[Lifesite News] Despite gay “Pride” events being canceled from coast to coast due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Cardinal Joseph Tobin has permitted an LGBT “Pride Mass” to be conducted in his archdiocese.
For the third year in a row, the “Annual Pride Mass in support of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters” was held on Sunday at the merged parishes of Our Lady of Grace and St. Joseph in Hoboken, New Jersey.
The Mass, which was livestreamed on YouTube, seems to show sparse attendance. Rainbow-colored banners lined the sanctuary.
The Archdiocese of Newark resumed Sunday Masses on June 21 after three months of suppression due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The current “Phase Three” directives require churches to restrict their attendance to 25 percent of capacity or fifty people, whichever is lower, with all who enter the churches required to wear face coverings among other mandatory “social distancing” dictates.
Previously, the archdiocese had suppressed not only the Mass, but also baptisms, funerals, confessions, and last rites.
Pastor Fr. Alexander Santora delivered an overtly political homily, condemning Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump for allowing “their personal prejudices or political needs to override their oath of office to protect the people they serve” — i.e., gay, lesbian, and transgender-identifying individuals.
Santora was quick to link the death of George Floyd and the protests and riots it has spawned to what he sees as ongoing discrimination within the Church against LGBT-identifying Catholics. The priest seeks nothing less than the normalization of homosexual and trangender identity and relationships.
“LGBT individuals are welcome and need to share their stories so stereotypes die and human beings emerge who desire what anyone in life wants: to love and be loved and accepted as they are,” insisted Santora.
“This is a nascent movement, and there are many in the Church opposed to gay accommodation,” he asserted. “More pastoral outreach and discussion are needed to break down walls. There is a need to minister together and to see each other as brothers and sisters without any labels in places around the world, though repression is still strong.”
“There is no new life without casting aside the old,” said Santora. “This is happening in the Church as we listen to our LGBT brothers and sisters and make our churches hospitable to all, especially those who have been on the margins not by their own choice.”
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[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Doug Mainwaring and first published at Lifesite News, title change by PNP]
