Gay ministries ('99)

In mid-1999, the Roman Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said:

Sister Jeannine Gramick, SSND, and Father Robert
Nugent, SDS, have been engaged in pastoral activities
directed toward homosexual persons for more than
twenty years. In 1977, they founded the organisation
New Ways Ministry within territory of the Archdiocese
of Washington in order to promote "justice and
reconciliation between lesbian and gay Catholics and
the wider Catholic community". They are the authors
of the book Building Bridges: Gay and Lesbian Reality
and the Catholic Church (Mystic: Twenty-Third
Publications, 1992) and editors of the volume Voices
of Hope: A Collection of Positive Catholic Writings on
Gay and Lesbian Issues (New York: Center for Homophobia
Education, 1995).

From the beginning, in presenting the Church's teaching
on homosexuality, Father Nugent and Sister Gramick have
continually called central elements of that teaching into
question....

The ambiguities and errors of the approach of Father
Nugent and Sister Gramick have caused confusion among
the Catholic people and have harmed the community of
the Church. For these reasons, Sister Jeannine Gramick,
SSND, and Father Robert Nugent, SDS, are permanently
prohibited from any pastoral work involving homosexual
persons and are ineligible, for an undetermined period,
for any office in their respective religious institutes....

Link: Notification Regarding Fr. Nugent and Sr. Gramick

I sent the following short letter to the New York Times in July 1999 (not published):

I guess Gramick and Nugent did lie about the Catholic Church after all: whenever they led people to believe the Church might change.