How Denying My Sexuality Destroyed My Ability to Love Those Most Like Me
I was once asked to protect an archbishop from gay Catholic protestors during a church service.
It is a rather unusual thing to admit, especially considering I am gay myself, but life is nothing if not ironic.
I was in seminary at the time, training to be a Catholic priest. One day the rector in charge of the seminary asked to see several of us who he had identified as leaders. We had quickly bought into his vision of a more masculine and orthodox church reform led by the men of Catholicism and he had made us his lieutenants.
Tomorrow, he explained, the Archbishop will be celebrating Mass at the university chapel. A group of LGBT Catholics are planning on protesting the service, probably inside the chapel and possibly during communion.
For Catholics, communion is the high point of our worship, where God becomes physically present under the auspices of simple bread and wine. A small amount of protestors around the world had taken to desecrating the communion host to make their point, which, when you believe God is physically present, is a truly offensive protest. Thus, any protests at a Mass were taken seriously, whether a threat was actually made or not.
The four of us, the rector said, would protect the Archbishop and protect Jesus at communion.
I was thrilled.
The next day we walked over to the chapel together, in our khakis and blue polos with the name of the seminary embroidered on the left chest. Standard issue seminarian uniform. Honestly, we looked more like an early 2000’s dance group in a retail clothing commercial than bouncers — a fact that was once called out to us on the street by an actual bouncer in New Orleans while fifty of us walked by: Five dollar wells! Four dollar domestics! Ladies get in free! And what is that a motherfucking Gap commercial?!
As we processed down the aisle at the beginning of the Mass we could see a group of four or five men and women sitting towards the back. Some wore a rainbow flag draped over their shoulders like the suffragettes in Mary Poppins, others a more modest pin. They all seemed to be at least fifty.
The scripture readings and sermon moved along without any disruptions. The protesters sat quietly, standing only when the whole congregation did, saying the usual prayers along with us. I was both relieved and disappointed. Part of me was grateful they were being so respectful, but I also was curious to see how any conflict would play out. Church is stereotypically boring for a reason — what would it look like with a little bit of rebellion thrown in the mix? Just being asked to be there, my ego was already sky high. My mind raced at what I would do if I had to step in.
The priest had asked us to stand alongside everyone handing out communion in case anything happened. The big question — and the heart of the protest, really — was whether the Archbishop would give the LGBT members communion. They were protesting the Catholic Church’s treatment of its queer members and symbolically, you couldn’t get much better than being prohibited to even share a meal with the rest of the congregation.
Devout Catholics would object to that set up. There’s no discrimination in barring LGBT Catholics from communion, they say. There are certain beliefs required of all members and various actions prohibited — confession awaiting all those who fall short — in order to be ready to participate in communion. There are no separate rules for gay and straight Catholics, just one set of beliefs that binds us all together.
Add onto that an understanding that the solemnity of communion is such that protesting or in any way politicizing the act would be wildly inappropriate and it is no large surprise that the threat of rejection floated in the air.
The small group queued up in the Archbishops line as I stood tall and still right beside him. It is not normal in Catholic churches to have anyone accompanying a person distributing communion, and given the potential for disruption we believed was present, I did my best to look intimidating. By this point I was nineteen and into it. I felt like a knight protecting royalty, or maybe secret service agent, accompanying the president as he shook hands or kissed babies.
A woman in her sixties approached the Archbishop and gently put up her wrinkled hands like the rest. Her grey hair was cut short and an “LGBT Catholic” button was placed prominently on her chest. I glanced out of the corner of my eye and caught the Archbishop’s face. He smiled and had a genuine tenderness in his eyes. He reached down and put his hand on her shoulder like he did for people not ready to receive communion and said a small prayer asking for God’s blessing.
The woman seemed to crumple like crepe paper under his hand. Tears gushed out and she quickly walked past the line for the wine and returned to her pew, muffled sobs echoing off the plaster walls.
I betrayed no emotion, but my eyes followed her all the way back to her pew until her head fell down into her hands. This was the great threat I was here to thwart, and honestly, I was proud to have played my part. Her tears did not move me. The dignity of the Church had to be guarded and the truth she bore upheld. If her stunt left her feeling rejected, good.
I was a knight. I was nineteen.
When Mass was over we accompanied the Archbishop back to the sacristy where he could hang up his priestly vestments. Us seminarians were in formation around the Archbishop as the protestors approached outside. They stayed just outside our perimeter, signs that were tucked away during the service suddenly hoisted high as they chanted about justice for gay Catholics. It was all over within several seconds. By the time the Archbishop had stowed away his vestments everyone had dispersed. Within fifteen minutes I was back in my room, my feet propped up and a Philosophy 101 textbook in my lap.
What worries me most, looking back on that episode, is not the dramatic overreaction in itself. The desire to protect the church, its leaders, and yes even God, is a sincere one. It was silly in its intensity, but not rooted in malice. Those protestors were incredibly peaceful, and honestly not even that good at being distracting. The part I struggle with is how easily I was able to disassociate myself from the LGBTQ Catholics that were there.
In 2005 I was still closeted to all but my family and a few old friends. In the seminary, I was trying desperately to increase the Catholic side of my identity, hoping it might somehow consume the gay one. Hoping that with enough fervor and devotion, the parts of me the Church found lacking would fade away and be forgotten.
The thrill I got at standing tall and being the Catholic knight, the defender of what is right and true and good, eclipsed any reality of how close I was to those who were approaching the altar, and why. I think my subconscious did some kind of primitive, communal calculus, and decided the queers wanting a place at the table were a threat to my own inclusion as an real Catholic.
Watching that woman with her wrinkled hands held out to the Archbishop, my mind wouldn’t allow me to see how close I was to her. How it had been only a couple years since I was laying in bed with a boy and then mumbling to my mother the next morning that maybe the Church could change.
Instead, I put my shoulders back and my eyes forward and decided that I had been the one who changed. I wasn’t gay — not really. I struggled with same-sex attraction, but no one needed to know that. It wasn’t a real part of me. Being a good son of the Church was my identity now.
I wonder what might have gone different if I had learned to see a part of me in those protestors. I can’t imagine I would have been willing to play the Secret Service agent. My discomfort with turning a church service into a protest would probably have remained. There are certain places and times that need to remain inherently reverent and free from antics, righteous though the cause may be.
But my willingness to engage, to listen, to search out a more proactive solution would have been there. If I had just been able to say, I disagree with how they are going about this, but I at least understand how I could have ended up there myself. That changes the dispositions of the dialogue entirely.
As should be plenty obvious by now, I have switched sides on the gay/Christian debate, and think it is the Church that needs to move more towards the gays, not just the other way around. But I hope I can remember the path I took to get there. How I was able to stand next to the Archbishop and, in my heart like Peter, utter my own, Woman, I do not know the man.
I need more compassion for those who disagree with me, even while I insist on the need to recognize the full humanity of LGBTQ individuals and their rights. The empathy piece is key though. Both in humility to recognize how easily I could have ended up in their shoes. And in practicality, to adopt a more inviting and, dare I say, Christian approach to conflict.
But I also believe trying to shut down my gayness, to compartmentalize and lock away this part of me, is what made me able to so harshly view those protestors as only their sexuality. The smugness with which I smiled inside at that woman’s pain was a direct consequence of me being taught to hate and push away being queer. The coded language of you are more than just your sexuality I was constantly told, in practice meant that any acknowledgment of it was to claim queerness as my sole identity. And when I saw it in another, I suppose I wanted it destroyed.
A refusal to see myself clearly meant an inability to recognize anyone like me. That is the terrible hole so many of us gay Christians are still trying to climb out of. It is how some of the most vocal opponents of gay rights end up coming out of the closet when the weight of it becomes too much. They look at someone with all the same life experiences and instead of seeing themselves, only see what they think could shatter them.
There is a lot about my youthful zeal I wish I could go back and do again. But few pieces of my history gnaw at my conscience like my role in seeking to intimidate that woman. To intimidate myself, really. So far from fear not. I stood tall and puffed out my chest, but inside I was cowering.
What a grace to know I have nothing to fear. I hate my role I played in sending away others from the communion table. But I cherish my part in being able to invite them back.
Reaching Out is a publication dedicated to gathering LGBTQ stories from people of all faiths under one roof and around one table.
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