Dear Paddy,
It is a very good thing that you have come out and said what you did about not being able to bless living gay couples – but you can bless cars, tractors, etc.
I have been celebrating gay blessings for 36 years now.
And, since the change in the law, both North and South, I am now celebrating fully legal gay marriages.
And when a gay couple asked for it, I have always and still do celebrate a full Catholic Nuptial Mass for these couples and their families.
At one, such Mass recently attended by 250 guests who all went to Communion, two nuns in their 80s, aunts of one of the groom’s offered to help me distribute Holy Communion.
Both families, including family members in their 70s and 80s, were ecstatically happy and so proud of their two young men.
It was a wonderful day, simply celebrating love.
Why do I marry fay couples?
I marry gay couples because Jesus, who loves them, wants me to impart His blessing on their life and love.
YOU PADDY
You obviously believe that Jesus would want you as a priest to bless love like this, too.
Maybe you do offer a “secret” blessing to some?
But why do such a good thing in an occult manner?
It’s probably because you fear repercussions from your bishop and the Church?
This means that you are not doing what Jesus wants you to do because you are afraid of men.
Is that not a great contradiction in the life of a Christian and a disciple of the Lord?
How can you continue that contradiction and live with it when you don’t have to?
Do you not believe in the words of Acts 5:29
“Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings!
Paddy, why are you obeying men instead of God?
Is that not a serious sin?
Your brother priest,
Pat
FROM FATHER BERNARD LYNCH
MISNEACH
Our Love, I was told was on the wrong side of the Gospel. I believed in the Love that was forbidden, so I believed too, I should be punished. In Love, like all people, we cry to be embraced for who we are. Everyone, from the first dawning of consciousness wants life giving moments, when the heart is filled with wonder and Hope. How else can we find ultimate meaning?
The great evil is to make any of the feelings of Love sin and shame. They’re the church made the greatest false claims against us, and against god and the universe. God is within us all, this god we call Love. We knew this, and felt this, as we held in our arms emaciated bodies crying with fear and pain. We were trying to find with the men sick and dying with AIDS, strength never to abandon Love . . . Never to abandon themselves . . . Love is never the reason for punishment, as they were told . . . Only men and women in their weakness, their cruelties, their hatred of themselves could ever call Love disordered or evil.
This is part of the battle for god and Love we wage forever and a day . . . Our weaknesses, successes and failures, are what make us fully human and more compassionate.
Love triumphs over everything and can never be corralled . . . Our humanity may have scars like tattoos which tell a tale of formidable struggle . . . These struggles are never so well expressed as when we struggle for others . . . We learn again and again that in the army of Lovers, only the wounded may serve . . . Everyone’s life at a level is a journey for Love . . . Sometimes this is through fear and ignorance, through a misapprehension of how we might be good, exactly because we are trying for the Impossible Love . . . We are made for the Impossible Love . . . As friends and lovers we know that at the most profound level this restless recklessness in us is Eternal . . . It is impossible to stop Love . . . There is no gift from Creation which matters more and gives our humanity forever more room to grow. Our generation is not finished with telling our tale of Justice and Love. Let us keep on the work of always alerting others to treasure how they experience Love. Let us imagine a day when there is nothing further in the way, and cruelty is no longer one of its false appearances. Then we will have a fully human resurrection. Happy Easter.
BISHOP PAT BUCKLEY 