To love and to be loved. Why, as a Gay Catholic, I Want to Join the LGBTQ Jubilee Pilgrimage to St. Peter’s
Testimony of Hector Lee (United States), participant in the Jubilee Pilgrimage of “La Tenda di Gionata and other associations” with LGBT+ Christians, their families, and the pastoral workers who accompany them.
Some 25 years ago, I came out as gay but I had difficulty integrating my gay identity with my Catholic faith. It was a time of deep depression. During this time, a friend invited me to mass at St. Agnes in San Francisco (USA). While there, I noticed in a bulletin announcement inviting LGBTQ+ Catholics to a meeting.
I was intrigued and attended the meeting with some trepidation as I still felt shame about being gay. The priest who was facilitating the meeting started the conversation by asking participants why they were there. Most mentioned that they had grown up Catholic but no longer attended as they did not feel welcomed. But now they were curious as to what the Church had to say to them. When it came to me to respond to the question, I was surprised by my response: “Jesus asked me to come.”
After 20 years of work in integrating my identity as Catholic and gay, I feel Jesus has been with me and has asked me to come to pilgrimage with other LGBTQ Catholics to St. Peter’s.
He calls me as I am. I was raised in the US in an immigrant family whose Catholic faith was important to them. As migrants in a new culture and new language, their faith provided an anchor in making a life and raising their children with love for God, the sacraments and the Church’s teachings.
We were clear on what was right and wrong. But it was not just about following the rules, it was also about living out one’s faith authentically and being in service to others. It was a faith that seeped into the marrow of our bones. When I had my first indications of being gay, I learned to suppress them. There were sanctions against anything that did not conform to gender-normed activities.
My faith, my family, my culture did not approve of homosexuality. There was shame, harassment and violence towards LGBTQ people when I was growing up. In my family, there was discomfort discussing sexuality; it was a faculty best kept under lock and key until marriage, which provided the sole legitimate expression. During this time, there was the emergence of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, which scared me and kept me in the closet. I was sincere in my faith, even attending seminary for a few years.
But I did psychological somersaults to sublimate, contain and bury an important part of who I was; I was ostensibly asexual. As I grew older, I thought I could will myself to be heterosexual, marry a woman and have a family. This psychological contortionism reached its limit when in my late 30s when I engaged in relations with a woman I was betrothed to made clear the truth about myself–I was gay. She told me, “The truth will set you free.” This was a dissolution of who I thought I was.
As my expectation to be married and have a family was now closed–I was suddenly grappling with the integration of my sexual orientation into my identity. It was inconceivable to me how I could be gay and a good Catholic. The Church taught that homosexuality was “intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to natural law”; the path forward was to live my life as a celibate homosexual. While some chose to live this out full, healthy ways-–for me, its imposition felt like a death sentence. The statement “God loves me in spite of my being gay” captured my state of mind at the time; I was filled with self-loathing.
I was fortunate that a family member suggested that I seek psychotherapy. With time and patience, this process helped me accept my sexuality. The process opened me up to explore relationship, with all its delights and challenges. Therapy also helped unpack the other emotional and psychological challenges that kept me from living a full, contented life. I am still a work in progress, and I see my shortcomings and challenges as invitations to humility, curiosity, and self-compassion.
It is important that I accept the totality of who I am as good and blessed by God, including my sexual orientation. In addition to its procreative purpose, I view sexuality as a faculty that orients us to relationship. And if Christianity is about anything, it is relationships: our relationship with God, our relationship with others, our relationship to creation. My sexual desire as a reminder that we are meant to love and be loved.
I continue to attend St. Agnes some twenty years later. It has many LGBTQ members, single, partnered and married, who are authentic in their desire to follow Jesus and live holy lives. I continue to lead a fatih sharing group around how the scripture readings speak to us as LGBTQ parishioners.
I continue to hear Jesus “bring good news to the poor, proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed.” While I am a sinner, I am primarily a loved child of God, called to live in freedom from shame, fear and living in darkness.
As I sit at the table with Jesus, I recognize that sometimes it takes courage to stand alongside Jesus as I too am called to bring good news to the poor and set captives free.
Hector Lee San Francisco, CA
> To read the full in Italian, click here…
> Official information on the Jubilee Pilgrimage of “La Tenda di Gionata and other associations.”
