New Ways Ministry

Boston, MA, March 16, 2011. DignityUSA has issued a statement supporting the author of a booklet on marriage equality who has come under criticism from two members of the US Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine.

DignityUSA was requested to participate in a seminal and hastily organized gathering of Catholic LGBT advocates in Washington, DC on January 30 and 31, 2010. I represented DignityUSA in lieu of Executive Director Marianne Duddy-Burke, who was unable to clear her calendar on short notice. I was joined by Board members Mark Clark and Tom Yates, both of Dignity/Washington. Ray Panas, President of Dignity/Washington was also present.

The meeting was convened by Phil Attey, a Washington attorney, and Rev. Dr. Joe Palacios, a Jesuit priest from Los Angeles currently on the faculty at Georgetown University. The purpose of the meeting was to address the increasing role of the U.S.Conference of Catholic Bishops and state Bishops’ conferences on LGBT political issues, and to coordinate efforts to shift Catholic public opinion and voter behaviors.We joined the following individuals and organizations.

Leaders of DignityUSA, New Ways Ministry and Call To Action—three groups that support gay rights in the Catholic Church—spoke out to condemn the Pope’s comments that implied that using condoms could increase the incidents of HIV/AIDS.

May 29, 2000 — During meetings in Rome last week, Sister Jeannine Gramick, a School Sister of Notre Dame, and Rev. Robert Nugent, a Salvatorian priest, were ordered to stop speaking publicly about homosexuality, or about the investigation into their nearly thirty-year ministry. In July of 1999, the Vatican had ordered the two to refrain from any kind of pastoral ministry with gay and lesbian people or their families.