Should Catholics Reach Out to the LGBT Community?

For the past four decades, the Catholic Church, locally, nationally, and universally, has put out the call to reach out, to build bridges, and to welcome in.

In 1986, then-Cardinal Ratzinger (now the late Pope Benedict XVI) wrote in a Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons where he stated:

It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs.

In 1991, the United States Conference wrote the document entitled Human Sexuality: A Catholic Perspective for Education and Lifelong Learning. It was later quoted by the United States Council of Catholic Bishops in 1997. This document on page 55 states,

We call on all Christians and citizens of goodwill to confront their own fears about homosexuality and to curb the humor and discrimination that offend homosexual persons. We understand that having a homosexual orientation brings with it enough anxiety, pain, and issues related to self-acceptance without society bringing additional prejudicial treatment.

Not long after, in 1992, the Catechism of the Catholic Church was first published where in paragraph 2358, it acknowledged:

The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible…They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.

About fifteen years later, in 2006, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops updated the letter, Always Our Children: Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care, which is currently on the USCCB website. It states, “This is the most current resource when it comes to ministry to persons with same-sex attraction, which was approved by the full body of bishops in November 2006.” The bishops state that:

It is crucially important to understand that saying a person has a particular inclination that is disordered is not to say that the person as a whole is disordered. Nor does it mean that one has been rejected by God or the Church…This is particularly important because more than a few persons with a homosexual inclination feel themselves to be unwelcome and rejected.

Finally, in 2017, Fr. Mike Schmitz published the book Made for Love, where he emphasized:

And if you have same-sex attractions, I have to make this absolutely clear: You are not merely welcomed in the Church; you belong in the Church.

This list of quotes provides us with a clear list of action items: There is a call to condemn malice and violence, confront our fears about homosexuality, stop our own prejudicial treatment, accept individuals with compassion, sensitivity, and respect, and let people who identify as LGBTQ+, SSA, GD, know that they belong in the Catholic Church.

The call to love and accept (but let me be clear, while not approving specific actions) is paramount since “more than a few persons…feel themselves to be unwelcome and rejected.”