After having passed beyond the wives, slaves, children and everything he possessed from the stream, Jacob remains alone and at the fall of the night he is attacked by a "man who clung to him until the ricker of dawn".We find all this in Jacobok's story of Jacob. But the ford is also an image that describes a ride, tiring, but still possible, from one bank to the other of the river. The homosexuals are also called, and certainly not with benevolence, "those of the other bank".
If we like the image it is because we want that there is neither antagonism nor separation between men, but a constant possibility of passage from one bank to another, for a meeting that takes place, perhaps, right in the midst of the ford. For us, however, the other bank mainly means a liberation landing, a land where you can live a love purified by selfishness and all ambiguity.
This is a hope that makes us move towards the fields of friendship and fraternity, following the indications of the Gospel that remains, for many of us, a precise point of reference. In this sense there is for everyone another side to which to go, together possibly, because so fatigue becomes lighter and, if one stumbles, can immediately find help. And it is to walk together that our group continues to exist and operate.
Faith and homosexuality
Faith and homosexuality. Two terms that, according to many, cannot absolutely be reconciled. Yet there are people who, like us, cannot fail to be said to be homosexual despite being Christians and who cannot fail to say Christians despite being homosexual.
Faced with such a reality, there is the great temptation to hide in hypocrisy and not to question the meaning of one's experience: it is certainly not easy to reconcile these two words in one's life and those who cannot overcome their isolation risks get lost between feelings of guilt and sexual promiscuity, between the superficial convictions and the abandonment of Christian values.
Together we would like to understand what sense the evangelical message for us homosexuals has. Together we would like to create the word of the Church that invites us to fulfill the project that God has on us. Together we would like to preserve the hope of Christ and announce it to those who are homosexuals like us.
With these objectives we have tried to build the ford: a place where people are encouraged not to deny their belonging to the Church and their homosexuality, but to live them fullness in the light of the Gospel, without conflicts and without hypocrisy; A place where it is possible to put yourself at the service of those who are close to us in the life and condition of homosexual people; A place where you compare yourself to elaborate an ethics together to experience our homosexuality Christianly.
In essence, the ford wants to be a sign of hope for all those who meet us, because it is in the hope that, since now, we experience our definitive liberation. To get to a more exact understanding of our homosexuality is one of the main objectives of the group: the encounter with psychology experts, with moral experts and with pastoral experts, the comparison between us on the choices that we are called to make, The praying listening of the Word of God and the attention to the magisterium of the Church are the tools that help us in this path. The goal is to mature an adult consciousness, capable of making its choices independently and with responsibility, without feeling the need to continuously resort to external authorizations.
Finally, the group tries to exploit all the occasions it has to offer to the Church: in its bishops, in its priests and in its faithful, a more correct intelligence of homosexuality. In this perspective, the numerous letters and the numerous meetings that, in the past, we have proposed and which we continue to propose must be read.
The history and statute of the group then place it in a position of natural dialogue with the different Christian confessions operating in Italy. Among our guests, in addition to numerous exponents of the Catholic Church, also members of the Valdese Church, the Baptist Church, the Veterocathian Church, the Anglican Communion and the Orthodox churches. We have thus discovered the sense of an ecumenical journey that does not eliminate the differences, but puts them in dialogue in a common dimension of service to the man and the Gospel.
