Day 703: Thursday, February 17, 2022

envision a world “where the dignity of every person is respected and protected, where everyone is loved"

The Rev. Bryan Massingale considered leaving the Catholic Church but decided to stay and make it "more universal and the institution that I believe Jesus wants it to be.”

The Rev. Bryan Massingale gives a sermon on Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022, at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in the Harlem neighborhood of New York

Parishioners worshipping at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Harlem are greeted by a framed portrait of Martin Luther King Jr.

The Rev. Bryan Massingale, who sometimes preaches at St. Charles, pursues his ministry in ways that echo Martin Luther King. Like King, Massingale decries the scourge of racial inequality in the United States. As a professor at Fordham University, he teaches African American religious approaches to ethics. He's a Black gay priest who challenges Catholicism from within

Like the German Martin Luther, Massingale is often at odds with official Catholic teaching -- he supports the ordination of women and making celibacy optional for Catholic clergy. And, as a gay man, he vocally disagrees with the church’s doctrine on same-sex relations, instead advocating for full inclusion of LGBTQ Catholics within the church.

The Vatican holds that gays and lesbians should be treated with dignity and respect, but that gay sex is “intrinsically disordered” and sinful.

In his homily on a recent Sunday, Massingale — who became public about being gay in 2019 — envisioned a world “where the dignity of every person is respected and protected, where everyone is loved.”

The Rev. Bryan Massingale, gives communion during Mass on Jan. 30, 2022, at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in the Harlem neighborhood of New York.

But the message of equality and tolerance is one “that is resisted even within our own faith household,” he added. “Preach!” a worshiper shouted in response.

Massingale was born in 1957 in Milwaukee. His mother was a school secretary and his father a factory worker whose family migrated from Mississippi to escape racial segregation.

But even in Wisconsin, racism was common. Massingale said his father couldn’t work as a carpenter because of a color bar preventing African Americans from joining the carpenters’ union.

The Massingales also experienced racism when they moved to Milwaukee’s outskirts and ventured to a predominately white parish. “This would not be a very comfortable parish for you to be a part of,” he recalled the parish priest saying. Thereafter, the family commuted to a predominantly Black Catholic church.

Massingale recalled another incident, as a newly ordained priest, after celebrating his first Mass at a predominantly white church. “The first parishioner to greet me at the door said to me: ‘Father, you being here is the worst mistake the archbishop could have made. People will never accept you.’”

Massingale says he considered leaving the Catholic Church, but decided he was needed. “I’m not going to let the church’s racism rob me of my relationship with God,” he said. “I see it as my mission to make the church what it says it is: more universal and the institution that I believe Jesus wants it to be.”

For Massingale, racism within the U.S. Catholic Church is a reason for the exodus of some Black Catholics; he says the church is not doing enough to tackle racism within its ranks and in broader society.

Nearly half of Black U.S. adults who were raised Catholic no longer identify as such, with many becoming Protestants, according to a 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center. About 6 percent of Black U.S. adults identify as Catholic and close to 80 percent believe opposing racism is essential to their faith, the survey found.

The U.S. Catholic Church has had a checkered history with race. Some of its institutions, such as Georgetown University, were involved in the slave trade, and it has struggled to recruit African American priests. Conversely, Catholic schools were among the first to desegregate and some government officials who opposed racial integration were excommunicated. In 2018, U.S. bishops issued a pastoral letter decrying “the persistence of the evil of racism,” but Massingale was disappointed.

“The phrase ‘white nationalism’ is not stated in that document; it doesn’t talk about the Black Lives Matter movement,” he said. “The problem with the church’s teachings on racism is that they are written in a way that is calculated not to disturb white people.”

At Fordham, a Jesuit university, Massingale teaches a class on homosexuality and Christian ethics, using biblical texts to challenge church teaching on same-sex relations. He said he came to terms with his own sexuality at 22, upon reflecting on the book of Isaiah.

“I realized that no matter what the church said, God loved me and accepted me as a Black gay man,” he said.

Father Massingale admits there is much to do to transform the Church and society. But he's hopeful saying "just because we cannot do everything doesn't mean we should not do something.

We are not as helpless as we fear. Moreover, helplessness is an emotion that we cannot afford to indulge. As James Baldwin believed, despair is an option that only the comfortable can afford to entertain."

We can create a new society, one where more and more people will challenge the assumptions of white racial privilege that sustain Our Universe; One built on a different set of assumptions, one where all lives truly do matter because black lives finally will matter.

I end with the final words of hois book Racial Justice and the Catholic Church:

Social life is made by human beings. The society we live in is the outcome of human choices and decisions. This means that human beings can change things. What humans break, divide, and separate, we can — with God's help — also heal, unite, and restore. What is now does not have to be. Therein lies the hope. And the challenge.

Come, Holy Spirit! Fill the hearts of your faithful. Enkindle within us the fire of your love. Come, Holy Spirit! Breathe into us a fiery passion for justice. Especially for those who have the breath of life crushed from them. Amen.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/black-gay-priest-nyc-challenges-catholicism-rcna16117