Another priest announces he is “gay” this time it is Father Rich Danyluk of St. Joseph’s Basilica church in Alameda. This happened back in September though I couldn’t find any coverage of the original event in the news or by bloggers.
The topic of his homily that early fall day, as dictated by Catholic hierarchy, was accepting, not rejecting.
So the priest told a story. It went something like this.
About two years ago his aunt was dying. As a priest and as her nephew, he arrived at her deathbed.
He sat next to her and she started to cry, finally telling the priest, her nephew, she was gay.
"I’m so afraid I’m going to hell," the priest remembered her saying.
"That’s not how God works," he replied.
Perhaps parishioners weren’t surprised by the priest’s story that day.
Homosexuality within the Catholic Church had been in the news lately. The Vatican was scheduled to release a letter within weeks stating its position on whether gay men should enter the seminary and become priests.
The pope’s position on homosexuality, however, had been defined within church teachings for some time.The condition is an anomaly, according to the Vatican. Furthermore, gay men and women are objectively disordered and homosexual acts are considered a serious depravity.
The priest continued with his homily.
He grasped a large book in his hands, raising the ornate Gospel over his head.
"This good news is for everybody or it is for nobody," he told his congregation.
The Gospel has to be for his aunt, too. For all lesbians and gays, the priest said with conviction.
How did he know?
The answer was simple.
"I’m one of you," Father Rich Danyluk said.
Once again of course it is all the hierarchy’s fault that your "objectively disordered" condition is not accepted. Beautiful words "This good news is for everybody or it is for nobody", but the Good News is that we can be saved despite our sinfulness, not because of it. To proclaim release to the captives – release from the stranglehold of sin.
At three separate Masses that September Sunday, Father Rich shared his sexual orientation with those who came to worship.
At the evening Mass, the small sentence fell on the congregation. There wasn’t the same hesitation as in the earlier Masses. Instead, the basilica erupted in applause, and pew by pew the parishioners stood.
Their priest was homosexual and they greeted the news with a standing ovation.
Instead of prayer – applause. Though this isn’t the first time he has received a standing ovation. Six years earlier he announced during Mass in a different church that he had been arrested for drunk driving and announced that he was an alcoholic. Though I guess at least the parishioners in this area are consistent in giving standing ovations to disordered conditions. Though I doubt that it would ever cross their minds to do the same thing during the consecration. Not that I would want them to, it at least would be somewhat fitting. Though I wonder if any priest in that area announced that he struggled with same-sex attraction and asked the parishioners to pray for him to help him fight these disordered temptations would also receive a standing ovation?
For Father Rich, the daily barrage of articles debating whether gay men could be priests got to be too much.
"One can only take so much of hearing how disordered you are," Father Rich said in an interview with the Herald several weeks after the September Mass in which he shared his secret. "I wasn’t baptized a disordered child of God. I was baptized like everyone else."
Once again "the document™" strikes – this case even before it was published. Though I can sympathize – nobody likes their sinful condition called out. Though this is exactly the problem with so many priests with same-sex attraction is that wrap themselves in a "gay identity." This is why the dissent concerning the document only proves its need. One of the reasons I became Catholic was that my sins were actually called sins by the Church. It is very easy to identify your sins or sinful inclinations with your very person instead of something that needed to be repented of and shed.
Sister Sandra Schneiders was at the 7 p.m. Mass in which Father Rich said he was gay. She was among those who stood to applaud him. It was courageous, she said; he didn’t say it with anger or as a way to bash the church.
Yes how brave and courageous in the middle of the Bay Area to announce that your "gay." Not exactly something that will lead to martyrdom.
|
|
Don’t just sit there – pray for Father Rich Danyluk. |
16 comments
I’m believing more and more that homosexuals are the most mendacious people on the planet. Their technique for twisting words and meanings to mean what they want them to mean is truly evil. They clamor for rights for themselves not found in any constitution on earth and work very hard to deny Constitutional rights to the majority, as in Massachusetts where they are now hard at work to deny the people the right to decide for themselves how they want their society ordered. They demand tolerance and are intolerant of any opinion which doesn’t conform to theirs. They call the Church’s definition of their activity ‘hate speech’ yet no one speaks as hatefully as they do. They are vicious people – liars and hypocrites, whose demand is, ultimately, that we all say with them that homosexuality is a normal condition. In other words, admit black is white.
If “homosexualist” is substituted for “homosexual,” then I tend to agree with Ferde’s comment. The gay ideology (almost a false religion, really), which I’ve just termed homosexualism, is indeed pernicious, but not all people who struggle with homosexual temptations, or engage in homosexual acts for that matter, subscribe to it.
Another selfish homosexual announcement in an inappropriate place to an unsuspecting and captive audience. The poor parishioners who are in church to worship, and are in the presence of the Divine in the tabernacle yet! To have the most abominable sin shoved in their faces and by their shepherd! Pray for him, I will, but had I been there I would have removed myself and my family in protest. The poor parents with their children. How irresponsible. I think I would look into suing him for assault.
Thank you very much for the prayer request. I think it is a great idea to pray for these people.
I am thinking especially about the invocation of St Monica, who, for years, prayed for her son Augustine who lived in a (heterosexual) relationship that seems so eerily contemporary (“loving”, “committed”, “faithful” – just not married).
But sin is sin, even if it’s accepted by society or large parts of it.
Same goes for this poor priest. Let’s pray for him!
That’s a terrible thing to do to people. There are some people who interpret mere mistakes or failures or temptations as actual sins, and some people who refuse to understand any sin as anything but a harmless mistake. To have one of the latter hearing confessions by the former — yikes! I know I’d be tormented with worries over whether any of the priest’s words of comfort had been good advice.
Fortunately, God’s sacraments work through sinful and mistaken priests, too.
Oh man. That’s just sad. I live in the SF area. I can understand struggling with same sex identity issues – but it’s supposed to be a struggle, not something you proudly proclaim. I used to struggle with allegience to the religion I practiced and gods I worshipped before I became a Christian. But it was a stuggle and something that God clearly told me was wrong and that I had to stop. He can work on anyone’s heart, but that person has to be willing to see the truth, even if that truth might not be what you want to hear.
I feel sorry for his aunt- she was dying and needed bread, and he gave her the stone of his own self-deception.
I wonder, if Father Rich goes into a McDonald’s, walks up to the counter, and makes the announcement that he wants a Happy Meal, that he knows the french fries and shake are not the healthiest thing but it’s a lifestyle choice he’s made, and that the Happy Meal is on the menu board and so it’s for “everyone or for no one”, does he expect the person at the cash register to applaud?
Afterwards, does he sit at a table after making the announcement to the dining room “I’m one of you!”?
So Fr. Danyluk used the homily as an AA moment on one occasion, and then as a coming out of the closet moment on another. Both garnering him applause. The Mass and the Sacrament of Confession is diminished in one swoop. St. Joseph’s: Your emporer has no clothes.
For the record, Publius makes a valid and entirely correct distinction in his comment to my comment at the top of the page.
I am grateful for the correction. I should have said “homosexual activists” who are who I meant in the first place.
I really hate how the gay agenda is being shoved down our throats- I refuse to swallow it.
Also, it is unfortunate that the message is being shown in the wrong way. The Church does not condemn homosexuality itself (because then if it did, it would mean that heterosexuality is a sin as well), but it comdemns homosexual sexual behavior (as it does heterosexual sexual behavior).
With upwards of 60% of the priesthood gay by most accounts, does this surprise? The church wanted a liberal priesthood to accept the liberal reforms she was going to implement and who more liberal than a homosexual?
One wonders why the seminaries are empty, at least of heterosexual men, as one who can attest, the Bishops on down are either gay themselves in most cases or sympathetic to the cause. Our Lord clearly said a good tree will bring forth good fruit and a bad tree will bring forth bad, and one just needs to start at the seminary level, at the formation directors, whose interrogations of young orthodox traditionaly minded seminarians is legendary.
This was totally inappropriate behavior from a priest at Mass. Why does he feel a need to “share” this very personal information – which implies opposition to the teaching of the Church – with a captive audience (including children) that is there to worship the Lord. I will pray for him, but I hope the Bishop silences him permanently.
Are you all really surprised your hateful crap doesn’t appeal to gay people? With your condemnation of loving, intimate relationships between people of the same sex you only contribute to misery and self-loathing. All your prejudiced drivel only serves to make you feel so good and so orthodox about yourself doesn’t it? Ah, shock and horror, a priest who’s gay. Don’t worry, you now have that Vatican document to purge all gays out. What a brave new world this cleansed church will be.
Well he violated the holy spirit. He is to be homogenious;one with the father. He is not to have an intracate disorder. St. Joan’s of Arc in South Minneapolis violates more than what this priest did from the pulpit. They have had women on the altar, ss dating service, lay preachers and pastors who have consitantly violated the faith through and through. SJA claims to be the church for people on their journey. Well life goes on and sin has to repudiated. I told my aunt I would rather go to any church than that, to show good faith is better than to going to a place like that.
My family has attended this church for years. In fact, both my parents hold very high positions within this church and are quite close with Father Rich. I was raised with a very clear directive on right and wrong. In the last 7 years, I have become astounded by the change in BOTH parents.- I blame a lot of this on Father Rich.
My parents no longer view homosexuality as a sin (this is pretty ludicrous since all premarital sex and sexual depravity is sinful – hetero’s not excluded). They no longer believe Jesus is the only way.(They actually think they are loving and progressive in this view). Truth has become relative and subjective. My mother no longer believes that the bible is the true living word of God. The word of the Bible is something that they no longer rejoice in, but often apologize for.
Priests like Father Rich are a cancer. You see, I have heard him preach. He actually says many good things – but interwoven with the good news are deviations from the truth – whether it’s talk about the “feminine face of God”, or this nonsense about sharing his homosexuality.
We live in a fallen world and the church must always be a place where both the love and life-changing teachings of Jesus Christ are shared and modeled truthfully and unapologetically.
Father Rich has done this church and community a huge disservice – His watered down and at times deviant interpretation of gospel has bred a parish that can’t discern right from wrong.
The fact that a standing ovation, rather than a solemn reflection on the direction of the church occurred from his proclamation is something that should give the dioceses pause. In my opinion, Father Rich though perhaps well-meaning, is extremely misguided and must be reprimanded and removed from the church.
Comments are closed.