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Francis DeBernardo
Executive Director, New Ways Ministry
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Most Recent Press Statement

April 8, 2024

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Catholic LGBTQ+ Ministry Highly Critical of Vatican Document’s Approach to Gender Identity

Statement of Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry

MOUNT RAINIER, Maryland—The new Vatican document, Dignitas Infinita, fails terribly by offering transgender and nonbinary people not infinite, but limited human dignity. While it lays out a wonderful rationale for why each human being, regardless of condition in life, must be respected, honored, and loved, it does not apply this principle to gender-diverse people.

In its approach to gender, the document relies on the outdated theology of gender essentialism which claims that a person’s physical appearance is the central evidence of a person’s natural gender identity. This physicalist perspective prevents the Vatican from embracing the growing consciousness that a person’s gender includes the psychological, social, and spiritual aspects naturally present in their lives.

Far from being an individual’s choice, gender identity is based on a discovery of who God created each of us to be accounting for factors other than the physical appearance of one’s body.

The document’s attempt to uphold and defend human dignity is weakened by its stunning lack of awareness of the actual lives of transgender and nonbinary people The Vatican’s arguments and conclusions on gender identity and gender transitions indicate that the authors failed to consult developments about gender in the biological, psychological, and social sciences. Worse yet, it shows the authors did not listen intently to the lived experience of people who have discovered, often after painful and torturous journeys, that God has naturally created them with a gender identity beyond social expectations, usually based on physical appearance.

By simply dismissing this growing awareness of the realities of gender as “gender theory,” the authors of this document abdicate their responsibility to uphold transgender and nonbinary people’s dignity. By cavalierly categorizing LGBTQ+ inclusion as a Western phenomenon imposed in a colonialist fashion on other cultures, the authors ignore the anthropological fact, documented by many scholars even before the current day, that cultures around the world and throughout history have acknowledged and celebrated gender identities beyond the church’s claims of male/female gender binary.

If ideological gender theory and colonization exist in the world, it exists in the schema outlined by this document a person’s gender is based on physical appearance, and that only two genders, male and female, exist in human reality. Recent discoveries and experiences show that the poverty of church leaders’ thinking about transgender and nonbinary denies the rich diversity with which God created the world.

The document should not be dismissed as simply an abstract theological conversation with few human consequences. Rather, the Vatican is again supporting and propagating ideas that lead to real physical harm to transgender, nonbinary, and other LGBTQ+ people. They are harmed by the very violence which this document condemns in economic, psychological, spiritual, social, and most tragically, physical forms, resulting in grave damage that often leads to death.

While Vatican officials do not yet understand transgender and nonbinary’s people infinite dignity, the Catholic faithful have already done so. Catholics, especially the laity but even some bishops, have come to know, accept, and love people with diverse gender identities. Like many instances in the past, the LGBTQ-positive faithful will call on church officials to better apply Catholic social teaching to the realities of gender and sexual identities today.

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New Ways Ministry is a 47-year old national Catholic ministry of justice and reconciliation for LGBTQ+ Catholics and the wider church community. For more information, visit www.NewWaysMinistry.org.

April 5, 2024

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Bishop Gumbleton: Remembering a Prophetic Pioneer of Catholic LGBTQ+ Equality

Statement of Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry

MOUNT RAINIER, Maryland—With great sadness and great gratitude, New Ways Ministry mourns the passing of our dear friend, Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton. We will miss both his courageous voice for justice, which rang through our church, our country, and our world, and his gentle personal presence which touched our hearts.

He spoke on many issues, but the one most important to us was his uncompromising pursuit of justice for LGBTQ people, particularly in the church. Bishop Gumbleton paved the way for Pope Francis. Decades before this pope’s openness, when a Catholic leader’s support for LGBTQ people could negatively affect one’s stature in the church, Bishop Gumbleton spoke fearlessly with compassion and certainty that were rooted in a deep commitment to the Gospel of Jesus.

He was not concerned about his own reputation or person. He was concerned that justice be done, that people be accepted, and that the institutional Catholic Church have the courage to live up to its own best ideals.

In the 34 years that he had been public about his support for LGBTQ issues, Bishop Gumbleton did more than any other member of the hierarchy to move church members, theologians, and pastoral ministers to extend a friendly and welcoming hand to LGBTQ people. For him, LGBTQ issues were not a question of sex, but of justice.

His passion for LGBTQ issues sprang from his relationship with his brother, Dan, who was gay. Bishop Gumbleton confessed that, when he first learned that Dan was gay, he was concerned about how Dan’s identity might reflect negatively upon him. But the bishop was moved by a question his mother asked him, “Is Dan going to hell?” He quickly disavowed her of that notion and began to realize the truth of faith: God loves everyone, so the church should welcome everyone, just as they are.

When asked once how Catholics could get more bishops to speak out positively on gay issues, Bishop Gumbleton answered, “Find the gay and lesbian members of your families. That experience will change you.”

New Ways Ministry is grateful for our relationship with Bishop Gumbleton over many decades. At New Ways Ministry’s 1992 national symposium, Bishop Gumbleton first spoke publicly about his gay brother and how the Catholic Church needed to do so much more for LGBTQ people and for people like his mother. After that event, he began criss-crossing the United States, speaking to Catholic groups to help them better understand and welcome LGBTQ people. On such occasions, he sometimes celebrated Mass wearing a bishop’s miter adorned with a pink triangle and rainbow colors.

From 1997 to 2002, Bishop Gumbleton served on New Ways Ministry’s Advisory Board, stopping only because of a direct order from Pope John Paul II’s Vatican to separate from the organization. He did separate in a public sense, but continued to attend board meetings and offered his wisdom and counsel. In 1992, Bishop Gumbleton collaborated with New Ways Ministry in recruiting 20 bishops to ask the National Conference of Catholic Bishops to write a pastoral letter to Catholic parents of lesbian and gay children. The result, five years later, was the document, Always Our Children. To this day, Always Our Children remains the most positive statement the U.S. bishops conference has produced on LGBTQ issues.

In 1992, Bishop Gumbleton received New Ways Ministry’s “Bridge Building Award” for his brave pastoral leadership. During the introduction to the event, the emcee thanked Daretta Williams, Bishop Gumbleton’s secretary, for her help in planning. When Bishop Gumbleton was called to the stage to accept the award, amidst sustained, thunderous applause, and a standing ovation, he whispered to the emcee, “Thank you for mentioning Daretta.”

In a moment when he could have basked in glory, his first thought was not for himself, but for his secretary. Such is the example of humility that is part of Bishop Thomas Gumbleton’s legacy.

The road ahead for LGBTQ Catholics is still a perilous one within their own church. Last year’s Synod General Assembly in Rome showed that achieving consensus on questions of sexuality and gender appear to be in the distant future. But perhaps the closing Synod assembly in October 2024 will produce a surprisingly more positive outcome for LGBTQ people because we now have a powerful saint in heaven whose calls for justice and equality, for compassion and welcome have not died, and they will continue to echo through eternity.

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December 18, 2023

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Pope’s Blessings Approval An Early Christmas Gift to LGBTQ+ Catholics

Statement of Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry

MOUNT RAINIER, Maryland—Pope Francis gave LGBTQ+ Catholics an early Christmas gift this year by approving blessings for same-gender couples. The Vatican doctrinal office’s previous claim that “God does not bless sin” has been uprooted by the new exhortation, “God never turns away anyone who approaches him!”

It cannot be overstated how significant the Vatican’s new declaration is. Approving blessings for same-gender couples is certainly monumental. But Pope Francis goes further than that by stating that people should not be subjected to “an exhaustive moral analysis” to receive a sign of God’s love and mercy. Such a declaration is one more step Pope Francis has taken to overturn the harsh policing of pastoral care all too common under his predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

In contrast, Pope Francis desires pastoral care in which, in the declaration’s words, “every brother and every sister will be able to feel that, in the Church, they are always pilgrims, always beggars, always loved, and, despite everything, always blessed.” By opening blessings to same-gender couples, the institutional church now expands the ways that LGBTQ+ Catholics can know God’s love. And this declaration benefits not only the couples blessed, but every queer person and ally who has had a difficult relationship with the church.

This declaration is proof that church teaching can—and does—change. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has now overturned in full its 2021 statement prohibiting queer blessings because, it claimed, “God does not bless sin.” And how does change happen? Formal approval in teaching often recognizes what people are already doing pastorally and theologically. Practice precedes teaching. So, too, with LGBTQ+ blessings.

For decades, the laity, joined by some religious and clergy, have called for greater inclusion of same-gender couples. In the past few years, this call has become louder in places like Germany, where the Synodal Way process approved such blessings earlier this year. The question of blessings in Germany has been a contentious point, sparking criticism from the Vatican and even Pope Francis. His decision now to approve blessings shows the pope is willing to listen, learn, and respond meaningfully to God’s people, something every church leader should be doing.

When I had the honor of meeting Pope Francis this past October, one of his statements that most impressed me was that a thing he is most upset about in the church is priests who chastise people in the confessional. That time, he said, should be a time of welcome, love, and mercy, not a punishment. This new declaration about blessing same-gender couples is an example of that kind of pastoral attitude.

LGBTQ+ Catholics worldwide welcome this early Christmas gift, which brings them much closer to being full and equal members of the Church they love so dearly.

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New Ways Ministry is a 46-year old national Catholic ministry of justice and reconciliation for LGBTQ+ Catholics and the wider church community. For more information, visit www.NewWaysMinistry.org.

November 8, 2023

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Vatican’s New Transgender Policy Reflects Pope Francis’ Pastoral Approach to LGBTQ+ People

Statement of Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry

MOUNT RAINIER, Maryland—The Vatican’s affirmation that transgender people should be welcomed in the church’s sacramental life signals Pope Francis’ desire for a pastorally-focused approach to LGBTQ+ issues is taking hold.

This affirmation, itself a reversal of a previous Vatican decision, contrasts strikingly against the restrictions some U.S. bishops have imposed on LGBTQ+ people in recent years. Additionally, though the document appears to caution that people in same-gender relationships may not be suitable godparents, the new decision’s emphasis that “pastoral prudence” be used on a case-by-case basis opens the possibilities for married gay people to serve in such roles.

In a note signed by Pope Francis, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith affirms that transgender people can be baptized, serve as godparents, and be witnesses at Catholic weddings. This development confirms that the pope and high-ranking church leaders do not perceive gender identity as a de facto barrier for participating in Catholic sacraments. The doctrinal note is a 180-degree reversal of a 2015 decision by the same dicastery that prevented a transgender man in Spain from serving as a godparent, despite the local bishop’s support for the man’s involvement.

Significantly, not only does this doctrinal note, known as a responsum ad dubia, remove barriers to transgender people’s participation, it proves that the Catholic Church can—and does—change its mind about certain practices and policies.

The doctrinal note also reveals that the church must continue to do more for LGBTQ+ equality. We applaud that statements about transgender Catholics are generally positive, and that the Vatican affirms that children of same-gender couples can and should be baptized. Yet, possibly barring someone in a public and committed relationship to serve as a godparent shows that the Vatican remains bound by a narrow definition of marriage used as a litmus test for Catholics’ participation in the church.

If church leaders do not employ pastoral prudence with this guideline, it could be used by other officials to establish other policies which would exclude such people from other areas of church life. We have already seen how church institutions have fired many of their employees simply because they sought legal protections for their families through getting married by the state. Focusing particularly on the ineligibility of people in “stable, marriage-like relations” who are “well known by the community” suggests that the DDF remains more concerned about “causing scandal” than about integrating LGBTQ+ Catholics in the lives of the church and of their families. We hope that church leaders will apply these guidelines by following Pope Francis’ example of extravagant welcome, rather than using them to continue old restrictions.

The Vatican’s more positive approach to transgender and nonbinary people as participants in the sacraments contrasts with, and even contradicts, some U.S. bishops’ approach. In recent years, several dozen dioceses have issued policies with restrictions for LGBTQ+ Catholics, including prohibiting transgender people from being baptized or serving as godparents. Such policies must now be reconsidered, and likely rescinded, given that Pope Francis and the Vatican are leading the church on a different path.

The Synod on Synodality’s first General Assembly this past October produced a document that seemingly ignored LGBTQ+ issues, despite the desire for greater inclusion being a dominant theme in the preceding two years of consultations. The Vatican’s new intervention about godparents and marriage witnesses indicates that Pope Francis and other high-ranking church leaders will keep advancing LGBTQ+ equality in the church, even if the synodal process takes more time to do so.

Welcoming transgender people more fully to the Sacraments is a good step; that welcome needs to be expanded even more now, including to Catholics in same-gender marriages who want to support their family members and friends in the practice of their faith.

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October 28, 2023

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Synod Report Greatly Disappoints on LGBTQ+ Issues, Catholic Ministry Says

Statement of Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry

ROME—In the Synod on Synodality’s first two years, Catholics worldwide expressed a strong desire for the church to engage positively with LGBTQ+ people. Today, the final report of the Synod’s first General Assembly disappoints by simply reaffirming the hierarchy’s status quo.

With no positive statement on LGBTQ+ issues in the document, and with only two references which simply state what was known when the Synod began, Catholics globally will be greatly disappointed. After two years of calling on the church to have a more positive approach to LGBTQ+ people, repeated over and over around the globe and in every phase of the Synod consultations, it is clear that Catholics want a more inclusive church.

Stating LGBTQ+ issues are controversial in the church does not raise new questions, as the report suggests, for this fact was known well before the Synod even began. Church leaders have had decades to learn about scientific and theological developments about gender and sexuality. Likewise, acknowledging people excluded by the church because of identity or sexuality seek to be heard is well-known. The questions the report claims are now are not, in fact, new.

The only acknowledgment that the church needs to grow is a single sentence which admits that current Catholic anthropological categories do not sufficiently respond to new information which is being discovered from experience or scientific knowledge. Yet the vagueness with which this acknowledgement is described does not provide sufficient confidence that change can be envisioned.

While LGBTQ+ Catholics and their supporters will be disappointed, we pray that they will not also become discouraged. When New Ways Ministry’s co-founder and staff met with Pope Francis this month during the Synod assembly, he counseled us never to give up hope, quoting St. Paul: “Hope does not disappoint” (Romans 5:5).

The Catholic LGBTQ+ community must take Pope Francis’ message to heart. The report’s shortcomings are an invitation to speak anew about their joys, their sorrows, and their faith during the remaining year of this synodal journey. Now is not a time to despair. Now is a time to continue living in hope, and to make that hope come alive through action.

It is progress that LGBTQ+ issues were openly discussed, further dissolving decades of silence–or worse, only negative and harmful messages– from high-ranking church leaders. Catholics who desire a renewed approach to gender and sexuality in the church will continue to pray, dialogue, and hope in the Synod’s final year and beyond.

One encouraging message from this first General Assembly of the Synod is the reportedly sizable number of delegates who supported a more positive approach to LGBTQ+ issues. The Roman rumor mill made clear that some participants strongly urged changes in Catholic practice, language, and teaching related to LGBTQ+ people. One delegate spoke powerfully about a bisexual loved one who died by suicide after facing rejection by the church. This final report does not recognize these participants’ contributions.

Nothing in Catholicism changes overnight, but change never comes to any institution if there is not free, open discussion. For decades, Catholic theologians, pastoral ministers, and advocates who spoke out in support of LGBTQ+ people were silenced and dismissed. With this meeting, the universal church has begun an institutional LGBTQ+ dialogue, ending decades of obstinate suppression of the issues of sexual and gender identity which are so essential to human flourishing, and so important for the Catholic Church to live up to its best ideals of being an enlarged tent where all are welcome, all are respected, and all are treated equally.

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October 2, 2023

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Blessings Guidance ‘Significantly Advances’ Pope Francis’ Affirmation of LGBTQ+ People

Statement of Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry

MOUNT RAINIER, Maryland—Though the Vatican’s latest statement about same-gender couples does not provide a full-fledged, ringing endorsement of blessing their unions, the document significantly advances Pope Francis’ work to include and affirm LGBTQ+ people.

This new step, outlined in a document released on October 2nd by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, allows for pastoral ministers to administer such blessings on a case-by-case basis, advising that “pastoral prudence” and “pastoral charity” should guide any response to couples who request a blessing. It also indicates that permitting such blessings cannot be institutionalized by diocesan regulations, perhaps a reference to some dioceses in Germany where blessings are already taking place with official and explicit permission. “The life of the church,” the Pope writes, “runs through many channels in addition to the standard ones,” indicating that respecting diverse and particular situations must take precedence over church law.

The allowance for pastoral ministers to bless same-gender couples implies that the church does indeed recognize that holy love can exist between same-gender couples, and the love of these couples mirrors the love of God. Those recognitions, while not completely what LGBTQ+ Catholics would want, are an enormous advance towards fuller and more comprehensive equality. This statement is one big straw towards breaking the camel’s back of the marginalized treatment LGBTQ+ people experience in the Church.

The document, called a “responsum ad dubia,” was written in July as a response to five conservative cardinals’ questions to the Vatican, including a question about blessing same-gender couples. Unhappy with the response, the cardinals reformulated the questions again, and the pope gave no reply. The Vatican released the pope’s answers now because today the five cardinals made public their reformulated set of questions.

The timing of the document’s release is significant. Though the five cardinals received these answers in July, and resubmitted their questions in August, they have publicized their questions on the eve of the assembly of the Synod on Synodality, a meeting in which greater pastoral care with LGBTQ+ people is on the agenda. In releasing it, they have asked Pope Francis to condemn same-gender relationships. Such timing seems designed to forestall any meaningful discussion in the synod assembly of these matters. Pope Francis would be wise not to respond to their request. In fact, the release of the pope’s response shows more clearly that the pope wants discussion on greater pastoral inclusion of LGBTQ+ people.

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July 26, 2023

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Pope Francis’ Transgender Welcome a Good Sign, And More Must Be

Statement of Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry

MOUNT RAINIER, Maryland—Pope Francis’ recent comment to a transgender person that “God loves us as we are” is a grand sign of welcome to LGBTQ+ people, particularly to transgender and nonbinary people. He is once again modeling the kind of pastoral outreach message that he wants the rest of the church to follow as they encounter LGBTQ+ people in their faith communities.

This kind of message is needed as an important first step for church leaders and ministers who want to affirm LGBTQ+ people. It is a message that the pope has issued several times in the past, such as welcoming a transgender man to the Vatican, corresponding with an Argentinian nun who ministers with transgender people, and helping a community of homeless transgender people in Naples. (For a list of statements and actions from Pope Francis on transgender issues, click here.)

If the pope’s messages of unconditional and compassionate acceptance encourage ministers, theologians, and church officials to listen more attentively to the life stories and spiritual journeys of transgender and nonbinary people, they will have the power to transform pastoral practice, and eventually church teaching which currently has too many condemnatory messages for LGBTQ+ people.

What is further needed from Pope Francis is a repudiation of anti-trans messages from church leaders, such as using the term “gender ideology” to refer to accurate scientific understandings of gender that recognize the male/female binary is not the only way that gender manifests itself in human nature. These explanations show that people experience gender in a wide variety of ways beyond only the two categories of male and female, and that physical characteristics are not the only signals of a person’s gender.

Unfortunately, the pope himself has often used the term “gender ideology” in the past, and has promoted the idea that the male/female binary is the only way that gender should be understood. This kind of thinking causes great psychological and spiritual damage to people whose gender identity do not fit the category they were assigned at birth, based on the insufficient evidence of physical characteristics. This thinking also harms the segment of the human population for whom “male” and “female” are not accurate descriptions.

If this message of God’s unconditional love signals a turning away from the language of “gender ideology” and from the practice of ignoring the reality of transgender people, then it has the power to transform the church into a community which accepts, values, and blesses the wonderful and amazing diversity with which God has created human beings. We pray that this message will help the church work for the full equality of LGBTQ+ people, particularly transgender and nonbinary individuals.

We pray that this message will usher in a new era where all are truly welcome in church and society, and where transgender and nonbinary people are respected, valued, and loved.

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July 7, 2023

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Hope and Disappointment for LGBTQ+ People Spring from News About Catholic Synod List

Statement of Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry

MOUNT RAINIER, Maryland—The participants’ list for the Synod’s next assembly causes both hope and disappointment for New Ways Ministry as we work for LGBTQ+ inclusion. This news commits us to continue working to ensure LGBTQ+ people will be heard in the church’s synodal process.

On the hopeful side, Pope Francis’ appointment of several high-profile U.S. clerical leaders to participate in the Vatican’s October meeting of the global Synod signals that LGBTQ+ issues will be on the agenda. Cardinals Blase Cupich, Wilton Gregory, Robert McElroy, Sean O’Malley, Joseph Tobin, as well as Archbishop Paul Etienne and Father James Martin have, in varying degrees, expressed openness to improve the church’s pastoral care for LGBTQ+ people. Father Martin, well-known for his LGBTQ+ ministry, is a clearly positive voice.

As far as New Ways Ministry can identify, no openly LGBTQ+ person or leader was selected to participate at the Synod assembly. If our examination is accurate, it will be very disappointing for the following reasons:

For the first time, people other than bishops are being included as full, voting participants in the assembly. This possibility for non-episcopal voices presented a prime opportunity for openly LGBTQ+ people to express the joys and challenges of their faith with other leaders in the church. The Synod’s Instrumentum Laboris (working document) emphasized that those who have been excluded from church life “are bearers of Good News that the whole community needs to hear” and that “whenever we encounter another person in love, we learn something new about God.” The Synod assembly is ideal for such encounters to occur.
Since LGBTQ+ issues emerged in so many synodal conversations around the globe and were reflected in the reports at each previous stage, it is reasonable to have expected that openly LGBTQ+ people would have been included in the assembly. One of the reflection questions asks synod participants to imagine ways of “walking with people instead of talking about them or solely at them.” Unfortunately, with no openly LGBTQ+ people present, the participants will still only be talking about them, not walking with
Because of the promise that their voices were wanted in synod discussions, LGBTQ+ people participated actively in the initial stages of the synod process. They were glad to be welcomed at the table for discussion. Their absence at the October meeting does not allow for their voices to be heard directly. As thousands of pastoral ministers know, hearing LGBTQ+ people share their experience has powerfully moved them to work for their greater inclusion in the church.

From the U.S. perspective, a particular disappointment is the list of Synod participants put forward by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: Archbishop Timothy Broglio (Military Ordinariate) Bishops Daniel Flores (Brownsville), Robert Barron (Winona-Rochester), Kevin Rhoades (Fort Wayne-South Bend), and Cardinal Timothy Dolan (New York), who all have made negative statements on LGBTQ+ issues. We hope that their participation in the synod will help them to better understand the lives and spiritual journeys of LGBTQ+ Catholics.

However, despite all these disappointments, we still have hope that the synod can produce some steps forward in regard to LGBTQ+ people. Internationally, a number of the bishops appointed have LGBTQ-positive records, including support for blessing queer couples, ministry with the transgender community, and calls for non-discrimination protections. Importantly, the Synod’s Relator General, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, is quite positive. Other church leaders include: Cardinal Leonardo Ulrich Steiner (Brazil), Bishop Georg Bätzing (Germany), Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck (Germany), Archbishop Charles Scicluna (Malta), Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle (Vatican/Philippines), Cardinal Michael Czerny (Vatican/Canada), Cardinal Jozef De Kesel (Belgium), Cardinal Oswald Gracias (India), Cardinal Christoph Schönborn (Austria), Cardinal Matteo Zuppi (Italy), and Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, O.P. (England).

The October assembly is the first of two such international gatherings for this Synod. We hope and pray that for the October 2024 assembly, planners will correct their omission this year by prioritizing some openly LGBTQ+ people who can tell their stories. Although the Synod is not specifically about LGBTQ+ topics, concern about ways to include LGBTQ+ people in the church emerged as a dominant issue in preceding conversations and as a key part of how to become more fully a synodal church.

Openly LGBTQ+ people may be absent, yet the strong voices for LGBTQ+ equality who are included have the opportunity to be truthful and bold about their pastoral and ecclesial experiences with LGBTQ+ people. Indeed, since openly LGBTQ+ Catholics will not be there in person, it is incumbent for these church leaders to make them as present as possible by telling their stories to the synod assembly.

Ultimately, we have hope because we believe firmly that the Holy Spirit is guiding the Church. We have faith that the Holy Spirit can work through the 2023 participants to help move our church in a more positive direction towards LGBTQ+ ministry. And we continue to hope and pray for the day when LGBTQ+ people themselves will have a place at the table to share their hopes, dreams, and prayers for the church they love so dearly.

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June 30, 2023

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Catholic LGBTQ+ Ministry: Supreme Court Ruling Hurts People of Faith and Entire Nation

Statement of Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry

MOUNT RAINIER, Maryland–The LGBTQ+ community, people of faith, and the entire country have been greatly wounded by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the 303 Creative case which dangerously allows religious beliefs to be weaponized for discrimination.

The decision makes LGBTQ+ people second-class citizens by putting them at greater risk of discrimination and limiting their use of public accommodations, such as businesses. Discrimination violates our nation’s ideals for building a more just and equal society. Moreover, it goes against Catholic social teaching which upholds that every person has inherent human dignity and deserves equal treatment in society.

Broad exemptions to allow religious-based discrimination hurts people of faith, too. The legacy of people from particular religious backgrounds facing discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations from people with different religious beliefs persists. Historically, Catholics from a variety of ethnic groups know this kind of exclusion only too well. The court’s exemption will further fuel the violence against religious minorities, particularly against non-Christian adherents, that still continues to poison our national life.

The Supreme Court’s decision also harms the entire country by affirming that theocratic ideas can trump the democratic processes of a pluralistic society. The court endangers democracy by eroding laws designed to protect equality and justice for all. This ruling supports the rising tide of Christian nationalism which threatens true religious freedom, and opens the door to discrimination in public life based on gender, race, disability, and other legally protected categories.

As Catholics, we encourage members of our church, and indeed all people of faith, to follow Pope Francis’ advice for building a better world: encountering those who are different from ourselves and treating them with respect and courtesy. Such encounters are the opposite of that discrimination this new ruling condones.

This case did not have to be a struggle between religious beliefs versus civil law. Business people whose religious beliefs prevent them from following civil law can choose to stop providing services they do not want to offer to everyone. If the owners of 303 Creative LLC do not want to provide wedding websites for same-gender couples, they have the option not to offer that service to any couple. If beliefs are truly strongly held, religious people would be ready to live by them even if that means losing revenue by curtailing their businesses to honor both their personal beliefs and the law of the land in which they elect to set up shop. Religious people have long redirected their lives so as not to follow laws with which they disagree. They should not seek loopholes that carve out exemptions which create new injustices targeted against marginalized groups.

Instead of upholding the principle in the U.S. Constitution’s Preamble to “form a more perfect union,” the Supreme Court’s decision instead enhances the growing divide in our country by giving the blessing of so-called “religious freedom” to people who want to discriminate.

LGBTQ+ people and so many other marginalized communities continue to suffer greatly in the present national atmosphere where division and exclusion are rampant. Religion should be a tool to help unite people across ideological lines, not cause greater isolation into camps that oppose one another.

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June 20, 2023

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Catholic LGBTQ+ Ministry Praises Synod Document for Inclusivity

Statement of Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry

MOUNT RAINIER, Maryland—It is nothing short of an amazing and true blessing that LGBTQ+ people were mentioned twice in the Vatican’s working document for the assembly of the Synod in October, which was released today. The language and style of the document, called the Instrumentum Laboris, is highly generalized, mentioning very few specific topics, so getting not just one, but two mentions in the document signifies that LGBTQ+ issues are priorities that cannot be ignored as the Synod participants continue to reflect on building a church that, as the document says, welcomes all and respects diversity.

Simply using the term “LGBTQ+” is progress. In 2013, Pope Francis was the first pontiff to use the word “gay.” In 2018, the working document for the Synod on Youth, used the term “LGBT,” the first time that acronym occurred in a Vatican document. In this current document, the use of “LGBTQ+” indicates that the Vatican is not only respecting the terms that members of this community prefer, but is also being more inclusive of various gender and sexual identities.

For LGBTQ+ Catholics, who for decades have called on the church’s leaders to have a conversation, this synodal process has signaled the beginning of such a process. Today’s document emphasizes that the excluded “are bearers of Good News that the whole community needs to hear and that “whenever we encounter another person in love, we learn something new about God.” LGBTQ+ people are indeed bearers of Good News inviting the church to learn more about God.

The synod will certainly not resolve all the issues that LGBTQ+ Catholics have raised, but this document indicates they are taken seriously by church leaders. The document’s promise for respecting diversity, encounter, and dialogue ensures that LGBTQ+ Catholics will continue to be included in the synodal journey, with their concerns being taken seriously by church leaders. All of this paves the way for ongoing conversations in the future.

As we have seen throughout the synodal process, which began in October 2021, LGBTQ+ issues were one of the most mentioned and discussed topics not only in the U.S. and other Western nations, but around the world. Along with concerns about the role of women in the church, clericalism, and colonialism, LGBTQ+ issues were one of the few topics that had resonance in discussions worldwide.

As the Synod progressed from the local phase to the national phase to the continental phase, and now arrives at the global phase, we have also seen that the language of the documents at each of these phases has become increasingly and necessarily more general, moving away from specific topics to address themes that underlie the challenges and desires for developing the church’s community. Discussing the church’s relationship with LGBTQ+ people has survived each of these levels of generalization, however, and has appeared as an item in the successive reports, indicating that concern for this issue will be a major and critical topic of discussion at the October assembly.

The Catholic Church, however, need not wait until the synodal process is concluded to grow in its relationship with LGBTQ+ people. Today’s document insists the church “stand alongside the most marginalised in public debate, lending a voice to their cause and denouncing situations of injustice and discrimination whilst seeking to avoid complicity with those responsible for injustice.” LGBTQ+ people, particularly where they are criminalized and persecuted, need the church’s solidarity now—including an end to discrimination in the church. The document is clear: non-discrimination is already a Catholic value on which we can act.

Overall, the Instrumentum Laboris offers a promising outline for the next phase of the Synod. By identifying three critical areas—communion, mission, and participation—the Synod leaders have selected topics that desperately need to be addressed for the church to continue to become a more synodal institution, a promise that was made over 50 years ago at Vatican II.

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March 21, 2023

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For information, contact: Francis DeBernardo, mobile: (+1) 240-432-2489

Catholic LGBTQ+ Ministry Criticizes U.S. Bishops’ Guidelines on Transgender Healthcare

Statement of Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry

MOUNT RAINIER, Maryland—The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ new document on transgender healthcare states its intention as continuing Jesus’ healing ministry. Yet, in neglecting the experiences of trans people and in not attending to contemporary science, it harms people instead of healing them.

The bishops’ document, coming from its Committee on Doctrine, does not begin with the experience of transgender people. In fact, there is no evidence that a single trans or nonbinary person was consulted in preparing it. Further, the document follows a typical ecclesiastical style of refusing to engage with or even acknowledge experts’ advice. Nearly every major medical and psychological organization finds that gender-affirming medical interventions positively aid transgender people’s human flourishing. This professional consensus about the best standards of care for transgender people is absent from the bishops’ text.

The bishops’ unwillingness to counter any of the evidence from the scientific community or the experience of transgender people is neither good theology nor acceptable pastoral care.

The document’s authors state that they rely on the natural law for their conclusions, yet they ignore that the world has undergone an enormous transformation in understanding what is natural about gender. It is astounding that the document relies on papal statements from the mid-20th century, but does not acknowledge any new understanding of gender. Some Catholic theologians now employ natural law for a more trans-affirming approach, understanding gender diversity to be very much in line with God’s creation. Ignoring this sea change means that the document’s advice is comparable to the medieval practice of bleeding patients to rid them of ill humors.

The science and theology of gender deserve wide and careful exploration because they are a part of the gift and mystery of God’s creation.

Because this document intentionally disregards the vast, complex conversation about gender and identity that is occurring in the world—and in the church, its policies ring hollow, devoid of human reality and closed off from the human suffering that they say they want to alleviate. They ignore the reality that when transgender people are denied appropriate medical care, many see their only alternative as suicide instead of living a painfully inauthentic life. In the past, the Catholic Church did not allow medical interventions in childbirth, thus resulting in death for many women. The bishops are making a similar mistake now by prohibiting interventions that would save the lives of many transgender people.

Catholics who support transgender and nonbinary people’s access to medically-necessary gender transition care do so because they want to promote human flourishing and to help their transgender loved ones achieve integration.

Thankfully, this document is limited in its power at this point. Whether it becomes a national policy remains to be seen. Each bishop can still determine for himself if the recommendations in this document are helpful for the pastoral care of the transgender people in their communities. We hope that local bishops will turn to transgender people and to the wider medical community to decide what policies about transgender healthcare they will pursue.

This document makes clear just how much church leaders have to learn about LGBTQ+ people. Bishops and leaders in Catholic healthcare should model the hallmarks of Jesus’ healing ministry to which they say they adhere: encounter, listening, accompaniment, and love.

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March 11, 2023

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For information, contact: Francis DeBernardo, mobile: (+1) 240-432-2489

Poll: LGBTQ+ People Give Pope Francis a “B” Grade on His 10th Anniversary

Statement of Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry

MOUNT RAINIER, Maryland—What grade do Catholic LGBTQ+ people and allies give Pope Francis for how he has treated issues dear to their hearts during his papacy, which marks its 10th anniversary today?

The average of the responses to a poll conducted by New Ways Ministry, a national Catholic outreach and advocacy group for LGBTQ+ people, was a solid “B.” Even when only the grades of those who identified as LGBTQ+ were considered, the average was the same: “B.”

The poll was conducted by Bondings 2.0, New Ways Ministry’s daily blog of Catholic LGBTQ+ news, opinion, and spirituality. The post which announces the results features comments from some of the respondents’ more detailed explanations of their grades, which ranged from A+ to F. The post is available here.

The “B” grade reveals Catholics interested in LGBTQ+ issues recognize the good Pope Francis has done with his welcoming and pastoral style from saying “Who am I to judge?” in 2013 to this year’s condemnation of anti-LGBTQ+ criminalization. The “B” also recognizes the pope’s shortfalls, such as his repeated criticisms of “gender ideology” and his inability to make substantial doctrinal changes. (A full chronology of the pope’s LGBTQ+ record, positive and negative, is available here.)

Sister Jeannine Gramick, SL, co-founder of New Ways Ministry who has been in LGBTQ+ ministry for over 50 years, offered her own appraisal of Pope Francis in a reflective post on Bondings 2.0, New Ways Ministry’s daily blog on Catholic LGBTQ+ news, opinion, and spirituality. Gramick’s main point: “Ten years on, this pope still gives me hope!” Her reflection is available here.

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March 11, 2023

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For information, contact: Francis DeBernardo, mobile: (+1) 240-432-2489

Catholic LGBTQ+ Ministry Praises German Church’s New Approach to Gender Identity

Statement of Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry

MOUNT RAINIER, Maryland—Coming just one day after an historic vote to give church blessings to same-gender couples, the Synodal Way process of the Catholic Church in Germany has made another groundbreaking decision by voting for greater recognition of transgender, intersex, nonbinary, and gender diverse people.

New Ways Ministry joyfully praises this decision which paves the way for greater equality of gender minorities in the Catholic Church. This new direction not only moves the Church in Germany toward more a more compassionate pastoral approach, but, even more significantly, it is a first step toward ending the false gender binary of male/female in the Church, which for centuries has prevented Catholicism from not only affirming LGBTQ+ people, but has also kept it frozen in its discriminatory attitudes, policies, and restrictions for women.

New Ways Ministry is extremely grateful to German Catholic leaders, clerical and lay, who have shown the global Church a way to begin to remove the chains of gender inequality which for too long has prevented Catholicism from living the radical inclusivity and equality of Jesus.

The decision redirects the Church away from an antagonistic view towards new approaches to gender, which some church leaders have disparagingly referred to as “gender ideology.” Even Pope Francis, whose record on LGBTQ+ issues has been a game changer for the Catholic Church, lacks sufficient understanding when it comes to gender, and often rails against the made-up threat of “gender ideology.”

The new German policy is a challenge to the almost 40 U.S. bishops who have instituted restrictive and harmful policies about gender identity for their Catholic schools, parishes, and other institutions. These policies were instituted without consulting or dialoguing with transgender people, which resulted in their directives reflecting not only a basic ignorance about human reality, but in guidelines that lacked human compassion.

The German Synodal Way, by contrast, included at least three trans and intersex delegates in the decision-making, one of whom, Mara Klein, was elected to join the Synodal Commission. This inclusive and dialogic method makes the German policy so much more authentically Catholic.

New Ways Ministry sees a new dawn breaking in the Catholic Church, and we pray that the light of gender equality will soon spread its way across the globe.

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March 10, 2023

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Catholic LGBTQ+ Ministry Praises German Church’s Approval of Blessings for Couples

Statement of Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry

MOUNT RAINIER, Maryland— The Catholic Church in Germany has taken an unprecedented step towards equality for LGBTQ+ people by voting to endorse church blessings for committed same-gender couples. New Ways Ministry sends heartfelt thanks for the Synodal Way’s brave move towards greater justice and more compassionate pastoral care.

The document on blessings will encourage LGBTQ+ Catholics around the world, who have been waiting for uncountable years to have their love as couples be recognized. The document will also encourage Catholic leaders in other countries to be bolder in their advocacy for LGBTQ+ people, a trend which has been growing steadily since the papacy of Pope Francis began ten years ago.

It is significant that such blessings had been forbidden by the Vatican, and this decision may test of Pope Francis’ call for greater discussion in the church, particularly on LGBTQ+ issues. If the German document goes unchallenged, it will be a landmark moment for moving the Catholic Church closer to a full acceptance of LGBTQ+ people. It will also be a landmark in modern Catholic history for allowing local church leaders decide on the best approaches to pastoral care for people in their country.

Church history shows that changes in pastoral practice always precedes a change in church teaching. This change in practice paves the way for much needed doctrinal change on LGBTQ+ issues, and all issues of gender and sexuality.

As it concludes, the Synodal Way opens a new chapter in the discussion of LGBTQ+ issues in Catholicism. With the global Synod set to meet in Rome this October, the German decision will offer an important item for discussion on the agenda. Once the discussion begins in this wider venue, it is almost certain more and more church leaders will begin calling for greater pastoral care, justice, and equality for LGBTQ+ people.

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January 25, 2023

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Catholic LGBTQ+ Ministry Praises Pope Francis’ Decriminalization Statement

Statement of Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry

MOUNT RAINIER, Maryland–New Ways Ministry rejoices because of Pope Francis’ declaration that homosexuality should not be criminalized, a statement which millions of Catholics have long called for from church leaders. This call for decriminalization will help save lives and promote respect for LGBTQ+ people, particularly in areas where law or social norms make them victims of fear, hatred, violence, and death.

The pope is reminding the church that the way people treat one another in the social world is of much greater moral importance that what people may possibly do in the privacy of a bedroom.

Most important, the pope highlights that being LGBTQ+ is not sinful and criminal, but harming one’s neighbor is most certainly both. That simple principle is a bedrock of Catholic teaching.

Too many church leaders have often ignored this principle and refused to teach it. The hierarchy’s silence has helped to perpetuate a culture of draconian laws, rampant disrespect, violent rhetoric, and brutal and often fatal physical attacks against LGBTQ+ people.

It is shameful that in some nations where criminalization exists or has been proposed, Catholic bishops and other leaders have been in the forefront of supporting such abhorrent measures. The pope’s statement will help end this tragic record of church leaders’ complicity with the scourge of criminalization.

The pope’s statement highlights the Catholic value of protecting human dignity which too many church leaders have refused to apply to the oppressive social situations of LGBTQ+ people around the world, including in the U.S. Nothing Pope Francis said contradicts church teaching. Indeed, his words are rooted in that teaching.

In the U.S., and in many nations, Catholics in the pews have been calling on the pope and other church leaders to condemn criminalization and violence. In 2014, New Ways Ministry instituted the #PopeSpeakOut campaign, calling on supporters to send tweets and messages to urge Pope Francis to make a statement against criminalization laws. When the pope visited Uganda, Kenya, and the Central African Republic in 2015, many African advocates for LGBTQ+ people called on him to make an anti-criminalization statement, but he did not. In 2021, over 750 church leaders and scholars endorsed a public theological statement calling on Catholics to put an end to anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination.

We hope Pope Francis will speak this message when he visits South Sudan, which criminalizes homosexuality, during his apostolic journey, January 31-February 5, 2023

As anti-LGBTQ+ movements around the U.S. and the globe gain strength, Pope Francis’ statement is greatly needed. We hope that more church leaders will be emboldened to make similar statements, particularly when initiatives which damage the human dignity and the lives of LGBTQ+ people arise in their regions and nations.

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New Ways Ministry is a 46-year old national Catholic ministry of justice and reconciliation for LGBTQ+ people and the church. For more information visit: www.NewWaysMinistry.org.

Catholic LGBTQ+ Ministry Marks the Passing of Benedict XVI

Statement of Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry

MOUNT RAINIER, Maryland– New Ways Ministry offers prayers for the repose of the soul of the Benedict XVI, the Pope Emeritus, who passed away on December 31, 2022.

Before becoming pope in 2005, Benedict, known then as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had an outsized influence on the Church’s approach to gay and lesbian people and issues. As the principal author of the 1986 “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,” he introduced the term “objective disorder” into the Church’s vocabulary to describe a homosexual orientation. He also oversaw the production of the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church, which described sexual activity between two people of the same gender as “acts of grave depravity.”

These documents caused—and still cause—grave pastoral harm to many LGBTQ+ people and to Catholics who see the goodness, holiness, and God-given love in the relationships of queer couples. While Cardinal Ratzinger’s statements were intended to settle the debate on homosexuality in the church, they merely widened the debate. Many Catholic theologians, leaders, and people in the pews question this teaching and seek doctrinal renewal on LGBTQ+ issues. Sadly, Cardinal Ratzinger’s words caused many Catholics to leave the church, some going to other Christian denominations or other faiths, and some rejecting any kind of institutional religion.

In 1998, Sister Jeannine Gramick, a co-founder of New Ways Ministry, encountered Cardinal Ratzinger on a flight from Rome to Munich. Sister Jeannine and her ministry colleague, Father Robert Nugent, were being investigated by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was directed by Cardinal Ratzinger. The following year, the pair were barred from ministry with the LGBTQ+ community. While Father Nugent complied with the order, Sister Jeannine objected.

(To contact Sister Jeannine Gramick: [email protected])

Sister Jeannine described her airplane conversation as experiencing the Cardinal’s humanity: warm and friendly, gentle, humorous, and personable. While disagreeing with his views on homosexuality, she sensed he was of a man of deep faith and deeply committed to the Church in the service of God’s people.

At one point in the conversation, she asked him if he ever met lesbian and gay people. He answered, “When Pope John Paul II and I were in Berlin, there was a demonstration of homosexuals.” She was saddened because his response indicated that he had not had a personal relationship with lesbian and gay people; his image of them was as protestors, not as the full, loving, and faith-filled human beings whom she had come to know.

Benedict’s approach to gay and lesbian issues was clearly hindered by the fact that he did not understand the human dimension of love and relationship that characterizes same-gender couples and individuals. He relied on centuries-old, abstract philosophical and theological ideas instead of learning about more recent understandings of sexuality. Most importantly, he failed to listen to the lived experiences of real people.

While clearly a man of faith seeking to act with good intentions, his resistance to engaging the lives, love, and faith of actual human beings means he will be remembered as a church leader who did not listen pastorally to those the Church serves. In contrast, Pope Francis, his successor, has called for pastoral leaders to be listeners and learners, particularly in ministry with those on the margins of church and society, such as LGBTQ+ people.

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New Ways Ministry is a 45-year old national Catholic ministry of justice and reconciliation for LGBTQ+ people and the church. For more information visit: www.NewWaysMinistry.org