Women Religious and LGBTQ Catholic Ministry
Photo © Seydisfjordur Kirkje,Naturfreund, pixabay
BY JEANNINE GRAMICK, SL
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esbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) ministry in the United States Catholic Church began, developed, endured, and flourishes today because of women religious. This is an unknown story that needs to be told. Countless sisters have embraced LGBTQ ministry in assorted ways. For more than 40 years, sisters have opened their motherhouses and retreat centers for LGBTQ programs. Many have signed petitions, demonstrated, or written letters of complaint when LGBTQ people are fired from Catholic institutions. Some have marched in solidarity in gay pride parades. The backbone of financial support for LGBTQ Catholic ministry has been women religious and their congregations. A number of communities are conducting educational programs for their own members about sexuality and 8
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gender issues. Sisters have long been part of the LGBTQ struggle as trusted allies. In the 1980s, women religious convinced Archbishop Weakland to support civil rights for lesbian and gay persons in Wisconsin, paving the way for it to become the first state with civil rights protections. In this same decade, a provincial leader of the School Sisters of Notre Dame sponsored a meeting for sisters who served as chaplains for Dignity, a Catholic lesbian/gay organization. In these early days, there was no public consciousness of transgender, intersex, or non-binary people. A number of sisters have healed the spirits and saved the lives of many transgender people. Members of the Eucharistic Missionaries of St. Dominic, Racine Dominicans, Dominican Sisters of Peace, and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet have companioned transgender people and their families on their sacred journeys. Through a ministry of presence and accompaniment, women religious have welcomed transgender folks into their lives and been welcomed in return. The sisters’ basic message is that God loves them for who they are. Women religious are conscious that this ministry is also needed within their own communities. For the last 20 years, New Ways Ministry, the organization I co-founded with Fr. Robert Nugent, sponsored educational conferences for lesbian religious, their congregational leaders, and formation and vocation personnel. Last year, when the anthology, Love Tenderly: Sacred Stories of Lesbian and Queer Religious, was published, the authors received overwhelming support from their religious congregations. All of the above pastoral support on a private level has been accompanied by public backing. In 1974, the National Coalition of American Nuns became the first Catholic group to assert that it is
immoral, and should be illegal, to discriminate against any person because of their sexual orientation. Three years later, the Sisters Council of the diocese of Rochester, NY, affirmed the need for ministry of the lesbian and gay community. In 1993, the National Board of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) publicly affirmed the rights of lesbian and gay persons to full and equal protection under law at every level in our nation. The year before, the General Assembly of the Sisters of Loretto publicly disagreed with the document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which opposed civil rights legislation for gay and lesbian persons. In their employment policies, the Loretto Sisters include sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, and personal support for marriage equality. At a high school they operate in San Francisco, the Sisters of Mercy publicly backed a teacher who came out as transgender in 2016. Shortly thereafter, the Sisters of St. Agnes in Fond du Lac, WI, organized a public prayer vigil after a rampant shooting of LGBTQ people at the Pulse nightclub. All of these activities, both private and public, are merely a bird’s-eye description of the countless ways women religious have long been in the forefront of LGBTQ ministry.
The Early Days My own story is a good case study that shows the tenacity and early embrace of LGBTQ ministry by women religious. In 1977, the School Sisters of Notre Dame (SSND) assigned me to full-time lesbian/gay ministry. Many gay Catholics felt alienated from a church they loved. Some experienced being thrown out of the confessional and being told by a priest that they were going to hell. Others were told by their parents never to come home
