A Gay Catholic Journalist’s Journey into a Fraught Period of Church History

A review of ‘Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear’, by Michael J. O’Loughlin

Reporting on Church events and issues affecting LGBTQ Catholics, however, did not make him feel more comfortable with being a gay Catholic. “I was having trouble integrating that side of myself with my faith. I needed insight from people with more experience, people who had lived through similar struggles. But who?”

In 2015, an older friend, who had been a young priest in the early days of the AIDS crisis, told him stories of gay Catholics to whom he had ministered; these men had “faced fierce backlash from church authorities cracking down on unorthodoxy, just as HIV and AIDS upended their lives.” O’Loughlin was hooked and set out to learn as much as he could about this period of history in the Church and in the lives of gay Catholics.

He met with Sister Carol, a member of the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis, who as a homecare nurse in the small town of Belleville, Illinois in 1984, had cared for a young man with AIDS who had returned from New York to die in his childhood home. In this encounter, Sister Carol not only had to learn how to provide for the medical and physical needs of an AIDS patient, but she was also faced with the bureaucratic maze parents and other caregivers were required to navigate in order to acquire the funding and the materials needed by their patients and loved ones. Moreover, Sister quickly discovered the stigma attached to being a victim of AIDS: doctors and hospitals refusing treatment, funeral homes refusing to care for the dead patient’s remains.

Sister Carol and her friend and colleague Sister Mary Ellen, a hospital chaplain, determined that they needed to learn more about the disease and its, mostly, gay victims. They attended workshops and seminars, met with medical professionals caring for AIDS patients, and eventually received permission from their superior to go to New York, the epicentre of the crisis and work in Catholic hospitals that cared for AIDS patients. They also learned a great deal about gay life and gay culture. Upon her return to Illinois, Sister Carol worked with AIDS patients for ten more years. “She became a leading advocate in Illinois for expanded AIDS testing, funding for AIDS care, and anti-stigma education. She would be featured in local news reports abut HIV and AIDS and would be named to a state commission to help disperse much-needed funding in a fair and equitable manner.”

In his quest for a deeper understanding of the Church and LGBTQ people, O’Loughlin met David Pais, an HIV-positive gay Catholic who began volunteering in the early 1980s for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and witnessing the deaths of gay men, including many friends, from AIDS. David was also deeply affected by the infamous 1986 “Halloween letter,” in which Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) called homosexuality “a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil” and “an objective disorder.” The letter resulted in the expulsion of gay Catholic organizations, such as Dignity, from all parishes.

O’Loughlin also visited the site of St. Vincent’s Hospital, which had had an HIV/AIDS clinic that treated thousands of gay men, and others, with AIDS. He learned of notable staff members, like Dr. Gabriel Torres, a gay man, who advocated tirelessly for more resources for the clinic and for the patients he was treating. Dr. Torres contributed significantly toward making St. Vincent’s a vital centre for AIDS research. And Sister Patrice Murphy, coordinator of supportive care in the hospital’s AIDS hospice, who was dedicated to making the final days of her patients easier and more comfortable.

The author learned about the strict prohibition enacted by the Archdiocese of New York and other dioceses in the United States against the promotion and distribution of condoms by Catholic institutions; he also became aware of the creative ways in which Catholic healthcare workers, like Dr. Torres, found their way around the prohibition.

And in another chapter, he tells us about the infamous ACT UP protest in New York’s St. Patrick Cathedral in 1989, where at Communion a Catholic protester shouted, “Opposing safe-sex education is murder!” and instead of consuming the host he crumbled it up and threw it on the floor. O’Loughlin also offers a comprehensive and moving depiction of Catholic priests who suffered from AIDS and died from the disease, pointing out that it was likely (although not proven) that a large percent of the Catholic clergy was gay.

In the book, O’Loughlin also recounts his talks with Father Bill McNichols (profiled in this article) and his visit to Holy Redeemer parish in the Castro district of San Francisco, a parish which became (and remains today) a place of welcome for LBTQ Catholics and a community of care for persons with HIV and AIDS.

In early 2021, the Vatican reaffirmed the prohibition on priests blessing same-sex unions, stating that “God does not and cannot bless sin.” In the epilogue to Hidden Mercy, O’Loughlin reflects on this statement:

I considered my own longing to remain part of this church, in which the sacraments that sustained my ancestors connect me today to believers throughout the world. To balance that desire with a love I know to be sacred has not always been easy. The stories I’ve learned help me make sense of this new challenge, and at the same time, I look toward the future, seeking out voices who speak prophetically about the day when Jesus’s commandment that we love one another will be a step closer toward fulfillment.

O’Loughlin’s fascinating and moving journey does reveal a hidden and multilayered slice of Catholic Church history: the tension between the Church’s hard-line position on homosexuality and its mission to care for the dick, no matter the cause of that sickness; the members of the clergy and of religious orders, straight and gay, who cared for victims of HIV and AIDS without judgment and in every phase and aspect of the victims’ suffering; and gay Catholics, deeply hurt by the Church’s callous rejection of their orientation, who were able to hold onto their faith and to find a Catholic community that welcomed them.

Due to an unfortunate incident, I am no longer writing for Prism & Pen. I have created my own publication, Peace and Light, where I will be posting articles about the LGBTQ community and the Catholic Church.