My commentary on: https://international.la-croix.com/news/religion/pope-thanks-new-ways-ministry-for-work-with-lgbt-catholics/15338

The fact that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 1999 prohibited the ministerial & pastoral engagement of the two founders of the New Ways Ministry, Sr Jeannine Gramick and Fr Robert Nugent on the basis that the CDF concurred the pastoral approach of this ministry’s two founders to be replete with doctrinal errors and inconsistencies is what I would call writing something off the board without having gone into it thoroughly enough.

From one angle, this could be seen plainly as a hasty dismissal. A bit like throwing a real pastoral need that exists out there at the margins of the Church and indeed in the wider world in the too-hard basket. From another angle, had the dismissal resulted from a rejection not of the willingness to minister into the lives of LBGTQers but more from the fact of an incompatability of style and emphasis embraced by New Ways Ministry with the apostolic charism of the CDF, then the dismissal is understandable to the point at which it only rejects that particular pastoral aporoach or emphasis rather than rejecting the entire area of need to proactively and effectively minister into the lives of LGBTQ people altogether.

Should the former be the real reason for dismissal, I would have to say in hindsight of this apostolic oversight on the part of the CDF, a much better approach and indeed a much more responsible one is for the CDF to work alongside both Sr Gramick and Fr Nugent to iron out the cited errors and inconsistencies and proceed from there. And I think also that this is what Pope Francis was trying to point out and rectify by writing that letter to this ministry’s founders, in a nutshell to express his solidarity with paving the way for a viable future of such a ministry in collaboration rather than contention with the aims and mission of the CDF. And since the exact nature of these “errors” and inconsistencies” was not expressly mentioned in Brian Fraga’s article as such, I cannot comment any further on them until I look into it in more detail elsewhere but what I will say right here and now is that the existance of these “errors and inconsistencies” is still no excuse for not having a proper ministerial channel set up to address the complex and necessary task of ministering to and providing adequate pastoral care for those people on the fringes of the Church and the Catholic Faith including those of an LBGTQ persuasion.

Now, having finally looked into the website of the New Ways Ministry itself, it is obvious that much of the present emphasis appears to be centered around essentialistically validating and re-validating &c.(at length/over and over to an excessive degree) an identity status that is already widely known and accepted by the vast majority of LBGTQ people as the place in life where they are at currently instead of reflexively coming at the whole gamut of life issues (centered around finding God and plugging into and anchoring firmly in the life of the Spirit) from a standpoint of neutral common-ground with the whole Church but with a distinct difference of recognizing that such people are deeply impacted by idenitity issues concerned with sexuality, gender & the like; and then working to provide a range of both concrete and discrete options for taking action in order to come to terms with or confront where need be, the various struggles of life in light of how their current spiritual/identity issues affect them and their opportunities for advancing in terms of both their temporal and spiritual wellbeing.

There needs to be a decisive plethora of available resources and help links for people on the margins to access the kind of human solidarity and support which will eventually bring them safely and soundly to a haven of good will within the heart of the Church, and one that can minister to their deepest spiritual and temporal needs whilst at the same time recognizing that they are currently either niched by the ebbs, flows and sways of various circumstantial encounters within the LBGTQ paridigm or life-outlook or they have had a miscellany of other unfathomable but nonethless related identity questions arise in their life’s slipstream.

For some it is a choice stemming from only having the opportunity to be positioned betwixt and between certain circumstances that afforded a vision or outlook on life tailored to a specific but spiritually limited set of points of reference. For others, complex identity background music of a generational or inherited disposition is the reason for being steeped in such an outlook on life and/or coming up against a chronic life-pattern of experiential barrarge on account of miscellaneous and often-times inexplicable relational circumstances which do set themselves up outside the boundaries of the dictates of a realizable personal responsibility or beyond the control of any particular person or human agency.

Irrespective of the variety of reasons, people who adhere to these means of identifying themselves through the lens of such rubrix or come through a convoluted life-experience replete with seemingly unanswerable spiritual questions and dilemmas of all kinds need access to practical ministry resources that will help them coherently and safely navigate the complex web of decision-making and circumstantial cross-roads that inevitably make up the throes of our human pilgrimage on earth.

And this navigation is at best guided and reviewed within and under the ministerial authority of Holy Mother Church and in doctrinal alignment with her teachings, being careful not to depart from them in any area whilst at the same time giving due recognition to the reality that every person on this planet is where they are at for a reason in the mystery of God’s divine plan and that none can achieve a holy mastery of their own passions or realize the full breadth, depth, and meaning of their own Salvation in Christ Jesus without the intervention of the Holy Spirit on a profoundly personal level.

We need to be mindful of the stark difference between intervention on our own human terms no matter how much wisdom we think these terms exude, (even if and when they are motivated at times by noble intentions) and the unmistakable miracle that marks intervention by God Himself. And authentic humility predisposes us to pray for, seek, and nurture the conditions for welcoming the latter.

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Key words: Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Apostolic Charism, LBGTQ, Identity Issues, Generational Disposition, Human Pilgrimage, Holy Mother Church