A Black, Gay, Catholic Priest: The Witness of the Rev. Dr. Bryan Massingale.

 A good news story!

The living witness of an openly gay, Black Catholic priest who teaches at Fordham University, teaching African American religious approaches to ethics. 

In a recent article in religionnews.com, reporter Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu tells the story of Bryan Massingale, who is a Black, gay Catholic priest. He has been open about being gay since 2019, even though he is part of a church, namely the Roman Catholic Church, that treats people who are LGBTQIA+ with dignity and respect, but believes that gay sex is "intrinsically disordered" and sinful.

Massingale says that he envisions a world where "the dignity of every person is respected and protected, where everyone is loved," a message that he preached recently at St. Charles Borromeo in Harlem, NY.

Massingale is 64 years old, born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His mom was a school secretary and his dad a factory worker, whose family was part of the great migration or "diaspora" from the South. Mississippi, to be exact. 

But even in WI, racism was common. Massingale said his dad couldn't work easily as a carpenter because of a color bar preventing those who were Black from joining the local carpenters' union.

And the Massingale family faced racism when they moved to the suburbs of Milwaukee, too, in which they were told in a white parish that they would probably feel better in going to a Black Catholic church. 

Even at his first parish, he was told by a parishioner, "Father, you being here is the worst mistake the archbishop could have made  People will never accept you."  

Massingale says he considered leaving the Catholic church, but then decided that he was needed: "I'm not going to let the church's racism rob me of my relationship with God...I see it as my mission to make the church what it says it is: more universal (which is what) I believe Jesus wants it to be."

Massingale says he came to terms with being gay at 22-years-old, upon reflecting on the book of Isaiah. "I realized that no matter what the church said, God loved me and accepted me as a Black gay man," he said. 

Massingale's "hopeful" vision of the Catholic church? One where (all) Catholics enjoy the same privileges regardless of sexual orientation. 

He acknowledges that he has lost some priest friends, "who find it difficult to be too closely associated with me because if they're friends with me, 'what will people say about them?'"

Massingale remains optimistic, with a gradual, slow, incremental change in the Catholic Church because of Pope Francis, and recent signals from several bishops in Europe who expressed a desire for changes, including blessing same-sex unions.

"My dream wedding would be either two men or two women standing before the church; marrying each other as an act of faith and I can be there as the official witness to say: 'Yes, this is of God,' he said after a recent class at Fordham. 'If they were Black, that would be wonderful.'"

For more about the Rev. Dr. Massingale, go to this link: https://religionnews.com/2022/02/14/black-gay-priest-in-nyc-challenges-catholicism-from-within/

As an out gay Presbyterian pastor, I, too, have been told similar things that Rev. Massingale has been told in Presbyterian congregations, that a mistake had been made by a nominating committee in hiring me as an interim pastor, in which individuals, couples, and families would then leave until my contract came at an end, and a new pastor was called and installed. Unlike Dr. Massingale, I also experienced homophobia among students, staff, and faculty alike at Duke Divinity School after I was outed by a senior faculty member. 

Yet like Dr. Massingale, I, too, long to see, hear, feel, and sense full acceptance as an an out gay pastor, with no worries about my sexual orientation. And unlike Dr. Massingale, I've already officiated a few same sex weddings, and look forward to a wedding in which I get to be one of the grooms. 

Like Dr. Massingale, I hold onto hope for the future, not as a feeling, but as a choice. 

May it be so.