InDignit-y

Two final speakers at the Dignity/USA Convention were a Passionist priest from Pittsburgh, Thomas Bonacci, and the Jesuit executive director of the University Ministry at the University of San Francisco (USF),

Donal Godfrey, who splits his time between his home country of England and the U.S. Godfrey was effusively about the support he receives from the president of USF and the head of the worldwide Jesuit order for the educational work he does on homosexuality with students and was encouraged, particularly by the head of his order, to further hone his leadership skills in this area.

Bonacci’s “The Gender Transcendence of Jesus: Reflections on John’s Gospel” was an “experiential meditation concerning Jesus’ humanity found in John’s Gospel,” and explored different texts in which the speaker concluded that Jesus assumed various “gender realities, only to transcend any particular gender expression, i.e. being a male.”

Godfrey, in his caucus “Gays and Grays; Parish-Based Pastoral Care for GLBT People,” used his book Gays and Grays: the Story of the Gay Community at the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church to talk about parish-based pastoral care for LGBT people in differing cultures, countries and local parishes, like St. Columba in north Oakland.

Godfrey proclaimed that he had marched in the San Francisco “Gay Parade” a number of years ago for three consecutive years, wearing his Roman collar, and was not in the least disturbed by learning that San Francisco Archbishop Levada had sent a video of this to the Vatican.

As an Englishman, he was particularly gratified by the fact that the recently retired cardinal-archbishop of England and Wales, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, had permitted Dignity to move its services from an Episcopalian church to the Catholic St. Patrick’s in Soho, London.

Godfrey bemoaned the fact that “he did not see such Church teaching changing any time soon.” He was not sure about the attitudes on homosexual matters by the recently installed (and presumably soon to be cardinal) archbishop of Westminster (in London), Vincent Nichols. But perhaps Archbishop Nichols (and members of the U.S. episcopacy, including San Francisco’s Niederauer) will emulate senior Church of England bishop, Michael Nazir-Ali, who recently angered gay-rights activists by writing in the (London) Sunday Telegraph that “gays should repent and be changed,” and that the Bible defines marriage only as the union of a man and a woman.
Link (here) to the full article at the California Catholic Daily.

Photo is of Fr. Donal Godfrey, S.J.