Between faith and homosexuality there is not necessarily a fracture

Sometimes the boxes in which we feel the need to insert the people we know enter apparently conflict. Faith and homosexuality, for example, can coexist in the same person? But how is it possible, some are wondered, on Friday evening go to an LGBT party in the disco and on Sunday morning take part in a mass?

We talked about it with Paologay doctor, practicing Catholic and voluntary de Gonate’s tentan association that since 2018 welcomes, form and informs people (and their respective families) that are at the same time Catholics and part of the LGBT community.

From a website to a project with groups throughout Italy

Born as a simple information site, the Gionata project soon joined an association, Gonate’s tentwhich today has active groups throughout Italy. The initiative is the result of an intuition had in 2018 from the prematurely disappeared Don David Esposito And, as Paolo explains, today he organizes various activities that somehow aim to remedy the apparent fracture between being part of the LGBT and Catholic community. All in the firm conviction that “There is a welcoming church towards the differences: Ours is not a battle against windmills, if anything it is a matter of opening doors that vice versa risk remaining closed ».

Among the organized events there are biblical-theological training meetings, book presentations, retreats and projects such as I trust youdedicated to listening to Catholic gays who live complex situations.

How the relationship between faith and homosexuality is changing

What Paul tells us about the evolution of the relationship between homosexuality and Catholicism is in the name of a difference, of a deviation, between a more formal level and the reality of those who live the faith every day. With a trend, after Pope Francis, to one greater opening (net of opposite sign slips): “An opening never seen before, if we consider even that it was the first to call us by name in an official document, what is followed by the Synod dedicated to young people in 2016, where the abbreviation LGBT appears for the first time”.

Yes, because in general in official documents and in the magisterium homosexuality is not even indicated as a sexual orientation, but as “one disordered tendency. From the point of view of the magisterium, the Church is still quite firm on these themes, but pastorally it has gone far ahead ».

An evolution that was born from the bottom, as already happened for other themes in the past: «We only think that until a few centuries ago slavery was tolerated by the Catholic magisterium. But it is the acting of people from below who changes these settings, even if sometimes – it is the case to say it – with biblical times ».

Catholic gays, however, know how to be patient, also thanks to the awareness that “we are church, we do not need someone to ratify it: We do not aim for acceptance but if anything to recognition. Jesus himself said that where two or more are gathered in my name, I am in the middle. There is no distinction based on sexual orientation and Pope Francis himself, when he accepted the vice -president of our association, reiterated They are all sons and daughters of God».

And that’s okay, what is in writing in the official documents of the Catholic Church is very important for a believer, but never, in no case, should be used to make you feel uncomfortable or, worse, wrong, someone. Even when we talk about the Bible: «In some training encounters we invite a biblist who can dispel false myths about what the Bible says about homosexual people. The Bible is not a weapon to use against the LGBT community. Ours is not a God -wrapped god ».

The complexity of a double coming out

When we talk about differences that are not serenely accepted by the people we relate to we are always a coming out. It happens with the non -prevalent sexual guidelines, but in the case of Catholic gays in some way also with faith. «I can assure you that at the beginning it is not easy to say: on Friday we see you at the Boum (a well -known LGBT evening in Milan, editor’s note) But on Sunday I go to Mass ».

The risk is to feel different From those who surround us in both contexts and for this reason the work of associations such as the Gionata tent becomes precious (the groups that work on these themes are different and after the pandemic, Paolo tells, they have also increased in Southern Italy): it allows people to feel at home again, safe, beyond their faith and their sexual orientation. “If we don’t do it, nobody does it in our place” continues Paolo, “but the tent is witness that there are as many difficulties as welcome: we do not cry on us, the Christian is a man of hope”.

Eliminate the stigma closer to faith

When a person feels that he has to hide or give up a piece of his identity, there is the concrete risk of moving away from the community in which he lives. An eventuality that Gionata’s tent wants to avoid, doing everything possible so that a non -prevalent sexual orientation and Catholic faith can coexist in serenity. A serenity that also infects families of origin.

«In our association, several LGBT Catholic parents are active. After all, a child is flesh of his meat and A parent warns the consequences of discrimination on his own skin. It is beautiful to see the faith of the parents flourish that include that there is not necessarily a fracture between Catholicism and homosexuality “.

A fracture that after all would be unthinkable in the project that Catholics recognize in the work of God: “He created us like this and certainly did not make a factory error”, jokes Paul. “After all, if God had not loved the differences, he would not have created the incredible and varied beauty that we see every day around us.”