Father James Martin, SJ

Some weeks ago Life Site News launched a petition named Bishops, Please Stop Fr. Martin’s LGBT Advocacy. The URL itself contains the ominous message, “Silence Fr. Martin.”

Orthodoxy in Dialogue wishes to go on record as fully supporting Father Martin’s efforts in the Roman Catholic Church and beyond. Like Orthodoxy in Dialogue, Father Martin wishes only to encourage dialogue among Christians of good will on the meaning of sexuality and gender in human life, and more importantly, to welcome Christians who identify as LGBTQ as full participants in the conversation.

We consider it an honour to have interviewed Father Martin twice (here and here), to have reprinted an article of his from America: The Jesuit Review (here), and to have distributed to our tens of thousands of readers around the planet his Facebook post of June 16, 2018 (here). We appreciate deeply Father Martin’s friendship for us and reassure him publicly of ours for him. At Orthodoxy in Dialogue we know for a fact that he has a great many more supporters among the hierarchy, clergy, and laity of the Orthodox Church than he can possibly realize.

Life Site News reported (here) on our first interview with Father Martin only two days after it appeared.

Our conversations with Father Martin and our careful reading of his Building a Bridge leave no doubt that Life Site News—in its “reporting” as well as in the text of the present petition—resorts to the same kinds of fear-mongering and outright misrepresentations that we have come to expect from certain traveler-priests (here, here, here, and here, for instance) and blogger-priests (here, here, and here, for instance) in the Orthodox Church—one of whom administers his own fan club (!!!) on Facebook…and another of whom has come to the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center (see report here) for his involvement in a designated hate group.

In stark contrast to these, Orthodoxy in Dialogue is profoundly grateful for the moderate and moderating voices of Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) and Father Andrew Louth, who both wrote for the recent issue of The Wheel devoted to sexuality and gender; again to Father Louth for his interview with Orthodoxy in Dialogue; to our sisters and brothers at The Wheel and Public Orthodoxy; to the editors and contributors of “For I Am Wonderfully Made”; to Dr. David Dunn; and to countless others of our Orthodox brothers and sisters in Christ who do not fear dialogue.

Once again, we are also profoundly grateful for Father Martin’s voice of moderation among his Roman Catholic brothers and sisters in Christ. May our gracious Lord strengthen and comfort him in his ministry.

See also, inter alia, the extensive Sexuality and Gender section in our Archives by Author, Conjugal Friendship, A Bed Undefiled, and Father Pavel Florensky and the Sacrament of Love.

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