The Rev. Mychal F. Judge, the NYC Fire Department
chaplain and one of the most widely loved Roman priests in the history of New York City, died in the rubble of the World Trade Centers of 911. For 40 years Father Judge, a gregarious, sandal-shod
Franciscan friar, had ministered to firefighters and their grieving widows, friends and families, AIDS patients, homeless
people, and countless others. At his funeral, the Catholic Mayor of New York City called him a saint and later admirers began a campaign for his
canonization.
Father Judge, who was age 68 when he died, was also a celibate homosexual, as he had told many of
his friends. He was a longtime member of the gay Catholic group Dignity, often spoke up for gay rights, and in the 1990’s
had conducted Masses for gay and lesbian Catholics in a Unitarian church on Staten Island (forbidden, of course, in Roman
churches).
The Christian churches, founded in the name of an incarnate Spirit of Universal Love who famously
warned against judging others, long ago floundered under the divide and conquer machinations of the male lords of earthly
power, including the many careerist bishops who willfully ignored the little children who were being abused, not loved, in
their churches by their ordained, pedophilic priests.
The lords of the Christian faith have long despised and persecuted homosexuals, as have
the clerics of the other two religions claiming Abrahamic roots, Judaism and Islam. And now a Vatican directive barring
gay men from the priesthood even though celibate, has stirred anger among those faithful who revere the memory of
Friar Judge, who was a veritable
Minister of Love.
In the six-page edict published on
November 29, 2005 by the Congregation for Catholic Education, the Vatican declared that "the Church, while profoundly
respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present
deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called 'gay culture.' "
Defenders of the ban on gays in the priesthood claim that even celibate gays should not enter seminary
because of the temptations arising from being surrounded by men, even as they attempt to pass the blame in the ongoing
sexual abuse crisis in the Chruch on to gay priests ... and so such cruel bigotry survives into the 21st Century,
in Catholicism as in Islam and fundamentalist Judaism and Protestantism. Also persistent is a refusal to distinguish homosexuality
from pedophilia, consent from rape or celibacy from licentiousness. Such is the fate of those whose spiritual eyes are blinded
by dogma, for verily it is said that none are so blind as those who will not see.
May the stars and stripes around the picture of
the hero Friar Mychal Judge
allow us all to reaffirm our own personal stand for
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
FOR ALL.
