"The Radically Inclusive Love of Jesus for All."

Some say that preachers really only have one sermon in them, it is just interpreted in different ways. I don’t really think that is true per se, but I do think there is some truth in it, and if you stripped everything back, my sermon message would be the ‘radically inclusive love of Jesus for ALL’. This may be obvious to you already in terms of what you have heard me say but given it is Manchester Pride on August Bank Holiday Weekend, and I am busy organising the Pride Eucharist in the Cathedral, and will be walking in the Pride Parade with ‘Christians Walk With Pride’, I thought it a good time to share something of my own story.

The best place to start is by saying that for the majority of my 20s and early 30s I just instinctively felt that I was not welcome in church. To be fair, this wasn’t because I had been told not to come but having been to a very religious school in the 1980s, I never imagined there was a place for me in church. In fact, truth be told, in retrospect I think I thought that was probably fair. In other words, I had no right to be welcome in church.

I came out in the mid 1990’s, I was in my early twenties. Clearly being gay had been legal for nearly 30 years by then, but it wasn’t really the “done thing” to be indiscreet outside the comfort and safety of the gay scene. My parents were accepting but still for the first few years it was not widely known in my family. And of course, at this stage HIV and AIDS remained the “gay plague” in public consciousness and I think this coloured the view of the mainstream.

I went through periods of attending church, but I would tend to go to an 8am said Mass which as generally attended by a handful of people, I would arrive just before the Mass was about to start and would be the first out of the door at the end. I felt that if I was cornered and asked about myself, I would have to tell a lie. LGBTQ+ people have this thing of regularly having to come out or to be opaque and it saddens me.

About 15 years ago, I read an essay written by the journalist Charlie Brown about his conversion to Roman Catholicism. As gay man this was something of a surprise to him, but he described a Mass that was regularly celebrated for gay people in Soho, in an Anglican church in fact. He also talked about finding in Catholicism a big enough space where his own weaknesses and failings drew him closer to God. He seemed absolutely comfortable with his sexuality and being part of the church.

When I plucked up the courage to speak to a Priest about it, I was evidently too honest because he said he regretted I had been so open and suggested that Mark and I would need to live as Brothers, so I went back to the anonymity of 8am Masses and not feeling part of it.

Mark and I moved back to Manchester from Essex in 2011 and I did a google search with 3 words – “gay, Catholic, Manchester”. In truth I was praying to find a gay Roman Catholic Mass like Charlie Brown had found in Soho. Instead, I found an Anglo-Catholic Church, St Chrysostom’s. I attended for the first time on Christmas Eve 2012, having begged Mark to come with me, and I have to say I was nearly sick when I realised, we had to sit in the choir stalls so close to everyone else but I was hoping they lived up to the inclusiveness of their website.

They did live up to their promise of inclusivity and I started to attend their Parish Mass on a Sunday morning. By the beginning of February, I had plucked up the courage to stay for tea after Mass and the rest as they say is history.

In 2021 I was ordained, and each day, I look in the mirror and can’t believe that I have the privilege of this calling. It is such a far cry from creeping in and out of church hoping no one notices me. I am so grateful to be in a Diocese that’s trying its best to be inclusive and to be serving in a mission community where I am loved for who I am, and not only me but my wonderful partner too.

We must never take inclusion and equality for granted, we need always to be intentional and when we get it wrong, on whatever grounds, because this isn’t just an LGBTQ+ thing, we must learn the lessons and do better next time.

I would never have dreamed ordination would be an option for me and the Church of England still worries me, infuriates me, and makes me feel very sad at times; but I have hope for the future that the ‘Radically Inclusive Love of Jesus for ALL will be found throughout the church some day and mission communities like ours will no longer be the exception to the rule. After all, I’m a Christian and in Christ there is always hope!

With every blessing.

Fr Paul.