By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of the Archdiocese of Washington DC is warning Catholics to stay away from a new booklet produced by the controversial New Ways Ministry which advocates “marriage equality” for same-sex couples because it is not based on Church teaching.

The Catholic News Agency (CNA) is reporting that the booklet, entitled, “Marriage Equality: A Positive Catholic Approach” was authored and released by New Ways Ministry executive director Francis DeBernardo.

In “no manner is this organization authorized to speak on behalf of the Catholic Church,” said Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C.

“I wish to make it clear that, like other groups that claim to be Catholic but deny central aspects of Church teaching, New Ways Ministry has no approval or recognition from the Catholic Church and that they cannot speak on behalf of the Catholic faithful in the United States,” said the cardinal.

Among its many errors, the booklet argues that the “full” Catholic position on same-sex marriage is not represented solely by bishops within the Church.

“When dealing with lesbian and gay issues, a relatively new area of Church discussion on which there is so much debate,” DeBernardo wrote, “the bishops may not yet be able to discern what the Catholic community believes.”

It also claims that “Catholic tradition” allows for laity and theologians within the Church to have equal say and authority on the issue.

New Ways Ministry, which calls itself a “gay positive ministry of advocacy and justice for lesbian and gay Catholics,” was founded in 1977 by Sr. Jeannine Gramick, SSND, and Fr. Robert Nugent, both of whom were barred from continuing their activities in the Archdiocese of Washington in 1984. In 1999, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith permanently prohibited them from any pastoral work involving homosexual individuals because of the many “errors and ambiguities” in their approach.

Cardinal Wuerl agreed with the former head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, who said New Ways Ministry’s “lack of adherence” to Church teaching on the morality of homosexual acts was the “central issue” in the censure of its founders and continues to be its “crucial defect.”

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