The Catholic Bishops' Crusade Against Gay People

With so many problems on so many fronts - with parishes closing, the ranks of the priesthood dwindling, and church membership falling - one would think that the Catholic bishops would have better ways to spend the large amounts of money being directed towards the suppression of the civil rights of LGBT citizens.  But instead we continue to witness an almost extreme hysteria against gays in dioceses across America country and the world.  One of the worse anti-gay zealots is Archbishop John Nienstedt of Minnesota (at left). Interestingly enough, however, it seems that more and more of his flock are ignoring his message.  Even more interesting is the refusal of Fr. Mike Tegeder to preach Nienstedt's message of anti-gay hate.  A lengthy piece in City Pages looks at the confrontation and the Catholics who are refusing to buy into Nienstedt's message.  Here are some highlights:

Which is why Mike's here, talking about it, slamming his finger on the desk and calling out the shame that his church promulgates. Calling out the way his church robs homosexuals of their dignity, the way it stares them down and claims they are "intrinsically disordered."

"The greatest threats to marriage are the economy, joblessness, alcoholism, drug abuse — there are a lot of threats to marriage, but it has very little to do with homosexuals having a committed relationship," says Tegeder, who's also a pastor at the Church of Gichitwaa Kateri. "I know committed same-sex people who are doing God's work."

Tegeder knows what the Bible dictates on homosexuality — along with what it dictates about shellfish, and mixed-cloth clothing, and all those other Bronze Age concerns. And he knows there's no single person responsible for the shame his church lifts from these passages.

But there is one person who could single-handedly end it all in the Twin Cities: His Excellency, the Most Reverend Archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis John C. Nienstedt.

"Nienstedt is just so rigid about these things," Tegeder continues, growing animated. "But, you know — just let go of it. What are we trying to defend? Marriage? Has the Catholic Church protected marriage? I mean, [Nienstedt] has a priest who impregnated one of his staff members, broke up their marriage, and the guy's still functioning! ... Why don't we take care of our own issues before we start imposing views onto other people who don't have the same religious beliefs?"

"I'm afraid these men have sex on the brain, and between you and me that's not the best place to have sex," says Leonard Swidler, a prominent Catholic theologian and professor of Catholic Thought and Interreligious Dialogue at Temple University. "Issues of birth control, marriage, divorce, married priests, female priests, same-sex marriage — it's all sex, sex, sex. They're sex maniacs."

Few fit Swidler's caricature of the current episcopacy more naturally than Nienstedt. Born in Detroit in 1947, Nienstedt took to the church early. His parents were devout Catholics, and it took little time for Nienstedt to find his calling, claiming from an early age that he'd someday become a priest.

 Nienstedt first showed his willingness to tow the church's anti-gay line while working as a bishop in New Ulm, which happened to coincide with the release of Brokeback Mountain. Nienstedt forbade his fellowship from seeing the film — a unique step among American bishops. Even more odd, he felt the need to explicitly detail the reasons for his decision in the diocesan bulletin.

Next he inserted into Mass what was colloquially called a "marriage prayer," instructing priests to force parishioners to "proclaim and defend [God's] plan for marriage, which is the union of one man and one woman."

This year, Nienstedt has also taken the extraordinary step of assigning priests and married Catholic couples to carry anti-gay messages to seniors in the archdiocese's Catholic high schools. The couple dispatched to DeLaSalle High School compared same-sex relationships to bestiality.

Nienstedt is, of course, parroting the Vatican's party line, and was recently burnished by Pope Benedict in a March visit to Rome. Still, few bishops have taken such public, vocal stands on the matter — and none have employed the panoply of methods the archbishop has utilized to get out the anti-gay message.

"[Nienstedt has] this idea that the truth is already complete, that he's got it, that he's the keeper of it, and that you make sure your experiences match this truth," says Bayly. "Such hubris. It makes him and the system they've built into what I consider to be a clerical caste. And it's the antithesis of what Jesus was about."

"There's a fear that the bishops utilize: If gays get the right to civil marriage, then the church will be sued if we don't marry them," Bayly says. "That's a crock. The church can choose not to marry divorced people, but you don't see straight couples getting turned away because one of them is divorced."

Bayly is planning more gatherings, more vigils. He's planning to write more op-eds, and will be trying, against the odds, to finally discuss with Nienstedt why the archbishop carries such a preoccupation, such an obsession, with the idea of same-sex attraction.

"I think this whole issue of homosexuality is the last one the bishops still have any sort of control over, and they see that going," Bayly says. "And that's why they're putting up such a huge fight. Because after that's gone, there's nothing left in the realm of sexuality that people will listen to them about."

Personally, I believe the main hallmarks of today's Church leadership are rank hypocrisy and a pathological obsession with all things sexual and gay sex in particular.  Most of the bishops are in my view very psychologically disturbed individuals.