Gays For Christ

By GLEN JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer Fri May 11, 7:57 PM ET

BOSTON – Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is defending his opposition to gay marriage by citing the Scriptures.

“This isn‘t just some temporary convenience here on Earth, but we‘re people that are designed to live together as male and female and we‘re gonna have families,” he tells interviewer Mike Wallace, according to an excerpt CBS released Friday. “And that, there‘s a great line in the Bible that children are an inheritance of the Lord and happy is he who has or hath his quiver full of them.”

“What‘s at the heart of my faith is a belief that there‘s a creator, that we‘re all children of the same God, and that fundamentally the relationship you have with your spouse is important and eternal,” Romney said over the course of two interviews, one of which was taped at his vacation home in Wolfeboro, N.H.

In its main story, Time writes, “The closest he has ever come to a personal religious crisis, he recalls, was when he was in college and considering whether to go off on a mission, as his grandfather, father and brother had done. … He says he also felt guilty about the draft deferment he would get for it, when other young men his age were heading for Vietnam.”

“I didn‘t go on a mission to avoid the draft,” Romney said at the time. “I never asked my dad (Michigan Gov. George Romney) in any way to be involved with the draft board.

Sexual orientation of church members claimed not to be a factor
BOSTON (AP) | Apr 17, 10:12 AM

The Jesuits are closing a Boston church that serves a largely gay congregation and putting the building up for sale because they can no longer afford to keep it open, the order’s leader say.

The Jesuit Urban Center in the city’s South End will close at the end of July, said Rev. Thomas Regan, the superior of the New England Jesuits.

The sexual orientation of many in the congregation did not play a role in the decision, and there was no pressure from the Vatican or the Boston Archdiocese to shutter the church, Regan said.

The Roman Catholic religious order has become financially reliant on salaries paid to members who teach at Boston College, College of the Holy Cross and Fairfield University — all Jesuit schools — but as they retire or die, the order is being forced to cut back on its activities, he said.

About one-third of the order’s 342 priests in New England are retired.

“A lot of people are still in the church because of the Jesuits,” Regan said. “We do not want to abandon these people. But there’s a spirit among this group, and I think that’s going to be lost, and that’s very sad.”

Worshippers informed of the planned closing after Mass on Sunday reacted with disappointment and anger.

“I, and my friends, while not surprised, were saddened,” said Dr. Juan Jaime de Zengotita. “This comes after a few years of rough times for gay Catholics, with Vatican and local Episcopal declarations that have not been so friendly. I don’t know what will be the future of gay ministry.”

The Jesuit Urban Center costs the order about $350,000 a year to support, and its only significant remaining activity is a weekly Mass attended by 150 to 200 people who generate weekly collections of about $2,400, Regan said. The building, the Church of the Immaculate Conception, was dedicated in 1861 and needs $4 million to $8 million in renovations, he said.

Jesuits would continue to welcome gays and lesbians to worship at St. Ignatius of Loyola, the parish they oversee adjacent to Boston College on the Brighton-Newton line, Regan said.