The Murder of Paul Broussard: A Catholic Bishop Speaks Out

“This Month in Catholic LGBT History” is Bondings 2.0’s new feature to educate readers of the rich history—positive and negative—that has taken place over the last four decades regarding Catholic LGBT equality issues.  We hope it will show people how far our Church has come, ways that it has regressed, and how far we still have to go.

Once a  month, Bondings 2.0 staff will produce a post on Catholic LGBT news events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions ofBondings 2.0’s predecessor:  Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. Unfortunately because these newsletters are only archived in hard copies, we cannot link back to the primary sources in most cases. 

1991: “The Murder of Paul Broussard”

In 1991, the gay-bashing death of a young Houston banker sparked a strong reaction from the local Catholic bishop in which he stated that to hate homosexuals “is to offend God.”

Paul Broussard was brutally beaten by ten youths–nine of whom were high school students–when he and his friends were leaving a nightclub in the Montrose section of Houston, known as a gay neighborhood, in the early morning hours of July 4, 1991.  Broussard was just blocks away from his home.  He was fatally stabbed twice during the attack.

First responders were slow to arrive at the scene, which was seen as a common practice for incidents in the Montrose neighborhood at that time because of fear of the AIDS virus.  The medical examiner indicated that “delay in treatment” was a cause of Broussard’s death.  In the days that followed, the city’s police chief declared that he had no intention of solving the crime, sparking days of protest marches at the mayor’s home by the gay community.  The protests went on to become the largest gay rights demonstration in Houston’s history.  Eventually, the attackers were apprehended and plea bargained to receive prison time.

Paul Broussard

On August 9th of that year, in the midst of all this turmoil, Houston’s Bishop Joseph Fiorenza took the unprecedented step of speaking out to condemn the brutality of this attack.  No bishop had ever spoken up against a gay bashing in such a public way. In a column in The Texas Catholic Herald entitled “The Death of Paul Broussard,” Fiorenza stated:

“To hate homosexuals is to offend God whose creative love gives life to every person and it is a violation of the Church’s teaching that every human being has immeasurable value and dignity which is to be respected by others. “

Fiorenza provided a theological basis for this claim:

“. . . [I]t is a religious truth that every person, regardless of lifestyle, is a child of God , formed in His image.  The ‘image of God’ in every person, whether a homosexual, a bisexual, or a heterosexual, is what gives dignity and worth to each individual, and is the reason that every person is th subject of human and civil rights.”

The bishop also got more specific in his instructions about how to eradicate the homophobia which caused such cruel acts:

“Any hatred of homosexuals or jokes about gay bashings or calling homosexuals by common epithets is clearly a violation of our responsibility to love as Christ loves every human person.  To hate or to violate another person, no matter whoo he or she is, continues the cyle of violence that can lead to other Paul Broussards’ being brutally killed just because they were thought to be homosexuals.  Please God, this will never again happen in our community. “

Bishop Fiorenza

Fiorenza also explained some recent experiences which brought the Broussard murder into a clearer focus for him:

“Shortly after Paul’s murder, I visited Central Europe and Berlin where I saw evidence of neo-Nazi anti-semitism   We must not forget that the demonic evil of Nazism also targeted homosexuals for the gas chambers.  Hitler wanted them eliminated.  God forbid that the Nazi hatred for homosexual would ever infiltrate into our community.  It is possible, however, if we are not alert to its dangers, and if we fail to teach the God-given dignity and worth of every human person.”

In an interesting move, the bishop also acknowledged that the failure to proclaim this teaching was part of the problem which caused gay bashing:

“. . . [O]ur tradtional mediating institutions [religious congregations, schools and homes] have failed society if anyone thinks ‘gay bashing’ is an acceptable form of diversion. Or what is worse, if any member of our religious congregations and schools has developed a hatred for homosexuals.”

He stressed that  the church’s teaching about human dignity needed to be proclaimed more strongly:

“The Church has always made an important anc clear distinction between homosexual orientation and homosexual genital activity.  The Church has not and does not condemn those with a homosexual orientation.  Furthermore, every religious faith teaches that homosexuals are to be respected and loved as brothers and sisters in the human family and any attack upon them is a violation of religious principles.

“In view of the tragic death of Paul Broussard, it is timely for all faiths to recall this teaching to that it will be clearly understood and hopefully prevent a repeat of deaths resulting from ‘gay bashing.’ “

Bishop Firorenza’s example stands as a witness which should motivate Catholic bishops around the world to speak out against violence inflicted on the LGBT community.  This lesson is particularly important for the bishops who continue to support laws which criminalize and severely penalize LGBT people.  The teaching on human dignity is clear and unambiguous.  Application of this teaching to these situations should be similarly clear and unambiguous.

–Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry

 

 

THIS MONTH IN CATHOLIC LGBT HISTORY: Georgetown University President Calls Gay Expulsion “Obscene”

“This Month in Catholic LGBT History” is Bondings 2.0’s new feature to educate readers of the rich history—positive and negative—that has taken place over the last four decades regarding Catholic LGBT equality issues.  We hope it will show people how far our Church has come, ways that it has regressed, and how far we still have to go.

Once a  month, Bondings 2.0 staff will produce a post on Catholic LGBT news events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions of Bondings 2.0’s predecessor:  Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. Unfortunately because these newsletters are only archived in hard copies, we cannot link back to the primary sources in most cases. 

Since this is a new experiment, we would appreciate hearing from you in the “Comments” section if you think an occasional feature such as this is helpful to you.  For other posts in this series, click here.

1990: Prelate’s order made priest wonder what has happened to the Church

After the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) issued its “Letter to the Bishops on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons” in 1986, many U.S. bishops began expelling chapters of DignityUSA from the use of church property.  The ostensible reason was that the bishops believed that the groups did not follow church teaching on gay and lesbian sexual relationships.  One of the chapters which eventually was expelled from church property was Dignity/Washington in the nation’s capital, which had been meeting at the Dahlgren Chapel of the Jesuit-run Georgetown University.

Fr. Timothy Healy, SJ, was the president of the university at the time, and he personally delivered the expulsion notice to the Dignity community at a liturgy.  Fr. Healy, who has since passed away, was one of the leading college presidents and intellectuals of his day.  From Georgetown University, he went on to another prestigious position: the president of the New York Public Library system.  In 1990, Fr. Healy gave the John Courtney Murray Forum Lecture at Fordham University, New York.  During that talk, he said that he felt his expulsion of the Dignity chapter was “obscene” and made him wonder “what happened to my Church.”

A Religion News Service story published in The Catholic Messenger, Davenport, Iowa, on May 31, 1990, with the headline “Prelate’s order made priest wonder what has happened to the Church,” reported on the lecture and the comment.  The story began:

“The Jesuit priest who formerly headed Georgetown University said he questioned what has happened to the Catholic Church the day he was forced to tell an organization of homosexuals that it could no longer have Mass on campus.”

Father Timothy Healy, SJ

The story continued:

“Fr. Healy said the university chapter of Dignity, an organization of homosexuals, had been holding Sunday Masses for 15 years when he received a formal order in 1987 from Archbishop James Hickey of Washington, D.C. that the Mass had to be discontinued.”

But delivering the news was not the end of the story for Fr. Healy:

“Although he obeyed the order, he said he was haunted by a contrasting memory of 30 years earlier.  As a young priest spending some time in Spain, he was asked to assist in hearing confessions for two nights in Valencia when ‘the cathedral was reserved for “las carteladas,” the city’s prostitutes. . . .

The memory of that confessional experience of listening to people who were outcast from society was with him the night he delivered Hickey’s order to the Dignity community. He said of that night:

“For the first time in my life as a priest I felt what I was doing at that altar was obscene, and with the Spanish memory strong in my mind I wondered what had happened to my Church.”

One wonders what Fr. Healy would think about the last few decades of the Church, where under John Paul II and Benedict XVI, we have witnessed an even tighter closing of the doors and shunning of anyone whose thinking might differ one iota from official doctrine.  How rare it was in 1990 for a church leader to admit that he had been wrong about a negative policy regarding lesbian and gay people.

Fr. Healy’s comments were made  in his lecture titled “Probity and Freedom on the Border,” which the news story described as a talk which

“. . . discussed the function of the Jesuit university as a meetingplace of Church and world.  As a forum, the university, he said, ‘is full fed and draws upon the best of science, the humanities, the social sciences and the arts.”

The story continued to expand on Healy’s opinion:

“But some Church officials, like those in Galileo’s time, ‘solemnly refused to look through the telescopes for fear of what they might see,’ he said.  In two recent cases the document on in vitro fertilization [a CDF instruction condemning artificial means of conception] and the first draft of a universal catechism, officials in charge of those efforts ignored Church-related academic institutions.

“Referring to the in vitro fertilization document, Fr. Healy said, ‘With five major Catholic medical centers at its disposal, Rome consulted none of them.  The result is, of course, a faulty document.’ “

Healy’s comments about Catholic campuses are extremely relevant today.  As Bondings 2.0 reports in our “Campus Chronicles” series, Catholic colleges and universities are often leading the way in terms of policies and programs which support LGBT students, faculty, and staff.

And despite the expulsions in the late 1980s, Dignity chapters and DignityUSA continue to thrive, bringing justice and pastoral care to those still considered outcasts.

Catholics in the future will look back on the days of struggle for Catholic LGBT equality in the 1980s and 1990s, and even up to today, and ask a similar question to Healy’s:  “What happened to our Church?”

–Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry

 

 

THIS MONTH IN CATHOLIC LGBT HISTORY: Archbishop Instrumental in Passing Gay Rights Law

Today, Bondings 2.0 inaugurates a new feature, “This Month in Catholic LGBT History.” We hope this feature will serve to educate readers of the rich history—positive and negative—that has taken place over the last four decades regarding Catholic LGBT equality issues.  We hope it will show people how far our Church has come, ways that it has regressed, and how far we still have to go.

Once a  month, Bondings 2.0 staff will produce a post on Catholic LGBT news events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions of Bondings 2.0’s predecessor:  Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. Unfortunately because these newsletters are only archived in hard copies, we cannot link back to the primary sources in most cases. 

Since this is a new experiment, we would appreciate hearing from you in the “Comments” section if you think an occasional feature such as this is helpful to you.

1991: Archbishop Instrumental in Passing Gay Rights Law

In April 1991, Connecticut’s state legislature was debating a bill that would outlaw discrimination against lesbian and gay people  in housing, employment, and public accommodation.  The bill had originally been introduced in 1973, but always failed.  On April 5, 1991, in the midst of the debate, Hartford’s Archbishop John F. Whealon wrote a column entitled “The church and the homosexual person” in the archdiocesan newspaper The Catholic Transcript,  in which he stated that discrimination against lesbian and gay people “is always morally wrong.”

The Gay Paper reported:

“Whealon’s comments on homosexuality were quickly interpreted as a tacit endorsement of [the] gay rights bill that the state’s Roman Catholic bishops have opposed for years.”

The newspaper also noted:

“In the General Assembly, lawmakers on both sides of the debate said the bishops’ neutrality could mean the General Assembly will pass a gay rights bill this month.

” ‘The neutral position of the church is tantamount to approval.  There is no question about that,’  said Rep. William L. Wollenberg, R-Farmington. ‘People here have said, “If the church isn’t against it, I’m not against it.” ‘ “

The following are some excerpts from Whealon’s column:

Archbishop John F. Whealon

“What is the official teaching of the Catholic Church concerning homosexuality? . . . The cornerstone of this teaching is the dignity of every human being.  Every person is made in God’s image and therefore worthy of love, and must recognize in self a spiritual and mortal soul, and must regard the body as good and honorable because God has created it and will raise it up on the last day. . . . The dignity of every son and daughter of God is basic for any Catholic in approaching this question about homosexual persons. . . .

“The official teachings of the Catholic Church make a sharp distinction between homosexuality as an orientation, which is a tendency or attraction to the same sex, and homosexuality as expressing itself in sexual acts.  The Church clearly teaches that homosexual men and women should not suffer from prejudice on the basis of their sexual orientation.  Such discrimination is contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and is always morally wrong. The Church also consistently teaches that homosexual acts are immoral, against the natural law, and not to be practiced by any person who wants to follow God’s law. . . .

When parents and siblings learn that their son or daughter, brother or sister, is homosexual in orientations, often the topic is discussed in an atmosphere of fear and anger.  Alienation of members of a family from one another is the result. Relatives need to show understanding and the homosexual person needs to be more perceptive of the family’s lack of understanding.  Trust and openness and love are needed in every attempt at reconciliation.

To those who are burdened by the cross of homosexual self-hatred, a special message is also needed.  The Church reminds them that they must accept themselves as God made them, that as persons they also are the handiwork of God, redeemed by the Blood of Christ and cherished by the Church.”

What I think is interesting about Whealon’s approach is that he sees human dignity as the “cornerstone” of church teaching about lesbian and gay people.  While he clearly affirms the magisterium’s disapproval of sexual expression between people of the same sex, it seems that he sees the teaching on human dignity as more basic to the discussion.  It’s important to note this ordering of priorities because under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the reverse order was usually promoted:  sexual ethics was seen as primary, with human dignity mentioned often seemingly as an afterthought.  Pope Francis, who also upholds the church’s sexual ethics teaching about lesbian and gay relationships, does seem to be returning, however, to Whealon’s set of priorities.  Pope Francis and other church leaders need to be more explicit about this ordering or priorities, and to be more explicit in their defense of human dignity and rights for LGBT people.

On April 17, 1991,  The New York Times reported that Connecticut’s gay rights bill passed its final legislative hurdle, a Senate vote, and was on its way for the governor’s approval, which it received. At the time the bill’s passage was historically significant because only three other states and the District of Columbia had such protections:

“Wisconsin, Massachusetts and Hawaii have gay-rights laws on their books. Between 50 and 100 cities, counties and other jurisdictions also offer some legal protection, including New York City and the District of Columbia, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.”

The news story noted some legislators’ observation about the 1991 debate:

“Lawmakers said that several factors were different this year. The Roman Catholic Church, in particular, which had been perceived to be in opposition before, played no role in opposing the legislation this year. . . .

“The co-chairman of the General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, Representative Richard D. Tulisano, Democrat of Rocky Hill, said the church’s role, or at least its lack of opposition, was probably the key.

” ‘It created a different atmosphere,’ he said in an interview. Mr. Tulisano, who has worked in support of the measure since the mid 1970’s in the Assembly, said that in previous years, much of the debate was spent on whether gay people represented a threat to traditional family values.

“This year, however, he said lawmakers finally focused equally on the threat that discrimination posed to society. ‘The whole tone was different,’ he said.”

Another interesting quality about Whealon’s column is he never once mentioned the gay rights bill in the legislature.  That is quite a difference from today’s bishops who frequently opine explicitly on bills.  Perhaps Whealon did not want to explicitly support the bill, or perhaps he did not want to be seen as engaging in political debate.  Regardless of his motivation, it is clear that politicians inferred his support, allowing them to vote for its passage in a strong Catholic state.

–Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry