The Sheepcat

Clarifying a Catholic Pastoral Approach to Same-Sex Attraction

While I love being Mrs Sheepcat, being married to a husband with such an unusual background means taking on some unpleasant social and spiritual consequences. After all, the Sheepcat is a triple minority: he has experienced same-sex attraction (and continues to experience some); he's chosen chastity; and now he's happily married.

I don't, of course, mean to compare the pain and misunderstanding I've experienced to that endured by people with SSA and their loved ones, especially those who are pursuing chastity. And suffering in one's own life often points one to ways of serving others. Many members of Courage have survived bullying and isolation, and not just in the ways popularly portrayed. Even so, some become spiritual giants who have a lot to teach those like me who don't personally struggle with SSA. I'm not just a witness to the testimonies I've seen, I'm an ad-hoc ambassadress to those outside Courage/‌‌EnCourage who need to understand better how the Church can respond.

In my capacity as co-facilitator of EnCourage Toronto, I respond in the May edition of The Interim to an April letter-writer who misunderstood the purpose of Courage. (The Interim is Canada's life and family newspaper. If you or your parish don't already receive it, please consider subscribing. You can see most of the monthly past content of The Interim and its associated regular blog, Soconvivium, but letters appear only in the print edition.)

A well-meaning letter-writer suggested referring a young same-sex-attracted friend to Courage, to "help him reconnect with an attraction to the opposite sex and experience the rich rewards it is blessed with."

Please allow me to clarify two popular misapprehensions about Courage, a Catholic apostolate endorsed by the Pontifical Council for Life and the Family. Courage ministers to persons with same-sex attraction – and through EnCourage, to their loved ones. The Courage approach is rooted in our Catechism and carefully distinguishes between the person, inclination, and act. (If you're a non-Catholic reader, please bear with me. Any fair historian of Christian pastoral responses to SSA would acknowledge that, in general, other groups upholding traditional sexual morality have been improving their care of souls by moving in Courage's direction.)

First: if "Gordy" is a minor, he isn't eligible for an adult support group. His experience of SSA might be transient or deep-seated, and he would benefit instead from confidential assistance as he considers the question. But he and his family, school, lay group, or parish would be welcome to request spiritual direction, counselling referrals, and approved speakers through the local Courage chaplain.

Second: I'm the delighted wife of a well-known former gay activist and current Courage member. It's often easier for a married member to give public testimony, so if you're outside the Courage/EnCourage environment, you may be hearing stories like ours more frequently. However, the majority of Courage members are single and likely to stay so. They deserve the same gratitude and respect we show others who are celibate for the sake of the kingdom. They need well-informed support from the pro-life and pro-family movements.

Presuming a one-size-fits-all narrative of change could be deeply hurtful and disrupt a private discernment process. Please see couragerc.net to learn about the five goals of Courage: chastity, prayer and dedication, fellowship, support, and service as a role model. The first is for members "to live chaste lives in accordance with the Roman Catholic Church's teaching on homosexuality." Indeed, all of us are called to chastity, whether that is realized in marriage or in celibacy. Members seeking to explore heterosexual attraction are supported, just as are members who heroically struggle with ongoing SSA.

If you're eligible, please consider joining a support or reparational prayer group; participating in a retreat, sports camp, or ListServ; or attending our conference in Emmitsburg, MD this July 19 to 22. If your area has no group, please contact the central office at 203-803-1564 about getting started. And if you're not eligible but would like to learn more, please browse the website's numerous text, audio, and video resources.

Courage members start with surrendering to God, and they leave the outcome to Him.

The Sheepcat tells his story because he's grateful to God, and he wants to be like the leper who went back and thanked God. He was already doing a great job testifying as a single man. Since we got engaged in 2008, I've joined him in speaking out about same-sex attraction. We hope that our particular story may give inspiration to others, but we don't want it used as a template imposed on others.

I've noticed that the Sheepcat's testimony as a celibate-man-with-SSA was more interesting to some audiences, and his testimony as a married-man-who-continues-to-have-a-degree-of-SSA is more interesting to other audiences. Why that is the case is worthy of discussion in the Church. In any case, we're a happily married couple and our marriage is now part of the Sheepcat's story. That doesn't mean that anyone should expect that marriage is the only happy ending for people with SSA – far from it. We're the Church that celebrates celibacy, so we need to love and respect and support all our singles. For parents to force children in their state of life is a violation of the Fourth Commandment;¹ and it likewise follows that anyone else pressuring someone in that area would infringe upon individual conscience and freedoms.

Source

My husband and I will accept a speaking engagement only after making clear to the prospective host that we're not offering a program with the goal of getting everybody with SSA "fixed" so they can be married. And that's never been a problem yet. But given the lingering influence of programs that do seem to have that goal, or once did, it seems there's a lot of work left to do to clarify the Catholic pastoral approach, so we'll be even more explicit in future. That we love being married doesn't mean that anybody, anywhere should ever be pressured into marriage.

1 I've loved this particular Examination of Conscience for about as long as I've regularly used the Internet. One small caveat: three times (twice in the text and once in a handy definition footnote), the document used a word then unfamiliar to me, "froward," which (cough!) I badly needed to learn. Anyway, at some point since I started visiting the page, an overzealous webmaster or some impertinent software "corrected" the word to read "forward." So far, I haven't been successful in trying to let the author know. It's still a great resource.

Remembering Father John Harvey, OSFS

On this Feast of St John, we remember the death of Fr John Harvey, OSFS, a year ago today. Fr Harvey served with great patience and compassion as cofounder of Courage, the Catholic apostolate to persons with same-sex attraction and their loved ones.

This past August we had the privilege of attending the Courage/EnCourage conference at Mundelein Seminary outside Chicago. Five bishops supported the work by their presence: Bishops John Levoir, Thomas Paprocki, Mark Seitz, Thomas Olmsted, and the keynote speaker, Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke.

Here Cardinal Burke speaks on "The Memory of Fr. John Harvey, OSFS and the Future of Courage and EnCourage." (The link opens a PDF in a separate window.) He is introduced by Fr Paul Check, the executive director of Courage.

At the opening Mass, on the Memorial of St John Mary Vianney, Cardinal Burke's homily remembered with gratitude the ministry of faithful priests such as Fr Harvey (the PDF opens in a new window).

Father Harvey accepted a priestly ministry which many either ignored or avoided. He faced serious misunderstandings and endured years of questioning, on the part of those from whom he rightly expected support. But, through, with and in Christ, he remained steadfast to the end, expending his every energy on behalf of the flock entrusted to his care. Our privileged time together, during these days, offers us the occasion to contemplate how Christ has loved us and cared for us, announcing to us the divine truth accompanied by the works of divine charity, through the priestly life and ministry of Father Harvey.

We were greatly inspired by the homilies and talks we heard. Courage members Angelo and Tina gave powerful testimonies recalling Fr Harvey's influence on their lives. Listen to them and watch other Courage conference talks here.

Back in the Saddle

Welcome, readers from The Catholic Register. For an overview of the blog, we recommend the "Best of the Sheepcat" links in the left sidebar, including an account of The Sheepcat's rage at his parents when he found they were praying for him to leave a gay lifestyle and our three-part engagement story.

We're looking forward to blogging again on a more regular basis. Loyal readers of The Sheepcat will know that for the past year we've been preoccupied with a serious illness in the family; we're happy to report that the family member in question is now settled in a nursing home very close to our home and parish.

Our improved family circumstances have allowed us to proceed at last with the long-time invitation to co-facilitate a Toronto chapter of EnCourage, which had not been active for many years. EnCourage offers peer and pastoral support for family and friends of persons with same-sex attraction. It and Courage are the only Church-approved apostolates dealing with SSA. We plan to begin monthly meetings of EnCourage Toronto in the fall, and in the meantime we've been accepting referrals to speak with affected individuals. To be clear, our blog represents our own views and not necessarily those of the Courage Apostolate.

A separate and more recent initiative has been the founding of the policy group Reclaim the Rainbow – Toronto, which consists of Toronto-area Catholics who have experience of SSA either in themselves or among their loved ones, and who are loyal to the Magisterium. We have been lobbying our local Catholic school trustees to provide authentically Catholic support at the level of home, parish, and school.

We greatly appreciate the excellent new document from the Commission for Doctrine of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) entitled "Pastoral Ministry toYoung People with Same-Sex Attraction." Without compromising on any of the hard teachings, our bishops offer compassionate guidance to the Catholic community at large, priests and pastoral workers, parents, educators, and especially young people themselves. Ottawa's Archbishop Prendergast explains to Canadian Catholic News, "If we are going to be Catholic school boards and we are going to try to have equality and equity in our outreach to young people then we need to be clear about what the Church’s teaching is." Rightly the document warns, "Avoidance of difficult questions or watering down the Church’s teaching is always a disservice. Such attitudes could lead young people into grave moral danger." LifeSiteNews has responded with grateful coverage, while an editorial from The Catholic Register commends the letter.

The choice of Monday as the document's release date was significant. This is Pride Week in Toronto, a time when increasing numbers of people affected by same-sex attraction and seeking an alternative to a gay lifestyle have been seeking the support of Courage or EnCourage. It also marked six months since the death of Courage co-founder Father John Harvey, at the hour of mercy on the feast of his namesake, the Beloved Disciple.

Readers of The Sheepcat may recognize part of a photo we used in our post memorializing Fr Harvey in today's Catholic Register profile of The Sheepcat. In media interviews and public appearances we consistently reiterate our position that we can't operationalize the unmerited grace The Sheepcat received as he discovered heterosexual attraction. Sometimes parents of a same-sex-attracted child hear our story and hope we can offer some program of change for their child. That's not our message; Courage is for chastity, not marriage, and we surrender the particular outcome to God. For parents faithful to Church teaching and hopeful that their child will leave (or be preserved from) a gay lifestyle, our message is this: Pray without ceasing, never giving up on your child, and make sure he or she knows that no matter what he or she does, you and God will always, always love him or her.

We can and do testify to the powerful experience of unconditional love, therapy, support groups, the Rosary, and Eucharistic Adoration; not to do so would be for The Sheepcat to be one of the nine lepers who didn't go back to thank Jesus (Luke 17:11-19). We're also honest in explaining that The Sheepcat continues to experience a degree of same-sex attraction, which is no barrier to our joyously living out our vocation to married life. As compelling as The Sheepcat's story is, though, the stories of our faithful celibate friends with SSA are even more compelling. We're eager to include their voices along with ours as, with the help of your prayers, we continue to proclaim the truth about God's design for our sexuality.

Rev John F. Harvey, OSFS, RIP

Father John Harvey, founder of the Courage Apostolate, passed away at the hour of mercy, Monday, December 27. He was 92. We've been temporarily inactive with this blog in recent months (and we ask our readers' continued prayers), but we're making an exception because of the special circumstances.

We met Fr Harvey in January 2009, when he came to the Archdiocese of Toronto on a speaking tour. At a time when some family members and friends had grave reservations about The Sheepcat's capacity to be a husband, he believed in us and helped us to prepare for the great sacrament of marriage. While marriage is not the goal of Courage (most members who wish to pursue the possibility of opposite-sex relationship seek professional help outside the group), he had seen enough successes to know that The Sheepcat's transition was authentic and that we would have what we needed for our life together. We were touched that he made time to see us privately, and his advice to us has proven valuable.

The occasion of that five-day visit is memorialized in the first-ever Salt and Light FOCUS episode on homosexuality, which features Fr Harvey and other interviewees, including us.

We and other Courage members saw him again when he returned to Toronto for a social visit in August of that year, a few weeks after our wedding. Here we are at the end of the Courage lunch.

We remember Fr Harvey with affection and gratitude. May he rest in peace, and may his ministry flourish. Already a cause is pending for the canonization of his Courage co-founder, Terence Cardinal Cooke, and we wouldn't be surprised to one day see a cause put forward for Fr Harvey too.

Courage has posted a brief notice, which links to a memorial by the Order of St Francis de Sales, the order to which he belonged for 73 years. How fitting that Fr Harvey died on the feast day of his namesake, the beloved disciple, St John the Evangelist.