The Traditional Hispanic Catholic Family and the LGBTQ Child

We are so blessed and privileged to worship with some of the finest Hispanic Catholic families I have ever known.  Our family regularly attends with them at the San Fernando Cathedral in the heart of downtown San Antonio.  These beautiful families are typically large and averaging four or more children within each family.  The dedication to raise up their children to love and honor God is like nothing I have ever seen.  Even with the extreme hardships of the modern world, they do their absolute best to stay faithful to their Catholic identity and their families, even in cases where they are migrant refugees.

What if one of those Hispanic Catholic children comes out LGBTQIA+ within the family and the Catholic Church?  Historically, it decimates and pushes out the entire family while sending them into religious trauma, many times resulting in the suicide of children and even parents at times.  The entire identity of the traditional Hispanic Catholic family lies within the family and the Catholic faith. The chances of a child coming out LGBTQIA+ within the traditional Hispanic Catholic family are the same as a secular non-religious family. To ask them to leave for the Episcopal Church is denying a large part of their identity as a family and exponentially increasing the risk of religious trauma and suicide because the Catholic faith is such a large part of the Hispanic identity.

For the last 40 years, a program called Courage/Encourage has existed “For children who experience same-sex attraction.” The program is geared to coerce celibacy so the child is living within the teachings of the Church.  This is not a classic Gay Conversion Therapy program where attempts are made to “make the child straight.”  The Courage Program is a form of Reparative Therapy. Both Gay Conversion Therapy and Reparative Therapy have been condemned by every major medical association in the world due to bad fruit from suicide and lasting damage to the child and family.  Research shows that when a parent participates in one of these programs, it triples the risk of suicide for the child.  According to the majority of medical professionals in the field of gender and sexuality, most people are incapable of life-long celibacy without serious destruction to their health, spirituality, and/or lives, even if the child desires life-long celibacy initially. This is why every major medical association in the world now supports full-affirmation, full-inclusion, and gender affirming care for LGBTQIA+ people, especially youth because it is life and death or pro-life to follow science.

How does the Catholic Church deal with such a difficult modern-day issue, especially when science says it gives life to fully-include and affirm yet the Church teaches against homosexual acts. In order to understand the reality of this challenge, we have to look at the actual teachings of the Catholic Church’s on sexuality and historic Catholic Social Teaching.

This is the Historic Catholic Teaching on sexuality. It wasn’t until the Anglican Communion introduced contraception to all of the Protestant world in 1940.  All Christians traditions believed these teachings until World War II.  Only 3% of the Catholics in the world follow all of the Catholic historic teachings on sexuality. Here it goes!

Any type of sexual activity is to be postponed until the wedding night. In the context of a heterosexual marriage, which is the only marriage permitted, every sexual act must be open to life which means artificial contraception and any non-conventional sex acts like oral sex are totally out. Divorce and remarriage? The historic teaching is that if the husband and wife separate, they are not to get civilly remarried without an annulment, for they would be committing perpetual adultery with someone else. Sterilization? Only in the case where the mother’s life is at-risk such as the life and death need for a hysterectomy.  Masturbation? strictly prohibited under all circumstances. Committing any of these acts perpetually, including divorce and remarriage without an annulment, has historically been grounds for excommunication from the Catholic Church and denial of Communion. These teachings are still part of Canon Law in the Catholic Church today but not followed overall in practice.

Now we have to ask ourselves if we have lived or are living by all of these historic Catholic teachings on sexuality.  The answer is “no” for me even though I have been faithfully married to my husband Grant for 28 years and do my absolute best to be a faithful Catholic.  My reply to anyone attacking the LGBTQ child within the Catholic family is this.  “If you are not currently living by ALL of these historic standards as a Catholic on sexuality, especially on a regular basis, then you may need to rethink of how you are examining the lives of LGBTQ children within the context of their families as I hypocritically once did. How many of us are capable of living a celibate life without a life partner? This is what we are expecting from those who are LGBTQ which so few would expect for ourselves. If we excommunicate all people who are not following the historic Catholic teachings of sexuality, we excommunicate 97% of the Catholic Church out of 1.35 billion people, half the Christians in the world.

Now we have to examine the Historic Teachings of Catholic Social Teaching because life and death are involved.

So Catholic parents of LBGTQIA+ children who are many times also Neurodiverse or disabled, here is some good historic Catholic teaching for those trads who want to use sexual doctrine as a weapon to isolate, destroy, kill, harm, and reject only the LBGTQIA+ people and families and ignore all of the other teaching on sexuality to target these families.  If you want to get technical with Catholic Teaching, by advocating for LBGTQIA + inclusion, we are following Catholic Social Teaching which honors the Sanctity of life and Dignity of the Human Person, The Call to Family, Community, and Participation by keeping the family intact, which includes the LBGTQIA person.  I am following Pope Francis’s directive in his Encyclical Amoris Lattetita and the Catechism of the Catholic Church to give appropriate pastoral care to the LBGTQIA person by including him/her because it’s life and death, and Jesus’s 2nd greatest commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves.

“The Hogg Foundation for Mental Health states that every word and action of love, affirmation or acceptance can between the difference life and death for Neurodiverse / LGBTQIA+ people.”

So you can call me a Cafeteria Catholic all you want, but by excluding and rejecting the LBGTQIA child within the family, that is destroying the person and their family to which they belong, and that’s less Catholic teaching than allowing the LBGTQIA+ person to be a practicing homosexual in a life-long committed relationship included within their extended family which is life and death. Debating someone’s right-to-life is not negotiable.  The Sanctity of Life and Human Dignity always come first in the Catholic Church. God doesn’t make junk, nor does He make mistakes.

There are two choices involved when dealing with this very challenging issue, destroy the family and the LGBTQIA+ child within the family or give life by following science and including the child. I choose life every time. This is why the Double Effect in Catholic Teaching exists.  https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/answers/principle-of-double-effect-23224

We cannot endanger families’ lives to enforce a doctrine of sexuality through rejection which is anti-life. This is the choice the Catholic Church faces.