Glenn Beck has been warning about the PROGRESSIVES in your churches, schools ect…in The Greater Rochester area, it is out of control. They use walkie talkies to monitor ICE agents at illigal invader gatherings, they pick up illegals at the bus and train staions and take them to hiding areas…Invaders are picked up by local police and transported to anywhere they want to go, esspecially if they are drunks and drug addicts, because the FARM BUREAU runs the rural areas and thus the police…This area needs to purge the Catholic Church and governments of these socialists and communists…One more reason I left the Catholic Church…..

Young people need the DREAM Act

By blocking passage of the DREAM Act in December, some U.S. senators decided to prolong the nightmare for those brought here as young children, at risk because they have no way to document their status. Many have grown up among us with few memories of their country of origin. The act would furnish reasonable provisions for them to become productive citizens. What are the alternatives to developing a path to citizenship for them? Should we deport them by the thousands — how is this even possible? — and how would they survive without their loved ones or ability to speak the language? Should we leave them here undocumented, unable to secure higher education or employment for their future? New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand stated, “Current law unfairly punishes thousands of young people who grew up here and know only America as their home, and holds them back from making a contribution to our country. …”

Please contact Gillibrand and Sen. Charles Schumer (both in favor) and your member of the House to express your views.

—SISTER M. GRATIA L’ESPERANCE
ROCHESTER
The writer is a member of the Sisters of Mercy.

ON THE SAME DAY, THIS COLUMNIST DOES HIS SPIN ON SOCIAL JUSTICE…

Parents of gay children should push their churches

Mark Hare – Jan 6, 2011

When Casey and Mary Ellen Lopata’s son Jim told them in 1983 that he is gay, the coming-out turned their world upside down. They never wavered in their love for Jim, 19 at the time, or in their love for and devotion to the Catholic Church.

For Casey, the question was, “Can Jim be Catholic and gay?” For Mary Ellen, the challenge of Jim’s revelation was about love. “There was no doubt in my mind that he was a good person and that God loved him,” she says.

In the early ’80s, the Lopatas say, no one talked about homosexuality. They felt isolated. And as opposition to gay rights became more hostile, especially in churches, Mary Ellen says, “it became clear that the people making the rules didn’t know any gay or lesbian people.”

For several years, the Lopatas worked with Catholic Gay and Lesbian Family Ministry of the Diocese of Rochester, which gradually built a network of families willing to share their stories and be a voice for compassion within the church. Casey, who has a master’s of divinity degree, speaks and writes about the theological perspective. The church, he says, teaches that homosexuality, which is not a choice but an orientation, is not sinful. Only homosexual relations, which, like any sexual activity outside marriage, is sinful. But Casey says it’s not that simple. The church also teaches that celibacy is a gift. Not everyone has it; must all gays live celibate lives if they do not have the gift? The church, he says, also teaches that no one is obliged to do what is impossible for them.

Jim went to college at Miami University of Ohio and they would have long talks on some of those trips back and forth, Mary Ellen recalls. On one trip, she asked him — inartfully — if he would change if he could. Jim said he would not, that God had made him who he is. “I was glad to hear that he was comfortable with who he was,” she says, but even more important, “I realize that being gay was integral to who he was, that he would not be that person if he were not gay. And I loved that person.”

In 2004, the Lopatas formed Fortunate Families (www.fortunatefamilies.com), a resource and networking ministry for Catholic parents of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender children. The group works primarily with Catholic families, but welcomes others. The website collects and shares personal stories and includes a “listening network” of parent volunteers who lend an ear to other parents who are struggling with questions about their children’s sexual orientation.

“In the ’90s, when we talked to other parents, there were tears and fear,” Casey says. “Today, there’s fire and ire.” There is a growing sense that many churches have not gone far enough, and parents are angry.

“There will never be change if people don’t talk,” Mary Ellen says. They started Fortunate Families because they wanted to “go national,” Casey says. “We thought that parents — who are often pillars of the community and active in their churches — have the greatest opportunity to make a difference.”

But many parents are themselves “on the edge” of leaving churches where their children do not feel welcome. Parents, Mary Ellen says, “need to find their voices and be not afraid.”

Churches need to be pushed and prodded, and yes, loved, into acceptance. Change will come, Casey says. It always does. http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20110106/NEWS0201/101060335/1003/NEWS01/Parents-of-gay-children-should-push-their-churches