Yesterday’s article for the Feast of the Holy Family is by Deacon Ray Dever, the parent of an adult trans woman, who is a retired Catholic priest with nearly 50 years of various church and agricultural ministry experience. Deacon Ray has been invited to handle LGBTQ issues by several national magazines and Catholic organizations, including the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, and he often provides rural guidance to Catholic families with trans children from across the US. He holds three student levels, including a master’s degree in theology.
In 2014 on the Feast of the Holy Family, which the church celebrates every year on the Sunday after Christmas, I offered some reflections for Bondings 2.0 readers about Catholic families with LGBTQ babies, including my own. At that time, my family was still in the early stages of adjusting to and accepting the reality of our oldest child coming out as transgender.
I had come across a Bondings 2.0 article from a young professional woman, a lawyer if I recall correctly, who came from a traditional Catholic family and who was in a same-sex relationship. She vividly recounted that what she wanted most was to be able to come home for Christmas with her dearest lover, which her parents did not support for fear of violating church teachings. Her account touched me deeply, both as a parent and as a priest, and I commented online about her situation from the perspective of a fairly traditional family that had come to a completely different conclusion than her parents. That led to an invitation from New Ways Ministry to share our story and to write that first website article.
Little has changed for families with LGBTQ kids over the past decade, for better or for worse. Beginning with the now-famous words “Who am I to judge?” from Pope Francis in 2013 and continuing with his general outreach to the LGBTQ community, there have been growing signs of hope that the church is moving, albeit slowly, towards greater understanding and acceptance of LGBTQ individuals and their supportive families.
Just recently, two notable documents were released from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith: an October 2023 email allowing the communion of transgender people and a December 2023 statement allowing blessings of same-sex unions. Although both documents are full of limitations and shortcomings, they have generally been met with joy by the LGBTQ Catholic community. And in the recently completed meetings in Rome of the synod of the church, LGBTQ issues were very much on the table for discussion, although it remains to be seen how the final year of the synod will play out with respect to those issues.
On the other hand, if one were to ask Catholic families with LGBTQ kids how they perceive the changes of the past decade, I think you might hear considerably less optimistic perspectives. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who most of us came to know during the Covid pandemic but who was one of the leaders of the response to the AIDS crises of the 1980s, just warned that anti-gay sentiment in this country is the worst it has been in 40 years. The number of anti-gay legislative actions introduced at the state level has skyrocketed over the past five years, with 2023 setting a record in that respect. Families with trans children’s lives are in turmoil in many states as a result of the ban on providing their children with essential health care and the investigation of families for child abuse for merely providing the best care possible.
Additionally, because many of these legislative actions have received public support from local churches, there is a major intersection between what is happening in the US government and the church. More than 40 dioceses have issued generally negative policies over gender identity and sexual orientation over the past few years, many of which explicitly forbid transgender people from attending Catholic schools or receiving the sacraments. The Diocese of Davenport, whose 2023 rural policies on sex and sexual orientation are more enlightened and sympathetic than other Catholic policies, is one notable exception.
If I had to decide whether the changes over the past ten years have been for the better or worse, I’d first consider how my own family has been affected by all of this. On the plus side, our journey over the past ten years has resulted in the flourishing of our transgender daughter and a closer relationship within our family. Additionally, it has helped in opening our minds and hearts to the problems of everyone on the periphery of society and the church, not just those of LGBTQ people.
The fact that all three of our older kids have left the church is a downside, primarily due to the prejudice against LGBTQ people. Because she didn’t want the LGBTQ people closest to her and her husband, including her transgender sister, to feel unwelcome on her wedding day, our middle daughter, who married in October and brought together two sizable Catholic families, did so primarily outside the church.
The ultimate irony is that our transgender daughter no longer visits us for Christmas, not because we don’t love and welcome her in our Florida home where we’ve celebrated our family holidays for the past 30 years, but rather because she feels unsafe going to a place where she
might be detained for using the bathrooms. Instead, we’re heading to her with our family’s Christmas celebration packed.
We must keep in mind that this family from 2,000 years ago was also marginalized in many ways, even to the point where they had to flee for their lives while carrying a newborn baby, as we observe those beautiful nativity scenes in our homes and churches on this Holy Family Sunday. Please understand that your family has the same God-given value and dignity as any other family in the church for those Catholic families with LGBTQ kids who feel rejected and who are struggling with everything going on around them. Consider the Holy Family and God’s unending love for everyone that was embodied in the Incarnation. Consider the mercy and forgiveness extended to everyone by the birth of the Christ child. Love one another as Christ has loved us, and most importantly, continue to love your kids, as the new commandment commands us to do.
