It's early Sunday morning. There is a cool breeze blowing through the leaves of the dogwood and walnut trees outside my 2nd story studio. My enormous old windows are wide open and as the breeze hits me I am overwhelmed with peace. This is my church.

But now there are tears running down my face as I read about the new rule expected to be released by the Vatican prohibiting homosexuals from entering the seminary. When I first heard about this I was stunned and infuriated. This morning it just breaks my heart.

I always thought that God = Love.

There is an article in today's New York Times about Father Mychal Judge, the priest who was killed while giving last rites to a fallen fireman on 9/11. Father Judge was known to be a celibate homosexual to his friends. He was know to be a true man of God to all. For Father Judge not to have been allowed to minister to people as a priest would have been whatever it is that lies far beyond criminal.

It breaks my heart that so many churches and religious leaders ignore godliness in their striving to make people conform to their comfort level. But, the God of my understanding is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving and all-inclusive. Vile rules such as this new Vatican rule are hateful, exclusionary and spit in the face of any Being thought to be great.

Hate is small. Hate is putrid. Hate is the poison that hardens the heart and probably the arteries as well. And so I try not to hate those who make rules like this that break not only my heart, but the hearts of so many I hold dear. For one single one of my gay friends to think for one nano-second that they are wrong or not loved by God saddens me so profoundly I can barely breathe.

One need look no further than Father Judge to see that sexual orientation has absolutely nothing at all to do with one's capacity to love God, love mankind, and spend a life in service of both.

September 25, 2005

Admirers of Fallen 9/11 Hero Disdain the Vatican's Likely Plan to Bar Gays as Priests

By ANDY NEWMAN

The Rev. Mychal F. Judge, the Fire Department chaplain who died in the rubble of 9/11, was, and still is, one of the most widely loved Roman Catholic priests in New York City's recent history.

For 40 years, Father Judge tirelessly ministered to firefighters, their grieving widows, AIDS patients, homeless people, Flight 800 victims' families and countless others. At his funeral, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani called him a saint, a sentiment that admirers have followed up by campaigning for his canonization. A simple prayer that Father Judge wrote has been circulated around the world and attached to thousands of donations to the needy. Pope John Paul II accepted the gift of his helmet.

Father Judge was also, according to many of his friends of all sexual orientations, a homosexual. A celibate homosexual, he told friends, but a homosexual nonetheless. And reports last week that the Vatican is likely to try to bar gay men, even celibate ones, from the priesthood stirred anger among those who revere his memory.

The former city fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen, a close friend of Father Judge's, said Thursday that excluding men of his caliber from the priesthood would be simply "a shame."

Mr. Von Essen, a married, practicing Catholic who said that Father Judge came out to him years before his death, added, "To sacrifice your life to God and try to do so much good every day and to be prevented from doing that - it's no wonder they can't get anyone to join the church to become a priest or a nun."

On Thursday, Andrew Sullivan, the outspokenly gay and Catholic journalist, posted on his Web site an oft-reprinted photograph of Father Judge's limp body being carried off by firefighters on 9/11 minutes after he had given last rites to one of their own. Above it was the sardonic headline "Unfit for the Priesthood."

Mr. Sullivan said on Friday that Father Judge's work with the Fire Department mocked the assertion, made by a Catholic official who described the expected new rule, that even celibate gays should not enter the seminary because the temptations arising from being surrounded by men there would be too strong.

"The idea that gay priests somehow cannot serve straight congregants, when you have this priest working with one of the most stereotypically macho organizations - and he gave his life to them - captures some of the cruelty and bigotry we see in the Vatican now," Mr. Sullivan said in a telephone interview.

Father Judge, a gregarious, sandal-shod Franciscan friar who was 68 when he died, was a longtime member of a gay Catholic group, Dignity, and he often spoke up for gay rights. But several of Father Judge's admirers from conservative backgrounds declined on Friday to discuss his sexuality because they said it had no relevance.

A gay man who posted to saintmychal .com, a Web site promoting Father Judge's canonization, said he did not see why anyone would care, either. The man, Ralph W. Vogel, attended Masses that Father Judge offered in the 1990's for gay and lesbian Catholics in a Unitarian church on Staten Island. "I don't know anything personally about his sexual orientation, and it's not really important to me other than 'Wow, he was there,' " said Mr. Vogel, a director of volunteer services at Ronald McDonald House.

In fact, some prominent conservative Catholic commentators said on Friday that the church should not concern itself with the sexual orientation of candidates for the priesthood who honor their vows of celibacy.

"I don't really care, and I don't think most Catholics care if a priest is gay" as long he does not act on his urges, said William Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and a fierce critic of what he has called declining moral standards.

The Vatican document on gay seminarians has not yet been completed, and exactly how the authorities would go about screening out homosexuals remains an open question. The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a conservative Catholic who edits the religious journal First Things, said that he doubted that the final document would include celibate gays in the ban. Such a policy, he said, "would raise enormous theological and moral problems in the teaching of the church."

Mr. Donohue said that the while the Vatican did need to address the sexual abuses committed by priests and damage they have done to the church, "the answer to the problem is not all of a sudden to roll out of bed and have this universal prohibition."

The founder of the saintmychal Web site, Burt Kearns, suggested that Father Judge himself could help repair the church's public image.

"If you look at the work and life of Mychal Judge, this is a man who should be on the recruiting poster for Catholic priests," Mr. Kearns said. "He was a great priest."

Shadi Rahimi contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company