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DignityUSA
PO Box 376
Medford, MA
02155
tel: 800.877.8797
202.861.0017
fax: 781.397.0584
email:
info@dignityusa.org
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RETURN TO > SPEECHES > CONVENTION 2005 > HOME
Address of Sam Sinnett, President, DignityUSA to Philadelphia
Convention attendees — July 10, 2005
Good morning, DignityUSA!
My name is Sam. I’m gay, I’m Catholic and I’m proud.
As our new purple bracelets say, “Live Proud!”
I said two years ago that I stood before you humbly in all my human frailty — and I do so again today. The footsteps of those who walked before me in DignityUSA — and indeed before all of us — show that we have big shoes to fill. I want to express my heartfelt thanks to those of you who have responded this weekend to your organization’s call to become part of our new Culture of Leadership and volunteered your time and talent for the work of our great mission. Together we can work it; remember that the opposite of love isn’t anger or even hate but indifference — lack of response. If you have not yet responded, I hope you will go forth from this marvelous weekend together, pray about this Culture of Leadership challenge and respond some time soon or in the year ahead.
Hey, hasn’t this been a marvelous Convention! Thanks again to Tom Streeper, Michael Flynn and all who helped make it a fabulous success. Join in the effort to make our next Convention as grand and fabulous! Event planners from across the country can help. Pre-register for it soon if you haven’t done so already. 140 have signed up this weekend!
Our great mission is inspired by the Holy Spirit. There will be many years ahead for DignityUSA. Truth will lead us to Freedom.
Two years ago you also heard me say “We are good; we are very, very good; and we’re gonna be Great!”
We have all joined hands to Amplify the Voice with renewed membership growth. We stand here today with nearly double the membership we had two years ago. We hope every one of our chapters will experience such growth in the next two years.
The doors of membership in DignityUSA were swung open wide to include not just us gay Catholics, lesbian Catholics, bisexual Catholics, and transgender Catholics but all our families, friends, allies, and supporters whether G, L, B, T or not, whether Catholic or not and of whatever faith community inspires their lives and deepens their spirituality.
People responded to this open arms invitation literally by the hundreds. DignityUSA as the Voice for GLBT Catholics has been given a high platform to respond to the increasingly virulent, anti-GLBT rhetoric coming from our Pope, Cardinals and all too many of our other Bishops. We continue to be the Church of the Catacombs — as one marvelous ally called us — witnessing to all our Church, the Church in exile that we are. We again ask you to leave here and personally sign up 3 new national DignityUSA members to continue Amplifying our Voice. Some will join just to receive the weekly link to Breath of the Spirit — our weekly spiritual resource on our website www.DignityUSA.org to deepen one’s experience at Sunday liturgy. Ask (for membership) and you shall receive.
We swung open the doors to all. Membership cannot be bought but is freely given because we believe People Come First. We have earned your support; your passion for our great mission inspires your support. I love it that the DignityUSA family members are such passionate people — passionate about our life-saving efforts to help other folks integrate their spirituality and their sexuality. As an organization we took the leap of faith and our growing membership Empowered the Voice with generous contributions that not only replaced the dues and donations of the past but saw something worth more. And we thank you. We thank you.
This weekend we nourished each other in many ways — with the Eucharist, with laughter and tears and prayer, with renewed and new friendships. How much more like a true family gathering can you get? We also solicited your input for long term planning and your Board of Directors will be following through on that. We hope you will also respond to its challenges with renewed and new support. If you are not now a monthly Guardian Angel donor, please sign up and become one. If you already are a Guardian Angel, please dig deeper into your pocket and increase your monthly donation. 10% or 20% more each month might be small for you — not $21 a month but $25, not $100 a month but $125 — but can significantly further Empower Our Voice.
We continue to stand steadfast as loyal Catholics in non-acceptance of the Objectively Disordered / Intrinsically Evil language of then Cardinal Ratzinger’s 1986 letter "On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons." Our sexual or gender orientation is NOT Objectively Disordered. Our loving relationships are NOT Intrinsically Evil. Advances in human knowledge — medical, social science and theological knowledge — must be taken into account by anyone claiming to be a moral teacher. The truth of our lived experience is the Holy Spirit speaking in the Church today and must be part of the development of a valid relationship theology. Barnyard breeding sexual theology, or purely genital theology, does not cut it. We now have on our website many marvelous resources and the new theological resource “The Call to Wed, Why Catholics Should Celebrate Same Sex Marriage” by Patricia Beattie Jung.
We steadfastly proclaim that our loving, same-gender relationships do not do violence to our children. And the Vatican does not make it so by endlessly repeating the lie. We do not accept such teaching. We steadfastly proclaim that our marriages — whether legally recognized or sacramentally blessed — are not pseudo marriages and we do not accept such teaching. Mark my words — July 10, 2005. We are in non-acceptance of these teachings. The tide of history, of truth and of the Spirit cannot be held back forever. Truth will lead us to freedom if we dare to speak it! And if we won’t be the Voice, who will?
I weep when our Church throws its moral teaching authority away in a world that needs it so much. So we must be the people of hope in a pilgrim Church. Do not romanticize being a pilgrim. It is hard work. Do not despair; the people of God are responding. Will the hierarchical, institutional Church ever respond? Do not hold your breath. It may not even be the plan of the Holy Spirit that it does so; instead She calls us forth from the Catacombs to lead our church in hope to a new spiritual regeneration based on true Christian love, the living Spirit with us and the Beatitudes.
Brian McNaught, speaking at a huge 30th anniversary celebration for the Dignity/Detroit chapter that he helped found, told us that each of us, individually and as community, must find our “song” — the authentic music deep within our souls — and step forth and sing it to our Church and to society. “Hi. I’m Sam, I’m gay, I’m Catholic and I’m proud.”
Live Proud! Do not hide your light under a basket. Truth will lead us to Freedom if we dare to speak it!
Hey let’s do Brunch again!! Two years from now in Austin, Texas. Where the Morning Star Awakens Us As Prophets! Be there with us.
God Bless you and all those you love! Travel safely and savor all that we have shared here in Philadelphia.
