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NYC Religion

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DECEMBER 31, 2014

A Catholic Church in Williamsburg, Brooklyn develops LGBT ministry

Article excerpt…

Pope Francis has posed a question to people who don’t want gay people in the Catholic church, “Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?” Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, in an October address to a crowd of prelates, diplomats and journalists at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, summed up his understanding of Pope Francis’ approach. “Don’t lead with the chin, don’t lead with controversy,” Dolan said. “Don’t even lead with the mouth. Lead with the heart and you’re going to win a lot of people.”

The encounter at the AA meeting guided Calise to a breakthrough idea: he would start an AA group for the gay community.

The first thing he did was to reach out to Reverend Diane Jeep Ries, an ordained interfaith minister interested in aiding seekers who are disinterested in conventional modes of religion. Jeep was a lapsed Catholic who had been away from the church for over three decades and has been married to her same-sex spouse since 2008. She was curious about the priest’s pitch.

“I convinced her to hold AA meetings for people from the lesbian and gay community so that they could speak out in a safe space and not be an object of ridicule,” said the Monsignor. And as they say, the rest is history.

Now, two of the AA meetings are specifically tailored for the gay and lesbian community. The church’s support of gay people didn’t end with the AA group.

After seeing the successful reception of these AA groups, Calise decided to go a step further and asked Jeep to start a gay ministry as part of the parish.

Jeep was initially taken by surprise but then eagerly accepted Calise’s proposal. She began by researching Catholic groups that worked with the gay community. She discovered that the internet has worked as a handy connector for the relatively low visibility of Catholic gays.

“I found out about the Catholic Association of Lesbian and Gay Ministry (CALGM) by going on the Internet and learned about starting a ministry through it,” recalled the reverend.

The primacy of conscience

Jeep went down to Tampa, Florida to check out an association conference in Tampa. There, she learned about a Catholic doctrine called “the primacy of conscience.” The doctrine teaches that a person’s conscience is a primary indication of what is right or wrong. Catholic scholar Douglas McManaman stated, “Because one’s conscience is one’s best judgment, one has a duty to obey it.”

However, McManaman carefully specifies the limits of this doctrine. A person’s conscience, he emphasizes, does not determine what is right or wrong. Instead, conscience acts as an internal divining rod that points a person to the right decision when they may be receiving ambiguous or confusing directions from an outside source.

Jeep explained McManaman’s approach this way, “You can sit in contemplation and find in your heart a resonance, or not, of an issue in conflict with another doctrine of Church teaching.” After reflecting on the two sides, “you can then move as your conscience informs you.”

Jeep’s says that upon reflection, her conscience pushed her toward doing something more for the gay congregants at Our Lady of Mount Carmel. She became convinced that the church needed a ministry that would make gay congregants feel included and protected as they followed their faith. She named the newly minted ministry Glad Tidings, a variation of the word 'gospel.' With the name “Glad Tidings,” The church’s message to the gay and lesbian community was that they too deserve God’s love and mercy.

The ministry was affiliated with the Catholic Association of Lesbian and Gay Ministry and was a fully integrated component of the parish. This unique relationship is unlike other LGBT Catholic groups such as Dignity USA and New Ways Ministry, which are not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church.

Having accomplished her vision at OLMC, Jeep departed in March 2012 to establish an independent interspiritual ministry called “The God Garage,” which is a portable resource for people taking unconventional spiritual paths. The organization also connects spiritual development to local and global activism.