The Feast of St John Paul II was like any other day and it was not unusual for me to make a mid-week confession; I knelt in silent prayer before the tabernacle before creeping into the wooden confessional at the back of the Church; I detailed the familiar naughtiness and ended with a general confession regarding the sins of my relationship.
I’m a 29-year-old year old gay man in an eight-year relationship and All Saints’ Day marks the Fifth Anniversary of my reception into the Catholic Church.
For the first time ever, the priest refused me absolution. The experience left me angered, saddened and confused.
I accept the irregularity of my situation as existing outside of the Church’s normative structures of family life and yet I am resolved, by God’s grace in the life of “complete continence” (Familiaris Consortia 84), to live out my call to holiness as detailed in Lumen Gentium.
It is always difficult when visiting a new confessor and language so often fails in our feeble attempts to give a full account of the complexity of our lives: in negotiating how to communicate the resolution of chastity with the reality of weekly failure I wonder whether the poor priest I visited that evening mistook my amendment for Sebastian Flyte’s Augustinian lament: “O God, make me good, but not yet”. I was quite prepared for a pious grumble about “cheap grace”.
The refusal to absolve me that evening and the reproach of my relationship as an occasion of sin belongs to a conservative narrative that thinks of homosexuality principally in terms of Cardinal Ratzinger’s “objective disorder”. So to “come out” is always to announce one’s sin: the love, care, and bonds of affection that are Providential in our redemption are less important to the homophobic mind than the presumption of our genital transgressions.
This presumption of gay sin is inimical to St Paul’s dogmatic assertion that we are “all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28) and is an injustice to the “theology of hospitality” set out in the Synod’s midway Relatio post disceptationem: the same theology that Cardinal Vincent Nichols characterised in his BBC Radio 4 interview as “respect”, “welcome” and “value” and which I believe are the hallmarks of a pastoral language of mercy towards gay folk and their relationships in the Church.
I returned to that priest the next afternoon. He distinguished between being refused and deferred absolution, yet this distinction failed to acknowledge my relationship – in Cardinal Peter Erdo’s words from the recent Synod – in the “light of the law of graduality” which Cardinal Nichols explains is a “law of pastoral moral theology which permits people, all of us, to take one step at a time in our search for holiness in our lives.” The grace of sacramental absolution is “sweetness to the soul and health to the body” (Proverbs 16:24) and necessary to the mental health of gay Catholics who labour in faith to integrate their lives to the perfect will of God.
I returned to confession and absolution this afternoon with my principal confessor, yet I fear that politicising absolution will serve to destroy the faith of those gay Catholics who, in the words of Pope Francis’ famous “Who am I to judge?” line on gays, “seek God and have good will”.
Aaron Saunderson-Cross is a lay Catholic and a lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies
Editor's note: Given the absolute confidentiality priests observe with regard to confession, we are unable to ask the priest who denied absolution to this blogger the reasons for his decision.
Above: The Vatican has been encouraging Catholics to rediscover the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Pope Francis surprised onlookers by making his confession during a penitential liturgy. Photo: CNS/L'Osservatore Romano via Reuters
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My heart goes out to you. I believe to try and live out chastity as a gay man or woman is a very hard path. But it is thevteaching of the Church that homosexual acts are mortal sin. If you are living in a gay relationship, and saying you are resolved to live chaste eventhough you "fall" every week, the only one you are fooling is yourself. You can go and receive absolution and have that absolution have NO effect whatsoever. How is that possible? If you are not truly contrite the sacrament is invalid. I know I sound harsh, but as Archbishop Fulton Sheen said, "If you want people to stay the same, tell them what they want to hear. If you want to help them change, tell them what they need to hear." As I said, my heart goes out to you. I too am a sinner. But what I have said, I've said in love and concern for your immortal soul. Getting to heaven and experiencing the beatific vision is the pearl of great price, that we must be willing to lay down all we are and have to obtain.
Thank-you for sharing 'Desire of the Everlasting Hills' Garden Lady: it is a beautiful and powerful testimony of the challenges that lesbian and gay folk encounter and the grace of the Church's redemption in Jesus Christ. I would wholeheartedly recommend it as my friends have done too.
http://everlastinghills.org/movie/
Rilene, Dan, Paul – stories of three people who came out of the gay life
In my desire to take the spotlight off the particulars of Aaron and his friend, may I offer a better explanation of what I am trying to explore in general about gay (and heterosexual) relationships. I do not know Aaron, but in his bravery of sharing his pain, he has opened the consideration of sex and how all of us need to explore where this desire can carry us. This is not my own website…not trying to self-promote…but this one-hour movie shares the stories of Rilene, Dan, Paul – stories of three people who came out of the gay life. Paul, in particular, makes me think of Aaron’s life and challenges. Emrys…I believe these stories give a real picture to the life you and I both pray will draw people home to Christ.
Emrys, you are quite right about celibacy. However, the full descriptions in both the article and the author's Combox responses is somewhat ambiguous about celibacy as it is intended and pursued in this relationship. Enough. I agree that celibate individuals can share life together...I thought my comments were clear on this. Sorry they weren't. I continue to offer prayers of support to these men for such a goal.
What is this "sin" Garden Lady keeps referring to? Aaron specifically says, "we have, by the grace of God, committed to living a life of sexual continence for the sake of both our love and the precepts of the Church." Surely she does not think that two celibate men sharing a life together is sinful!
Aaron, my questions were meant rhetorically to point out important elements that would be involved in pastoral care for any of us struggling with your situation. As another writer pointed out, gay and straight people are similarly directed to pursue and maintain holy relationships. Respectfully, knowing that I am only dealing with your limited written descriptions, when you say, “I am in an eight-year relationship,” this suggests a commitment to remaining in the relationship (at least for an extended period of time). I do not want to put you on the spot in terms of further explaining your own situation publicly. I only wish to point out that when any of us choose to persist in our sin, a priest has a difficult role in extending both mercy and counsel for correction. Reading your description of the priest in question, I must allow that he was called to make a difficult decision. Again, when our sins are forgiven, it is under the presumption that we are confessing, turning and leaving the sin. While we are not perfect and may fail, our intention to reject the sin is key. You claim you “have built a life together and hope for the future.” That statement and your mention of the “Church’s official teaching,” suggest that you oppose the official teaching and have made a deliberate choice to remain in this gay relationship in spite of what the Church teaches. You and your priest are best able to work through your personal situation. God bless.
Garden Lady out of respect for my own privacy and my partner's I am not willing to answer the first three detailed questions that you ask and whilst I have been happy to give a general sense of my situation I am not prepared to enter into a personal account inappropriate for a public forum. In respect of 'pastoral counselling' I have both a confessor and a spiritual director and I have once attended 'Courage' which due to its London meetings is difficult for me to attend regularly. I respect the distinction you draw for yourself between 'friendships' and 'relationships' and I am in an eight-year relationship with a man with whom I have built a life and hope for a future with: the fact that our status may not be recognised in the Church's official teaching does not diminish the love, care and bonds of exclusive affection that exist between us.
As with other readers, I am not quite clear about your situation as you describe it. “I’m a 29-year-old year old gay man in an eight-year relationship” – and other comments – suggest that your resolution to be celibate needs review. I deeply love many of my friends, but I consider these friendships…not “relationships.” My relationship is only with my husband. What are your living arrangements? What boundaries have you established in spending time with the other man? Does he share your Catholic faith or the goal for celibacy? What use have you made of pastoral counseling and Catholic ministries that would support you in this difficult walk? I can imagine a loving, compassionate priest challenging you to be truthful to yourself…to see your confession and repentance put into practical, real actions. Remember that Christ extended mercy to sinners and then instructed them to, “Go, and sin no more.” Yes, there are priests (and deacons and lay leaders) who need a stronger foundation of love in their ministry. But dealing with our sins is a challenging effort all around, and it requires us to face hard truths. May you receive the love of Christ from those helping you in your call to holiness.
Thank-you to all the very kind and generous comments here and particularly the two Fathers 'Emrys' and 'Richard Rutkauskas' - your words of compassion are gratefully received.
I would like to pick up on a point that 'Leedac' makes and that 'philip' picks up: relationships that constitute the occassion of sin, living separately and witholding absolution.
I have been in a same-sex relationship for over Eight years now and both my partner and I have built a life together; we have, by the grace of God, committed to living a life of sexual continence for the sake of both our love and the precepts of the Church. It is difficult enough that same-sex relationships are rendered invisible in the Church, that there are no real structures of support for them, and that as we have seen the Extraordinary Synod on the Family was unable to commit to a meaningful pastoral language for those of us in such relationships except to highlight their non-equivalence to marriage.
The consequence of this situation is that people in same-sex relationships are without any real help or support or pastoral advice and we are forced to build community 'together' if we are to thrive in the Church.
That I fall into sin is an issue of concern and repentence for me that I take to the Sacrament of Penance: that I am best helped by the characterisation of my relationship as an 'occasion of sin' and the recommendation to live separately and be refused absolution is a very harmful narrative that I disagree with.
Aaron, I sympathise with your situation.
I agree with Philip. I do not see your situation as being a specifically gay issue. The same circumstance would apply to anyone unwilling to move away from a non-spousal sexual relationship.
Every sacrament is composed of two parts, 'form' and 'matter'. In the case of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the 'matter' is the penitent's contrition. The Act of Contrition states, in part, "O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins...I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin."
Now, homosexual acts are - like acts of adultery and cohabitation - manifestly and objectively sinful. if a penitent engaged in - and with no intention of desisting from - these objectively sinful behaviors (e.g. by cutting off the adulterous affair, or by no longer living with and having sexual relations with a person to whom they are not sacramentally wed) they are not either properly contrite nor are they honest about "intend(ing) to sin no more and avoid(ing) the near occasion of sin."
Thus, if there is no 'matter' of the sacrament, there can be no 'form'. Think of it this way, in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the form and matter consist of the Eucharistic Prayer (i.e. the words of consecration) and the bread and wine. If there is nothing to consecrate, the priest cannot say to any effect the words of consecration. Nor can the priest say the words of consecration to any effect if he is presented with gingersnaps and grape juice. The priest cannot, i.e. is unable, to effect a sacrament absent the proper 'matter'. In short, the priest was objectively unable to absolve you of your sin.
In 1966 I said good-bye to my moral theology professor. His last words to me have never left me. Waving his hand towards the Aula Magna where, for three years, he had taught, impeccably, the Catholic analysis of matters moral, he said, "All that stuff in there is all very well. However, you are to be a confessor and you must never forget that each person is a mystery." Hopefully, I have exercised the ministry with this wisdom while respecting what, in the Church's judgement, is objectively right and wrong.
Confessions should be occasions of joy - like the father running towards the prodigal son when he decides to come back home. These days, we have liturgists really doing good work to make the Eucharist appropriately celebrated. Perhaps some of them should start exploring how to improve how we celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation?
Aaron: let's be honest. At BEST you had a 50/50 chance of finding a compassionate priest. This is Catholicism. It is a bit naive to expect otherwise.
You drew the short straw. Dust your feet of the dust of that parish and look elsewhere.
Blessed are those who expect little; they will not be disappointed.
Aaron - I sympathise with your predicament. However, is this specifically an issue that has to do with a gay relationship where there is a desire to live in a celibate way? Graduality is not the issue here.
Say you were not gay and living with a young lady with whom you had been very good friends for years. Regularly (you hint at regularly above), despite the fact that you only wanted a friendship, you had intimate relations, you realized it was wrong and you went to confession. It would be entirely reasonable for a priest to say that you were putting yourself in a situation of an "occasion of sin" and that it would be better for your soul if you lived separately and, further, if you continued to be in a position where you were likely to be tempted out of your own choice then it was reasonable to withhold absolution.
I don't know much about the theology of these matters, but the priest may well have been charitable (and certainly not uncharitable) in making that suggestion (either in your own case or in the case of a heterosexual couple) you remove yourself from temptation.
Now, he may be wrong and you do say that you had difficulty explaining the situation (confession is never easy) but it does not seem to me to be a wholly unreasonable position for the priest to take and I am not sure why he was "ill-informed" (see comment below)
The article begins by Aaron acknowledging he has been in an eight year relationship, also that his falling into mortal sin is a regular thing. Being in a relationship that continually leads to the occasion of mortal sin, clearly shows you are not truly repentant and therefore it is the DUTY of the priest, who is a representative of God and HIS mercy, not to give you absolution. This priest who said no, is the only one who has truly shown you God's truth.
If you continually put yourself in temptation's way and fall refusing to change the circumstances that lead to the fall, you remain in your sin. Any priest who is giving you absolution is not being faithful to God. Jesus gave us a wonderful direction in the Lord's Prayer = "Lead us not into temptation".
Aaron, I pray you choose to follow God's law and the true teaching of the church on the sacrament of Confession.
I am sorry to hear of your experience. I am a priest of 27 years who would like to think that in this day and age that most of my colleagues would share the attitude of Pope Francis. My advice: trust in God who created you!
Very sorry to read of your unhelpful encounter. I am a 76 yr old diocesan priest and regard it as a matter of the greatest charity to pray for those who, ill-informed, cause distress and even harm to others in exercising the apostolic ministry.