S
stumbler
Guest
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - The two visitors to the meeting were quick with their comments - and their exit moments later. Gays have no place in the church, they said. Stop making trouble.
Then they left the gathering of gay and lesbian parishioners at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in south Minneapolis, a wave of confusion and anger closing in behind as the others watched them leave.
“I try not to listen to that ****,” a lesbian parishioner said as she relayed the conversation to others a few moments later. She started to say something else but then, shaken, stopped.
The encounter at St. Joan’s last month, brief as it was, was like a window into the soul of the Roman Catholic Church today. The tension among straight and gay Catholics has become a persistent and personal one illustrating both the rising power of the American gay rights movement and the nation’s rightward shift on social issues.
“I really think this is part of a much larger struggle,” the Rev. George Wertin, the pastor at St. Joan’s, told the gay and lesbian parishioners at last month’s meeting. He then referred to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s that helped overturn discriminatory laws. "What happened for black people has to happen now for a new group of . . .
duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthtribune/10414882.htm
Then they left the gathering of gay and lesbian parishioners at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in south Minneapolis, a wave of confusion and anger closing in behind as the others watched them leave.
“I try not to listen to that ****,” a lesbian parishioner said as she relayed the conversation to others a few moments later. She started to say something else but then, shaken, stopped.
The encounter at St. Joan’s last month, brief as it was, was like a window into the soul of the Roman Catholic Church today. The tension among straight and gay Catholics has become a persistent and personal one illustrating both the rising power of the American gay rights movement and the nation’s rightward shift on social issues.
“I really think this is part of a much larger struggle,” the Rev. George Wertin, the pastor at St. Joan’s, told the gay and lesbian parishioners at last month’s meeting. He then referred to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s that helped overturn discriminatory laws. "What happened for black people has to happen now for a new group of . . .
duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthtribune/10414882.htm