A church that smiles. Navigating with the Bolognese group "couple and paste" for Christian homosexual couples

.
Reflections sent to us by Don Maurizio Mattarelli* and by the psychologist Laura Ricci*, conductors of the Bolognese group "couple and paste" for Christian homosexual couples

In a beautiful and perhaps little known song by Francesco De Gregori (The house), he imagines to build a wooden and cardboard house, without roof or foundation, because it is a house "on the border", Provisional but welcoming. A house in motion but robust, strong of the points of reference: the cardinal points of love, human dignity and the names of the evangelists with reference to the joy and beauty of the word, the scent of pink of being together and the wine of joy.

With these cardinal points we have been "fixed couple" for more than thirteen years: for the diocese of Bologna we have accompanied the Group of separated and divorced for about a decade, for seven years we have conducted a laboratory of Pastoral Pedagogy at the Flaminio Regional Seminar and for three years we have guided the Timoteo Punto Zero supervision group for "ordinary Presbyteral Maintenance".

With the group "couple and paste" we live in a welcoming house where to live and shelter from the weather of life. A house “on the border"Because the homosexual condition, and in particular the life of a couple, is in this period a territory of social and ecclesial con-flaine not well defined, in motion but swallowing life like all the frontier lands.

We can say that we are a strange couple of conductors yes, but fruitful. We are sharing tools and strategies that allow the couple to build effective communication, which facilitates comparison on several fronts: sexuality, loyalty, trust, autonomy and responsibility.

Our task as a presenter couple is to listen, support and help these couples in a setting characterized by a warm and welcoming atmosphere, useful for pursuing the growth and self -realization Objectives. our driving attitudes are characterized by authenticity, by the unconditional positive consideration of both partners and by empathic understanding.

Couples with partners of the same sex find themselves facing the same problems that afflict heterosexual couples and, for this reason within our path, the themes that emerge are often common.

From the experiences that we have done in the groups of separated and divorced, we know that the difficulties of communication between the partners rather than depend on the genre or sexual orientation, seem to us to be linked to positions of power. Each couple is different from the others and is different, even by herself, after some time of life in common: this also applies in the case of the homosexual couple.

The social acceptance of their couple seems to be the greatest difficulty: for this reason the group path helps these unions to strengthen the boundaries that define the couple and make it stable.

In addition, gender stereotypes, beliefs about the naturalization of roles can undermine the image that the gay or lesbian person has of himself and his own relationship, deeply influencing the dynamics of the relationship; We think, for example, of the management and construction of sexual and family roles within the couple.

The challenges that Luca and Riccardo, Beppe and Daniele, Pietro and Giacomo, Silvia and Elena, Maurizio and Andrea, Cristiano and Gian Mario, Daniel and Angelo are facing are linked to negative beliefs, discriminatory attitudes, prejudice, verbal violence not only in society, but also within their own families, workplaces and religious communities.

Life in groups protects them from the sense of solitude and marginalization that derives from it, allowing them to find more resources that can nourish the same couple bond.

Another of the many prejudices that homosexual couples face is to be less stable and lasting than heterosexual ones. In reality, their paths only met more obstacles, evidence and failures that were congruent with the personal path of acceptance of their sexual identity. In our opinion, it is not very different from what happens to heterosexual couples: betrayals make it suffer in equal way.

As we do when we navigate on a sailing boat, we do not have arguments of landing and pre-infected, but we sail on sight following the cardinal points, the winds of the spirit, the stars, the dreams and desires of understanding, trust, intimacy and growth with a view to faith.

We can be with people as in a "Smiling church"Since we know that our inner child has the ability to create order, beauty and objectives starting from chaos and disorder.

The members of the group are, therefore, experimenting how their love is a sign of God's benevolence and, as such, has an undeniable dignity: our couple of conductors supports these couples while taking responsibility for this manifestation of faith.

* "Couple and paste" is a group of seven adult homosexual couples who, since last year, have found themselves monthly at the parish of San Bartolomeo della Beverara in Bologna. It is led by a heterosexual couple composed of don Maurizio Mattarelli (priest, father, parish priest and assistant separated group, divorced and remarried of the diocese of Bologna) and by Laura Ricci (wife, mother, psychologist, president of the Doceat Association and professor at the theological faculty of Emilia Romagna). A couple of "strange" conductors for a group of couples looked at from the outside, as equally "strange".