Boston, Mass., May 18, 2023 / 14:51 pm (CNA).
Following concerns expressed by the Archdiocese of New York, a Manhattan Catholic church has changed the name of an art display from “God Is Trans: A Queer Spiritual Journey” to “A Queer Spiritual Journey.”
The alteration of the display at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle comes following a firestorm online reacting to photos shared on social media in early May, with many critics calling the display “blasphemous.”
The artwork is still on display at the 19th-century mother church of the Paulist Fathers in a side chapel dedicated to St. Agnes.
The description has also changed slightly. The words “God Is Trans” have been removed from the first sentence.
The placard accompanying the display says the artwork “maps the queer spiritual journey” and says “there is no devil.”
The name and description were revised by the artist, Adah Unachukwu — a student at Fordham University — and the Paulists Fathers’ New York City “artist-in-residence” Father Frank Sabatté.
When CNA reached out to Sabatté for comment, he referred questions on the new title and description to the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University, a sponsor of the art exhibition at the church, “Vessel: A Spiritual Art Experience.”
“A Queer Spiritual Journey” is one of eight artworks included in the church’s exhibition, which runs until June 14.
When asked if he thinks the display’s description of the devil’s nonexistence contradicts Church teaching, David Gibson, Fordham’s director of its Center on Religion and Culture, told CNA Thursday that “I think people are taking this very literally.”
“You have to remember, this is an art installation, and this is a very literary and poetic meditation, and this is not a statement of a theological position,” he said.
Gibson said he wouldn’t try to “interpret” what the artist’s intended meaning was, but added: “This is not an effort to revise the catechism.”
Unachukwu could not be reached for comment on Thursday.
CNA asked Gibson if the display’s new title promotes gender ideology, to which he responded he didn’t know what gender ideology is.
“I don’t know. That’s one of those kinds of buzzword phrases. I don’t know. Some people are going to read it that way, I suppose. I don’t even know what gender ideology is, frankly,” he said.
“All of these terms people will define in their own way, kind of depending on where they’re coming at an issue from. I don’t think there’s any intention to do that, whatever gender ideology is,” he added.
Pope Francis has denounced gender ideology and said in a recent interview that it is “one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations” today because “it blurs differences and the value of men and women.”
Gibson informed CNA that the placard with the new title and description, and an iPad accompanying the display were stolen on Tuesday. The sign has since been replaced.
Paul Snatchko, the spokesperson for the Paulist Fathers, told CNA he didn’t think that the display promoted gender ideology.
“It is one artist’s entitling of her display as part of an eight-person art exhibit,” he said. “It’s just the artist describing their art.”
Snatchko said the mission of the Paulist Fathers is to “go beyond the church walls and encounter people who are not currently hearing about God and Jesus and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and faith.”
The art exhibit in the church is a way to bring people in who may not otherwise enter and for the church to “have a conversation with the larger culture,” he said.
CNA reached out to the Archdiocese of New York for comment but received no response.
When CNA asked Snatchko on Monday if the Paulist Fathers believe it is acceptable to say that God is transgender, he answered “no.”
Father Rick Walsh, the pastor of the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, is shown preaching in the church in an online video dated June 28, 2020, saying that “Christ is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer.”
In the video, he says: “We hear voices from time to time that speak to us female members of our shared body of Christ. And they say we are the weaker sex and that we cannot serve in positions of leadership anywhere including the church. Are they not aware that we who are women are now living in Christ; that we are Christ? Christ is a woman. In Christ, I am also a woman. Once you belong to Christ, you belong to all others who belong to Christ as well.”
“Some say that those of us who are LGBTQ members of Christ’s body do not belong to the body of Christ, totally denying our baptism. Are they not aware that we who are LGBTQ are also living now in Christ; that we are Christ? Christ is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer.”
“In Christ, I am lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer. Once you belong to Christ, you belong to all others who belong to Christ as well.”
CNA reached out to Walsh for comment but did not receive a response. According to a letter Walsh sent to parishioners on April 27, he announced that he is being reassigned and will no longer be at the parish after June 11. He did not say where he was being reassigned.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
The Paulists like the Jesuits have never left the hippies of the 60s! Time they got back to their founders vision but that of course is too much to ask!
A perverse philosophy that moral perversity is a naturally evolving understanding of Man’s actual nature. Permanence has long been jettisoned, change driven by free will absent of those true permanent principles of human nature.
It’s driven by feeling, the sensual good perceived as the arbiter of good. If it feels good it must e good, now becoming whatever bizarre acts feel good. Sex with both sexes becoming passe, now marked interest in children, in instances sex with infants. There’s a multi billion dollar world wide industry in this satanic abomination. Many videos feature murder of the victim infant [earlier the secret rage was adult women ‘snuffed’ at the end.
Paulist Fathers, it seems the better part were among the radical for decades, beginning with devaluation of the real presence in the Holy Eucharist.
Orders with strong devotion to the Holy Eucharist, mainly contemplative communities have been purged by a Vatican policy increasing the difficult for entry, for example by requiring a 9 year postulancy.
Whatever words, however pious stream into the media from the Vatican belie a policy that amounts to suppression of contemplative communities. Always considered the instrument for conveyance of grace upon the Body of Christ in the World. It’s little wonder that many seek refuge in the more contemplative liturgies of the TLM and Eastern Rite Catholicism.
If a Catholic, any truly believing Christian seeks a most noble, fast becoming necessary mission in a bothered, boring life turn to Christ on the Cross and participate in the baptismal priesthood of the faithful. Love, intervene, suffer with Him completing in your efforts the suffering lacking in Christ’s. How so? It’s that the Mystical Body, the members of the Church is Christ.
On the same theme of devoting ourselves to participation with Christ’s saving work, we become his instrument for the salvation of others living in sin. Our Blessed Mother during an apparition encouraged this form of intervention for others, since many persons are condemned because they have no one to pray for them.
Some years past a woman responded to my similar comment on intervention. She seemed erudite, faithful, admonishing me softly that God doesn’t require our intervention to save souls. True. Although our baptism into Christ includes priest, prophet, and king. She missed the point that while God doesn’t need us, His work of salvation through our intervention is markedly increased. She didn’t seem to understand that it’s the love we have for each other that purifies the Church and sanctifies us. That we have a responsibility to employ the graces he gives us for love of our brother. What greater love is there than in imitation of Christ we lay down our lives for him, or her of course?
It’s because of Pope Francis that church’s are emboldened to do the work of undermining the actual doctrine of the Church of Christ, since the time of the Apostles. His statements on homosexuality are equivocal at best, and simply open the door, at first just a crack, then widely to unnecessary proclivities, touted as necessary. “For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it”(Matthew 7:13-14). Super-subjective realities, based on post-modern ideology, have nothing to do with the supremacy, mystery, and grandeur of the human mind given to the man who enters the Way, through the narrow gate of Jesus Christ’s commandments in the Gospel. Which road would the pope have us trod?
The Paulists going off track like this predates Pope Francis.
It’s a great shame because originally they used to do great work evangelizing in the South. I was baptized by a Paulist priest.
“Are they not aware that we who are LGBTQ are also living now in Christ; that we are Christ? Christ is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer.”
Christ is no such thing. He is the Living God, the Only Begotten Son, Creator of All, Lord of All, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He is also the Coming King and Judge, and those who embrace error, propagate sin, and utter blasphemy would do well to repent while they are able to do so.
Good luck with that!