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Published: September 15, 2008

Birds of a feather?

Bishop Jaime Soto will give keynote address at National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries convention

Soon-to-be Bishop of Sacramento Jaime Soto is still listed as keynote speaker for opening night of this year’s National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries in Long Beach.

Bishop Soto is scheduled to address the group at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 18 -- just six weeks before a ceremony at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Sacramento in which Soto will take over the diocese from retiring Bishop William Weigand.

The homosexual ministries conference will be held Sept. 18 – 24 aboard the Queen Mary, a decommissioned ocean liner converted into a hotel. The National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries, based in Berkeley, is a network of local ministries that has the reputation of taking, at best, an ambiguous stance on the moral character of homosexuality and homosexual acts.

The group’s web site, which prominently displays the so-called “rainbow flag” of the homosexual rights movement, says there are chapters of the organization in 36 U.S. states, as well as in at least one Canadian province and in Puerto Rico.

Bishop Soto’s planned speech to the homosexual ministry on Thursday will not be his first. In 2003, he spoke at the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries conference in Palm Springs, though not as one of the major speakers. The theme of that year’s conference was “Out in the Desert: A Wellspring of Hope.” This year’s theme is, “‘I Am Who I Am By the Grace of God’ (A Voyage of Renewal and Rediscovery).”

Bishop Soto, former auxiliary bishop for the Orange diocese, was named coadjutor bishop of Sacramento on Oct. 11, 2007, making him next in line to become Bishop of Sacramento. As a bishop, Soto has been a voice for immigrants and has taken a public stance against abortion, joining pro-lifers in prayer outside abortion clinics. He was also a voice in the Church in support of the 2005 Parents’ Right to Know Initiative.

Among other scheduled speakers at the Queen Mary convention is Sister Fran Ferder, a frequent presenter at conferences held by Call to Action, a group that dissents from Church teachings on women’s ordination, contraception, homosexuality, and other matters. She often appears with Fr. John Heagle, co-director with Ferder of Therapy and Renewal Associates in Seattle. In an interview on The Social Edge.com, Heagle said that his and Sister Fran's hope "is that the institutional Church will only come to this deeper and richer understanding of human sexuality if it listens to the love stories of all the people...”

Fr. Jim Schexnayder, co-founder and first president of the group when it was formed in 1994, told the August 2004 U.S. Catholic that diocesan members of the ministry “all operate within Catholic teachings.” But Schexnayder has also asserted that, since homosexuality can be separated from sexual acts, it can be considered in itself a gift, “something to be integrated rather than denied or feared.”

Also scheduled to speak at the Long Beach convention is Teresa DeCrescenzo, executive director and founder of the Burbank-based GLASS (Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services), which calls itself “the nation’s oldest and leading agency delivering social and health care services to self-identified Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans-gender, Questioning (GLBTQ) and HIV/AIDS impacted youth.” Among GLASS’s programs is the Pride Foster Family Agency, begun in 1989, says the GLASS web site, to provide homosexual men and women “the opportunity to experience the special rewards of being foster parents.”

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