June

Lexi McMenamin 6-09-2021

Screenshot of Miguel Díaz, the former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See under President Barack Obama, offering a blessing during DignityUSA's Catholic Pride Blessing event on June 1, 2021. 

Earlier this year, the Vatican said that its priests and ministers cannot bless same-sex unions. For LGBTQ Catholics, this was a setback for what many saw as the church’s more welcoming trajectory under Pope Francis. But not everyone is following the instructions; in the United States and across the globe, Catholics have directly disobeyed the Vatican’s instructions.

On the first day of June — which marks the beginning of Pride Month in the United States — DignityUSA, an organization supporting LGBTQ Catholics, hosted a Catholic Pride Blessing, where LGBTQ Catholics could be blessed by clergy.

Illustration by Shin Yeon Moon

EARLY ON IN my training for hospital chaplaincy the spiritual care director asked each student to choose a biblical role model of faith. I chose the Apostle Paul. It wasn’t an obvious choice for someone raised as a feminist and aware of the damage done to women through interpretation of Paul’s letters and those attributed to him.

Despite that, I love the way Paul’s faith and humanity shine through his words. Even in his letter to the Romans, one of Paul’s last and most-polished, we have a sense of his limitations. He mixes confidence and humility, offering an unflinching look at sin: collective sin and the sin that is particular to each of us, broken beloveds of God.

I need Paul’s writing on sin so that I don’t grow too self-righteous. When Paul writes that we received God’s grace “while we were still weak” (Romans 5:6), I am reminded that I can’t claim righteousness before God on my own. It is only when we have an honest estimation of ourselves and our capabilities that we can engage in justice work without moralizing or neglecting to set good boundaries.

Taking sin seriously means not only fighting back against oppression but taking a hard look at myself. In my feminism, am I aware of and working to end the ways misogyny particularly oppresses black, brown, Asian, and Indigenous women, as well as queer and trans people? Do I put my own concerns first or truly seek liberation for all people?

June 7

With Us Always

Genesis 1:1-2, 4; Psalm 8; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Matthew 28:16-20

READING THE CREATION story in Genesis, I imagine myself deep inside a dark place, with the breath of God like a gust of wind. I recall James Weldon Johnson’s poem “The Creation,” especially as it is read by James Earl Jones in a short film featuring animated clay art by Joan C. Gratz. The darkness through which God births the world is “blacker than a hundred midnights / down in a cypress swamp.” From that rich blackness comes the countless colors of the myriad creatures that dwell on the earth.

Ed Spivey Jr. 5-11-2013

By Ken Davis

JUNE IS A special month, particularly for families celebrating ... uhm ... something. I forget. Fortunately, ever since I read a study suggesting that cholesterol-lowering statins can cause problems with ... with ... word retrieval, I realize now it has nothing to do with getting old, which many people my age are getting these days. It’s because I’m just another victim of an unscrupulous drug industry. (Drug company lawyer: “I understand that you think you took our drug, sir, but how can you be sure?”)

But now I remember why June is special: Our oldest daughter is getting married this month, and I can use our cover story as a reminder that I’m probably supposed to do something to help out. Although darned if I can remember what it is.

My daughter’s won’t be a gay marriage, which is trending this year, but it will be an alternative wedding, one of those nontraditional celebrations that doesn’t require me to dress up and “give away” the bride. (If I was going to give her away, I should have done it well before the wedding bills started coming in.) There’ll be no church to rent and no preacher to pay. The ceremony will be outside, probably in a tent, and we already have one of those. (It sleeps four. Nice size for an intimate gathering, if people don’t mind stooping during the service.)

The problem is that she wants to invite a lot of friends and family, an inclination that has always puzzled me about marriage ceremonies. A wedding is a sacred ritual between two people, an intimate, spiritual moment of connection that shouldn’t be ruined by a bunch of other people sticking their noses in. Why have a ceremony at all? Why not just get married, say, in the back of a van, on the way to the honeymoon?  Or just go to the DMV or whatever government office has the forms that the clerk could ceremoniously—and no doubt with tears in her eyes—slide across the counter to be signed. I could quietly sing a romantic tune in the background to set the tone, and to block out the loudspeaker announcing the next available window. And then they’d be done. Heck, you don’t even have to get a blood test any more, although since they’re marrying in Virginia, they may need to prove they own a handgun. If they can’t, one will be provided for them.