Sunday, July 03, 2016

Gay Pride: A Catholic Perspective

Pride is not arrogance, as many would typically understand it. For someone who identifies with the LGBT community, pride means to be fiercely unashamed that love is love. As gay and Catholic, pride is to dance with conviction that God’s love liberates us from the shame that diminishes our life as God’s beloved community. It is to “boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:31) whose radical commitment to God’s mercy and justice led this Son of God to be in solidarity with the outcast and marginalized, even to the point of death on a cross.

Pride means to be amazed at the wild creativity of the Spirit of Christ who lives within and breathes among us, beckoning us toward newness in life as a beloved community in the here and now. Jesus’s injunction to us not to be afraid is a call to stand without shame as living witnesses of God’s unconditional love for all. There is no place that God will not go, and it is precisely this widening outreach and radical inclusivity of God’s love that the gospel challenges us to embrace with pride – unashamed.

– Alfred Pang
Excerpted from "Celebrating Pride in the
Shadow of Orlando: A Catholic Reflection

Bondings 2.0
July 3, 2016


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
The Theology of Gay Pride
Gay Pride: A Celebration of True Humility
Dan Furmansky: "Why We Have Pride"
Gay Pride as a Christian Event
Catholic Priest Explains Why He Intends Participating in Gay Pride
Quote of the Day – March 6, 2011
Catholics Make Their Voices Heard on LGBTQ Issues
Remembering and Reclaiming a Wise, Spacious, and Holy Understanding of Homosexuality
Gay People and the Spiritual Life
In the Garden of Spirituality – Toby Johnson
The Gifts of Homosexuality
Same-Sex Desires: "Immanent and Essential Traits Transcending Time and Culture"
"I Will Dance"

Image: Michael J. Bayly (from Catholics for Marriage Equality MN's 2012 series of Lenten prayer vigils at the chancery offices of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis).


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