I was born and raised Catholic in a small town in central Ontario. I attended Catholic elementary and secondary schools complete with uniforms, multiple daily prayer times, in-school masses, and compulsory religion classes.
People are often surprised to learn that I’m very proud to be a Catholic, because I’m also an out and very proud lesbian.
It’s true many of the doctrines of the Catholic Church are, in my opinion, old fashioned and closed-minded, but I believe in the faith above the institution.
The Catholicism I identify with is the general spirituality offered by God, rather than the fine print details that have been imposed by humankind.
The core message of Catholicism—and Christianity in general—is love and goodwill.
The other primary tenets are found in moral guideline packages such as the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes, which encourage behaviour globally accepted as good: do not kill people, do not steal things, be merciful toward others, etc.
The most important passages of the Bible have nothing to do with sexual orientation.
I reconcile my faith and my sexuality knowing that God created me with love, in His image, and that Jesus willingly died because He loved me too.
The primary argument I encounter when I speak with other Catholics about the heteronormativity of many Bible-based denominations is the “it’s not a buffet” approach.
They say you can’t pick and choose which parts of the Bible you want to accept and leave other parts behind. For queer individuals, the Bible passage in question is usually Leviticus 18:22, which is typically translated as “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination” in the King James version.
The text has since been interpreted by clergymen to encompass same-sex liaisons between two women as well, so the “sin” of lesbianism isn’t overlooked by literal technicalities.
It’s through such interpretations I fault the “buffet” criticism. The Bible, though it represents the Word of God, is disseminated among laypeople via the clergy. Priests’ sermons are comprised of their personal—albeit educated—interpretations of Biblical messages. Because of this system, the very meaning of God has shifted throughout the generations, as have His messages according to the Church.
For example, in my grandparents’ childhoods, God was a fearsome entity, a body of supreme judgement and retribution that punished the deaths of un-baptised infants with an afterlife sentence to limbo. Conversely, by the time I was attending weekly mass, the younger priests were exalting the Almighty as a loving, forgiving God who welcomed into His arms even those who strayed from the path of righteousness.
This drastic shift in the purported image of God mere decades exemplifies the way in which the messages of the faith can become garbled by the institution’s bureaucracy.
Although I believe God’s divine wisdom resides within the Bible, I also know this wisdom was recorded by men, who were, by nature, imperfect. The Bible is an ancient document that’s been transcribed, translated and therefore transformed by humans. Across two millennia—and much longer than that if we reference the events of Leviticus—and several continents, the Bible we read today can’t possibly contain the exact information it was originally intended to. I believe the most important messages to take away from my religion are its central and most exhaustively described lessons. From 14 years of mass, Catholic religion classes, prayers, sacraments and private question-and-answer consultations with ordained individuals, I can confidently report that the deepest, most emphasized core of Catholicism is love and goodwill.
These don’t exclude queer individuals from being heaven-bound Catholics. Extremist Christian groups that have used bastardized concepts of Jesus’s teachings to promote racist and sexist agendas, and extremist Muslim organizations that have twisted the meaning of Jihad to support their hate crimes are frightening illustrations of how people misinterpret stories that were intended for goodness. Everyone has a personal agenda, whether conscious or sub-conscious, and that an individual’s world view influences their interpretations of religious messages.
Because humans are fallible they comprise the institution that is the Church, this lesbian doesn’t worry about her immortal soul. My faith lies in the Faith, rather than in the doctrinal details inscribed and determined by cloaked men’s interpretations of divine teachings.
For this reason, I feel able to love God and women simultaneously without feeling condemned.
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