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Mass Outside of Stonewall Inn – L.G.B.T. Community Comes Together to Pray

By Emily Drooby

A park outside a tavern became a gathering place to pray.

But it wasn’t just any tavern, it was The Stonewall Inn – the so-called birthplace of the gay rights movement.

Meghan McKeever is a member of ‘Out at Saint Paul’, the L.G.B.T. ministry of the Mother Church of the Paulist fathers, St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan. Members of the ministry planned this outdoor mass and the group is not affiliated with the Archdiocese of New York.

“It’s just really special to be out here in the open in an affirming, sort of open loving environment and celebrating Mass together,” said McKeever.

The holy Mass comes on a special anniversary, 50 years to the date of The Stonewall Riots, when members of the L.G.B.T. community led a series of demonstrations against an excessive and violent police raid.

For McKeever, this Mass is a way of combining two parts of her life, faith and her sexuality.

“I’m a cradle Catholic so it’s something I was born with and I was blessed to be born with. It’s a foundation for me and it routes me anywhere I am and it’s my community,” said McKeever.

The Church teaches that marriage is only between a man and a woman. At the same time, the catechism teaches that L.G.B.T. people must be “accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity.”

Recently, more churches have been trying to reach out to all the people they minister to, and that includes the L.G.B.T. community.

In July 2013, Pope Francis said “if a gay person, is a person of good will who seeks God, who am I to judge?”

For the gay community, that comment from Pope Francis aboard the papal plane on his way back from a trip to Brazil in 2013, seemed to echo around the world.

It was made in the context of Pope Francis suggesting that he would not judge priests for their sexual orientation.

This made many hopeful for inclusivity, a hope that perpetuates through Greenwich Village today.

Some here believe that there has been a shift for Catholics who identify as L.G.B.T. But still, many members of clergy are holding fast to church teachings.

Ahead of pride month, Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence Rhode Island asked Catholics to not support L.G.B.T. events in a tweet saying, “promote a culture and encourage activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals. They are especially harmful for children.”

It’s an idea that was backed in a recently released Vatican document on gender ideology that urged Catholic educators to teach that biological sex and gender are naturally fixed at birth and part of god’s plan for creation.

There was another recent incident in Indianapolis. The Archbishop there defended his decision to require their Catholic schools fire gay teachers on the basis of them not following Church doctrine, adding they addressed it because it came to their attention.

“That’s when he addresses it. We’re trying to address how to reconcile it in order to go forward there comes moments however when we can only accompany people far before some sad hard decisions have to be made,” said Archbishop Charles Thompson.

Still, what matters here in front of The Stonewall Inn is this moment of unity and faith. It’s a stark difference from what happened during that early morning fight on June 28th, 1969.

“You could just feel the energy, you could definitely feel the holy spirit just passing through and bonding us. And his words to us, love, fidelity, acceptance, I mean that’s, that’s powerful,” said Charly Debiasse-Calle, a parishioner from the Brooklyn Diocese.

From Brooklyn and Queens to Puerto Rico, VBCC Teens Are Ready to Serve

By Melissa Enaje

A large contingent of high school students was nestled in formation inside the emerald green gymnasium at Msgr. King Hall at the St. Thomas Aquinas Sports center on a Friday night in April. But instead of perfecting plays that are the norm inside the Flatlands gym that’s home to CYO basketball tournaments throughout the year, the teens were Catholic “ambassadors” trying to perfect the salsa dance.

It was the eve before a fundraising gala dinner for the Vicariate of Black Catholic Concerns’ Youth Leadership Ambassador Program (VBCC), and the young leaders were learning how to sway their hips at the precise moment to the rhythm of the beat without stepping on their two feet.

The next day, they were going to perform in front of a packed gym to celebrate the VBCC’s 10-year anniversary and to try to impress potential donors for their mission trip to Puerto Rico, which is scheduled for July 1-7.

Young Catholic Leaders

The young Catholic leaders will spend a week volunteering in Aibonito, a small mountain region in the Diocese of Caguas in the southern part of Puerto Rico.

Each morning during the week, they will attend Mass and then go on a service project wherever they are needed, performing such tasks as cleaning an orphanage and rebuilding a chapel. At the end of each day, they will reflect as a group.

The VBCC consists of high school students from the Diocese of Brooklyn who were chosen as “ambassadors,” or youth leaders. Each member was nominated by his or her pastor and was then interviewed before being accepted.

Thirty-five members of the group will go to Puerto Rico. Each had to raise more than $1,100.

Back at Msgr. King gym, Lorenzo Boland, a three-year ambassador and recent St. Edmund Prep, Sheepshead Bay graduate, reflected on his motivation for going to Puerto Rico.

Bringing Faith to Puerto Rico

“I’m looking to get a better experience through my faith,” Boland said, “help out people who really need it, maybe bring them closer to their faith. In school, I’m involved in the Emmaus program that is a retreat program to help young men get closer to their faith. So I’m going to try and bring some of that and a little help to the Puerto Rico community.”

Father Dwayne Davis, the mission trip leader and one of the group’s chaperones, watched the teens practice the salsa dance in the gym.

“Ten years ago, I approached Bishop [Guy] Sansaricq and asked him to start a leadership program for the young people within the black community, and so they said go ahead and we started the youth leadership ambassador program,” Father Davis said, referring to the now-retired auxiliary bishop of the diocese.

“Preparing young people for college, for the workforce, preparing them to be leaders in the church in different leadership roles,” Father Davis, pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas, Flatlands, said of VBCC’s goals.

Each month, the teen leaders meet to participate in leadership, entrepreneurship and college-prep programs. They also serve as ushers at Masses, as altar servers and as lectors in between schoolwork and extracurricular activities.

Now, they are set to travel to Puerto Rico.

 “I think the most important thing that’s going to happen is not necessarily the work that gets done, but being in solidarity with the people that they encounter,” said Marilyn Santos, who works in the area of youth catechesis and evangelization for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and who will be accompanying the teens on the trip.

“Because we’re going to encounter them and we’re going to accompany them during the week. And what I’m hoping is that accompaniment continues even after we leave. Something as simple as prayer,” Santos said.

Santos has been working with Father Davis and with the Pope Francis’ mission organization, the Pontifical Mission Societies in Puerto Rico, to make sure the youth ambassadors will meet those they encounter as equals, instead of having a “savior” mentality.

“We’re here because we haven’t forgotten you,” she added,  “we’re here because you’re my brother and sister in Christ and that’s really why we’re there. We’re not going with the savior mentality, that we’re coming from the U.S.; no, we’re not going to save anybody. That shouldn’t be the focus of what we’re going to do, but to encounter and be in solidarity.”

Colsen Compere, one of the teens going on the trip, said he struggled to sell tickets to the fundraising gala. Nonetheless, with the help of the other leaders, volunteers and Father Davis, he said he feels prepared and he has one thing on his mind.

“When I get to Puerto Rico, I want to make people smile,” he said.

60+ Second Review – ‘Amazing Grace’

Steven Greydanus reviews the must-watch concert documentary AMAZING GRACE, featuring Aretha Franklin’s performance at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church back in 1972!

Currents News for Thursday, June 27, 2019

The U.S. Supreme Court wrapping up its work for the year, handing down decisions anticipated by court watchers; Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio strongly calls for action on the escalating immigration crisis as there’s a breakthrough on an emergency deal; Monsignor Bernard Quinn is page one in The Tablet. We’ll preview the sainthood story; She’s called “Sister Strike” – and the nun is up for a famous award.

Watch weeknights at 7:00 pm EST on NET-TV in the New York City area on Spectrum, Optimum, and Fios. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive notifications about new content.

Supreme Court Stops Citizenship Question in Census, for Now

By Carol Zimmermann

WASHINGTON (CNS) — The Supreme Court, for now, blocked the Trump administration’s added citizenship question to the 2020 census, sending the case back to a lower court.

A 5-4 ruling handed down June 27, which was written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined in part by the other justices, said the administration’s reason for adding the citizenship question “seems to have been contrived.”

The case is not completely closed because the government still has the chance to offer more acceptable reasons for the added question, but it is against time because census forms were to be printed in early July.

The census case hit a potential twist in late May, a month after oral arguments, when newly submitted evidence from the files of a deceased Republican strategist put the citizenship question in another light: as a means to create an advantage for whites and Republicans in future elections.

Then in late June, a federal appeals court in Maryland allowed a lower court to study the background of these files.

The government had asked the Supreme Court to rule on the census dispute by the end of June, so that it can finalize the census questionnaire and get the forms printed in time for distribution next year.

During oral arguments about the added census question in April, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said: “There’s no doubt people will respond less” to the census questionnaire with a citizenship question, a point which she said “has been proven in study after study.”

Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh said citizenship questions were common in other countries and had been on the U.S. forms over the years.

Both Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito said the decision by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to add a citizenship question — for the first time since 1950 to improve compliance with the Voting Rights Act — seemed reasonable. But Justice Elena Kagan said Ross’ reason for adding this question seemed “contrived.”

In its defense, U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco said the information it would provide would help enforce the Voting Rights Act. When asked about the question leading to potentially less participation, he said: “There is always going to be a trade-off.”

Lawyers for New York, immigrant advocacy groups and the House of Representatives stressed that the question would prevent noncitizens from filling out the census and have a negative financial and political impact on communities with large immigrant populations.

A similar argument was raised in a friend-of-the-court brief opposed to the citizenship question filed by Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York and Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens in New York. The brief stressed that the added question would cause a “net differential undercount of people who live in noncitizen and Hispanic households” and would result in a “drastic and unwarranted reduction in funding in states and cities with large populations of such persons” and also would impact social service agencies.

In a statement in late April by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Florida, chairman of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, and Bishop Joe S. Vasquez of Austin, Texas, chairman of the Committee on Migration, stressed the importance of an accurate census count.

“The Catholic Church and other service providers rely on the national census to provide an accurate count in order to effectively serve those in need,” said Bishop Dewane.

Bishop Vasquez said all people should be counted in the census, regardless of their citizenship and he said “proposed questions regarding immigration status will obstruct accurate census estimates and ultimately harm immigrant families and the communities they live in.”

By one government estimate, about 6.5 million people might decide not to participate in the census with the added citizenship question.

The census is rooted in the text of the Constitution, which requires an “actual enumeration” of the population every 10 years. It determines federal funding for roads and schools, congressional districting and number of congressional representatives.