Via TitusOneNine. Gee, maybe pecusa should rethink being the gay church since it's having such a deleterious effect on the other gay churches. ed.
10:00 PM PST on Monday, December 15, 2008
By DAVID OLSON
The Press-Enterprise
When Archbishop Mark Shirilau founded the Ecumenical Catholic Church in 1987, he did so to provide a religious home for gays and lesbians.
Now, with the Episcopal Church ordaining gay priests and the United Church of Christ performing same-sex weddings, the Riverside-based denomination is losing members.
As more mainstream churches reach out toward gays and lesbians, many gays are leaving churches like Shirilau's. The largest gay Catholic group, Dignity, lost nearly half its active members in the past decade.
Archbishop Mark Shirilau started the Ecumenical Catholic Church in 1987 to provide a religious home to gays and lesbians.
"There's less need," Shirilau said inside a chapel in his Riverside home. "You can church-shop and find at a local level a parish that is accepting."
In 1995, the Ecumenical Catholic Church had about 2,000 members in 25 churches. Now, there are about 500 members in 20 churches, some of which have only a few members and meet once a month.
Even Shirilau worships at an Episcopal Church.
Shirilau said he never felt a strong need to attend a church geared toward gays and lesbians. He was happy in the Episcopal Church even in the mid-1980s, when the denomination was more conservative on gay and lesbian issues.
But he and his late partner realized that other gays were not comfortable in mainstream denominations, so they founded the Ecumenical Catholic Church. The church adheres to the majority of Roman Catholic teachings and uses a blend of Roman Catholic, Episcopal and Lutheran liturgy.
About half the members are Catholic, Shirilau said. Some former members now attend Roman Catholic churches, even though the Vatican teaches that same-gender sex is a sin.
But Shirilau said what's important to many gays and lesbians is how individual parishes treat them, not what a Vatican document says about homosexuality. And an increasing number of priests are accepting toward their gay congregants, he said.
"We provide an option," he said. "We don't recruit people who are already happy in their church."
Acceptance by local clergy and fellow congregants is also why many gays and lesbians attend services in Episcopal, Lutheran and Methodist churches, he said. The national denominations are deeply divided over homosexuality and none yet offers full equality for gays and lesbians. The United Church of Christ is the only mainline Protestant denomination that performs same-sex weddings. But most people care far more about how they're treated in their home church than about the heated debates over homosexuality at national church conventions, Shirilau said.
The Ecumenical Catholic Church is strongest in conservative areas where there are few other congregations where gays and lesbians can feel comfortable, Shirilau said. Its largest congregation is in Tulsa, Okla., where up to 150 people attend services every week.
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Ed Crisostomo / The Press-Enterprise
"There's less need" for congregations geared toward gays and lesbians, said Mark Shirilau, of Riverside. "You can church-shop and find at a local level a parish that is accepting."
There are none in Southern California, and Shirilau said he has no plans to start one. There are more options here than in places such as Tulsa, he said.
Dignity's declining membership is also largely because of increasing acceptance from liberal Protestant denominations, said Executive Director Marianne Duddy-Burke.
Yet even as fewer people attend weekly Dignity Masses, more people are accessing the group's Internet ministry.
Even some people who attend a non-Catholic worship service cannot completely break away from Catholicism, Duddy-Burke said.
"Catholicism is so deep for most of us," she said. "You can walk out of the doors of the church, but the deep connection to Catholic spirituality, to the sacraments, to Catholic culture, that doesn't go away."
HOPES FOR INTEGRATION
The Inland area's only Dignity congregation, in Palm Springs, is gradually gaining members, probably because the city's gay population continues to grow, said Dignity Palm Springs' president, Bill LaMarche, of Calimesa.
The nation's largest church geared toward gays and lesbians, the 18,000-member nondenominational Metropolitan Community Church, is also slowly growing. Its membership has increased more than 2 percent since 2003, said Executive Director Rev. Cindi Love.
But Love said that's partly because some of the church's 211 U.S. congregations are seeing increasing numbers of straight members, especially in conservative areas where there are few liberal religious options. There are also more children than in the past, many of them adopted by same-sex couples, she said. Nearly a third of those attending Love's Abilene, Texas, congregation are children. And unlike gay Catholic groups, which adhere to a fixed liturgy, MCC has worship services that draw people from a variety of denominations, Love said.
The Rev. Nori Kieran-Meredith, pastor of Heartland Metropolitan Community Church in San Bernardino and a practicing Catholic, said she looks forward to the day when gay-oriented churches no longer exist.
"I always wanted to go out of business," she said. "I want MCC to be just a social club. I want to create an ideal world where people don't segregate themselves."
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