Gay people still get no welcome from the pulpit despite rhetoric of Pope Francis
First gay Irish priest to marry reveals hurt of the hatred by ‘devout Catholics’
SOME denounced him as a pervert, others slapped him in the face and screamed ‘you’ll get Aids’ at him. But, now in his 70th year, Fr Bernard Lynch, tells the Irish Mail on Sunday how proud he is to be married in Ireland and gay, despite the pain he suffered at the hands of a minority Catholic ‘harbinger of hate’ throughout his life.
Speaking for the first time since his wedding last year, Fr Lynch, the first gay Irish priest to marry, told how, for many years, he received a number of ‘very hurtful’ letters from the ‘same minority of so-called devout Catholics’ in Ireland, New York and London.
He said: ‘They wrote I have no right to call myself a priest, I’m not a good man, that my relationship is perverted. ‘Others wrote: “Don’t you know your love is evil.”
‘It’s usually from the same minority of so-called devout Catholics, and we see the same happening now in the abortion referendum. Religion is used as a harbinger of hate, rather than an apotheosis of love,’ Fr Lynch told the MoS. But he also told of the improvements.
‘Thankfully, the positive practically drowns out the negative and that hate-mail has declined over the years,’ he said.
At the age of 69, he married Billy Desmond, from Cork, now 49, in January last year, at a reception in the Armada Hotel, Spanish Point, Co. Clare. ‘It was very important to me to get married in Ireland. It was the culmination of a life’s work and a life’s dream. Married life is wonderful; it’s to be highly recommended,’ he said.
The ‘Munster match’ came after they met 20 years ago in London, where they both work as psychotherapists. The couple also had a private audience with President Michael D Higgins.
Fr Lynch was the first Catholic priest in the world to have a civil partnership, when he and Billy held a ceremony in London in 2006.
He took part in the infamous 1991 St Patrick’s Day parade in New York – when mayor David Dinkins defied organisers and marched with the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organisation. But it wasn’t easy.
‘I was slapped across the face. People shouted “you’ll get Aids” at me, and waved rosary beads in my face. It was an awful experience,’ he said. ‘I was terrified. So, it was great to see Leo [Varadkar] marching this year in New York. It makes you believe that there is a heaven on earth, and not just a hell.’ But he warned that despite some advancements in equality, the Church has yet to accept transgenders. When Pope Francis visits here in August, he should apologise on behalf of the Church for the way gay people were treated here, he said.
‘The Church has the view that LGBTI people are disordered in our nature and that if we express our nature naturally in a loving relationship then that is evil. That is preposterous, outrageous and very, very damaging.
‘The so-called Vatican experts, who are not experts at all to my mind, show profound ignorance of the biology and psychology of transgender people. There’s a belief that you choose to be gay or lesbian or intersex, as if you would choose an apple over an orange, which is outrageous.’
Fr Lynch lost his ministry long before he wed, as soon as he came out as a gay man. When he joined the seminary of the Society of African Missions at 17, he had no idea who he was. ‘As far as sexual orientation then, you may as well have talked about an exotic dessert. When I worked with people with HIV and Aids in London and New York, I learned quickly the Church had no time for me or my kind. But when I worked with them, I said to myself: “I happen to be gay. I have to try and share that with them.”
‘It did mean a lot to people I was ministering, who were dying, that I was gay myself, so that they felt that God doesn’t condemn you for being gay or sexually active, as the Vatican does for getting the virus.
‘The Vatican said the most horrendous things about gay people at that time and blamed them on their deathbeds for getting the virus. I was forced out of my closet because of that type of rhetoric.’
Since he lost his ministry, Fr Lynch has run an outreach service for LGBTI people in Camden in London, and is the patron of the London lesbian gay transgender forum. He said that, in spite of the more recent welcoming rhetoric from Pope Francis, LGBTI people won’t be actively welcomed by the pulpit.
‘Transgender people can be there, but you don’t get any affirmation whatsoever from the altar.
‘I know the agony of being true to yourself. LGBTI people are the bravest of people and the loneliest of people. They ought to be given Academy Awards for their journey, not condemned, or preached at, or told they are going through a phase. My message for anyone questioning their sexuality is: “God did not simply make you straight or gay, or male or female. Accept who you are because that is how God accepts you. Don’t apologise for who you are.”’ Years after he left Clare, he returns to bless same-sex unions.
‘And to be able to do that is just wonderful,’ he said.
They wrote: ‘Don’t you know your love is evil’ ‘LGBTI people are the bravest and lonliest’