Hey all. The relic of St Augustine (and a few others) is coming to my local church and I wanted to get my bisexual flag blessed. His story of growing closer to God and rejecting the person you use to be really sticks out to me. My main issue comes from the church, which is very “”traditional”” and my family is also very “”traditional””. I was thinking about hiding it in my copy of “Confessions”. Would it still be a 3rd class relic? Or blessed?

first time posting,

Ive been reflecting on this, I'm a trans woman and haven't been in school for years but my school was a catholic school. But I must note that they where also extremely tolerant, lgbt people where aloud in this English class to get away from bully's and even the principal expelled a kid for bullying another kid for being gay.

I never experienced any homophobia or transphobia from anyone there. from a Catholic school.

I still go to church and now my bf attends with me, I've never felt the experience of homophobia or transphobia. It was always a space that helped. When I was homeless because my dad rejected me, they helped, even when i was in a hospital I was given basic toiletries by the church.

infact the only people who have tried to convert me have been athiestic people calling god a "sky daddy" and telling me I simply can't be catholic.

The only people to give me hate for my identity was my dad and people who I have never seen regularly attend church, they just regularly scroll social media. The only catholics to dislike me are faceless ones online, even my old grandmother loves my bf and is proud.

I wish catholicism had a better online or social image, maybe my experience is exceptionally rare. But my experience with Catholicism in the real word has been nothing more then acceptance which i feel so grateful for.

I've recently been doing a lot of reflection on this as it feels the media, social media, etc says Christians hate lgbt people? but the most accepting people to me have been catholics my whole life?

Like the title says, plain and simple. I am 18NB, queer. I am afab. I am about to start OCIA classes but..

I am reading the NSRV Bible - Catholic edition, and it sucks.

I mean that's it, it's bad. Maybe not the worst version, but are any Bible versions actually "good"?

I'm doing these classes because I go to church with my Catholic boyfriend. I have always been interested in learning about all religions. For most of my life I have simply called myself pagan, but lately I've been confused. (In absolutely no way is my boyfriend forcing me to do this, he has never suggested it or suggested me becoming Catholic, he loves me as I am and is fully supportive of who I am.)

My relationship with God is a strained one. I often feel angry at him, but I've changed my view. I believe God is not a being who directly interacts the world. I don't think he instructed the people on how to write the Bible either. The Bible, in my view, is just an old book written by old men in order to use it for laws against the people they wanted to control. I see it as a product of the times, not as God's true word.

I see God as a being of hope and faith, a source of light. Yet, I don't dismiss other culture's beliefs. I believe all people who are good will go to a good place when they die, regardless of religion. I believe the one true path to God is the one that comes from love, empathy, and kindness in your heart, regardless of the figures you worship.

More so, the Catholic Church is kind of putting me off. The church I go to is very welcoming and nice, the priest is a good man. But the church has a bad past, but likewise so does nearly everything and every religion.

Because of my beliefs, would I even make a good Catholic? There's a weird part of me that is called to it, but I don't want to seem like a traitor to the communities I love, nor do I want to support something that goes against everything I believe and am.

Luce, the official mascot, ties both the Jubilee and the World Expo 2025 together. She is a pilgrim doll made in the pop culture style and carries many of the symbols of a pilgrim: a missionary cross, staff and boots dirty from walking.

Im an ex Mormon who considers himself agnostic at the moment who accepted his bi sexuality who is skewed towards the male side of bisexual.

I’ve toyed with the idea of having a boyfriend and husband at and still do to this day and I also like women as well and wouldn’t mind a wife either hence being bi sexual an wanting to date both genders.

I don’t know if it’s because I was raised Mormon but I’m drawn to the Catholic Church and am toying with the idea of being a Democratic Supportive Catholic.

Should I join the Catholic Church? I just need advice thanks.

I’m not really religious but am drawn towards it specifically the Catholic Church.

Hi everyone!

Just wanted to get on here today to share with you all the many wonderful miracles that St. Jude has worked in my life.

When I desperately looking for a place to stay, I petitioned St. Jude and within a matter of days my prayers were answered.

While living shelterless, St. Jude comforted me, he helped to guide me, he defended and protected me against evil spirits in high places and against witches and against all evils.

St. Jude is a power patron and his aid never fails.

As a gay man St. Jude has shown me his unconditional love, without judgment. When invoking him I get an assured feeling that St. Jude knows that I'm gay and that he loves me regardless and that he prays for me and protects with the same love that Jesus has for me.

I love you St. Jude! 💚

Hi. I've got some questions about Catholicism. I grew up as a non-denominational Christian up until I was around 16 (around the time I was realizing I was queer). I have a lot of religious trauma, mostly stemming from the Christian school I went to. We were not taught about other religions and were told that they were not "true" and that whatever they were teaching was.

Right now, I'm looking into religions that might fit my beliefs, and was wondering about how Catholicism. Because I never had any education, and I do better hearing from people's experiences, I wanted to ask y'all. I was specifically wondering how Catholics view sin, especially around believing in other gods. I believe that all gods throughout human history are "valid" or true because of the strong beliefs held by their cultures. I also don't really believe in sin. I don't know how to explain it but I think to be human is to make mistakes and feeling guilt about it. Are there certain aspects of Catholicism that fit with this or should I look to another religion?

Thanks in advance!

I am trans, stealth, and entered the church years after my transition was medically/legally complete. No one at my parish is aware that I'm trans. My church is very large and constantly in need of volunteers for all sorts of activities and projects, most of which appear to require a background check and completion of VIRTUS training.

I've personally been asked several times to volunteer, and I'd like to, but I worry that the background check is going to out me. Is there anyone who can confirm whether or not name changes appear on these background checks, and who gets to see them? I don't mind so much if it's someone at the diocesan level just processing things, but it's not a discussion I'd like to have with my priest.

Hi everyone! My name is April Espinoza, I am a first generation Latina doctoral student at Alliant International University. I am currently recruiting for a qualitative research study on the spiritual and religious experiences of transgender Latinx adults. This includes any experiences good or bad with religion. My parents were atheists for the first 10 years of my life and I was later raised in the catholic church and attended catholic high school and university. I have family in the transgender community as well as younger brother who recently transitioned while attending a private catholic school so this project is very important to me as I have seen how both negative and positive experiences with religion have impacted my family's gender-affirming journeys. If anyone is interested in sharing their experiences please reach out to me at aespinoza9@alliant.edu I really want to provide a voice to the personal experiences of this community without judgement in research and appreciate any responses or if anyone could share to anyone who may fit the criteria!

I’m no longer Catholic but I thought my sisters over here would love this blog post about the mascot of the Franciscan University of Steubenville being a gay polyamorous icon of the 1700s.

Happy LGBTQ History Month friends!

https://outoffaith.org/2024/10/19/til-franciscan-university-of-steubenville-mascot-a-gay-icon/

I guess I'm going to do a take-down of Side B thought, since I tried putting it into practice in my life, and it basically led to three different relationships imploding in the space of a year.

"Side B" suffers from two serious problems apart from the unnecessary pathologization of homo-eros, which others have covered before. They are:

1. A category error

2. A misdiagnosis of what human beings, in general, actually want.

I will cover each in turn, using Pieter Valk's "What Are Celibate Partnerships? Are They Wise?" and Taylor Zimmermann's "Gay Men and Falling in Love - Part III" as examples of Side B perspectives.

1. "Spiritual Friendship" is Romance, Actually

I talked about this in an earlier comment, but I experienced the kind of incandescent friendship that is SpiritualFriendship.com's (hereafter, SF) raison d'etre. St. Aelred of Rievaulx describes this as well in his work, "Spiritual Friendship". I recommend this book to everyone. What Aelred describes is a connection so intense that it outstrips all other forms of love, including what many people feel for their sexual partners. It includes a high level of time and energy commitment, as well as a deep willingness to undergo hardship and sacrifice for the sake of the Friend. It is, in a sense, both the most clarified and distilled form of romance: an all-consuming devotion, yet totally de-corporalized. Aelred is quite clear that spiritual friendship is not carnal.

(This last part, I think, distinguishes it from the kind of love that Aaron at "Strength of His Might" describes for Seth, who he considered "staggeringly good-looking", or Wesley Hill - "stirred by his beauty" - had for Spencer. I did not consider my beloved particularly beautiful. Her sister, on the other hand, looked like a young Greta Garbo. And everyone knew it.

It wasn't The Pretty Sister who I was obsessed with. And everyone knew that, too.)

Now, Mr. Valk commits the category error of considering "spiritual friendship", in the Aelredian sense, as a form of friendship rather than romance. Let me see if I can disentangle these threads here, because there's a lot of confusion in the way that he talks about it.

On "celibate partnerships":

For the purposes of this article, when we at Equip use the phrase “celibate partnership”, we are specifically describing couplings between two people of the same sex, often both same-sex attracted, and often where there is mutual attraction (note: our definition may not encompass every pairing who call their relationship a celibate partnership). As defined, celibate partnerships are usually exclusive commitments (which means an individual could not simultaneously be in another celibate partnership or in a marriage) and often aspire to make lifetime commitments to their partnership.

On "spiritual friendship":

These spiritual friendships let each individual need the other and gave each person the permission to ask of the other’s time, energy, etc.[...]Yet, none of these spiritual friendships included romance.

On "romance":

romance is motivated by eros in that it is both exclusive and involves certain forms of physical intimacy associated with dating and marriage.

Here's where I think Mr. Valk is wrong: firstly, romance does not necessarily involve "certain forms of physical intimacy". I was in love with a woman in a way that my brother, the archetypal straight bro, has never felt for anyone. I never went past a hug (and, very rarely, a kiss on the hair). I told myself that it was friendship. But even so, I never, ever fantasized about kissing her on the lips, let alone going further.

Rather, we have to ask ourselves: what is the telos of Eros? After a lot of thought, I've come to the conclusion that the purpose of Eros is to create the kind of intense bonds and commitments that are characteristic of familial relationships. The telos of Eros is to bring unrelated adults into the family.

So, if you're a queer in a same-sex spiritual friendship that has 1) a familial level of time commitment and 2) a familial level of emotional connection...babe, you're in love.

Mr. Valk reads the story of David and Jonathan as a non-romantic one. (I also favor this interpretation, FWIW.) But St. Aelred not only discussed D&J as a paradigmatic spiritual friendship, he also draws attention to Saul's homophobic, violent outburst. He certainly doesn't seem to have read it as non-romantic. (Also: Aelred may have really identified with David and Jonathan, because Aelred was the boyfriend of King David of Wales before becoming a monk. He left the court at least in part because of an incident where a knight shouted homophobic insults at him in public. Aelred knew what it was to love a King David, and to be humiliated by others for it.)

(It's sad to say, but I really think that some of St. Aelred's self-styled heirs are homophobic in a way that the original Spiritual Friend was not.)

The second thing I think Mr. Valk is wrong on is the concept of "exclusivity". He criticizes "celibate partnerships" for being "exclusive", and later says:

[Celibacy] is a call to possess no one exclusively. It is a call to love differently, more widely than the romance of married people.

In an uncharitable reading, this can mean that not only are queer people physically untouchable - we're emotionally untouchable, too. Because of course, you're going to have one person or clique who is your favorite. You can't love everyone equally. And when you're looking at a core, life-long relationship - it is exclusive, even if not procreationally so. Because if someone prioritizes you - if you're their #1, or even their #2 - that means that someone has to be de-prioritized.

Excluded, if you like.

Let's have an example. Let's say that my core, life-long relationship is my cousin. By virtue of our relation, I can expect a higher level of time commitment and emotional intimacy than I would with my het-partnered friends. But I cannot be the cousin of everyone in the world. I can only be the cousin of my actual cousins.

Now, it is a fact that certain relationships involve the promise of one's exclusive procreational capacities. Procreative marriages, for ex. But so do relationships without that procreative capacity: marriages where one or both are sterile, celibate partnerships, even monastic communities. You're making the promise that, if you're not gonna have a kid with this person, you're at least not gonna have one with anyone else. But this is not a coterminous topic with emotional/logistical exclusivity. Again: my cousin has not promised me childlessness. Valk errs in conflating the two. As a result, "a call to love more widely" can easily be construed (and lived out) as "a call to be loved by nobody".

Woof. That was a lot.

Onto part 2.

2. What (Wo)Men Really Want

Encountering Plato's thought has been a revelation to me. It really feels like I was deluded, all this time, thinking that friendship was the highest form of love and it was [Freudianism/modernity/capitalism/insert bugaboo here] that destroyed and distorted it. On the contrary, it really seems that for me and for others, a familial relationship is what most people really want. People's strongest, most important relationships are with their families of origin, and their mate.

They're not bad or misled for not wanting intense friendships with you. They're just OSA, brah. The kind of excruciating heartbreak that Aaron & Hill experienced, and drew such devastating theological conclusions from...it's neither uncommon nor particularly theologically deep. Tons of gay people have had the person they're in love with choose a hetero-normative lifestyle. These drives are powerful for OSA people. And it sucks, but that's just how the average human being is wired.

I'm going to call the above idea - that one's most important relationships are one's relatives or partner - familialism. It's not an ideology per se, but a deep instinct (like, how "being kind to animals" is more instinct than ideology). The key thing that I think SF bloggers have missed is that familial celibacy is a different beast from non-familial celibacy, and the former appears far more common.

One of the things I've been puzzling about is the strange absence of discussion of celibacy-within-the-family on SF. I think the neutral reason is that Ron Belgau was interested in explicating an End for queer Eros, and the sad reason is that many queers of his generation didn't have relationships with their families. :( But I think that, like OSA people, gays are also mostly interested in family! That's why "mere" friendship didn't appeal (and see above, re: the distortion of spiritual friendship into something non-romantic). Friendship really seems to be considered a lower-effort type of relationship: low reward, but also low investment. And that's not a bad thing. It's just that, if you try to make that kind of high-investment friendship with married OSA people, they're going to be stressed out by the pressure and cut you loose, or you're going to be hurt by the lack of dedication and dump them.

From Mr. Zimmermann:

[Gay people] can begin to not only deepen their own friendships but can also begin to challenge the greater social narrative. By pursuing their own flourishing, gay people can help others pursue deeper flourishing and change social systems for the better.

Sure.

The thing is, when I think about people I know who have hacked it as long-term singles, they did it by staying close to their families. Familial celibacy seems way more workable, over the long term. A friend's aunt never married and lived two doors down from her parents. My boss's uncle is a 70-year-old bachelor living with his 90-year-old mother. Lillie Steinhorn made it to 98 on the strength of her relationship with her parents and siblings. Most people, regardless of what they do with their genitals or even their heart, are really just invested in their families. People who want their core, life-long relationships to be friends, neighbors, or members of intentional communities are not typical. Not invalid or illegitimate - just unusual. That's all.

If there's one key criticism to make of Side B, it's that it misdiagnoses the "longings of the human heart", and prescribes a solution that 1) they themselves cannot articulate accurately and 2) because of the multiple confusions, cannot actually be successfully practiced with your straight/hetero-flexible peers.

I love God, I love the idea of God. I trust in the teaching of the immense love and power of Jesus, Mother Mary, the Holy Spirit, and the angels. I was culturally raised Catholic, but the only thing that I just cannot gripe with is the fact that a majority of Catholics/Christians think of being gay as a sin. I also feel disheartened that there's an evident verse within the Bible that obviously justifies that homophobia. I feel disheartened whenever I go to any Christian church and know that from members being able to tell that I am gay they would want something within me to be "fixed" or "rid of". It stings a lot to be born into this religion, believing in God, yet feeling like I am not deserving of getting to believe in God because of what I am and what the church and the Bible says about my sexuality. I've been thinking if I should just stop believing in Catholicism all in all, but I know that from being raised in it and from it being a big part of my culture I'm going to miss it and feel nostalgic for it. I also hate knowing that any chance for a reform in these flawed ways of thinking of such things would take years and years and years, something out of my lifetime.

I just really wish there were any other ways that being gay and being Catholic/Christian would be seen as something valid other than being a celibate devoted gay man. I just cannot believe that if God were truly above all--that if being gay were to be a sin, he who is the ultimate power would even allow for it to be a thought in the first place within this reality when inviting lives to come to this Earth.

Any perspectives or insight would be appreciated.

Just want to wish this community (in the US or not) happy National Coming Out Day!

Hello, is anyone familiar with this organization? I'm a former youth minister and still on NFCYM's email list. Apparently a speaker affiliated with them will be at the next NCYC, who regularly speaks on inclusive LGBTQ ministry.

I guess I don't expect any catholic organization (in good standing with the church at least) to be truly affirming, but I'm wondering if anyone has experience with this organization? "Inclusive ministry", if it means what it sounds like, seems a lot better than what I remember in the past which always boiled down to "Unless you're celibate, you're not welcome if you don't fit this mold exactly."

I did even more research on the churches teachings on Gender transitioning. The Pope compared gender theory to nuclear warfare. I have to believe that it is that evil. I was so wicked and disgusting for ever thinking that I could destroy nature like that. To take hormones is as bad as nuking a city. I’m literally fucking evil for thinking it was ok to come out to my family. I remember the stories we read in school about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The people with their skin melted off but were still alive, the radiation sickness, the cancer, all those innocent men women and children. All the wounded and dead. I remember the images. They still remain in my head. A dog disintegrating alive. Everything flattened. Children that couldn’t even cry because they had no eyes anymore. The children of their children had cancer too. They only wanted peace. Their skin was charred black and melting off of their bones. You could see the skull through the childs face while he was still talking to you. The bright flash, the deafening sound, the intense heat and burning and the windows shattering. And then everything is completely silent. And to think that I want to something on an equal level as that. I just wanted to take puberty blockers. I don’t want all that horror to happen because of my selfish wicked desires. All the precious lives that were lost and tortured by that nuke. And me taking puberty blockers is as bad as that. I must deserve to be tortured for 1000 years just like the children that were destroyed in that nuke. I am just like the guy that dropped the nuke. To alter the way that God made you is the same as dropping a nuke on Hiroshima. I don’t want to hurt people. I didn’t know that transitioning was that bad. I am fucking vile and disgusting and wicked. I’m a bloody degenerate for ever wanting to do something comparable to the nuking of Hiroshima. Only Jesus can save me. In school I felt like I was in a dream and nothing was real. So I sat in my chair unmoving for 2 hours because I can’t comprehend how evil my thoughts were. I will never be a man.

I’m bisexual but not currently dating anyone. I do tend to like men more than women so idk if I can post here but it’s the closest think to an open and understanding catholic place I can write.

I was raised catholic but never got confirmed. I started going back to church last year and I even Went to confession for the first time. I believe in God. I believe in the sacraments. I do honestly think there was a mistranslation in the “homosexuality being a sim” aspect but I can’t really fix that. I also am pro choice for lots of reasons but anyways. I’m lowkey scared to get confirmed and idk if I even wanna go because I just feel so alone and lost. I also live in Alabama.

I always see people at Mass socializing after and talking about I the priest and I just dip out asap because I know I’m just not “one of them”. But I always remind myself I’m not going to church for friends I’m going for God and myself.

I don’t know what to expect and OCIA has anyone else gone that was confirmed older?

I love the Roman Catholic Church, and I love its traditions. I believe the vast majority of what the Church teaches. I want to be Catholic. But there's been been one MAJOR thing standing in my way.

I am a man who is gay, and I am married to my wonderful husband. I do NOT believe homosexuality is a sin, nor do I believe that sex between two people of the same gender is a sin when they are married (or thoroughly committed to each other in places and circumstances where they cannot legally marry). Nothing will ever convince me otherwise. I am a survivor of the harmful effects of "reparative or conversion therapy". I know I am the way God created me to be, and I am with the one whom God has joined me together with.

The problem is every RC priest I have talked to (including the one from yesterday) have all told me "if you join, and I hope you do, we will seek to have you two live together more as brothers with no sexual acts..."

I feel hurt. I knew that the RCC doesn't celebrate same sex marriage (or as I like to call it: marriage), but I could hope for that to eventually change.

I am a member of the Episcopal Church currently (as it is the closest thing I can get where I and my husband are truly welcomed and embraced). What do I do about this feeling of being called to Catholicism, but can't because I am not really accepted there? I do pray the rosary, I do eucharist adoration when given the chance, plus many other practices that are considered Catholic.

Any advice? I know truly welcoming RCC parishes are around, but the closest ones to me are 2+ hours away, so those aren't an option.

NOTE: if anyone has in mind to comment that "it's a sin"... just don't. It's BS and you're wrong.

I'm not here to debate. I just need a place to vent my frustration. I& can't stand going to church because I remember all of the abuse I& and others suffered. I don't want to change my faith, I& just want to go back Home. I just want to be a child again and listen to the soothing charismatic chants. I want to pray the rosary without fear.

I hate how corrupted my church is

Insert sympathy-grab origin story of former traddie childhood here.

Insert bizarre story about former seminary experience, undiagnosed autism, etc.

Enter the alphabet mafia courtesy of my discovery that asexuality exists and I'm part of that demographic.

Typical.

Anyway, I'm Catholic and in the United States I see the church pushing for the right wing. It's going to split society wide open. Yes the effects are real, I can't hardly ride a bicycle anymore because truck owners think bikes are a liberal plague instead of a vehicle for the road so I'm always afraid of being run down by a road raging driver. And it is going to get a lot worse.

Going to mass on Sunday worries me. I am a member more of good old St Elsewhere's Parish instead of "the Church," it seems, and I know I'm not sure what to do at this place in my life. Faith journey is stalling out. I don't pray much anymore. I'm cooked and have been feeling this way for a long time.

It looks like I might get married because I met a fellow queer Catholic weirdo who is of a sex convenient for the Church to accept our union. Once I figured out a bit about attraction I realized I am at least attracted to her enough where it'll probably work out where we have children. And this is not anything I ever saw myself doing, I never wanted to marry or be a dad.

I'm losing faith in my faithfulness to the Faith. Am I going to perjure myself when I promise to raise kids Catholic but then the church does something egregious yet again and I decide not to drop them in the deepest eddy of Tiber's waters?

Feeling lost. Anyone else?

Thanks. Not a lot of things left to say. I am not a fancy sort of wordsmith; I'm a factory worker and I hate my job and where my life is going. Used to want to be a priest and if the other wasn't in my life, I'd go back, and be a statistically present LGBTQIA clergyman, but I don't think I can bring myself to do that anymore with the post-2015 churchwide conniption fit going on.

Love you all.

I'm a gay married father of two children (one by adoption, one by surrogacy) who was raised Catholic but drifted away from the faith because I couldn't believe that God would want me to be celibate when I had no inclination at all toward that life, and eventually my belief in God started drifting away as well.

More recently, one of my children has had some pretty severe health problems (hopefully getting better at this point) -- but the experience has had a profound effect on me. I found myself praying a lot and actually reading the Bible, believing in God again, and having an overwhelming desire to raise my children in the Catholic faith or some sort of faith.

I have no desire to divorce my husband and would consider it positively sinful to do so -- worse for my husband, worse for the children, and putting myself in a risky position where I'll be "burning with passion" (as St. Paul put it) in a way that just doesn't help anyone. I ultimately think that St. Paul just didn't have any idea of homosexuals trying to form families etc. and was just knew about pederasty and similar awful practices of ancient world, so his condemnation doesn't really apply to me. I don't think my husband and I are all that different than someone in an infertile heterosexual couple trying to raise a family, which obviously isn't condemned by Catholicism (and nobody views this position as conflicting with any doctrine).

I just wonder -- how would it actually work if I tried to raise my children Catholic and just tried to somehow be a Catholic with conscientious objections to the doctrine regarding homosexuality? Would I just not take communion and just explain to my kids that it's because I don't personally don't agree with this one point? Is it just a bad idea to raise my kids in a faith where they're going to be viewed with suspicion all the time? Should I just go to a Catholic church that has a more gay-friendly approach (I know some nearby) even though they're probably technically in conflict with the official Church teachings? I guess the other option is becoming an Episcopalian or something, but I just always had the sense like they're not terribly serious about charity and it was more of like a social club with a smattering of ritual (though maybe that's unfair).

Thanks for whatever advice you have.

Ok, so last summer, I backpacked around France and Italy (very catholic) and I ended my trip in the Vatican. I bought a rosary as a kind of promise that I would start looking into Christianity again, and specifically Catholicism, (was raised Presbyterian) but its honestly been pretty hard. I'm queer, and have spent much of my life questioning the existence of a greater being. I completely believe in evolution and see much of the bible as metaphor and reasoning from the time of being written. I see the creation theory as a way of explaining evolution, and the "days" as steps for God. I'm not sure if that even makes sense, but it works in my head. I found my way back because I would like to model my life after Jesus in that he never hated anyone, helped those he could, and especially Luke 23:34. Can you beautiful people help me out. I know that I will never live a life as good as Jesus, and that shouldn't be the goal, but I'm lost in a spiral of constantly having to prove that My existence is not a sin, not because God made us perfect, (which again is not why I'm going back to religion, but because why would a natural part of me be considered sinful) Again feel free to send me readings or papers on this.

So this weekend my church is installing our new Pastor. Which much of the congregation is excited about, due to us not having a set one for a long time. Our Archdiocese has a shortage of Pastors and so has instilled a new program where Pastors take over a group of parishes rather than just one. Which meant our old Pastor had to take over for another Parish and why we we had a temporary Pastor and Deacons for so long.

The thing that I am having trouble with though is, when I heard this Pastor preach a couple weeks ago, he had a pretty negative mention of LGBT (among other things). Though it was only a small mention and not his whole sermon, something akin to: "There are many ways that people of the world turn from Christ..."(and then proceeds to list different vices, including "same sex marriage")

It wasn't anything I hadn't heard before or didn't already know that the church thought that way. But for the most part, I had always had very loving and warm experiences with the leaders of my church. And always made me feel like I was welcome no matter what or who I was! Which is why I never ONCE considered leaving, despite me realizing I was gay.

As an adult though, I have had a couple experiences with other Priests thst had me doubting and the connection I think I have with God, or at yhe very least made me feel unwelcome about it. But I never let myself, get too caught up in those moments, cause I always knew I could return to my home parish, where I felt safe and welcomed.

But after, hearing his sermon I'm really worried my current church won't feel that way anymore. Like, this new Priesr will always be saying something each week thst feels cold and unwelcoming that'll make me feel like I don't belong. Alot of it I know is just anxiety talking and I suppose there's another big part that comes from trauma. Rembering the last time I tried to attend a Parish outside of my own and the pastor there was basically ALL fire and brimstone. (It was in the Midwest mind you.)

I suppose I can take comfort in the fact, that not only do we have two Parochial Vichors who will rotate with him but a few Deacons too. So, its not like this new Pastor will be the ONLY one to preach every week. But the fact that he is essentially intended to be the new head of our church, does concern me if his mindset really is so heavily sent against the LGBT community. But I suppose even then, I shouldn't judge things off ONE sermon and maybe see how his other sermons go.

Anyway, sorry about the rant. I just wanted to get that off my chest and needed a place to vent. Thanks!