Here All Along, Here to Stay

Relationships and conversations that once centered queer joy began asking the increasingly fraught question – why stay? – in the Catholic Church amid such divisiveness.

I no longer ask why I stay, but why it is the Church keeps moving further and further away from me.

My choices were to live my vocation in the closet, come out and be fired, or come out and leave my job. The third option was the only one that left me any agency.

I stay in the Church because it is home for me…However, it is a struggle to find a community where I can be fully myself.

I came to see myself and others in my community as uniquely gifted and called, with a definite place at our Catholic table of faith.

We had a lot to offer to the Church, but the Church was not ready to accept our gifts.

I can only maintain resistance and presence in the Catholic Church today by being openly and honestly my whole self.

It is all of me that is the source of how I engage the world and how Christ engages me.

I am committed to working in the church to further change and creating a home for LGBTQ+ Catholics.

That pain and hurt must stop with me…