Preface
This series of pastoral letters was born out of a deep concern for the families in our church who are struggling with the moral issues our culture is presenting to us. I found that our families are not equipped to deal with these difficult issues. Moreover, we tend not even to talk about them out of embarrassment or fear of conflict. But we must talk about them straight on; so much is at stake. There is an elephant in the room, and we must not ignore it or we will surely get trampled.
In time these letters quickly expanded into what might be called a program, and it has truly become a church production. The process was extremely intense, often messy, but love always prevailed. Inspired by these lines of a poem by William Blake,
And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love,
I thought it appropriate to call this program, Bearing the Beams of Love (Beams for short). Love is a burden, although a sweet burden, we all must bear, no matter who we are, or whatever our issues may be.
Our Bearing the Beams of Love program is essential to our new church vision statement:
Saint Joseph Catholic Church will be the spiritual, moral, and social heart of Eldersburg/Sykesville through encounters with Jesus Christ.
We as a church congregation must have the mind of Christ, the compassion of Christ, and the obedience of Christ with regard to our moral life first in order to bring healing to our parish community. I feel special urgency for our young families with children facing existential burdens never before experienced at such young ages.
Although born out of a concern for our families and youth, there is something here for everyone. We all need formation, whatever age when it comes to moral deportment. At every stage of life, we are faced with moral challenges whether we are young or old, married or single, parents or grandparents. In Beams we move slowly from the foundational issues of what it means to be human in our present culture, into marriage and family, the single life and relationships, social media and pornography, and finally building up to the “hot-button” issues of same sex attraction and gender dysphoria.
Everything presented here is in keeping with Church teaching. It is heavily indebted to St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and draws from the wealth of Catholic moral teaching over the ages, as well as the Archdiocesan document published a few years back entitled Like Every Disciple … Guidelines for Ministry with LGBTQ+ Persons in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and everything we say is in the same spirit.
Here we prefer not to identify people by sexual orientation in Beams. Those who identify themselves this way would probably not feel welcomed or comfortable, by and large, in our church as it is now. We have two very different cultures. But the cultures do intersect in our own families, for our children will and do walk through the doors of our homes. Bearing the Beams of Love is geared for fostering discussion and relationships in our families first with the hope that our church will eventually reach out meaningfully and authentically to our culture surrounding us.
Acknowledgements
I am so indebted to our Parish Pastoral Council (PPC) at Saint Joseph Catholic Church and a focus group consisting of a wide range of parishioners before whom I presented these letters throughout the 2022/2023 year. More recently, a team consisting of Judie Boyle, Gwen Lilly, Terry Morse, Cathy Nusbaum, Karen Spivey, and myself further refined the letters and created for each one a package of materials that can take the reader deeper into the topic: Hungry for More, Moral Authority, Making the Connection, Further Readings, and Next Steps. I also want to thank Danny Gallagher, the manager of our Church Radio Station WSFJ 92.7 for producing podcasts for each of the letters.