In the Diocese of Worcester, home to 21 Catholic elementary and secondary schools, Bishop Robert J. McManus caused an uproar August 15 when he issued instructions on how the Church views sexuality and sexual identity, referring to transgenders and to homosexuals respectively.
“All entities of the Catholic Church are for the purpose of furthering the saving mission of Jesus Christ and must operate in accord with the truth revealed by God in both natural law and divine revelation,” the policy begins.
Farther down, the policy quotes Pope Francis and his views on the hot-button issues, which are taken from the Bible in passages from Genesis, Matthew, and Mark.
Bishop McManus was not done, however. He goes on to state:
We do not serve anyone’s greater good by falsifying the truth, for it is only the truth that frees us for the full life that God offers to each of us. Thus, when a person experiences same-sex attraction or some form of gender dysphoria, such struggles do not change the biological fact of how God created that person, and it would be untruthful for the Catholic Church or our Catholic schools to pretend otherwise.
The very next sentence leaves room for the schools in the diocese to sign their names and agree with the policy.
C.J. Doyle, of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, tells AFN the directive angered homosexual activists who protested in front of the diocese headquarters in Worcester.
“Homosexual militants are demanding that Catholics in the Diocese of Worcester abandon the Bible, abandon the Catechism, abandon the natural law, and submit to homosexual ideology,” he complained.
TV news outlet Boston 7 News interviewed several protesters about the policy, including a state senator, who accused the diocese of bigotry and spreading hate.
A teenager who identified as “nonbinary” told Boston 7 other Catholic schools are supporting “queer youth” in their classrooms but the Worcester diocese is “not living up with the times.”
The news story did quote a statement from an all-boys high school, St. John's. It plans to ignore the Bishop's instructions, presumably including about males and females, and instead "ensure that all of our students know they are loved by God and feel safe and secure in our school each and every day."
One of the protesters was identified as a state senator, Robyn Kennedy. Using a megaphone, she told fellow protesters she has read the Bible and the “key message” of the Bible is love. She also sounded disappointed when she said the government does not have the “power” to overturn the diocese policy.
Doyle says he was frustrated Boston 7 claimed the protesters spread a “message of love” but they displayed hateful and bigoted signs about the Catholic Church and its stance on homosexuality and transgenderism.
