Christian Affirmation Service at Penn State (Byrne)
Fr. Fred Byrne, the director of the Penn State Catholic Center, allowed the Catholic Center to co-sponsor a Christian Affirmation Service honoring sexual diversity. Then, after the fact, he claimed ignorance implying he had no idea that lesbian prayers praying for priests to come out of the closet along with other blasphemies would be a part of such a service.
The following is a “prayer” which was said at the Christian affirmation service honoring sexual diversity held at Eisenhower Chapel at Penn State on Thursday 10/10/96. A Catholic priest, Fr. Conan Feigh, O.S.B. did take part per the directive of the Penn State Catholic Community.
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April 2, 2000
PRAYER
“A priest sent a card
of van Gogh’s ‘Olive Orchard.’
In the tortured brush strokes,
the artist reveals his own agony
as he depicts Christ’s agony in Gethsemane. The priest sees in the reproduction
his own spiritual struggle
to accept his homosexuality.
Let us pray for this priest
and the many like him
who are part of
an invisible community of suffering, unknown, unfelt, unloved by the church:
WE PRAY, O GOD,
FOR THOSE WHO LIVE IN CLOSETS.
For the quarter of a million homosexuals murdered in Nazi concentration camps and those who remained imprisoned
despite the Allied victory, who now live in history’s closet:
WE PRAY, O GOD,
FOR THOSE WHO DIED IN CLOSETS.
For millions of lesbians and gay men in other countries
in which there are
no support systems or groups,
in which revelation leads to imprisonment, castration, or death:
WE PRAY, O GOD,
FOR THOSE WHO FEAR IN CLOSETS.
For priests, nuns, ministers, and lay church leaders
who, to serve the church, cannot come out, while bringing liberation to others
who are oppressed:
WE PRAY, O GOD,
FOR THOSE WHO LIBERATE FROM CLOSETS.
For spouses, who also must hide—
nongay spouses,
protective of their loved ones’ careers,
gay lovers,
hiding their love under a bushel:
WE PRAY, O GOD,
FOR THOSE WHO LOVE IN CLOSETS.
Thank you, God, for all who, throughout the world,
struggle to make churches and cultures
more inclusive, homes where there are no strangers:
O GOD,
MAY CLOSETS GO THE WAY OF THE BERLIN WALL.
ALLELUIA! AMEN.
[From COMING OUT TO GOD: PRAYERS FOR LESBIANS AND GAY MEN, THEIR FAMILIES, AND FRIENDS by Chris Glaser]The following are lyrics from a hymn sung at the service.
1. Walls of color, ways of loving, Money, pow’r and war 2. Gays and lesbians and straight folks Should not disagree 3. Shall we hide in degradation? Shall we fear each other? 4. It is truth, God’s truth, that frees us; Fear that walls us in.
Keep us locked in lonely prisons: God calls us to more:
God who formed us. calls and loves us. Made us to be free:
Join hands, all God’s precious people. Sister, brother, lover;
Shout for freedom, joy, and vision; Come now, let’s begin:
Reconciling, building bridges cross the gap between Visions of what ought to be and what we know and see.
These “prayers” and “hymns” are anathema to the Roman Catholic Church per the Catechism and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s pastoral letter on the care of homosexuals which is the official Church position coming from the Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Speaking as a Roman Catholic member of the Faculty at Penn State and for concerned Roman Catholic members of the administration at this university, we are embarrassed that the Penn State Community under the leadership of Father Byrne gave their imprimatur to this blasphemy of the Faith. What occurred by the Catholic Community’s participation in this “service” was a capitulation to the pressures of homosexual activists by honoring paganism instead of Christianity.
The modus operandi of militant homosexual activists entrenched at Penn State University is well known. They have succeeded, through the Vice-Provost Office for Educational Equity, in misusing our hard earned tax monies in the promotion of sexual perversion as a civil right to be “celebrated”.
The very title of the so-called “service” was sufficient to give away the real motives. That should have been a red flag for Catholics to avoid same at all cost for reasons of giving scandal to the faithful.
Fr. Byrne and other members of the Penn State Catholic Community have taken part in homosexual demonstrations on campus in union with militant homosexual advocates like Methodist minister Carl Synan of the United Campus Ministries. The Reverend Synan is notorious for his outrageous public statements on the acceptance of homosexuality in Sacred Scripture using the well-known easily refuted fallacious argument that THE sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was inhospitality. Evidently, it never occurs to the Carl Synans of the world that it seems a little odd for God to nuke a city for a breach of manners.
Fr. Byrne always uses the “stop the hate” slogan as a reason for PSU Catholic participation totally ignoring the question of how can Catholic clergy be associated with such activities that have as their core aim the celebration of sexual perversion as an alternative lifestyle. It has become very clear with the promotion of homosexuality at Penn State and in the State College Community through Penn State that “stop the hate” means first and foremost stop the hate toward the sin!
Fr. Byrne has done nothing to the best of my knowledge in regard to removing a Penn State priest Fr. Joseph Hlubik who committed public heresy by saying that there are “healthy aspects of homosexuality” in a large op-ed in the local paper directly counter to the teachings of the Church. Fr. Hlubik has frequently used the lies of the homosexual lexicon in his op-eds in the Values section of the local paper, the most infamous of which is the fallacious position that “sexual orientation” exists in an innate final sense. Fr. Hlubik has no trouble with equating immutable, natural characteristics and constitutionally protected behavior with mutable, unnatural characteristics and aberrant behavior by equating skin color and ethnicity with perverse behavior that has been proven changeable.
An example of Fr. Hlubik’s disingenuous statements on homosexuality appeared in an article entitled “Church accepts homosexuals as its children, too.”
He stated “I would urge readers who want to get an accurate understanding of the Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality to read in its entirety the document “Always Our Children,” published by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, or the sections of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
“Always Our Children” has been reviewed by more than 80 American bishops who do speak authoritatively for the Church. The document has also been reviewed by the Vatican. The revisions were made to clarify the document.
“Scripture itself presents a diversity of theologies and points of view on many issues. God’s word might not change, but the human interpretation and expression of the Word has, as is evidenced in Scripture itself.
“The fact of the matter is that homosexuality was not known as a sexual orientation until the advent of modern psychology. The behaviors certainly were known, but there is no evidence of an understanding of it being a genuine attraction of love between men or between women.
“The church’s teachings develop, not in response to political agendas, but in response to genuine understanding. There are many examples of the church positions changing as we gain more wisdom. The church’s whole attitude about sex moved to a higher level of understanding with the 1984 Revised Code of Canon Law, which explicitly shifts from a position that sexual relations are for the purposes of procreation only to a position where sexual relations are considered both for procreation and unitive love.
“The church states that these two purposes of sex cannot be separated. That is the logic why homosexual intercourse is stated to be wrong; one of its purposes is frustrated. Since every act of sex must be open to procreation, every single genital sexual act of union must present the possibility of generating life. Therefore all genital sexual acts of union except vaginal intercourse itself, and all manner of contraception (except natural family planning methods), are just as wrong for both heterosexuals and homosexuals, according to the church.
“This presents a difficult struggle for both gays and heterosexuals. Many, many heterosexuals (including married couples) do not live up to the fullness of this teaching.
“The church calls all of its members to chastity: single, married, straight and gay. However, it does not, nor could it, forbid men from loving other men or women from loving other women, or even being in covenant with one another, and there are certainly biblical examples of men loving men and women loving women, and showing affection (see, for example: 2 Sam 26 or 1 Sam 20:41-42).
“The church does not ask homosexuals to deny their homosexuality, but it does say that genital sexual relations are reserved for husband and wife (man and woman) in the context of marriage.
“This is where the current controversy and difficult struggle is for many gay and lesbian Catholics who desire to follow the church, and yet also have a strong natural desire to express unitive love.
“There is no single ‘homosexual lifestyle’ as there is no single ‘heterosexual lifestyle.’ There are as many ways of being gay or straight as there are people who are gay and straight. There are healthy and perverse expressions of either orientation.
“It seems extremely sad to me that gay men and women who are not willing to be ashamed of who they are continue to be despised and persecuted by people unwilling to open their minds and hearts and see them as real people with genuine sexual struggles (as everyone has). If you must judge people, judge them individually by the kind of life they live and the fruit it bears.”
Fr. Hlubik’s statements are counter to the Teaching Magisterium of the Church as documented in the Universal Catechism and Cardinal Ratzinger’s pastoral to the world’s bishops on the care of homosexuals.
Fr. Hlubik’s column “Church accepts homosexuals as children too” is fraught with errors and is an obfuscation of the Church’s teaching on homosexuality in the same manner that Always Our Children was in its original implication that parents who observe their children exhibiting homosexual tendencies should say nothing. This is nonsensical as would these same parents be expected to say nothing if their children exhibited tendencies toward fornication? At least the latter recognizes a complimentarity of the sexes, which is natural in that context as opposed to the unnatural “vice” as St. Thomas Aquinas called homosexual behavior.
Sadly, a tremendous wound has been inflicted to the Body of Christ by the actions of this priest who confuses genuine compassion for the sinner with a pseudo-compassion for the inclination to a lifestyle that the Church calls “objectively disordered.” By his column, the priest has given ammunition to homosexual advocates who demand civil rights in an affirmative action sense, rights that they already possess as opposed to “special rights” which they don’t deserve. In short, he has scandalized the faithful in this community.
God’s word is invariant because the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us. The human interpretation of God’s word as such remains invariant, as His word was not a function solely of the time in which He was Man but for all time.
This “human interpretation” so cavalierly referred to by Fr. Hlubik is THE interpretation of his Church.
Fr. Hlubik said, “I would hope that the Church’s teaching are not developed in response to political agendas.” This is hypocritical in that the best example of this are the homosexual demands that the Church recognize their lifestyle and/or inclination to same as normal when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.
As for Fr. Hlubik’s reference to canon law, has the Church’s position really shifted? There is obfuscation at work here as by his own admission he states that the procreative AND unitive states of sexual relations are married, i.e., cannot be separated. This, per my reading, has always been the Church’s position.
Most certainly the Church calls all toward Chastity regardless of their state in life. But to state that it does not, nor could it, forbid men from loving men or women from loving women, or even being in covenant with one another is a heretical statement if taken literally, as the implication here is that these unions tend toward the conjugal, which is anathema to Church teaching. If otherwise, that men could love men and women women as friends, this is obviously true. But I do not, in the context of Fr. Hlubik’s column, believe that he was referring to this type of “normal” as opposed to “abnormal” love.
To say that the Church does not ask homosexuals to deny their homosexuality implies somehow that homosexuality is a gift from God. Another obfuscation of Church teaching reinforced by the latest research in regard to homosexuality and orientation toward it. The Church clearly is teaching those inclined to homosexual lifestyles out of unconditional love for them that they are embarking down a road leading elsewhere than to salvation per the Catechism.
Homosexuality as any problem encountered by mankind can be used as a channel of grace IF AND ONLY IF mankind realizes that this is a cross to bear in the same manner that Jesus carried His to Calvary. The struggles of those heterosexuals with homosexual inclinations are no different in this regard than any other individual. Everyone has genuine struggles – many of which are far more debilitating than sexual, i.e., born blind, limbless, suffering any myriad of physical disabilities, etc. We’re all called to a greater end, an ultimate end that the natural law rooted in the Decalogue leads toward. Catholic priests, above all, should realize this instead of apologizing for ignorance of the natural law, which leads to self-destructive lifestyles from both physical and especially spiritual standpoints.
How can pursuit of happiness be realized by adherence to a way of life, which leads to physical destruction? Even atheists recognize that. You would think that a Catholic priest would.
Fr. Byrne has done nothing in regard to removing another employee of the PSU Catholic Center Diane Bremer who gave the most radical of two positions supporting homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle in a public issues forum op-ed in the local paper. In an article entitled “Choice Three: Teach Respect for All Sexual Orientations”, Bremer said
“Schools need to aim for more than preventing discrimination and harassment. As part of building communities in which differences are respected, schools should take the lead in building a more respectful climate for all sexual orientations within the school and the community at large.
“I firmly believe that schools should teach respect for all. I, also, believe that the issue of sexual orientation must be included in our school curriculum at every age level.
“I call upon the school system to teach respect for all sexual orientations. Differences must be respected and discrimination and harassment must be prevented. But the schools need to go beyond this. Sexual orientation should be included in nondiscrimination policies and everyone should be aware of this and the policies should be enforced. Training and workshops should be planned for all staff to encourage understanding and respect for all sexual orientations. Also, students should see role models for various sexual orientations. Schools must take a proactive stance on this issue.”
Presumably, Bremer would have no problems with the “sexual orientations” of sadism, masochism, and pedophilia all of which have been removed from the disorder list of the American Psychiatric Association. The APA is busily constructing the psychologically normal pedophile. Their diagnostic manual, per Dr. Joseph Nicolosi of the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality now says that pedophilia isn’t a problem unless it bothers the pedophiliac.
Catholics of the Altoona Johnstown Diocese ran newspaper ads in the State College PA Centre Daily Times and in the Penn State Daily Collegian because of the horrendous catechesis Catholics of this diocese are being exposed to, in particular residents of Centre County in Central PA and the Catholic population at Penn State University, as a result of the heretical example of members of the Penn State Catholic Community including clergy in regard to taking part in public demonstrations celebrating homosexual lifestyles, co- sponsoring Christian affirmation services honoring sexual diversity, making public statements in the local paper saying that “there are healthy expressions of a homosexual orientation”, and signing petitions celebrating sexual perversion. This situation has been ongoing since 1996 with many complaints made to the bishop’s office. It has steadily deteriorated to the point of local Catholics now having no problem with publicly admitting that they are freely dissenting from infallible Catholic teaching on faith and morals at a time when people of all faiths are trying to unite to fight the acceptance of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle in our school district.
The Catholic Response Ad in the local papers was THE Catholic Response of the Church to homosexuality as a civil right as presented by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the highest teaching office in the Church apart from the Pope.
Fr. Byrne and the spokesman for the diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, Sr. Mary Parks, told this community that these ads which were published statements on homosexuality from the Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the highest teaching office in the Church apart from the Pope, “did not come from any official Roman Catholic source.”
Fr. Byrne and Sr. Parks then proceeded to apologize to State College PA for the official Catholic Teaching on homosexuality by saying “We regret that this ad has created confusion and even pain for some people and we ask that the law of Gods love for all people be held primary. God loves us male and female, straight or gay, every color of the rainbow, every culture on the earth. With Gods love as guide every person must be treated with dignity and respect.”
Again, please remember that the “ads” were verbatim statements from the teaching Magisterium of the Church on homosexuality. What is conspicuously missing in Fr. Byrne and Sr. Parks closing statement above is the God loves us but hates the sin which will keep us from spending an eternity with Him in Heaven, the sole reason for our creation.
This, in a community where the moral rot emanating from Penn State University through its blatant promotion of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle calling for domestic partner benefits has filtered down to our public school system which now demands that sexual orientation be recognized as a civil right in an affirmative action sense. So much for the support of the Church for local Catholics concerned about the souls of the faithful, in particular their children being exposed to hedonism with the blessings, it appears, of not only the state but also the diocesan Church.
Sadly what has resulted is more obfuscation of Catholic teaching when our diocese is crying out for a clear, Catholic voice to stand up for Christ and His Church.
Catholics are entitled to authentic catechesis. There are enough lies to go around in the secular world without adding to the problem. And that’s what is happening in State College, PA in the diocese of Altoona- Johnstown, Catholics are adding to the problem instead of witnessing to the Faith.
So, I find the actions of the Penn State Catholic Community under the leadership of Fr. Fred Bryne strange to say the least given Fr. Bryne’s reported claim of adamant opposition to homosexuality.
Catholics in the State College Area are fighting the direct pipeline of moral rot coming from Penn State University into the community without the needed support of the Penn State Catholic ministry. The local school board is currently in the process of legitimizing “sexual orientation” as a civil right with the help of the homosexual agitprop coming from the Penn State Vice Provost Office for Educational Equity, which is on record as celebrating homosexuality.
In the Wednesday, March 14, 1999 Penn State student paper, the Daily Collegian, a full page ad appeared promoting the homosexual lifestyle as a cause to be celebrated. One of the co-sponsors of the ad was the Office of the Vice Provost for Educational Equity.
WE ARE NOT AFRAID
We, the undersigned, are pledged to break the silence and end the discrimination aimed at our family, friends or ourselves based on sexual or gender orientation. We respect the basic human rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered individuals unequivocally. CELEBRATE THE COMMUNITY DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF MATTHEW SHEPARD (1976-1998)
(What follows are eight columns of printed names with the homosexual symbol “inverted triangle” held up by two arms superimposed over the names.)
This ad was sponsored by ALLIES, the University Park Allocation Committee (UPAC) and the Office of the Vice-Provost for Educational Equity
It is to be noted that two priests from the Penn State Catholic Community signed this ad in celebration of sexual perversity, one of which, in an aforementioned column written for the local paper said, “There are healthy expressions of a homosexual orientation.” This is a heretical statement given the clear teaching of the Church as the CDF has stated, the orientation to homosexual acts is “objectively disordered” because it urges a person, not toward the inherent good of marriage and procreation, but toward sinful conduct.
This is the sorry state of Catholicism at Penn State. This priest, and his superiors by giving him a forum, have done a disservice to the Church, our community, our university, and especially, to the souls of the Faithful which are entrusted to them, souls that deserve authentic Catholic catechesis instead of a bastardization of it. This is a classic case of “rendering to Caesar more than what Caesar is owed” as the Church on this campus is not a sign of contradiction to a world embracing hedonism but rather a sign of conformation.
The two priests who signed this ad were Fr. Conan Feigh, O.S.B. and Fr. Joseph Hlubik.
Catholics in Centre Country need the support of our diocesan Church, in particular, the Penn State Catholic Community. We have not seen same to date.
Please reference Canon 1741 below.
Canon 1741 – The reasons for which a pastor can be legitimately removed from his parish are especially the following:
1. a way of acting which is gravely detrimental or disturbing to the ecclesial community;
2. incompetence or a permanent infirmity of mind or body which renders a pastor incapable of performing his duties in a useful way;
3. loss of good reputation among upright and good parishioners or aversion to the pastor which are foreseen as not ceasing in a short time;
4. grave neglect or violation of parochial duties which persist after a warning;
5. poor administration of temporal affairs with grave damage to the Church whenever this problem cannot be remedied in any other way.
It might be that the good Archabbot is unaware of the extent to which these factors (#1 and #3) are at play in the community.
I respectfully submit, on behalf of Catholics fighting the culture wars in our area for our souls and that of our children, that the aforementioned actions of the director of the Penn State Catholic Center, Father Fred Byrne, O.S.B., and the priests under his charge bear review under items 1. and 3. above.
Gary L. Morella
Associate, Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Research Mathematician, Penn State University
