Father James Martin, SJ, on What LGBTQ Folks Experience at Hands of Many Catholics: "The Level of Hate, Personal Attacks and Homophobia Is Breathtaking"

Brian Roewe, "Fr. James Martin in social media fray over LGBT conversation": 

On Twitter, [Austin] Ruse accused the popular Jesuit priest of "harming souls," "leading poor gays to perdition," and at various points called Martin "pansified," "effeminate" and "out of the closet." . . . 

Martin did not reply directly to Ruse, but instead posted on Facebook a screenshot of the tweet, and wrote, "Insults and slurs like 'pansy' are what LGBT people face every day, even from Catholics. But hatred and contempt, like this public example posted today on Twitter, only strengthen my desire to advocate for LGBT people, especially within our church. 

"Many Catholics ask me if there is still real homophobia in the church, and so it's important to have public examples like this one. ... It's important for Catholics who may doubt the need to advocate for LGBT people in the church to see this kind of public contempt."

Facebook posting of Father James Martin, 4 September:

Dear friends: Insults and slurs like "pansy" are what LGBT people face every day, even from Catholics. But hatred and contempt, like this public example posted today on Twitter, only strengthen my desire to advocate for LGBT people, especially within our church.  

Many Catholics ask me if there is still real homophobia in the church, and so it's important to have public examples like this one. (The person who tweeted this is the president of the Center for Family and Human Rights; a Knight of Malta and a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre; and a columnist at Crisis Magazine.) So homophobia exists in high echelons in the Catholic church. Overall, it's important for Catholics who may doubt the need to advocate for LGBT people in the church to see this kind of public contempt. 

David Gonzalez, "Jesuit Priest Stands Up for Gay Catholics, Then Faces Backlash": 

Of his critics, Father Martin said, even an invitation to listen to L.G.B.T. people has "unleashed this torrent of hatred."

Charles Camosy, "Fr. James Martin: 'Advocating for LGBT People Is Necessary'" — Father James Martin tells Camosy, 

As I've said, there is a lot of hate around, even in the church. And most of it seems motivated by a blinding anger. But, again, the hatred only serves to remind me that advocating for LGBT people is necessary. The hate reminds me of the need for love.

Michael O'Loughlin, "Jesuit writer James Martin disinvited from talk at prestigious seminary": 

Father Martin told America that he expected criticism of the book—"from the far left it would be 'Not far enough,' and from the far right, 'Too far," as he put it— but he said he has been surprised by the "the torrent of hatred that it would unleash from the Catholic alt right." He noted that the book had been given approval by his Jesuit superior and that it has been endorsed by two cardinals and several bishops. 

But, he said, "The level of hate, personal attacks and homophobia is breathtaking." 

Bishop Robert W. McElroy, "Attacks on Father James Martin expose a cancer within the U.S. Catholic Church":

The coordinated attack on Building a Bridge must be a wake-up call for the Catholic community to look inward and purge itself of bigotry against the L.G.B.T. community. If we do not, we will build a gulf between the church and L.G.B.T. men and women and their families. Even more important, we will build an increasing gulf between the church and our God.

Yes. Yes, pretty much, to this analysis and all of these statements.

Some of us have lived with the hatred — the specific, toxic hatred emanating from Catholic circles — for a very long time and have grown very weary trying to sound an alarm about it.

We've grown weary of never having been heard and of never having had a voice. Because the hate is so destructive and because we have seen it at close hand and have much to say about it, and things need never have reached this point if Catholic officials and Catholic institutions —and especially the lay Catholic intellectual leaders of the American church — had been willing to listen . . . . To open up dialogue spaces in which our testimony might have been heard and taken seriously . . . . 

Instead, I've found repeatedly that my attempts to unmask the hatred in the conversation spaces controlled by those lay Catholic intellectual leaders, the people with the most influence to change the culture of American Catholicism through its academies and journals, have been pooh-poohed in the very same way that these very same folks pooh-pooh discussion of the very real and very problematic racism of many Catholics and Catholic institutions in the U.S. I've been told that I have "imagined" the hatred, am exaggerating it, am using reports of it as a weapon to destroy the church, because I am clearly an enemy of the church.

I've had a leading U.S. Catholic lay liturgist tell me at the Commonweal blog site that her parish in the New York City urban area could not be more chock-full of happy gay folks who are well-accepted — and then only a year or so down the road from her proclamation to me, a parish right next to hers  barred an openly gay man from eucharistic ministry. Proving that her illusion that her parish and other parishes in her area were havens for gay folks was just that: a self-serving illusion . . . A delusion.

Maybe people will listen when a priest and a bishop tell them that the U.S. Catholic church has a serious problem with homophobic hatred. In the meantime, there are a lot of bloodied bodies lying by the side of the road now. There are a lot of people who have just given up and won't be coming back to the church, since what's the point now? The damage is done.

And I don't see conspicuous concern about them among the Catholic leaders now decrying the homophobic hatred within their institution, and using memes of false equivalency to heap blame on the LGBTQ community for having — well, isn't the implication that we LGBTQ folks have made ourselves susceptible to Catholic violence? That's the gist of the false equivalency meme, which in and of itself continues the marginalization of LGBTQ people and the annihilation of their much-needed testimony.

You just don't do this to people if you're decent, moral people yourselves. You just don't blame people for getting violently attacked by haters, and claim (as Cardinal Ratzinger did in his infamous 1986 "Halloween Letter") that they somehow merit the violence by making known who they are and whom they love. You don't behave this way, that is, if you are decent, moral human beings.

If you're decent, moral people and you want to staunch the hatred, you start making room to welcome and hear those you've long excluded, and to whom you've long refused to listen seriously. Even if they aren't priests and bishops . . . . Or well-known players (usually straight ones, since very little room has been made for non-straight people) in the Catholic academy or Catholic journalistic spheres . . . .