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| Exiled LGBT churchgoers set for final Soho mass | Exiled LGBT churchgoers set for final Soho mass |
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| Almost 116 years ago Oscar Wilde, newly released from Reading jail after two years of hard labour, wrote to the Jesuits of the Farm Street church in Mayfair asking them to grant him a six-month retreat. Not surprisingly given his trial on charges of sodomy and gross indecency and his subsequent disgrace, they refused. | |
| Early next month that very same church – the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street, as it is formally known – will open its doors to dozens of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Roman Catholics who have been exiled from a West End church where they have attended mass for the past six years. | |
| At the beginning of January Vincent Nichols, the archbishop of Westminster, announced that the special fortnightly masses for LGBT Catholics at Our Lady of the Assumption church in Warwick Street were to be stopped. The decision to end the Soho masses left many members of the flock there saddened and angry. | |
| Nichols said the diocese had been happy to offer pastoral care for the LGBT community through the celebration of mass at Our Lady of the Assumption, but the church's "teaching on matters of sexual morality" remained unaltered despite recent legal and social changes surrounding "same-sex attraction". It was time for a new phase, he said. | Nichols said the diocese had been happy to offer pastoral care for the LGBT community through the celebration of mass at Our Lady of the Assumption, but the church's "teaching on matters of sexual morality" remained unaltered despite recent legal and social changes surrounding "same-sex attraction". It was time for a new phase, he said. |
| He also announced that the Warwick Street church was to be given over to the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, the body set up two years ago by the pope to welcome Anglicans at odds with the Church of England's position on female clergy into the embrace of the Roman Catholic church. | |
| Renate Rothwell, a longstanding member of the Soho flock and designated post-mass tea-and-coffee lady, is worried about how they will settle into Farm Street, where there will be no special LGBT mass. Some are so upset at their treatment that they have decided to boycott the Jesuit church. | |
| "I just feel let down by the church," she said. "It's like building a house on sand. We built a house on sand in Warwick Street because church teaching is what it is. That seems to have brought us to a fall and now they're doing it in the Jesuit parish … Who's to say if we become a nuisance to them they're not going to do the same?" | "I just feel let down by the church," she said. "It's like building a house on sand. We built a house on sand in Warwick Street because church teaching is what it is. That seems to have brought us to a fall and now they're doing it in the Jesuit parish … Who's to say if we become a nuisance to them they're not going to do the same?" |
| Not that the Soho congregation, which numbers about 150 people, plans to become a nuisance. Despite the protests of those Catholics who accuse them of trying to hijack the mass for their own ideological ends, of using bidding prayers to push an LGBT agenda and of planning to colonise their new Mayfair home, Rothwell said they had never sought to change or challenge the church's teaching. | Not that the Soho congregation, which numbers about 150 people, plans to become a nuisance. Despite the protests of those Catholics who accuse them of trying to hijack the mass for their own ideological ends, of using bidding prayers to push an LGBT agenda and of planning to colonise their new Mayfair home, Rothwell said they had never sought to change or challenge the church's teaching. |
| "The first agreement we made was that we weren't ever going to campaign – and we stuck to that," she said. "It was a proper mass and the liturgy was in line with the church's teaching. We never did that." | "The first agreement we made was that we weren't ever going to campaign – and we stuck to that," she said. "It was a proper mass and the liturgy was in line with the church's teaching. We never did that." |
| Open criticism of Nichols is conspicuous by its absence. His previous support for the Soho masses, and unambiguous 2010 response to their opponents – "anybody from the outside who is trying to cast a judgment on the people who come forward for communion really ought to learn to hold their tongue" – have earned him the gratitude of many members of the Soho congregation. | Open criticism of Nichols is conspicuous by its absence. His previous support for the Soho masses, and unambiguous 2010 response to their opponents – "anybody from the outside who is trying to cast a judgment on the people who come forward for communion really ought to learn to hold their tongue" – have earned him the gratitude of many members of the Soho congregation. |
| Altogether easier to discern is anger directed at Rome, especially Gerhard Ludwig Müller, who was appointed prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith last July and is said to have been keen to stop the masses. | |
| "I think the Catholic church is quite homophobic," Rothwell said. "I don't know an awful lot about the politics, but I think [Müller] just followed the hard line and said: 'No, I want these masses closed.'" | |
| Mark Dowd, one of the organisers of the Soho masses, is more sympathetic to Nichols than to many of the conservative Catholics who have berated the archbishop over the Soho masses, calling him everything from "a fifth columnist on a mission to … destroy Catholicism as we know it" to "a proverbial wolf with a mitre and crozier". | |
| "You could say this is dreadful, you're giving this church to these very rightwing, traditional ex-Anglicans and kicking the gays out," Dowd said. "But poor old archbishops have always got to play these games where they've got a certain number of chess pieces to move round." | "You could say this is dreadful, you're giving this church to these very rightwing, traditional ex-Anglicans and kicking the gays out," Dowd said. "But poor old archbishops have always got to play these games where they've got a certain number of chess pieces to move round." |
| At 5pm on Sunday, the LGBT worshippers will gather at Warwick Street for their final Soho mass. A fortnight later, many will attend evening mass at Farm Street, where they will be joined by Nichols. What happens after that is anyone's guess. | |
| Dowd at least is optimistic about the flock's new home. "Oscar Wilde was turned away; they didn't want to be associated with him," he said. "Now the Jesuits are saying: 'It's OK, it's fine.' | |
| "But none of us is quite as exotic as Oscar Wilde, I'm afraid." |