'If you are hungry, we will feed you'

Thirty-two years ago, Diane Sidorowicz was a young woman searching for signs of lesbian life beyond the local bar scene. With few resources for gay people available in 1975, she devoured the pages of Gay Community News, a Boston-based weekly. "I used to read it all cover to cover because it was the only information I had," said Sidorowicz, a lifelong resident of Dorchester. It was on those pages that she spotted an advertisement for a Catholic liturgy for gay people at St. Clement's Church. Her first thought was, "No way."

She soon made her way to the Boylston St. church one Sunday night, only to find a darkened, empty sanctuary. "I thought, okay, somebody put a joke in the paper," Sidorowicz recalled. A man approached her to offer assistance. "I said, "I'm looking for the 5:30 liturgy." He directed her to the church basement. As Sidorowicz headed down a winding stone staircase she was struck by the sounds of men laughing. It didn't sound like the Catholic Church she knew. She took a seat on a folding chair, among a group that included just two other women. "And it was an incredible service. I mean, I was so moved," said Sidorowicz. "I think I was stunned." Even more stunning, she was invited to stay for a social hour after the Mass, a largely non-existent practice in the Catholic Church. "So they were a very welcoming community from the very first day. And when I went back the following week people knew my name. I was like, 'You remember me?'"

Sidorowicz had found Dignity/Boston, an organization that has provided a spiritual home for LGBT Catholics since 1972. She's never left.

Sidorowicz was among about 50 Dignity/Boston members that gathered to celebrate the organization's 35th anniversary at its weekly Mass at The Church of St. John the Evangelist on Bowdoin St. on Dec. 2.

That Dignity/Boston now congregates in an Episcopal parish -- as opposed to St. Clement's, which is Catholic -- is a testament to its enduring vitality in the face of hostility from the institutional Catholic Church, which has only increased since the inception of Dignity/Boston and its parent organization Dignity/USA. Under the tenure of Boston Archbishop Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, the group was ousted from St. Clement's in 1977, at which point it moved to Arlington Street Church, a Unitarian Universalist Church. In 1979, Medeiros banned Archdiocesan priests from presiding over Dignity/Boston services. Services are now led by lay people or by priests operating outside of Archdiocesan authority. In 1986, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- now Pope Benedict XVI -- ordered bishops to "to deny use of Church property to organizations that do not accept strictures against homosexual relationships," effectively banishing all Dignity chapters from meeting on Church properties.

But rather than bemoan being pushed to the margins of mainstream Catholicism, Dignity/Boston members have embraced it. "I think you can never deny the pain that the bishops and the pope and the institutional Church have inflicted on gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered people and on our families as well," said Marianne Duddy, a Dignity/Boston member of 25 years who is also a former president of the national organization. "But I think we and lots of other people in the Catholic Church are also finding tremendous freedom. I mean, we're not the only intentional, small faith community around Boston, we're not the only group that has lay women and men co-leading the services, we're not the only group that has a theology of inclusion anymore, and we're starting to connect with those groups, which is really exciting." Duddy points to groups like the Core of United Priests United for Service (CORPUS), a national organization of former priests who advocate for allowing priests to marry, and Massachusetts Women-Church, a group that advocates for women's ordination that was banned from using Church buildings by former Boston Archbishop Cardinal Bernard Law. While many people largely think of the Catholic Church in terms of the traditional parish model, Duddy said, "the reality is there's lots of versions of being Catholic out there and it's kind of exciting to see how many of them look sort of what Dignity's looked like for 35 years. And they may be 10 years old, they may be five years old, they may be just emerging ... and people are still claiming that Catholic tradition in spite of what the bishops have to say about it."

'I think you can never deny the pain that the bishops and the pope and the institutional Church have inflicted on gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered people and on our families as well.'
And though the institutional Catholic Church hasn't changed for the better on the issue of homosexuality in 35 years, LGBT culture certainly has changed since the days when Sidorowicz combed Gay Community News in search of social alternatives to the bar scene. And while many LGBT groups have come and gone over the years, and other Christian denominations have opened their doors to LGBT people, Duddy is encouraged that Dignity/Boston has maintained its relevance. "There are still people coming through the door and especially in the last few years we've had this great influx of younger people, and they bring an entirely different sense of what the Church is about and what being gay or lesbian is about or what being transgendered or bisexual is about and there's much more energy in that population," she explained. "It's not so much about fighting against [the institutional Church], it's about how to move forward positively, and I think that's really helping all of us to not put so much energy into resisting the institutional Church but to create our own theology." Dignity/Boston members have created wedding rituals and theology around how Catholics can support civil rights, including marriage rights, for same-sex couples. On top of that, Duddy points out, they've run a community without an assigned priest for 35 years, proving that, "lay people can take charge of the Catholic Church, and I think those are really exciting messages for our community and for the whole Catholic Church right now."

Indeed, the organization has provided a sense of empowerment for many worshippers. Joe Gatto of Randolph, who was among three men recognized at the anniversary celebration for having been with the group for all of its 35 years, explains Dignity/Boston's appeal this way: "Nobody was left out. A lot of time churches say, if you're not Catholic don't come to communion. Here, whatever your spirituality is you're welcome. And I look at it as, if you are hungry we will feed you. In the institutional Church, if you're hungry we won't feed you." Gatto goes on to point out a literal angle to the nourishment which Dignity/Boston provides: For 22 years, the organization, in partnership with Arlington Street Church, has operated the Friday Night Supper Program, which provides meals for 200 people in need each week. "We've never missed a day," Gatto boasts. And though the institutional Church has not exactly nourished LGBT Catholics, Gatto has learned to adapt, with the help of Dignity/Boston. "Years ago, if the pope said, 'Jump off the bridge,' I would gladly jump off," said Gatto. "Now if he says it, [I say,] 'Are you coming with me?'"

Standing beside Gatto in the St. John's basement after Duddy offered an anniversary toast, George Mercier of Worcester, another 35-year Dignity/Boston member, interjected a more pointed rejoinder to the pope's hypothetical bridge-jumping decree: "You go first."

Mercier said he first discovered Dignity/Boston as a young man recently discharged from the U.S. Air Force who was "trying to find myself spiritually." Though he had been attending Mass at the Paulist Center, a Park Street chapel that has long been a refuge for marginalized Catholics, Mercier said there was something missing, though he can't put his finger on what it was. When he got wind that there was a group of gay folks meeting at St. Clement's, he decided to investigate. "And I've never left," he said. "There was a sense of community right from the beginning and it wasn't because we were gay," said Mercier. "There was just a sense of community."

Rene Sontag, who also celebrated his 35th anniversary of Dignity, sounds a similar note. "It's become my faith community and my family," said the South Shore man, "which is why I'm still here."

And though the institutional Church refuses to recognize Dignity/Boston, Duddy, who emerged as an articulate counterpoint to the institutional Church and its conservative allies, who vilified gay people and gay priests in the aftermath of the priestly sexual abuse scandal, indicates the congregation will likely be around for another 35 years at the very least. An inquiry about how often in the last 25 years she's been asked some variation of the question, "How can you be gay and Catholic?" draws a hearty, knowing laugh. "Yeah, that's the number one question," says Duddy. "For me it's like, they're just not going to push me out. I'm just way too stubborn for that to happen," she says, laughing again. "Yup, that's the big question." Surveying the crowd that gathered for the post-liturgy anniversary celebration, she adds, "This is how it's done."

Sidorowicz would agree. Had she not found Dignity/Boston she "would have been lost," she said. "I would have been in some little parish church just going there really not liking it and going home and feeling empty. I never feel empty when I leave here."