TORONTO, July 25, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — An ex-gay porn star who returned to his Catholic faith is raising alarm over a prominent media priest saying Mass this weekend for an LGBT group.
Joseph Sciambra describes All Inclusive Ministry, based at Toronto’s Jesuit parish Our Lady of Lourdes, as a “dissident pro-gay ministry.”
He notes that Fr. Thomas Rosica, executive director of Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation, Vatican consultant, and frequent English-language spokesman for the Vatican, is addressing the group and celebrating its monthly Mass July 28.
Toronto Catholic Witness blog also took note of the event. It asked Rosica to use the opportunity to “call those who have engaged in homosexual acts to repent, confess and be reconciled with Our Redeemer.”
Rosica, however, told a one-day conference on the Synod on the Family at Toronto’s St. Benedict’s Parish on April 11, 2015, the Catechism’s language on homosexuality “has got to change.”
Rosica: Catechism language “has got to change”
New Zealand’s Cardinal John Dew said as much during the October 2014 session of the synod, Rosica explained at that time.
Dew “started the ball rolling at the synod by saying we have a problem with language. It doesn’t help us to sit down with a homosexual person, a gay person and say, well, how does it feel to be intrinsically disordered? Imagine! Because that’s what the Catechism says, an intrinsically disordered person,” he told the conference.
In fact, the Catechism says the homosexual inclination is “objectively disordered” (2358) and homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” and “under no circumstances can they be approved” (2357).
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“I’ve never dealt pastorally with homosexuals by saying, how nice to meet you, an intrinsically disordered man, or woman,” Rosica told the St. Benedict conference participants.
“Or, a couple coming in living together, coming in for marriage instruction, oh, you’re at the same address, you’re living in sin, welcome. And all kinds of other words that are part of our theological vocabulary, words that don’t invite, they repel,” he said.
“You can still talk about the same reality, but the language has got to change.”
Sciambra: Church has facilitated homosexuality
As for California-based Sciambra, who wrote a book about his deliverance 18 years ago from the homosexual life, he has strongly criticized the North American Catholic leadership for facilitating the promotion of homosexuality in the Church, whether knowingly or not.
He’s heard from Catholics across the U.S. of “how a concerned parent sent a confused kid to an officially sanctioned LGBT ministry in his diocese, and the boy later emerged as a gay rights advocate,” Sciambra wrote in a May article unrelated to AIM.
“They also usually picked up a boyfriend at these ministries,” he added.
The Toronto archdiocese backed All Inclusive Ministries when Jesuit Gilles Mongeau founded it in 2012 to offer pastoral care to individuals with same-sex attraction that was in keeping with Catholic teaching, LifeSiteNews reported in 2014.
Our Lady of Lourdes had previously hosted the local chapter of Dignity, a U.S.-based dissident group that lobbied for Catholic acceptance of homsexuality.
Fr. Mongeau told LifeSiteNews in 2014 that AIM was in a process of “evolv[ing]” towards fully reflecting Church teaching.
In a March 2017 lecture, Mongeau said AIM’s “antecedents” were Dignity, the Soho Gay Mass in London, England, and the Chicago-based Archdiocesan Gay and Lesbian Outreach or AGLO, Sciambra wrote on Tuesday.
AIM a “dissident group”
Sciambra sees these connections as highly significant.
“AIM is a dissident group that traces its origins back to the pro-gay marriage Dignity ministry,” he asserted. “According to the ‘vision’ of AIM: ‘We envision a time when all the children of God participate fully in all aspects of life within the Church and society’.”
“Gay” activist Rick Garcia described AGLO as a “compromise” between Cardinal Joseph Bernardin and Dignity so “the archdiocese could have it both ways — Mass on Church property for gay people and the archdiocese wanting to alleviate pressure from Rome and right-wing Catholics,” Sciambra pointed out.
He also quoted AIM’s 2016 Facebook posts that suggest the group embraces dissenting views.
AIM posted August 23, 2016 on Facebook:
There are those whose theological project will always be to prove that gay love is something other than love. That proof can never be had. Gay love is love, and if Jesus was correct that the law is summed up in love, then homosexuality is hardly unbiblical. And if the end of natural law is to love rightly and fiercely, homosexuality is hardly immoral or unethical.
In September, AIM posted excerpts from the 1999 Spiritual Direction and the Gay Person by Jesuit James Empereur, including:
Homosexuality is one of God’s most significant gifts to humanity. To be gay or lesbian is to have received a special blessing from God. All humans receive their own special graces from their creator, but God has chosen some to be gay and lesbian as a way of revealing something about God-self that heterosexuals do not.
Moreover, New Ways Ministry — an openly dissenting “gay-positive” Catholic group — lists Our Lady of Lourdes Parish as “LGBT-friendly.”
Mongeau told LifeSiteNews in a telephone call from Montreal, where he is assistant to the Jesuit provincial superior, that he has not been the liaison between AIM and the archdiocese for “at least three years.”
AIM “is a ministry of the parish now,” he said, adding that archdiocesan spokesman Neil MacCarthy could confirm AIM’s status in the archdiocese.
In response, MacCarthy referred LifeSiteNews back to its 2014 article, but did not respond to the question whether Sciambra’s points — including the 2016 AIM Facebook comments — were a cause for concern.
Fr. John Sullivan of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish was at camp and unavailable for comment, and Fr. Rosica did not return a call from LifeSiteNews.