Backlash prompts Bishop Zubik to cancel Mass planned in solidarity with LGBTQ+ community
A Sunday Mass at Duquesne University’s chapel that had been planned in solidarity with LGBTQ+ Catholics was canceled at the request of Pittsburgh Bishop David A. Zubik because of an angry backlash including threats, officials confirmed Friday.
The Mass on the Catholic campus was arranged by Catholics for Change in Our Church, a Pittsburgh organization that supports social justice and various groups within the church. It holds monthly Masses there, and one held a year ago in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ Catholics was well-attended and without incident, the group said.
“We are very sad and very frustrated,” said Kevin Hayes, president of the organization’s board. “We feel it was an opportunity to affirm a group of Catholics, in this case LGBTQ+ (members), who don’t feel they are full members of the church.”
This Sunday’s Mass, which involved a number of other organizations, was to occur during Pride Month, which observes and celebrates the LGBTQ+ community.
“Given all that has transpired surrounding this event, I am asking that this gathering be canceled,” the bishop wrote. “It is my prayer we all, inclusive of the LGBTQ community, gather together on June 11th in our churches and chapels to celebrate the great Solemnity of Corpus Christi, and focus our attention on the Body of Christ in the Sacred Eucharist and the Body of Christ as the Church.”
In a letter to priests, deacons and seminarians in the diocese, including those associated with Duquesne, Zubik referred to the backlash and how he said the event had been promoted by some, including on social media.
“What we have learned is that independent sponsors, without the authorization of the pastors of the parishes listed, promoted the event with a flyer that confused some and enraged others,” Zubik said in the letter.
“This event was billed as a ‘Pride Mass’ organized to coincide with Pride Month, an annual secular observance that supports members of the LGBTQ community on every level, including lifestyle and behavior, which the church cannot endorse,” he wrote.
“Neither I, as bishop of the diocese, nor President Ken Gormley of Duquesne University knew anything about the Mass until calls came in to our respective offices over the holiday weekend,” Zubik added. “Many of the responses to the flyer jumped to the conclusion that I gave approval to this event. I did not. Many of the responses also used condemning and threatening and some might say hateful language not keeping with Christian charity, especially of the Lord’s command ‘to love one another as I have loved you.’ ”
Hayes said it appears that a person associated with one of the groups invited to participate in the Mass created the flyer referring to Pride Month.
“Everything seems to have gone sideways after that,” he said.
“We are concerned, committed Catholics. We are based in Pittsburgh. We formed to affirm the laity’s rightful role of co-responsibility in the church,” Hayes said. “We want to work collaboratively with clergy and have more transparency and competency and accountability in our church.”
Issues pertaining to gay and transgender people have been met with polarized views, not only in the church but within broader society, with some of it playing out in increasingly vitriolic takes on social media.
Hayes noted that The Daily Signal, a conservative website created by The Heritage Foundation, touted an exclusive story describing the bishop’s request May 31 that the Mass be canceled. It posted a copy of the flyer.
In his note, Zubik stated, “The Church has invested much energy in welcoming people who are dealing with sensitive issues in their lives. As Church, we all have the responsibility to love those who have same sex attraction. But at the same time, the Church cannot support behavior that goes against God’s law.”
“My hope is that the Church of Pittsburgh is welcoming to the LGBTQ community and, in turn, that the LGBTQ community is welcoming of the Church and her teachings,” the bishop added.
When contacted for comment, Duquesne shared a copy of the bishop’s remarks but did not immediately offer any additional comment.
More demented bigotry from the increasingly pathologically obsessed Gene Vincent.
ReplyDeleteIt is becoming blindingly obvious that Gene's obsessive hatred for homosexuality and homosexuals is curdling into a pathology, if not a psychosis. The strain of lying to himself about his own sexual ambivalence - evidenced not least by his over-wrought fixation on anal sexual intercourse, both hetero- and homosexual - is obviously approaching a point where something is about to give way.
Gene's personality crawls with clues - his claims to have fathered children with other men's wives - not only heterosexual but dominantly and piratically so; his boasting about his shameless sexual groping of young female colleagues [he would have run a mile had one of them opened her legs for him]; and of course his coarse scoffing at homosexuals - shirt-lifters, poofters, nancy-boys - all unmistakable evidence of his own self-loathing.
Most telling of all is his reaction to this insight - immediate censorship and removal of a post about it yesterday. Gene's inability to face the truth about himself is part of the series of fugues, flights from reality, of which the one he cannot face is the fact that the love he cannot stop himself obsessing about is also the one he dare not name in his own psyche. Sad, so sad.
Nor is there any point in refuting the crazed piffle of his current abusive posts about homosexuality. If you do, Gene will not engage with your arguments. Rather he merely selects statements from your counter-arguments, adds them to his original post and then simply gainsays them without engaging with your argument, usually adding an ad hominem insult about the your “impaired mental condition”. In this way he hopes to prevent any readers from following the argument below his original posts, thus distracting attention from the fact that his demented bigotry is, always and inevitably, humiliatingly and completely, exposed and defeated.
It also enables him to claim victory in arguments in which he is crushingly defeated. He used the same dishonest tactics years ago on TES Opinion, when his inept casuistry regularly turned him into a laughing stock, and his obtuseness used to both amuse and enrage.
I for one am done with wasting my time arguing with Gene, who has no regard at all for truth, honesty and integrity in debate. All he cares about is “winning” and, given that his arguments are so intellectually feeble and logically flawed, the only way he can even appear to win is to cheat.
He will, no doubt, claim that my resolve to stop debating his ridiculous bigotry is another “victory”, crowing about “bottle jobs” and insulting me as becoming senile - that is par for Gene’s malicious, nasty and shallow character. But somewhere, deep down, Gene knows what a shabby, dishonest, hypocritical fraud he is; and one day, I hope, he will find the guts to own this.
Miracles, after all, do happen.
"What homosexuals want - and are perfectly entitled to receive, is to be allowed to express their sexuality in whatever way suits them and their partners"
ReplyDeleteSUCH ACCEPTANCE WILL NEVER HAPPEN!" BELLOWS THE MORONIC GENE.
WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE FOR THIS CLAIM, GENE? NO, THOUGHT NOT.
"As I have pointed out the vast majority - religious or nonreligious - recoil from the depravity of sodomy and other homosexual practices."
IF THIS IS THE CASE, THEN PLEASE GIVE THE RESULTS OF THE OPINION POLLS CARRIED OUT BY IPSOS OR A SIMILARLY REPUTABLE OPINION RESEARCH COMPANY ASKING
[A] HETEROSEXUAL CHRISTIANS OF ALL DENOMINATIONS
AND
[B] HETEROSEXUAL ATHEISTS AND AGNOSTICS
THE FOLLOWING QUESTION:
SHOULD HOMOSEXUALS BE ALLOWED TO EXPRESS THEIR SEXUALITY IN ANY MANNER OF THEIR CHOICE, INCLUDING ANAL SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PROVIDED THAT SUCH EXPRESSION IS
[A] LEGAL
[B] CONSENSUAL?
AND UNTIL THEN, STOP TALKING MALICIOUS BOLLOCKS AND SHUT YOUR DRIVELLING MOUTH.
"And you must be the only person in the universe who denies the existence of the Gay Lobby."
NAME FIFTY MEMBERS OF THE "GAY LOBBY", AND GIVE AN ACCOUNT OF THEIR LAST TEN ORGANISED AND CONCERTED CAMPAIGNS.
NO, THOUGHT NOT.
Why not get off your fat, lazy arse and actually DO something - like volunteer as a hospital porter, as you promised to do all those years ago? Make soup and tray bakes and help to run a lunch club and a night meal service for the homeless and indigent? Read to the housebound? tend gardens or walk pets for the elderly, use your rusty teaching skills to volunteer in a school [as long as they didn't let you near the sixth form girls] - in other words, act like the Christian you claim to be.
ReplyDeleteJesus Christ didn't waste his time writing blogs that nobody reads or striking attitudes that make him look good - he got his hands dirty and did some actual good.
Too much trouble for a posturing fop like you.
"I, for some years now, have committed myself to fighting two great and damaging evils:"
Tell me about the marches you have been on, the rallies you have organised, the pressure groups you have joined, the letters you have written to your MP - another posturing fop like you. Of course you can't, because you have never actually DONE anything to fight what you see as these evils. Far easier to strike attitudes, you lazy, hypocritical, posturing arse.
""What homosexuals want - and are perfectly entitled to receive, is to be allowed to express their sexuality in whatever way suits them and their partners"
ReplyDeleteSUCH ACCEPTANCE WILL NEVER HAPPEN!" BELLOWS THE MORONIC GENE.
WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE FOR THIS CLAIM, GENE? NO, THOUGHT NOT.
"As I have pointed out the vast majority - religious or nonreligious - recoil from the depravity of sodomy and other homosexual practices.""
Read the article:
Backlash prompts Bishop Zubik to cancel Mass planned in solidarity with LGBTQ+ community
There is your answer.
"In his note, Zubik stated, “The Church has invested much energy in welcoming people who are dealing with sensitive issues in their lives. As Church, we all have the responsibility to love those who have same sex attraction. But at the same time, the Church cannot support behavior that goes against God’s law.”"
ReplyDeleteAgainst God's law. Got that Detterling?
""What homosexuals want - and are perfectly entitled to receive, is to be allowed to express their sexuality in whatever way suits them and their partners"
ReplyDeleteSUCH ACCEPTANCE WILL NEVER HAPPEN!" BELLOWS THE MORONIC GENE. WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE FOR THIS CLAIM, GENE? NO, THOUGHT NOT.
"As I have pointed out the vast majority - religious or nonreligious - recoil from the depravity of sodomy and other homosexual practices."" Read the article: Backlash prompts Bishop Zubik to cancel Mass planned in solidarity with LGBTQ+ community
There is your answer.
There is no answer at all, you malicious moron. DuQuesne Catholic University numbers about 10,000 students - where, in the article are the results from the poll within the university from which resulted your claim that the "vast majority recoil from" homosexual anal sexual intercourse or indeed any homosexual expressions of sexuality? Or is your "vast majority" a vast majority of its home town of Pittsburgh? or its home state of Pennsylvania? or the whole of the USA? or the whole WORLD?
Do you have a single statistic or shred of numerical evidence on which base your deplorably nasty and maliciously bigoted assertion that the "vast majority - religious or nonreligious - recoil from the depravity of sodomy and other homosexual practices."
OF COURSE YOU DON'T, GENE.
You simply cannot expect to get away with promoting your own viciously nasty opinions about homosexuality by claiming that a "vast majority" of people support them WITHOUT PRODUCING A SHRED OF EVIDENCE, YOU FUCKING MORON.
"But at the same time, the Church cannot support behavior that goes against God’s law.” Against God's law. Got that Detterling?"
ReplyDeleteThat is your opinion, Gene, and you are welcome to it - it is typical of your diseased mind. At the same time, a thing does not become true just because a Catholic Bishop has said and you agree with him. You have already lost the argument about the meaning of St Paul's statement that "all are one in Christ Jesus", so let us not have more balls-aching crap about arsenokoitai.
In particular, I do not accept the word of a Catholic Bishop whose hierarchy oversaw and assisted in covering up, in the diocese of Pennsylvania, the sexual abuse of children by more than 300 Catholic priests. Please consult the source of this report, basied on the findings of a large Grand Jury which included practising Catholics - The Guardian newspaper, August 2018.
"More than 300 “predator priests” were found to have committed sexual abuse in Pennsylvania, harming more than 1,000 children, according to a grand jury report released by the state supreme court on Tuesday. The near-900-page report is the result of one of the largest US investigations into sexual abuse in the Catholic church. In painful detail, it showcases how for decades one of the most powerful churches in the world hid the abuse and suffering of children.
The incidents described include a priest who impregnated a minor and helped her get an abortion, then was allowed to stay in the ministry; a priest who confessed to the oral and anal rape of at least 15 boys, including one as young as seven; and a priest who collected the urine, pubic hair and menstrual blood of girls he abused in his home.
The report said “almost every instance of abuse” was too old to be prosecuted, though two priests were identified and charged because of the report, including one who sexually assaulted two children monthly for several years until 2010.
“We know that child abuse in the church has not yet disappeared because we are charging two priests, in two different dioceses, with crimes that fall within the statute of limitations,” the report said. Twenty-three grand jurors – including practicing Catholics – worked for two years to compile the report based on internal documents surrendered by the six dioceses it investigated and testimony from victims.
The grand jury wrote that they also consulted the FBI, which analyzed cover-ups to find what the grand jury described as “a playbook for concealing the truth”.
The grand jury said it was able to identify more than 1,000 mostly male child victims, but expected there were thousands more because of lost records and victims who have not come forward."
Bishop David Zubik denounced the Grand Jury report, and passed the cases of two priests accused of sexual abuse to the Vatican despite their having occurred on his watch and, as recently as 2021, was sued for protecting and relocating another priest convicted of sexual abuse.
Do you SERIOUSLY expect me to respect the opinions of a shower of shit like that on sexual matters? Shut your filthy mouth and stop blaspheming the love of Christ, you disgusting little man.
"You have already lost the argument about the meaning of St Paul's statement that "all are one in Christ Jesus", so let us not have more balls-aching crap about arsenokoitai."
ReplyDeleteNo I most certainly have not lost the argument. I have repeatedly said that we are all one in Christ. We all are heirs to the Kingdom Of God.
The only thing that can remove us from inheriting the Kingdom is sin. You won't accept that will you? You want all - unrepentant murderers, thieves, sodomites etc - to enter the Kingdom of God. That won't happen
Anybody who equates consensual, loving sex to theft, assault and murder is as mad as a box of frogs. The trouble with talking crap is, that when it is refuted, all you do is shout it more loudly. You never demonstrated how, specifically in Galatians 3, St Paul made for exceptions for anyone, including homosexuals. Nor did you demonstrate that the being all one in Christ Jesus is theologically The
ReplyDeletethe same as inheriting the kingdom of god - because they aren’t and you can’t.
Yet another epic humiliation and fail from Gene “Barking Mad “ Vincent, the Claudia Winkelman of theology.
And I notice you dodge the column about Bishop Zubik. Typical arse-kissing creeping Jesus.
ReplyDelete