Our host, Broadway United Methodist Church, has resumed services. So we will re-start our at Broadway on September 27, Sunday at 5pm on a trial basis.

Many in our communities are grieving and enraged by the killing of George Floyd at the hand of a police officer. Let us all open our hearts and minds to hear the cries of all who suffer the injuries of racism.

Miguel H. Diaz was the ambassador to the Holy See, and holds the John Courtney Murray Chair in Public Service at Loyola University Chicago. He presented to the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics at DignityUSA’s 50th Anniversary Conference in Chicago, July 4-7, 2019.

Hunt explained that Dignity's message is sex and gender discrimination can never be separated from combating racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia as well as fighting for healthcare access, economic justice and the survival of planet Earth.

"This is the time that I'm going to be here, please pray with me," she said as she described her text message to her fellow female priests in Chicago and other parts of the country.

As I sat here this morning reading out loud the names of the victims, I was moved to tears. In today’s readings I am moved by the circumstances we find ourselves in with Jesus in the gospel.

Freedom laps at the shore of discontent
And dissolves fear in its wake.
It rises up on life's storm ridden sea
Making waves wherever it's sent.

Perhaps each of us can think of other examples of the way, over its 43 years, this community has refused to be nailed down, refused to surrender the queer and Catholic wisdom of both-and.

1969 Fr. Patrick X. Nidorf, an Augustinian priest and psychologist, formed a group of, “Catholic gay people”. 1971 Mary Houlihan of the Legion of Mary receives permission from Cardinal Cody to sponsor a Mass for the GLBT community.

In November 1971 five people met with Father Max, Cardinal Cody's liaison to Chicago's gay and lesbian community to discuss the possibility of forming a Chicago chapter of a new national organization of gay and lesbian Catholics called Dignity.

You must remember that even though Stonewall had happened in 1969 and a ray a hope was created by those brave actions in New York City, that was NYC and this was Chicago, and things were different then.

Dignity/Chicago had about 180 members and an even larger turnout for its Sunday evening Mass. Commonweal, a moderate lay-edited Catholic magazine, chided Dignity/Chicago for not cooperating with Cardinal Bernadin.