I love a great tableau of the saints—15, 20, 30 people surrounding Mary or Jesus and facing us, their heads framed by halos as yellow as the sun. It’s like getting to see the members of the Justice League or the X-Men all together. There’s that game of trying to see if you can recognize all of them, remember their backstories and superpowers. But for me, it is also reassuring to see them all gathered together. Particularly if they include more than just celibate white men, it feels like a glimpse of the kingdom of God, a home where there is a place for all of us.
But then a couple years ago, I was at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, showing some friends the gorgeous tapestries of the saints that line the walls of the church. Created by the artist John Nava, they are just extraordinary—young people and old, Europeans, Africans, Asians, Latin Americans and Indigenous people, women and men all surrounding us and looking with us toward God.
As I sat there in the church with my guests, looking up at all these beautiful images, it suddenly hit me that not a single one of these people has been identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, though undoubtedly some of them were. In fact, the Catholic Church has yet to recognize a single L.G.B.T. saint.
Now, depending on how you were raised, just the fact that I am raising this as a problem might seem scandalous. Honestly, I instinctively feel that way myself, and I’m gay. No matter how much work Pope Francis, various bishops, clergy and others have done to try and normalize the place of L.G.B.T. people in the church, the fact is, for many Catholics of a certain age, being L.G.B.T. still seems wrong or disobedient. It’s right there in the way the church has often tried to talk about L.G.B.T. people: “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” Those who use this phrase argue that it makes clear that the problem with us is not our identities, but our acts and desires. But the line only identifies L.G.B.T. people as sinners. It teaches people to love us anyway. And when you hear that enough as an L.G.B.T. person, you start to believe the same.
So yes, in proposing that it’s a problem that there are no L.G.B.T. saints, I feel like I am saying something transgressive. But the fact is, as Catholics we believe that each of us is born in the image and likeness of God. Not just straight people, white people or men—everyone. There is no asterisk in the Catechism on this point. This is the teaching of the church, even if some Catholics discuss or treat us in ways that suggest otherwise.
It is this truth of our faith, in fact, that allowed Francis to say, when asked a question about gay priests, “If a gay person is in eager search of God, who am I to judge them?” It is what has allowed him to praise the work of organizations like New Ways Ministry and people like Jeannine Gramick, S.L., and my colleague James Martin, S.J., all of whom have been ministering to L.G.B.T. Catholics, in Sister Gramick’s case for over 50 years; or to invite a group of transgender people to the Vatican to receive their Covid vaccine; or to restore the openly gay theologian Father James Alison to active ministry after two decades of what he described as a “Kafkaesque” nightmare in which he was not allowed to know what the charges against him were, could not make legal representation of his case and was not allowed any appeal. If we are children of God like everyone else, then we should be afforded the same care and respect that they are. “Know that God created you, God loves you and God is on your side,” Cardinal Joseph Tobin and 13 other U.S. archbishops and bishops wrote in a statement last December, speaking to L.G.B.T. youth.
But there is more to it than respect and love. To say that God created us or that we are made in God’s image is to say that we offer a glimpse of who God is, that we are each a means by which other people can know that they, too, are an image of God, seen and loved by Him. It’s an incredible statement, to think that any of us could be such a gift, a way by which others may come to know God and themselves better. And yet we believe that to be true of all human beings….
The above comes from a June 2 posting in America magazine by Jim McDermott, S.J, associate editor of the magazine.
God is not the author of evil. Those who persist in evil (as opposed the those who may struggle with the temptation thereto) are not with God, here or in the hereafter. Even those who repent before the end (St. Augustine, Oscar Wilde, or Charles II of England) are praised for their repentance, not for their behavior before repentance.
Maybe if a Saint struggled with same-sex attraction, they didn’t identify as “gay?’
In fact, describing a person as homosexual didn’t happen until the late 19th century. (Of course, homosexual behavior has been around as long as humans it seems. But, we didn’t have to label everyone. The term heterosexual, as a noun, arose about the same time.)
The Church has survived 2,000 years without identifying the sexual orientation or genders (more than two?) of her members. Why the sudden “need?”
Maybe something to do with the LGBTQ+ lobby?
Rev. Martin still won’t reveal his letters or pronouns.
I don’t identify as cisgender. I’m simply a man (who used to be a boy). I was never ordered to deny that.
Not everything has to be sexualized and politicized. Maybe that’s why some Saints were canonized, they lived chastely, followed God, grew in holiness and avoided needless political entanglements.
“Know that God created you, God loves you and God is on your side” in plain language, an unqualified “God is on your side” means God is an advocate for LBGT+ people. And if this be true, that advocacy should in theory include a recognition of LBGT+ sanctity. This logically means that aberrant sexuality by itself is no barrier to sainthood, and we should have LBGT+ saints. Thus the Church’s entire history of theology from Scripture and Tradition on sexuality is consigned to the dustbin. And if this happens, everything else the Church teaches is subject to revision. I suppose Jesuits of the Jim McDermott, S.J ilk would be only to happy to wield the axe on all matters they deem offensive. In particular, leave it to Jesuits to destroy the legacy of JP II and Benedict XVI.
Gay, gay, gay all the time with these people.
You know what? There aren’t any declared saints with Down Syndrome either. But I bet practically all of God’s Down Syndrome children are among the undeclared saints in heaven.
Yes, people who suffer from L or G or B or T are made in the image and likeness of God. They are also called to chastity and accepting their God-given sexual-bodily nature.
So there will never be a T saint because T implies not accepting the body God gave you.
If there have been, are, or will be any LGB saints, it will be because they lived lives of heroically chaste virtue, among other things. There will never be a LGB saint who asserts or lives contrary to the Church’s moral doctrine and God’s revealed truth that homosexual acts are gravely immoral and that marriage is exclusively between a man and a woman.
So, sorry, Fr. James Martin is not on the road to sainthood.
And why does this article’s Jesuit author get to state publicly that he’s gay but Fr. James Martin is prohibited?
“There will never be a LGB saint who asserts or lives contrary to the Church’s moral doctrine and God’s revealed truth that homosexual acts are gravely immoral and that marriage is exclusively between a man and a woman.” I hope you are right on this, because many Jesuits seem to have other ideas about homosexual acts and sanctity, and would see present teaching changed.
While there may not be any saints who identified as LGBTQ in their lifetime, I suspect there are saints who were LGBT or Q. One only need to consider how many of the “official” saints are priests, sisters, popes, nuns, etc. and recognize that today many priests, nuns, brothers, sisters are LGBT or Q. What is going on now with respect to the religious life has been going on for centuries. There is research data which indicates many people attracted to the religious life have sexual difficulties. The extent of the sexual abuse in all religions and Christian denominations in particular is another indicator of this phenomenon.
I don’t want to know that priest is gay. TMI. Keep it to yourself. Why are so many Jesuits gay?
The founder wasn’t named Saint Igaytius of Gayola. Might as well have been though, based on the current Jesuit demographic.
The day the Catholic church canonizes an active openly gay person is the day I join Grace Community Church. Because the Catholic church will have turned apostate.
A blessed feast day of St. Charles Lwanga and Companions to all the faithful. St. Charles and the others, whose feast day is today, was martyred for refusing the sexual advances of a pagan African king. St. Charles was probably as black as night, like the tents of Kedar and the curtains of Solomon, but he shines as bright as the sun and the stars in heaven.
The saints are saints because they overcame their temptations, not because they gave into them and taught others to do so.
St. Charles Lwanga and Companions pray for us.
“It’s like getting to see the members of the Justice League or the X-Men all together.” This priest is obviously quite immature. Naturally, he would make this comparison, as many writers in the comic book universe have pushed through their SSA characters and foisted them upon us.
…because it’s all about that…It’s all about being gay and demurring on whether or not that involves physical intimacy outside of marriage for purely self consoling reasons…or not…yes…no…who knows? Is it that important? Fr. Martin might advocate a lot better and foster way more understanding if he didn’t play so many narcissistic games.
Way more Jesuits that are grownups than is widely assumed. The 7th grade girls cliques just get all of the attention…what mortification those many godly men must endure in that order…God bless and have mercy on those wise and faithful Jesuits!
I’ll tell you this much… anyone who says gay is okay is wrong and not a true follower of Christ. Like the author of this article.
Jesus never said anything bad about gays. He healed the gay partner of the centurian and didn’t say they were sinning. Jesus always reached out to the disenfranchised and rejected. Today, he’d probably be reaching out during Pride month. I could see him marching in a parade, carrying a rainbow flag, tweeting with a rainbow icon on his profile pic. It was literally no big deal to him. He said nothing about it. Just accepted it as part of the human condition.
As for transgenders, you do have Jesus saying that some people are eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven, so there’s that. He did say that. I’m not lying. I’d say based on that that a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven is a transgender woman. You see she had to become a eunuch (look up what that means; it involves cutting off the man parts) to enter the kingdom of heaven. She could only enter God’s kingdom as her true self, and to become her true self she had to become a eunuch, or she had to transition from male to female. It’s in the Gospel. Jesus’ words.
So it’s all there in the Gospels. There’s gay and transgender there if you know where to find it. It’s the people who don’t know the Gospels that well that have all these hangups.
“He healed the gay partner of the centurion” only someone from the castro district or Greenwich village believe this, They cannot accept Truth, it was not the centurions’s lover. Twisted minds like this most twist the words of Christ so that their consciences are appeased while they commit acts that cry to heaven for vengeance.
The gay centurion is a staple of Fr. James Martin’s workshop presentations about how Jesus accepted gays.
And some writers also claim, based on evidence from their itching ears, that David and Jonathan were homosexual. The concept of friendship that does not include genitalia seems to be difficult for some.
I guess the question you have to ask is what authority did Jesus leave for passing on his message of faith? Anyone can grab a bible and exegete most anything they want if the Reformers are any example. The gender ideology that claims Jesus Christ is just riffing off of 16th century Reformers. It’s a 500 year old story.
At the end of the day if we truly follow Christ, we believe Him when he said, “You are Peter and on this Rock I will build my Church. Go and teach all that I have commanded you. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in Heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven and I will be with you until the end of the age. He established a visible Church with the promise of divine assistance that the Apostles spread throughout the world fulfilling the impossibly unlikely prophesy in Isaiah that the God of the Israelites would be worshiped by all nations throughout the world.
Being a Catholic is hard for anyone. But surrendering to Jesus in humility, penance and and service to his will in the long run is way easier than the irrational chaos that the gender/race ideology offers.
“We’re all okay with sex slavery now. Jesus never said anything about having a boy around for expressing ourselves so just get over your hang ups.”
-Jesus on gays
Jesus taught, “Let the children come unto me.”
There is no evidence, other than wistful revisionism, that states the centurion and/or his servant were “gay”. Fail.
There are no LGBT saints at all, Pride is their virture they are burning in Hell
Perhaps the author hasn’t stopped to consider that until about 40 years ago there were no people identifying as LGBTQP. If someone had those “feelings” or “attractions” they mostly didn’t talk about it except with like-minded people, close friends, a therapist or an arresting officer. So, perhaps the Church didn’t know that that they were either struggling with these feelings or giving in to them. Now all of this seems very strange, that people would not talk about these things. But the only people who now cannot talk about these things are heterosexual men who are accused of “Locker Room Talk” and shunned because of it.
Perhaps there were those who confessed these things in the Sacrament, but nobody talked about them in public. Still, the last group, of “those who are sexually attracted to minors” aren’t talking about it in public because it is not socially acceptable… yet. I hope it never is.
““those who are sexually attracted to minors” aren’t talking about it in public because it is not socially acceptable” give it time Father, the perverts are on the march. The Logical result of tolerance
Fr. James Martin is winning. Archbishop Cordileone is losing. Why is that?
“What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”
Jesus (Mark 8:36-38)
This is a spiritual war. There are wins and losses in battles, and casualties. Yet, we know Who wins in the end. Read to the end of The Book.
And, stay on the Ark and don’t give up the fight.
“Fr. James Martin is winning. Archbishop Cordileone is losing. Why is that?” Remember the words of Mother Teresa to the effect that God doesn’t ask us to be successful, but to be faithful. Under that metric it is Abp. Cordileone who is winning, not Fr. Martin.