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Working with Bishops, Lesson 1
Abstract: Did the Bishop of Sacramento rock the boat?
The 2008 conference of the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries (NACDLGM) was held September 18 - 21 in Long Beach, California at the Hotel Queen Mary. The theme of the conference was I Am Who I Am by the Grace of God, and one of the featured speakers was Bishop Jaime Soto (pictured), the Coadjutor Bishop of Sacramento.
Bishop Soto has 25 years experience as a a parish priest, is an advocate for immigration reform, has ministered to Latinos in the gay and lesbian community and has been involved in the church's response to the AIDS epidemic. The program for the event indicated that Bishop Soto would speak on John 10: "Christ came that we might have the fullness of life."
We don't know what the conference organizers' expectations were, but given the theme of the conference, we feel safe in saying that Bishop Soto's
We are called to live and love in a manner that brings us into respectful, chaste relationships with one another and an intimate relationship with God. We should be an instrument of God’s love for one another. Let me be clear here. Sexual intercourse, outside of the marriage covenant between a man and a woman, can be alluring and intoxicating but it will not lead to that liberating journey of true self-discovery and an authentic discovery of God. For that reason, it is sinful. Sexual relations between people of the same sex can be alluring for homosexuals but it deviates from the true meaning of the act and distracts them from the true nature of love to which God has called us all. For this reason, it is sinful.
Some attendees walked out, others demanded the opportunity to respond to the Bishop's remarks, and, as reported by the California Catholic Daily one NACDLGM board member offered an apology to those seated at a nearby table: "We had no idea Bishop Soto was going to say what he said."
We are Lutherans, of course, and we have developed our own rules of thumb for working with bishops. Even given the significant differences between Lutheran bishops and Roman Catholic bishops, however, we feel that Bishop Soto has validated rule 1: No one ever has any idea what the bishop will say.
