Bridgeport, Conn., Nov 26, 2019 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- Papal honors for Father Phillip Bochanski have been announced, and the priest says they are a recognition of the Courage apostolate’s ministry for people with same-sex attraction at a time when the world and even parts of the Catholic Church are unsupportive, confusing, or hostile to their desire to live the Catholic faith in its fullness.
“In this apostolate I’ve met some of the most dedicated people I know. People who at great personal sacrifice are following Jesus with what I would say is heroic virtue,” Bochanski told CNA Nov. 26. “For me it’s been a real blessing to be able to a spiritual father to them.”
Since 2017, Bochanski has been executive director of the Bridgeport, Conn.-based Courage International. The Courage apostolate provides pastoral support, prayer support, and fellowship for people with same-sex attraction who want to live chaste lives according to Catholic teaching.
On Nov. 25, the Philadelphia archdiocese announced that Bochanski was among four people honored with the Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, an honor given to Catholics over age 45 with a history of long and distinguished service to the Church and to the office of the pope.
“The thought that the Holy Father is willing to extend the award, knowing that my nomination must have had a lot to do with my work at Courage, means a great deal to me,” Bochanski told CNA.
The Courage apostolate has grown since its founding in New York in 1980. It is currently present in more than 15 countries, with about 110 chapters in the U.S. alone. It also has an outreach to parents and spouses, called EnCourage.
Bochanski said the work of Courage includes pastoral care to people who have same-sex attraction and providing formation to clergy and others in ministry “to understand and appreciate the teachings of the Church… and to be able to explain them well.”
Bochanski reflected on the present-day difficulties in ministry related to sexual morality and same-sex attraction.
“There’s a significant amount of opposition that the Church’s teaching receives from the secular world, of course, but even in recent years it’s not always clear that everyone within the Church acknowledges and accepts the goodness and the truth of those teachings,” he said.
The priest, who was ordained in 1999 for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, said he was nominated for the papal honors by his archbishop, Charles Chaput of Philadelphia. He received a letter from Chaput informing him of the honors.
“It caught me completely by surprise,” he said. “It meant a great deal to me of course to receive it.”
A Nov. 25 statement from the Philadelphia archdiocese said Bochanski “has worked tirelessly, with compassion and great sensitivity, to advance Church teaching on human sexuality, and gained national respect for the Courage apostolate in the process.”
Bochanski voiced gratitude both to Pope Francis and to Chaput, who will bestow the Cross on the priest on the pope’s behalf at a Dec. 9 Vespers at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia .
“To know that (Chaput) notices the work I’m doing here at Courage means a great deal to me,” said Bochanski, who added that Archbishop Chaput has “always been very supportive of my participation in the apostolate.”
The Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, Bochanski said, is a reminder that the Courage apostolate is living and teaching in harmony with the Church and with the Church’s expectations for pastoral care and ministry.
He hoped the honors will provide clarity, both for Courage members and for others who “may be confused by some of the ambiguities and the controversies in the world and in the Church with regard to those teachings.”
Bochanski said the main difficulty for the Catholics in Courage is is that the secular world and some parts of the Church “don’t value the sacrifices that our members are making in terms of living chaste lives and starting to pursue holiness according to the mind of the Church.”
“Some of our members, in coming back to the Church and embracing a chaste life, lost a lot of friends they had before,” he said. “People don’t understand why they would follow a Catholic teaching that requires so much sacrifice.” For many, this means choosing a celibate life that “certainly requires a new way of looking at themselves and relationships.”
“They’ve had that experience of being misunderstood or even pushed aside because of the commitments that they are making to the Church,” said Bochanski. Such attitudes can provide obstacles for those who “don’t feel support from people around them and sometimes from people in the hierarchy of the Church.”
Bochanski also praised the Christian witness of Courage members, whether in public or private.
”Many want to be private about their experience but an increasing number are willing to speak about how participating in Courage and living according to Church teaching have changed their lives,” he told CNA. “A number of them talk about how they feel much more free to be themselves, to have strong friendships, to live fully alive because they are embracing this invitation to chastity.”
Some members have reported that people who tried to affirm them in their attractions and desires only increased their unhappiness.
“The fact that people weren’t giving them the truth about their identity and morality was making that much worse.” said Bochanski.
“When they hear the teaching of the Church that our identity is not in our sexual orientation but in our identity as sons and daughters of God, and that God’s plan for chaste relationships is meant to build this up and lead us to fulfillment, it’s a real liberation. They experience a great real freedom by embracing their Church’s teachings.”
Others can learn from Courage members, he said.
“Whether people themselves are experiencing same-sex attraction, just to see the witness of our members who are living in such a heroic way inspires all of us to take our own commitment to holiness more seriously and to be always growing in our ongoing conversion, our ongoing acceptance of God’s plan for each our lives,” said the priest.
“People who are living that in a radical way, which many of our Courage members are doing at real personal sacrifice, can become a real inspiration and encouragement to pursue our universal call to holiness,” he added.
Church teaching on sexual morality is “really coming from a great love and desire that people live an authentic, happy and holy life,” the priest explained. “That would be a counter-witness to people who would suggest that the Church teaching is harmful or hateful.”
After his ordination, Bochanski was a pastoral associate in several Philadelphia parishes and a chaplain for the Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters, the Catholic Medical Association’s Philadelphia guild, and the Courage apostolate’s Philadelphia chapter.
He joined Courage International in 2016 as associate director.
Courage and EnCourage will host its next Truth and Love Conference, intended for those in Catholic ministry, in Sterling, Va., April 27-29. The Courage and EnCourage annual conference will be held in Mundelein, Ill.,, July 23-26.
In 2020 the Courage apostolate will mark the 40th anniversary of its first meeting on Sept. 26, 1980 with an anniversary Mass at the Church of St. Joseph in New York. Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York is scheduled to celebrate the anniversary Mass, Bochanski told CNA.
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So. A cardinal of the Holy Roman Church can’t even properly interpret the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Cardinal Muller was right. These guys are third-rate theologians.
Or not theologians at all.
This is why faithful Catholics are leaving; some to Orthodoxy; others to evangelical churches. This cardinal along with other cardinals and bishops, and Pope Francis, are destroying the Church for this generation and the upcoming generation.
And doesn’t “intrinsically disordered” offend the “human dignity” of each person…just like the death penalty (which for a practical purposes can be justified almost never?) …and the refusal to allow “death with dignity” for the terminally ill?
IMO, this shift started with JPII’s provisos for capital punishment…despite Veritas Splendor…a kind of workaround, a supra-Good in “the person” which makes little reference to particular goods such as “justice” really…but presents a card in moral theology that trumps natural law and Scripture…and ends all discussion?
What world does Cardinal Tobin live in that he thinks Catholics mistreat gay people? In the presence of our Lord, we are encouraged in the CCC to worship with proper disposition and decorum. Do you think that unmarried heterosexual couples, who also have a disordered attraction, and same-sex couples should display their relationships in the house of our Lord? It is unfortunate that a apostolic descendant cannot stand by the Church of the God he took an oath to completely obey.
“Tobin said of the book that “in too many parts of our church LGBT people have been made to feel unwelcome, excluded, and even shamed.”
Anybody who is committing a mortal sin *should* be ashamed.
“Father Martin’s brave, prophetic, and inspiring new book marks an essential step in inviting church leaders to minister with more compassion, and in reminding LGBT Catholics that they are as much a part of our church as any other Catholic.””
“LGBT” is an evil term, identifying a person with the sins he is tempted to commit and acting as if he has no will and no self-control. Catholics who are committing those sins are indeed as much a part of the Church as any other Catholic, and like any other Catholic who is committing mortal sin is called to repent and to stop sinning, not to celebrate his sin.
Unfortunately the reasons for calling anything immoral or intrinsincally evil are not addressed in any article I have ever seen. The reason is, it takes ones soul away from love and union with its creator which is what it even exists for and HIS truly holy and wholesome purposes. One stops off at the wrong station and becomes involved deeply and may never move on with eternal consequences. Who knows what lies ahead if you love God and HIS WORD which the catechism beautifully teaches. Personally I would not trust the one who says differently. (It has been tried so boringly often.) Careful what you give your power into. I stand with St. Michael who says “Who is like God?” I would seek union with HIM. Biology doesn’t lie either.
No matter how you slice it, it always comes down to the homosexual act. Tobin and Martin choose to look away. But as long as the homosexual community is unwilling or unable to separate the state of temptation and the conscious choice to act on that temptation, the Church has nothing more to say.
The best thing I can say relative to Archbishop Tobin is that he is at least not in the Indianapolis Diocese any longer.
It’s disturbing, to say the least, how the “LBGT” acronym is now being bandied about in the highest places as if it’s spumoni in relation to a *vanilla* Church teaching.
Has any Catholic moral theologian given a cogent argument as to what it means to “welcome” someone who practices B[isexuality], for example, other than to direct them to the confessional?
Too many prominent prelates have allowed themselves to be led into an intellectual sinkhole, unable to perceive today’s popular falsehood that opposes the clarity found in both the natural sciences and the Bible: that various and sundry sexual behaviors occur because people have/develop “identities” different from what’s evidenced by the obvious functional design of their God-given anatomies.
Perhaps the term “disordered” is not “unfortunate” but inadequate. Unnatural, irrational, hedonistic, self-destructive, are more fitting.
No one ever said that fighting for the truth would be easy.
St. Athanasius, pray for us.
Every time a member of the clergy makes a statement like this, they are effectively stating that they no longer believe in Christ, His teachings, the Bible or the Church. When it is coming from a Cardinal during Holy Week, we can be pretty assured of their lack of faith……. In this case, another of Pope Francis’s new Cardinals, it only enforces the thought that Francis too has walked away from the Lord. He can kiss all the feet he wants to, but as long as he is stacking the deck with his cadre of homosexual clergy, he cannot be believed as one who follows Christ. May the Lord have mercy upon their souls.
So I think the fundamental problem is that our Holy Father and company in their sentimentality have already ‘blessed’ contraception which opens the door to all the other sexual sins. Sex is no longer restricted to the procreative act.
Who is really surprised that Cardinal “Nighty Night Baby” Tobin does not believe same sex relationships are intrinsically disordered?
Nighty night baby!!! Give me a break. This is no Roman Catholic Bishop. Man of no faith. The Sodomy is an Act Of pure lust..please. Remove him from the priesthood. I am worried.
This is why faithful Catholics are leaving; some to Orthodoxy; others to evangelical churches. This cardinal along with other cardinals and bishops, and Pope Francis, are destroying the Church for this generation and the upcoming generation.
Could there be anything more hurtful, harmful, and demeaning, than identifying persons according to sexual desire/inclination/orientation in order to justify the engaging in of sexual acts that are hurtful, harmful, and demeaning no matter who is engaging in said acts, including a man and woman united in marriage as husband and wife? How can identifying persons according to sexual desire/inclination/orientation justify the engaging in of sexual acts, that by their very nature deny the inherent Dignity of the human person as a beloved son or daughter? How could anyone who Loves their child, dismiss the physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual harm, that occurs, when engaging in demeaning sexual acts, that can never serve for the Good of one’s beloved or oneself? Apathy is always the result of a failure to Love; what is unfortunate is how apathetic a multitude who profess to be followers of The Christ have become because they no longer believe that Christ’s teaching in regards to sexual morality, serves out of respect for the inherent Dignity of all persons.