LGBTQ community truly welcome
Gay, married bishop and trans pastor invite worshipers to church
Bishop Anthony Green, a Catholic, knows a church can drape its entrance in a rainbow flag yet offer an LGBTQ visitor who steps inside nothing but cold stares and an occasional awkward “hello.”
Green believes he and his deacons can offer a warm welcome and unique perspective to LGBTQ worshipers and to Roman Catholics who no longer feel comfortable with the mother church. Green is openly gay and married. One of Green’s pastors, Grace Ferris, is a transgender woman who is a former Southern Baptist and a military veteran.
“I transitioned from being Gary, male eye candy for the women in my retirement community to someone many of them wouldn’t make eye contact with,” Ferris said, ruefully.
But Ferris also has a daughter who is proud of her parent’s bravery during the transition. And, as her neighbors got to know Ferris, she also received an invitation to her retirement community’s Ladies Who Lunch Club.
“Inclusion” has been a mandate for the Catholic Apostolic Church In North America for longer than the word has become common usage.
Green and Ferris are aided by their deacon, Father Vic Desantis, who left the priesthood decades ago when he realized he was in love with his childhood sweetheart, Mary. (They are still happily married). They all serve as chaplains at St. Peter’s Hospital in Schenectady. Throughout the pandemic, they’ve been worshiping in the hospital chapel streaming service. But now they share Sunday worship space with the Eastern Parkway Methodist Church in Schenectady. The church is handicapped accessible. Both congregations, CACINA and Eastern Parkway are eager to welcome worshipers in person to that sanctuary.
“It will be a hard sell for people who’ve been alienated by organized religion but those are exactly the people we feel would enjoy worshiping with us,” Green said.
The mother church was founded in Brazil in 1945 by Bishop Carlos Duarte just a few days after Duarte was excommunicated by Pope Pius for his longtime lambasting of the pope’s silence about Nazi atrocities. (As World War II ended, Duarte was enraged by how many Nazi officials escaped war crimes trials by using Vaticanissued passports to get into Brazil).
But Duarte had felt uncomfortable with the Roman Catholic church for a long time. He supported democracy and openly opposed the military coup in Brazil. He was a social justice warrior who battled poverty and racism and championed women’s rights during the hopelessness of the Great Depression. He believed priests should marry and women should be ordained. And he wanted anyone who felt like an outcast from organized religion due to their politics or poverty to feel welcome. When his form of Catholicism spread to North America, CACINA reflected his values.
“CACINA offers you a welcoming and inclusive spiritual home, if you: have been denied communion because of divorce and remarriage,” the national website declares, “are a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered individual and have been shunned, ignored, or ill-treated by your church, find your political beliefs in conflict with your church, are looking for a church whose reach out to and serve those less fortunate.”
Green’s small group of Albany CACINA members partnered with Emmanuel Friedens Church two Saturdays ago to host a free monthly brunch for
the community, especially those struggling financially. About 100 people came. Green said they plan to help Emmanuel with brunch every week.
And his CACINA members will be helping Eastern Parkway UMC on Election Day, Nov. 2, greeting voters and giving them water and snacks as they come to the church to vote.
Green is part of the Schenectady Clergy Against Hate, which will hold a roundtable discussion at 7 p.m. Oct. 21 at the First Reformed Church in Schenectady. The discussion topic is, how to hold an inclusive conversation with civility.