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I grew up in a small Illinois farming community during the forties and fifties. Raised a devout Catholic, I knew I was different, but I had never even heard the word homosexual. I thought that God had somehow "slipped up" and placed a male soul inside my female body.
It wasn’t until I graduated from high school and moved to Chicago that I learned other names for people like me, mostly from ugly jokes told at work. These remarks hurt, but they were nothing compared to the discovery that the Church considered me an "abomination." At the time, I was in the midst of my first love affair and had been thanking God for this marvelous gift!
Perhaps only another Catholic can comprehend the particular spiritual anguish I went through. Every time I’d received Our Lord’s body and blood in holy Communion, I had been committing sacrilege because I was in a state of "mortal sin" -- a sin so deadly that it would land me in hell if not confessed.
I soon confessed this "sin," explaining to the priest that I had never confessed it before because it had never felt wrong. On the contrary, since God had given me a woman to love, for the first time, everything felt right.
The priest responded, "Well, with an attitude like that, I’m certainly not giving you absolution." And he didn’t. Nor did a long line of priests to whom I carried my confusion and pain over the months that followed.
After work one evening, I stopped by Saint Peter’s in the Chicago Loop and poured my heart out to yet another priest. I was, of course, prepared for rejection. What he said was so unexpected, I remember it word for word.
"My dear child, we don’t know enough about these things to pass judgment. You needn’t confess this again. I can tell that you are a good person, that you love God, and that you are well-intentioned, or you would not be here talking to me. And I tell you this: You must stop worrying about this thing. This worry will drive you from God. Just go on being the good person you are; pray and stay close to God. He loves you."
I began crying, and he offered to say my Act of Contrition with me. Then he absolved me. When I rose to leave, he whispered, "Please, pray for me, and remember me at Mass."
I had forgotten his parting request until now. I don’t remember whether I honored it at the time. But thanks to that priest, I have stayed close to God, and to the Church. I will pray for him now.
-- J.V.G., "Readers Write about Redemption," The Sun
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