Parish Welcomes Lesbian Couple Back to Music Ministry with Inclusive Mass

St. Michael’s Church, Athy

Catholics in Ireland welcomed a lesbian couple back to their parish after a right-wing parishioner pressured the couple to leave last year.

Jacinta O’Donnell and Geraldine Flanagan had resigned as choir leaders for St. Michael’s Church in Athy, County Kildare. Last week, they returned to the parish and resumed their roles with overwhelming support from the local community. The couple was interviewed by radio station KFM and said they received public support that “overwhelmed and humbled” them. O’Donnell told The Journal:

“We will never be able to sufficiently thank you, the people of our congregation, the people of our town Athy, for your love, your support and your prayers. Buoyed by all of this support, we as a choir will be returning to sing at 6pm Mass in Athy tomorrow evening. . .It is our wish that the focus should now turn to the love of God and his mercy.”

The couple married in July 2015, after which the editor of a right-wing Catholic newspaper publicly criticized them and contacted them through a “very personal text.” Facing pressure, they resigned from the music ministry, as well as from leadership positions with Lay Dominicans Ireland.

O’Donnell said their whole purpose in serving in the music ministry was to “enhance the Eucharist,” but, during the dust-up last year they felt that perpetuating the controversy fueled by this right wing editor “would be really futile and would negate anything we’re trying to do.” So, they made the “very difficult decision” to resign, despite being supported by the pastor, Fr. Frank McEvoy, and fellow parishioners.

The Mass welcoming O’Donnell and Flanagan back was quite the liturgical celebration, reported The Irish Times. Parishioner Sandy O’Rourke-Glynn posted a video on Facebook, which you can view below.  O’Rourke-Glynn commentedd, “I have never enjoyed a mass as much – 5 priests, 8 altar servers, a full choir and a packed church.”

The Mass is a positive ending for an ugly incident. This is not the first time right wing members of the church have targeted LGBT people, and it is likely not the last. Recent examples include the forced resignations of Catholic News Service editor Tony Spence and Catholic Relief Services’ Rick Estridge, as well as denial of communion to Barbara Johnson, at her mother’s funeral. But the community in Athy has exhibited Irish hospitality, especially the Catholics at St. Michael’s Church who lived their faith by standing up for inclusion and justice against right-wing attacks. And by loving one another and remaining faithful to God, Jacinta O’Donnell and Geraldine Flanagan certainly enhanced the Eucharist last Saturday. Thankfully, they can now do so at many Masses to come.

–Bob Shine, New Ways Ministry

Vatican Marks David Bowie’s Passing By Praising Him

David Bowie

Even the Vatican has marked singer David Bowie’s passing, praising the artist whose life and career perpetually challenged sexual and gender norms, and who, at varying points in his life, identified as gay and bisexual..

Among the first to honor Bowie was Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi of the Pontifical Council for Culture who tweeted lyrics from the musicians 1969 song “Space Oddity”:

“Ground Control to Major Tom/Commencing countdown, engines on/Check ignition and may God’s love be with you (David Bowie)”

L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, published an obituary complimenting Bowie. The New York Times reported:

“The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano has eulogized David Bowie as a singular musician, ‘never banal,’ who grew artistically over five decades thanks to his interest in art, film and theater.

“The paper, which frequently weighs in on pop culture, noted the ‘ambiguous image’ Bowie cultivated early on in his career and blamed it on his aim to attract media attention.

“But it said that aside from such ‘excesses,’ Bowie’s legacy ‘is one of a sort of personal sobriety, expressed even in his dry, almost thread-like body.’ “

Tweet by Cardinal Ravasi

This is kind, if unexpected, praise from the Vatican for Bowie, who challenged gender norms. Zack Ford of Think Progress explained:

“This confusion was apparent in his own sexuality, which never seemed to fit neatly into any particular label. First he was gay. Then he was bisexual. Then coming out as bisexual was the ‘biggest mistake I ever made,’ because he didn’t ever feel that he was a ‘real bisexual.’ He admitted to having same-sex sexual interactions, ‘but frankly, it wasn’t enjoyable.’ In terms of sex and relationships, his own description of himself as ‘promiscuous’ may have been the most accurate of them all, but it reflected, as in the other aspects of his life and career, defiance of convention.”

Commenting further on Bowie’s significance for LGBT communities, a columnist with The Daily Beast wrote:

“In his refusal to label himself, there didn’t appear to be a cowardice, but rather an honesty and maturity around how unfixed, at least for him, the notion of sexuality was. That proved to be its own liberation, or at least freeing, moment for so many of every kind of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The Vatican’s praise for David Bowie has generated global headlines, fueled by the dissonance created in bringing together rigid Catholic officials and the unconfined seeker that was David Bowie. That the Vatican’s newspaper was so affirming is a positive sign for LGBT issues in the church, likely another outcome from Pope Francis’ improved engagement with the world and demand for all people to be respected and valued.

I think Cardinal Ravasi and those behind the L’Osservatore Romano article are touching a deeper truth that connects Pope Francis, David Bowie, and all of us in between: the path to holiness is the journey towards authenticity. To paraphrase the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, “To be a saint is to be yourself.”

The world benefited from Bowie’s art, just as Catholics benefits from the many LGBT people who, in their own journeys to authenticity, help break down harmful gender and sexual norms in the church. We are all richer for the carefully tended fruits which then emerge.

David Gibson of Religion News Service headlined a column, “Saint David Bowie?” Perhaps we can just remove the question mark and simply say, “Saint David Bowie.”

–Bob Shine, New Ways Ministry

Prominent Gay Musician Fired from Catholic Parish

Mike McMahon

A gay church worker’s firing from 2013 has just recently become public. Mike McMahon, a prominent music minister, was fired from his position in the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia for marrying his husband.

McMahon worked for nearly four decades in music ministry, including service as president of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians and thirty years as music director for various parishes.

His latest position, from 2005-2013, was at St. Agnes Church in Arlington, whose pastor, Fr. Lee Roos, fired McMahon last summer after his marriage became known. The Washington Post reports further:

“McMahon said his meeting with Roos was less than half an hour. Church employees had verified that McMahon had married his partner in February [2013], and he could either resign or be fired, McMahon said Roos told him. He opted to be fired and was told the dismissal from the part-time position was effective immediately, he recalled recently.

” ‘He called HR and asked them to walk him through what he had to do. Then we walked over to the church where my stuff was. We walked to the parking lot, he gave me a hug and that was it,’ McMahon said of the exchange with Roos.”

Shortly after he was fired, McMahon also left his position at the National Association of Pastoral Musicians for undisclosed reasons. Michael Donohue, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Arlington, defended the firing because the marriage could “cause scandal in the church and confusion among the laity.” Of all this, the Post writes:

“McMahon is still figuring out the place of a Catholic musician who can’t work at a Catholic church. He feels just as Catholic, he said, and still attends a longtime downtown service with a group of gay and lesbian Catholics. And being out has, in his seventh decade, transformed his concept of his job. “

‘This has been a really freeing experience. One blessing is I no longer, I don’t think that way. I am who I am. And I can’t serve in ministry without being who I am — that I have to be careful who I say what to. Here it’s just normal. The church doesn’t revolve around’ the issue, he said [of a Protestant church in Washington, DC where he serves as music director currently].

“On the other hand, ‘serving in the ministry of the [Catholic] Church has been my identity my whole life. This placed me outside of that. I now think of myself as not able to serve in church ministry. I know I’m Catholic, and I know I belong, but I can’t do part of what makes me me.’ “

Michelle Boorstein of the Post explores the devastating trend of LGBT and ally church workers being fired from schools and parishes in the article, which you can read in full by clicking here. She mentions recent firings, as well as the new trend of explicitly anti-gay morality clauses in teacher contracts now used by Cincinnati and Hawaii Catholic schools. You can read about more than two dozen firings in recent years by clicking the ‘Employment Issues‘ section of this blog.

As for McMahon’s firing, he speaks eloquently to an overlooked reality when it comes to these firings. For many LGBT church workers, their identity is just as closely tied to being Catholic as to their sexual orientation or gender identity. Their employment is not just a job, but a ministry offered in service to the Church and to the world. Michael O’Loughlin tackled this false notion that LGBT and Catholic identities are exclusive, or even set against each other, in The Advocate recently. Responding to Bill Donohue’s antics around the New York St. Patrick’s Day parade, O’Loughlin writes:

“It’s not one or the other; this isn’t a zero-sum game. LGBT people should celebrate being their authentic selves. So should straight people. Draw the circle wide, as the hymn I learned in divinity school says.

“Here’s the thing about Donohue. He riles up people for money. He doesn’t believe in the bigotry he inspires. In fact, just last month he admitted that he believes LGBT people should be legally protected against discrimination in the workplace.

“But something Donohue might not understand is that to be a person of faith is not at odds with being an openly LGBT person. As a fellow Catholic, he surely knows as many holy and healthy gay priests as I do. So to claim that gay people who ask to march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade are attacking Catholicism, as he does, is nonsense.”

The firing of LGBT church workers and those who support their equal rights under the law is the true scandal, not the loving commitment of same-gender partners. In an emerging world where LGBT justice is increasingly the standard, church institutions are faced with the choice of losing talented ministers or accepting people, as our Catholic faith instructs us. Let us hope parishes and schools will make the right choice, but in the meantime, help prevent future firings by advocating for non-discrimination policies.

–Bob Shine, New Ways Ministry