HARTFORD, Connecticut (LifeSiteNews) — An extraordinary minister of Holy Communion who identifies as “transgender” said that Archbishop Christopher Coyne of Hartford, Connecticut, told him that he supports the so-called “LGBTQ community” and that he agreed to change the archdiocese’s transgender policy for students to be “more positive.”
“Following my visit with Pope Francis, I was able to meet with our new Archbishop Christopher Coyne,” a gender-confused man going by the name “Lynn” Discenza wrote in a November 20 article published by LGBT activist group New Ways Ministry.
“During the meeting, the archbishop made it clear that he welcomes and supports the [so-called] LGBTQ community,” he continued.
According to Discenza, Coyne “agreed with me that as an archdiocese we can do more” regarding LGBT causes and that Discenza‘s pro-LGBT parish, St. Patrick-St. Anthony, is a “welcoming parish.”
“It is the only parish in our Archdiocese that has [a so-called] LGBT ministry,” Discenza noted. “I am glad he recognized that.”
St. Patrick-St. Anthony in Hartford, a Franciscan parish, recently held a Mass in anticipation of “Transgender Day of Remembrance” where the altar was sacrilegiously adorned with a “pride flag.” Discenza is both an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion and a sacristan at the parish, as well as co-leader of the parish’s LGBT group.
“The other thing is he agreed with me that we need to create safe spaces for youth in our Catholic schools,” Discenza continued. “Right now, youth in our Catholic schools do not receive any kind of recognition or support for being LGBT. One of the initiatives that we are going to take on here at our parish is to create safe space for our [self-professed] LGBT students.”
Pro-LGBT “safe spaces” in schools typically refer to places where children are “affirmed” in their homosexual and/or gender-confused lifestyles and professed identities and where criticism of homosexuality and transgenderism is prohibited.
The Catholic Church teaches, in accordance with the natural law, that there are only two sexes and that bodily mutilation, such as “gender transition” procedures, is “against the moral law.” The Church also teaches, based on Sacred Scripture and the constant Tradition of the Church, that homosexual activity is mortally sinful and a “sin that cries to heaven” and that the homosexual inclination is “objectively disordered.”
Further, as canonist and author Father Gerald Murray has noted, the Church does not define people as “homosexual” or “transgender” but recognizes that God creates all people either male or female and to be attracted to the opposite sex. The Church “doesn’t believe that there is such a thing as ‘transsexuals’ or ‘bisexuals.’ You have heterosexual people who engage in deviant behavior. This is sexual immorality,” Fr. Murray said.
“The last thing that I talked to the Archbishop about was our archdiocesan policy for [gender-confused] students,” Discenza revealed. “He agreed with me that it does not reflect his values of welcoming and dignity for all. He agreed to mark that up and change that to be more positive.”
Coyne of Hartford, who assumed leadership of the archdiocese in May after the resignation of Archbishop Leonard Blair, has previously declared that he would use a “transgender” person’s non-biological name.
“It doesn’t cost me anything to accept them as they’re presenting themselves, as a brother or a sister, or whatever gender they’re asking me to refer to them as,” he said. “If they’d like to be referred to by this name or this pronoun, it doesn’t cost me anything to say, ‘Okay,’ and then begin a communication with this person.”
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Eighth Commandment “forbids misrepresenting the truth in our relations with others,” such as affirming a person’s confused “identity.” “Every word or attitude is forbidden which by flattery, adulation, or complaisance encourages and confirms another in malicious acts and perverse conduct,” the Catechism teaches.
Coyne also supports “female deacons,” despite the Catholic Church specifically reserving that role for men. Last year, he shared that he hopes “there will be some opportunity down the road [to] ordain or name some deaconesses.”
However, as former Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) prefect Cardinal Gerhard Müller has noted, “the impossibility that a woman validly receives the Sacrament of Holy Orders in each of the three degrees [deacon, priest, bishop] is a truth contained in Revelation and it is thus infallibly confirmed by the Church’s Magisterium and presented as to be believed.”
Coyne has previously advocated for extending legal benefits to homosexual “couples” and has described transgender-identifying people’s gender confusion as “biological” and “who they are,” as LifeSiteNews reported. He has also said that being in a homosexual “marriage,” which is mortally sinful, does not necessarily make someone “a bad person or a bad Catholic.”
In 2022, while bishop of Burlington, Vermont, Coyne removed Father Peter Williams as pastor of Holy Family Parish in Springfield after the priest refused to accept Coyne’s COVID shot mandate, LifeSiteNews reported.