Kate Childs Graham's blog

A few weeks ago, a video by comedian Sarah Silverman went viral. Well over 600,000 people viewed the official You Tube video and countless others viewed the video via Facebook and other sites.

The subject of this viral video? The Vatican. And world hunger.

In the video, Sarah suggests that the solution to ending world hunger could be to sell the Vatican.

As the same sex marriage debate heats up in Washington, D.C., Archbishop Donald Wuerl has consistently voiced his opposition to any legislation that would grant same-sex couples full and equal protection under the law. At the same time, however, the archbishop has sought to reach out to gay and lesbian Catholics via a letter explaining that while he may reject their rights, he doesn’t reject gay and lesbian people upfront.

As the comments on my fellow blogger’s posting about this letter show, Archbishop Wuerl’s letter has been rejected by many and reluctantly accepted by others.

Paxsjc writes, “As a lesbian Catholic who attends Mass 3-4 times a week now, I certainly don't feel alienated from the Church. I do believe, though, that the Church hierarchy is becoming further and further alienated from the people - the people in the pews as well as the people who've long left them … I appreciate Bishop Wuerl's pastoral tone, which is a welcome change from the hostile screeds of many of his brethren. But is he truly off in search of the lost sheep…”

Last January, the Vatican launched an investigation of communities of women religious in the United States. From those I’ve spoken with -- lay folks, women religious, priests and so on -- the reactions are mixed. Some see the investigation as an opportunity to look inward and revamp less-than-just practices that have been structurally ingrained in communities of women religious for hundreds of years. Others see the investigation as an unfair attack on these communities. Still others are worried about the fate of communities of women religious as a result of this non-transparent process.

Over this past year, the movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights has seen great successes mixed with a few setbacks. Yes, California did not go as we had hoped, but Iowa and Vermont pulled through and now allow same-sex marriage. We are hoping the same can be said for Maine in the coming months. We are still waiting on President Barack Obama to end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” but we were thrilled when he extended benefits to domestic partners of federal employees.

As we sweat through the dog days of summer, all I want to do is sit on the porch, drink lemonade and play guitar. Typically, however, I have found it hard to relax. In the complex and unjust world we live in, it always seems like there is so much, too much, to do. In the end, there never seems like a lot of time to rest or take care of myself.

This week, my partner, Ariana, and I bought our first home. Now, those of you who have recently bought a home know that the process is sometimes a little more than complicated, with a fair share of both ups and downs. Through this home-buying journey, I could not help but notice the similarities between finding a physical home and a spiritual home.

June is lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Pride month around the country. After a great weekend of Pride celebrations in our nation’s capitol, I began to reflect on the word pride; after all, its connotations can be both good and bad, especially for those of us who are practicing Catholics.

Pride, or hubris, is one of the seven deadly sins. In fact, it is considered by scholars to be the original and most serious of the sins. It separates one from their community and from God. With pride, one cannot recognize God’ grace. Thomas Aquinas said that pride is "inordinate self-love…the cause of every sin ... the root of pride is found to consist in [hu]man not being, in some way, subject to God and [God’s] rule."

This past week, a film premiered that has everyone talking about outing. The film, Outrage, seeks to “out” policymakers who, while opposing the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, are they themselves gay.

Now, I have always maintained an anti-outing stance; that is, I believe that it is up to an individual to decide when, where, why and how they tell people that they are lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender. At the same time, I believe that anyone who is against LGBT rights has a flawed stance, regardless of their individual sexual orientation or gender identity.

Besides college, the only other time I went to Catholic school was in kindergarten. At St. Thomas Aquinas School, we went to Mass once or twice a week (It was 20 years ago, so the details are a bit fuzzy).

Before one particular Mass, I decided that when everyone was standing, I would sit and when everyone was sitting, I would stand.

An Open Letter to Apostolic Visitor, Mother Mary Clare Millea, ASCJ

Dear Mother Millea,

Congratulations on your recent appointment as Apostolic Visitor for the Apostolic Visitation of communities of women religious in the United States. I send you many blessings as you embark on this noble endeavor.

While the impetus for this study has not been publicized, many have speculated that a primary reason is the decline of vocations in communities of women religious. If this is the case, I am sure you will agree that only looking to communities of women religious is akin to a teacher asking those present in class why their peers are absent. As such, I offer my experience as a member of the laity who has actively discerned not to become a woman religious.

I wasn’t always a prochoice Catholic. During college I attended the annual March for Life on more than one occasion. The first time my friends and I traveled to the event from Indianapolis, Ind., was with a bus full of high school students -- most, seemingly, only going for the trip to Washington, D.C., with their friends, sans parental supervision. Needless to say, it was a noisy bus ride. After I transferred to Catholic University, I volunteered for the Mass for Life two years in a row -- helping to herd all of those high school students into every crevice of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

The day before I started college I met a Sister of Providence who was just weeks away from serving her prison sentence for "crossing the line" at the School of the Americas protest. Just barely 18 and wide-eyed, I was taken aback by this vowed woman religious, her story and the egregious crimes that our country had helped to commit. So, that year in November, I traveled to Fort Benning, Ga., with 11 Sisters of Providence.

This past year, I have had a myriad of responses to my online writing. I have been praised, criticized, and sometimes even demeaned. Without doubt, I understood at the outset of my Internet expedition that by writing on gender, sexuality and the Catholic Church I was opening myself up for criticism, and hopefully at times, praise. However, what I did not expect was how I would react to the comments or blogs people posted in response to what I had written.

About a month before Proposition 8 passed in California Nov. 4, taking away an array of human rights, and the U.S. bishops decided to team up with the Knights of Columbus to make the “preservation of marriage” one of its key focuses for the next five years, my partner, Ariana, and I made our commitment to one another.

Our marriage was not "legal" by terms of the District of Columbia or the institutional Catholic church. Yet, in our eyes and in the eyes of our friends and family, our union is indeed holy.

As society has not yet defined the norms for our relationship the way it has for heterosexual couples, we had the freedom to be the architects of our own journey. And so, when Ariana and I initially realized that we were building a lifelong partnership, we had the opportunity to choose whether or not we needed or wanted a ceremony to mark our commitment.

Recently, the debate over academic freedom at Catholic universities has been escalating. In July, the University of San Diego canceled Rosemary Radford Ruether’s appointment to the Msgr. John R. Portman Chair in Roman Catholic Theology. This action was motivated by pressure from a right-wing Catholic group that objected to Professor Ruether’s progressive ideology and theology.

Many administrations at Catholic colleges and universities have similarly succumbed to the pressure of the Catholic right or the bishops.

However, not all administrations are so easily persuaded. Just last week, Fordham University Law School awarded Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer the 2008 Fordham-Stein Ethics Prize despite the strong objections of Cardinal Edward Egan. Cardinal Egan protested Justice Breyer’s pro-choice stance. The Cardinal Newman Society -- a conservative Catholic organization – joined the cardinal in objecting. In the end, the university decided to give the award to Justice Breyer.