Over the past two years, the New Prague School Board has faced opposition from a small group of people of extremely conservative people. Their issues seem to be part of the playbook of DeSantis and his like in Florida, many of them based on white privilege fears of those different from them in culture, race, religion, and sexual gender. In the recent months, these parents, about 40 in number, have been attacking the New Prague School Board’s position of supporting the law, as dictated by the courts, concerning support of transgender students in the school system.
I have followed all these proceedings with great interest, and have reflected and prayed about them. In my reflection, I use as my mentor, Pope Francis I, who envisions a community of faith that welcomes inclusivity and diversity, as opposed to the repressive, exclusive Church of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. What I have copied below is my letter to the editor that is being published today in the New Prague Times. Of course, Pope Francis I uses as his mentor, Jesus Christ, who loved and embraced all rejected by his society and condemned by the rigidly conservative, religious authorities of his religion.
Here is my letter to the editor, which is being published today in the New Prague Times:
I am an ordained Catholic deacon, now retired after 42 years of active ministry. In my many years of ministry, I served many marginalized including the homeless, the LGBTQ+ community, the Latino community, and families trapped in dangerous domestic violence. I always felt welcomed and my life greatly enriched by those who live on the margins.
From the time I was a music major, I have known, and had many friends and colleagues who are LGBTQ+. I found that aside from a difference in sexual orientation, we all desired the same things in life: stable, loving relationships, financial security, affordable housing and healthcare. None of us choose our sexual orientation, it is how God created us.
There will be clerics and theologians who say they have the answers to everything. However, the real truth is that there are many things we really don’t know and are mysteries known only to God. What we do know definitively is that God creates only good, and that applies to all people regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
We all live in our own social ghettos, be they rural, small town, suburban, or urban. The ethos of our ghettos form our world view, and shape our fears and prejudices toward those whose race, culture, religion, and sexual orientation differs from ours. Ministerial assignments by the Archbishop compelled me to serve and to live in diversity. Ministry in a far greater diverse world, altered and transformed the world view I was taught as a kid. For this, I am eternally grateful.
The great gift of our Founding Fathers was to establish a nation in which plurality of religion, culture, race was welcomed, not persecuted. Diversity is good, not evil! We all need to break free from the singular world views that imprison us, and begin to engage with those different from us. When we do this, we find that many of our fears and prejudices taught us are unfounded or are lies. From my lived experience and knowledge, the fear of transgender classmates endangering our daughters and granddaughters are unfounded and baseless. As in past times, our daughters and granddaughters have far more to fear from their heterosexual male classmates. Jesus commanded his disciples to love one another as Jesus loved us, no exceptions. The time has come for those who call ourselves his disciples to actually live that commandment.