July 21, 1999

Controversial gay-lesbian ministry proscribed

Duo caused confusion by promoting 'errors and ambiguities'

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Father Robert Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick have been barred from engaging in Catholic pastoral work with homosexual persons by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith because the "errors and ambiguities" they promoted "have caused confusion among the Catholic people and have harmed the community of the Church," said a notification released by the Vatican, July 13.

The notification said the two Americans, who have been engaged in joint gay and lesbian ministry since the early 1970s, advanced "doctrinally unacceptable" positions "the objective disorder of the homosexual inclination." The investigation has been ongoing for 15 years.

Father Nugent in a statement said his superior general called him to Rome and informed him of the decision before it was published. "As a son of the Church, a presbyter and a member of a religious congregation with a vow of obedience, I accepted the decision of the CDF and expressed my intention to implement it accordingly," he said.

The congregation said its public notification, personally approved by Pope John Paul II, was necessary "for the good of the Catholic faithful."

The "errors and ambiguities" promoted by the Father Nugent and Sister Gramick "have caused confusion among the Catholic people and have harmed the community of the Church," it said.

It also declared the two "ineligible, for an undetermined period, for any office in their respective religious institutes."

Father Nugent, 62, is a Salvatorian priest. Sister Gramick, 57, is a School Sister of Notre Dame.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the doctrinal congregation, and Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, its secretary, signed the notification.

Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a separate statement July 13 stressed that the Vatican ban was imposed because of "serious deficiencies in their writings and pastoral activities . . . not because it was a ministry to homosexuals as such."

He said the U.S. bishops "share a commitment to this ministry. . . . All Catholics facing serious moral questions deserve our care and respect as brothers and sisters in the Lord. Those with homosexual inclinations deserve this care and respect no less than any others."

Bishop Fiorenza also expressed a "personal hope that Sister Gramick and Father Nugent can find the way to express their acceptance of the Church's teaching on homosexuality."

"This decision was reached after nearly 12 years of dialogue with Sister Gramick and Father Nugent," he said. "This dialogue began with a commission, appointed in 1988 and chaired by Cardinal Adam Maida (of Detroit), to examine criticism that, in their ministry to homosexual persons, they did not fully and accurately present the teaching of the church on homosexuality."

He said the long time taken to reach a decision on the case "indicates that these disciplinary measures were not taken lightly." It is the obligations of church authorities "to discern what is or is not faithful to the teaching handed on by the Lord to the apostles," he added.