pride parades are looking to appreciate bodily beauty and find ways to experience intimacy with people of the same sex. Rather than giving them mere tolerance and acceptance, why not let them in on the Church’s understanding of real beauty and real intimacy.
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