Dignity Washington

Tickets for the 19th Annual Night OUT presented by Team DC will go on sale next Sunday, May 12, after Mass for $35 each.

Join the LGBTQ+ community in celebrating Pride at Nationals Park when the Washington Nationals play the Atlanta Braves with the game starting at 6:45 pm on Thursday, June 6.

This year all tickets will be electronic meaning you (or an accompanying friend) must have a smartphone to access your ticket(s). When you buy your ticket(s), you will need to provide your email address and smartphone number. Special instructions will be sent to you about how to set-up and use the MLB Ballpark app on your phone.

With the purchase of a ticket, fans will receive a Nationals Night OUT Wearable Pride Flag at the stadium.

Outreach, an LGBTQ Catholic Resource organization, will convene its third annual conference at Georgetown University on August 2–4, 2024.

Several Dignity Washington and DignityUSA members participated in the 2022 and 2023 conferences held in New York City.

This year’s conference promises to be equally welcoming and engaging.

Speakers will include Cardinal Wilton Gregory, Archbishop of Washington; John J. DeGioia, Ph.D., President of Georgetown University; and James Martin, SJ, founder of Outreach.

Diverse panelists will discuss a range of topics, including:

• News from Rome: The Synod and “Fiducia Supplicans”
• LGBTQ Women and the Church
• Transgender Catholics and the Church
• Telling LGBTQ Catholic Stories
• The Bible and Homosexuality
• Race, Intersectionality and LGBTQ People

Registration is open! Additional information about the event is available at: Conference: Outreach 2024

Over the weekend of April 12 through 14, a group of young adults of Dignity USA came together in Washington, DC.

The weekend was a reunion for several of the youth pilgrims who attended the Papal Youth Day year in Portugal. In addition, it brought together other youth leaders from across the country to help plan for several exciting events in 2024 and 2025.

These future events include a youth retreat, World Pride in DC next year, and the July 2025 Dignity USA Conference in Dublin, Ohio.

Dignity Washington sponsored the Saturday night dinner and several Washington members joined the festivities: Rory, Victor, Tom, Allen, and Daniel, who as Vice President, co-facilitated the weekend with Meli Barber, President of Dignity USA. A great time was had by all!!

StoryCorps is committed to the idea that everyone has an important story to tell and that everyone’s story matters. Their mission: to help us believe in each other by illuminating the humanity and possibility in us all — one story at a time.

Since their founding in 2003, they’ve helped nearly 700,000 people across the country have meaningful conversations about their lives. These recordings are collected in the U.S. Library of Congress and in their online archive which is now the largest single collection of human voices ever gathered.

While the stories are broadcast weekly on NPR to over 12 million listeners, StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit, sharing select stories with the public through our podcast, animated shorts, digital platforms, and best-selling books.

Women’s History Month commemorates women’s groundbreaking contributions to society and culture. Listen to and share the stories of women who have loved hard, worked hard, and broken down barriers. Honor the everlasting impact they have made in their industries, families, communities, and more. For more information and to select stories to listen, go here.

Although Capital Pride is still a few months away, planning for it has already begun. The Capital Pride Committee has announced the theme for this year as “Totally Radical” and in response, Dignity Washington has a working theme of “LGBT Catholics: Radically Claiming of Faith Since 1972!” Mark you calendar for the first planning meeting to occur on Sunday, April 7, at 4:30pm.

In preparation for the Synod on Synodality’s conclusion this October, New Ways Ministry is hosting a “Conversations in the Spirit” gathering for LGBTQ+ people and allies. All are invited to participate on Thursday, March 21, from 7:30- 9pm.

Last October, the Synod’s first General Assembly noted that, “people feel marginalized or excluded from the Church because of their marriage status, identity or sexuality also ask to be heard and accompanied.” Many Catholics on the margins seek a church that is “a place to call ‘home’ where they can feel safe, be heard and respected, without fear of feeling judged.”

New Ways Ministry’s spiritual conversations this month aim to help the wider church better understand the joys, hopes, griefs, insights, disappointments, and wisdom of LGBTQ+ people and allies. As part of the common synodal journey, a report on the gathering’s outcomes will be compiled and submitted to church leaders and Synod delegates. To register, go here.

The Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) invites you and your networks to join them for their upcoming monthly program “Pray with Us to Welcome Spring Renewal” on Zoom, Tuesday, March 26, at 7:30pm with Diann Neu and the WATER Community. You are invited to come and pray with them as they welcome spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Click here to register for the program.

The Story of WATER

More than four decades ago, two courageous women saw a need and took a risk that has shaped the feminist religious movement. Mary E Hunt and Diann L Neu gathered thirteen women from various faith backgrounds and created a place where women’s religious needs could be met and women’s creativity nurtured. WATER was born.

WATER is a non-profit educational center and public charity in Silver Spring, MD, that focuses on feminist work in religion. Since its founding in 1983, WATER has built a growing network of scholars, ministers, and activists around the world who are committed to engaging theological training and scholarship in the service of social change. They promote empowerment, justice, peace, and systemic change.

WATER transforms religious structures by strengthening women as religious agents and encouraging them to work for inclusive religious communities and an egalitarian future. They have a global impact, an international reach. They promote eco-feminist work and are collaborative and participative as they work in alliance with justice networks worldwide.
For more than forty years, WATER, thanks to supporters and funding partners, has demonstrated the financial stability and simple living necessary to create and sustain efficient and high-quality services for people in need. They operate on the principle of non-discrimination regarding race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, and national origin.

For Franciscan Fr Daniel Horan, Fiducia Supplicans, the Vatican’s declaration allowing blessings of same-gender couples, is a small, but important step towards LGBTQ+ visibility in the church.

Fr Horan, a theologian and columnist for the National Catholic Reporter, acknowledges that “most people have embraced the positive and rather matter-of-fact declaration” about blessings for “irregular” couples. He lauds it:

“Though the gesture may be small, the publication of Fiducia Supplicans signals an important departure from the status quo of erasure and dehumanization. Perhaps this declaration will be enough of a recognition, of seeing and beholding of LGBTQ+ persons that over time the broader faith community (of which LGBTQ+ Catholics are equally a part) can open itself up to learn more about and from them.

That many LGBTQ+ folks feel seen now and recognized by leaders in their faith community is a very good thing. Perhaps it will be the beginning of something more, but in the meantime it is at least a small acknowledgement of full dignity, value and humanity of LGBTQ+ people.”

Fr Horan divides the critics of Fiducia Supplicans into “two general buckets.” In the first are critics of the document who fear that permission for such blessings will cause confusion about whether same-gender couples can marry, and these include bishops from Africa and Eastern Europe. The second bucket, however, is the critics Fr Horan views as more dangerous for they fear even the simple recognition that LGBTQ+ people exist:

“…[I]t appears that there are those who are angry that LGBTQ+ persons are acknowledged as existing in the world at all. This homophobic frustration is most commonly found on social media and anonymous internet comments, but others have been more public with their displeasure.

Some have appeared to double down on the most incendiary and pastorally insensitive (not to mention theologically dubious) language that has appeared in Catholic documents on LGBTQ+ persons and ministry over the years.”

For Fr Horan, precisely makes Fiducia Supplicans is significant, and also suspect in the eyes of some critics, is that it acknowledges the humanity of LGBTQ+ individuals.
To read the full article, go to here.

~~ Sarah Cassidy (she/her) and Robert Shine (he/him), New Ways Ministry, February 8, 2024

Join DignityUSA’s Virtual Gathering, Saturday, March 16. The time to register is growing short.

Our Lenten-themed gathering focuses on the Divine assurance “I shall be their God and they shall be my people.” In addition to rich prayer experiences and Jason Steidl Jack’s keynote address, you can choose from among five workshops. Households can choose the same or different workshop sessions, as long as you are on different devices for that section of the Gathering. Instructions will be sent to all registrants.

Here are the workshops we’ll be offering:

• Reflecting on Gender Identity: Catholic Theological Perspectives — Elizabeth Block, PhD and Maddie Marlett
• Parenting as LGBTQIA+ Catholics: Our Journeys and Dignity’s Role — Chris Alberti and Jon Meek
• Preserving Our History: Why What Happens at the Local Level Matters and How to Ensure it is Documented — Doris Malkmus
• Aging with Dignity: How Dignity Communities Are Responding — Members of Dignity communities caring for aging members
• Experiences of LGBTQIA+ Catholics in Central Europe: Hierarchy Struggling with Synod Aims and Offering “Healing” Instead of Blessing — Miro Mata’kva

All are welcome! There is a sliding fee scale and scholarships are available. Contact info@dignityusa.org for more information about scholarships or register here.

In the second article in a series, Jim Lindsay interviews another Dignity Washington Member for you to get to know better. This time, the person is Rory Hytrek who had served on the Board of Directors and is more visibly seen as an acolyte during Mass. So, for this interview-style article, the first question is…

Can you tell us a bit about your youth, your family, where you grew up?

I’m an Air Force Military Brat^TM — so I’m used to moving to different states every couple of years, which means I’ve gotten to grow up all throughout the U.S. I’ve been very lucky, and really enjoyed the nomadic life, although it’s been nice to settle down in D.C. My mom and dad now live in San Antonio, TX, and my little brother and his wife are in Southern California. They are expecting their first child! (The psychic damage that comes from knowing your baby brother is going to be a dad, and he’s going to be a really good one, is unparalleled.)

We lived in Colorado, Northern California, Wyoming, Maryland, Southern California — and on my own I’ve lived in the Czech Republic, Cambodia, and throughout Northern VA – although our annual pilgrimages ‘home’ are always to Oregon, where my parents grew up but where I never lived.

My family is mixed Irish Catholic and German/Norwegian Lutheran, although I grew up Catholic, and attended Catechism lessons and even some Catholic elementary school.

Do you care to share your coming out story (assuming you have one!)?

When I was about 12 and still thought I was a girl, I came out to my family as a lesbian — I’d been dating (or the middle school equivalent — holding hands after school! And occasionally smooching!) a girl in my grade, and all my friends were sure it would be a non-issue, so I might as well just tell my family. I got the response that we “just didn’t believe in such a thing,” which came as a shock. I was so sure that my parents would be supportive that I hadn’t even prepared for the possibility they wouldn’t be. I spent most of middle and high school back in the closet when I was home, although I led much of a double-life and was a leader of an LGBT student club at school.

It was in college that I realized that I wasn’t a girl after all. I moved to the Czech Republic not long after and used the opportunity to try out my new name and pronouns in a clean break. I loved it, and coming home to D.C., I started my life as Rory. I’ve been “out” as Rory since 2014, and on hormones since 2016. I’ve been lucky, as my friends have been the strongest support and closest family that I have, and my fiancé is the kindest and most fiercely protective soul over my right to exist exactly as I am. As it is for many of us, “coming out” doesn’t happen just once, or to everyone at the same time. Now, however, I can say that I am a proud transgender man, and I love the life I’ve built for myself with my own hands and the support of my God and my loved ones.

How have you reconciled your being gay/trans and the teaching of the Church on matters of LGBT+ persons?

For me, being queer and being Catholic was actually my least stressful reconciliation. While I knew what the larger Church thought of me, I’d also had the role model experience of my friend “N.”, who was Confirmed a year before I was. He had his own crisis of faith, managed it, and helped me manage mine as well. He was only 13, and I was 12, and I can’t be more grateful to him, as he did more for my faith than any adult in my life. I was also lucky to have a strong relationship with God when I was a child, one that little me never gave humans the power to shake.

Theological arguments for queer joy and belonging in the church are so important for our continual fight for human rights—but when it comes down to myself, individual arguments sometimes feel superfluous. I know God loves me. What else is there?

How did you come to join Dignity Washington and how long have you been a member?

I was introduced to Dignity Washington by the leader of the LGBT Center at George Washington University, where I was an undergrad. He sent me to meet two other students at Mass. My first Dignity Mass was in 2010. I admit I have been an official member for perhaps only 9 years out of those 13 — for standard “being broke in undergrad” reasons — but I’ve been at DW for over a decade now.

What do you most appreciate about Dignity Washington?

The community at Dignity Washington helps me feel connected in so many ways: to the D.C. queer community, to a version of Catholicism that loves and values me, and to a group of adults who really care for my well-being and still act as role-models while I’m trying to navigate all the ups and downs of growing up.

What are your hopes for the future of Dignity Washington?

I hope that the next generation of queer Catholics who needs a home finds it, and I think that Dignity Washington can be that home — or even just a friendly stop along the journey. I hope that we are proof to the world that Catholicism is still about Love, that it can still be the spiritual home to all that it has always promised, but that the hierarchy has not always delivered.

Is there anything else you’d like the community to know about you?

There is a lot still for us to explore as a community on the fringes of gender, social class, and what is considered normal or palatable — and how all those things tie into who is seen as deserving of a place at the table. Our liberation is bound up in the liberation of all our siblings, even those whose experiences we do not understand. And, best of all, I think that our community is full of goodwill, deep empathy, and relentless determination to have those conversations.

~~ Jim Lindsay and Rory Hytrek