Good afternoon!

Yesterday with some friends we were discussing the presence of an image of Jesus with a rainbow flag around it at a gay pride event!

The image produced mixed reactions!

To the very conservative it is an abomination and because there are no gays in their church or families (yea right) they proceed with their religious nazism which like Hitler’s regime seeks to make our catholic church a place for the elite where gays have no place!

On the other end of the spectrum are the liberals! To them gay and everything gay is ok and they’d like to think that Jesus was gay and that heaven is some sort of giant orgy where everything goes!

And then somewhere in the middle are those who know that Jesus loves everybody regardless of their sexual orientation and that gays are included in this love!

Personally I like the image because while it causes controversy it also provokes discussion that simply has to happen!

Sexuality and people can not be explained away by theologians! It needs to be understood and people need to be loved by true followers of Jesus!

Traditionalists needn’t feel threatened if they truly know Jesus and are comfortable in their own sexualities and these discussions offer them an opportunity to better understand humanity, sexuality and ultimately to look in the mirror and face their own brokenness and hardness of heart!

So ya, Jesus should walk too at the gay pride as a light to the church and world of His love for all and an invitation to get to know Him, the best boyfriend of all!!

Have a gay day!! 😂😂

Michael

Another wonderful message from the pope who is not afraid to break the deafening silence on the gay issue!

May bishops and priests all over the world have the same courage to speak so boldly and so publically for the gay community!

Praise God! Thank you Francis for being a man of courage, conviction and love!

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pope-francis-says-world-leaders-anti-lgbt-speeches-remind-him-of-hitler

Hello!

Recently a priest spoke to me of the end-time prophesies and of Satan’s plan to destroy the family and to destroy priests!

Into this melting pot of fear come the lgbt community who by some are seen as agents of Satan to destroy the family, marriage, priests!

Sadly what many forget is that gay people are part of the family too and that they too are part of the church!

The real issue is that gay’s have never been properly integrated into the family of God in a loving and respectful way!

The result is that they are either ‘all in or all out’ and that the church can appear like a family for straight people only!

Gays are then seen as a threat to the church and family and even those who do become part of the church live in a great silence.

There are many celibate gay lay-people and priests who live in silence and fear!

So why are so many straight people afraid of gay people!

Surely if they were comfortable in their own selves they needn’t feel threatened by gays!

And besides, gays are never the majority so they hardly represent a real threat to marriage and family!

There are many advantages of being gay. Speaking for myself I have more time on my hands than if I was married with kids and so I’ve time to help others and participate more fully in church life!

On the negative can be the loneliness and not having one’s own family.

It seems to me that with a bit of love and understanding gay people could be seen as a great asset to the church and family and being gay could be seen as a gift rather than a cross!

And food for thought…if gay people were loved and integrated more into church and family life perhaps they’d be far less likely to create their own families through all these modern methods such as surrogacy etc.

Of course all this is not helped by 2000 years of almost complete silence on this topic by the church leading to fear, confusion and hurt!

But the best way to beat fear is to face it! The best way to beat confusion is to talk it through prayerfully and practically and the best way to heal hurts is to love!

And so I pray today for courage, wisdom and love for our church leaders so they may face these issues and break the hurtful cycle of fear, confusion and silence.

May nobody feel excluded from the family of God for who they are and for who they are not!

Michael

Another great article by our Pope which ties in with Our Lady’s messages of Medjugorje to be “apostles of love”.

St. Paul announced Jesus Christ to “idol worshippers” in Athens without attacking them, but by building bridges, Pope Francis said Wednesday.

“We also ask the Holy Spirit today to teach us to build bridges with culture, with those who do not believe or with those who have a creed different from ours. Always build bridges, always reach out, never aggression,” Pope Francis said Nov. 6 in St. Peter’s Square.

“Let us ask him for his ability to delicately inculturate the message of faith, placing on those who are in ignorance of Christ, a contemplative gaze, moved by a love that warms even the most hardened hearts,” he said at the general audience.

In his weekly catechesis on the Acts of the Apostles, Pope Francis described St. Paul’s discourse on the Areopagus as an example of inculturation of the Catholic faith in Athens.

“In the heart of one of the most famous institutions of the ancient world, the Areopagus, he achieved an extraordinary example of inculturation of the message of faith: he announces Jesus Christ to idol worshipers, and he does not do so by attacking them, but by becoming … a builder of bridges,” Pope Francis said.

Paul “shudders inside to see a city full of idols,” the pope said, quoting Acts 17:16. He added that this encounter with paganism pushed St. Paul to “build a bridge of dialogue with the culture.”

Looking upon Athens with the eyes of faith, “drives him [Paul] to open a path between the Gospel and the pagan world.”

“In this way Paul observes culture, observes the environment of Athens starting from a contemplative gaze which discovers that it is God who lives in their houses, in their streets and in their squares,” he said.

Francis added: “This makes us wonder about our way of looking at our cities: Do we observe with indifference? With contempt? Or with the faith that recognizes the children of God in the midst of anonymous crowds?”

Full article https://catholicherald.co.uk/news/2019/11/07/pope-francis-st-paul-announced-christ-to-idol-worshippers-without-attacking-them/

As I reflect on this I think of how many times I’ve used the same expression in terms of evangisation of lgbt community!

I even named my go-fund page (which was a failure as so few had any heart to help)

https://www.gofundme.com/f/bridge-of-love

But I guess seeing how much some people hate the pope and his pastoral approach I shouldn’t be surprised that I’d be hated too by many!

Yet Francis doesn’t seem to care! He’s a man of the people and is doing his best and so am I!

So today please join me in praying for the pope and that we may become the builders of bridges and the apostles of love that both he and Our Lady are asking for!

Good morning!

Most of us are familiar with the story ‘The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe” and how behind a seemingly innocent wardrobe was a mystical land of good and evil!

The wardrobe seemed just normal and yet behind the outward veneer was a forest of life!

In a way each one of us is a wardrobe and behind our outward appearance of normality can lie terrible pain and battles known to nobody!

It took the innocence of a child to open the wardrobe and free Narnia!

At times I see our catholic church as a big wardrobe and locked inside is a terrible battle of good and evil that remains somewhat hidden by the external structure!

People are trained to walk around like mini-wardrobes locked tight with the keys of fear and silence!

As I meet more and more gay catholics I find it sad that the place they feel the most rejected is the church!

Many, after years of struggle come out of the gay closet and accept their sexuality only to be then put into the catholic closet or wardrobe!

And just like Narnia, behind the fur coats is a multitude of catholics from all walks of life who are gay!

There are professionals, clergy, young, old, married and they live a hell of shame, silence and rejection!

Jesus desires truth and to open the wardrobe of vulnerability and to free the gays!

Not free them into a godless lifestyle but free them into a godfilled lifestyle where they can be fully integrated and accepted in the church for who they are without pretending!

This requires our church leaders to have hearts of love, compassion and mercy and a thirst for justice, equality and truth and to return to its origins as a divine institution run by God rather than a human institution run by men!

So whatever your closet is, open wide the doors and be yourself! Jesus made you to be you and there is no shame in that!

Come Lord Jesus, free us of all shame, fear and silence and may our church by a place of love, freedom, acceptance and vulnerability that will draw all people to you!

Good morning!

A few days ago I had a great experience in confession with a french priest!

He listened with his heart, asked appropriate questions and didn’t judge!

One of his questions was funny! After telling him that I’m involved in evangelisation he asked me if I was part of a community.

Good question and certainly not the first time I heard it!

I replied that I wasn’t, not for the want of trying but that in 11 years travelling all over the world I’d never met a community with any desire to reach out to the gay world and that as soon as I mentioned my desire to talk about that I was politely made aware that there was no space for me!

The gay world is a totally different world and one needs to be as immune to talking about sex as a doctor would be with seeing blood!

It often seemed to me that the reason many catholics are not at ease helping gay people is because they are not at ease in their own sexualities and that many times their sexual purity is more fear and law based than from a heart-lived love of God!

Certainly the gay community goes the other extreme where there is no shame at all but there is something to learn from them!

Sexuality is a gift from God, we are not supposed to be ashamed of either having it or talking about it!

In fact, to learn how to integrate it properly into our lives we need to be able to talk about it honestly, simply and openly!

Sadly many in our church are so very far away from this and as a result are unable to really communicate to a sexually liberated younger generation!

Last night I was at a venue where we feed the homeless. As I reflected I felt that I too was homeless, not in the sense that I have nowhere to sleep but more that there is no place in the home of the church for me!

Now I know that God can and will make a space but yet how sad that one has to literally fight so hard for a space, for a corner in the church!

‘Catholic’ means universal. Jesus commissioned the church to make disciples of all people and all nations and so it’s sadly ironic that someone like me should have to fight so hard for what in theory should be a walk in the park!

The church baptised me and confirmed me without my asking and when the very Holy Spirit that they gave me came alive in my life they didn’t want anything to do!

Sounds like a cuckoo-church to me where just like a cuckoo who lays eggs and then dumps them to some other nest to rear them!

Anyway, that said Jesus has a place for me and I am catholic just like anyone else regardless of my sexual orientation or spiritual experiences!

My prayer today is that our church will be like a mother hen carefully looking after her precious chicks rather than a careless cuckoo abandoning her chicks to foreign homes!

Have a great day

Michael

Soon after accepting that I was gay I had an experience of Jesus. Jesus showed me that He loved me, gay and all!

And so I went to talk to my uncle Thomas. Thomas was a very tall man, he was a model when he was younger and while some say I look a little like him, I have yet to win any beauty pagents!

Thomas never married and growing up we all knew that he was gay. Of course he never said it but some things don’t need to be said.

Thomas was also a very religious man and had told me a few years before of a dream he had where Jesus came to him. Like all gay people, he too had suffered an awful lot in his life and in his generation homosexuality was even more taboo.

Country Ireland is full of old bachelors who “never found the right woman” and who hang out in men’s toilets!

To be honest while some of these men can be dangerous, they are also to be pitied. They could never talk openly about their sexuality and shame drove them underground.

Sadly the Church had a big role to play in this!

And so when I experienced Jesus I went to talk to my uncle Thomas. He understood immediately. He too had had experiences of demons and Jesus had given him a charism in prayer.

Thomas was my rock and loved me and helped me and prayed with me more than any priest in any country.

He had a simple and yet iron faith!

There was only one problem. Thomas would tell me to keep away totally from gay people less I fall into sin!

I would for a while but each time lonliness would lead me back. Straight people can never fully know what it’s like to be gay!

Priests would advise me the same, to keep away from gays!

But keeping away from gays was like keeping away from myself and gave me so much depression and lonliness.

It was like gays were deemed to be dangerous predators and that there was nothing good about them!

Occasionally I used to sneak off to meet gay people and it was so freeing. It was an environment where I wasn’t judged and I must admit that I often had the most interesting conversations in gay bars and even sauna’s.

Yes of course there was a lot of sexual activity too but one is not obliged to participate.

As I got to know these guys I got healed myself. Seeing that there was more to them than their sexuality helped me understand that there was more to me than my sexuality! Seeing God’s love and mercy for them helped me understand His love and mercy for me!

Many times I saw a supernatural blue light of Our Lady as I wandered around these places!

However I lived in terrible fear! Fear of my uncle Thomas asking me where I’d been, fear of priests..

In 11 years travelling never once did I meet a priest with a heart to reach out to the gay community. Even the gay priests preferred to hide behind religious habits than open their hearts to their brothers!

Fear, fear and more fear is at the heart of it all. Fear of gays, fear of sin, fear of the church!

But catholic teaching teaches of 2 types of sins! One is by things you did deemed to be sinful such as masturbating and the other is the the things that you could have done but didn’t!

And so 99% of catholics seem to be so afraid of falling into sin that the same fear blocks them from reaching out to people who need love! Why are they not afraid of the sin of judging gay people and the sin of not loving and helping gay people?!

And so priests and others were so afraid that I’d fall into sin by mingling with the gays that they failed to see that it was in mingling with the gays that I’d get fully healed! Furthermore gay people needed to hear of God’s love for them, something I’m not sure I’ve ever heard mentioned in a Sunday sermon!

What’s more than that I’ve often found far more love and community among the gays than in religious houses where I’ve stayed over the years!

And so nowaday’s I meet gay people every day. They are the most wonderful people who have often had very difficult lives.

If I’m honest I know that I’ve reveived far more healing from them than they have from me!

So today is perhaps a good day for us all to open our hearts even wider to the gay community. Let’s not judge on people’s sexual activities but let’s love and break down the walls of prejudices in our hearts between ‘us and them’

How often in Church circles do I hear this statement in relation to gay people!

It is loaded with accusation, absent of mercy, compassion and any personal experience working with gay people!

The worst culprits are the people who themselves were away from God once upon a time, had some sort of experience of God and converted and now walk around thinking that they are better than everybody else forgettimg that without God’s intervention they could well be worse!

I am convinced that the pride of these people hurts Jesus more than all the other sins put together!

Going back to the title, do gays know what they are doing is wrong!

To say so suggests gays are not only wrong but they are also stupid and rebellious.

To the gay man or woman it feels perfectly natural and right to be with another of the same sex.

It would feel wrong and deceitful to pretend to like the opposite sex when one doesn’t.

Then comes the teaching of the church which by the way not everybody grew up with as the whole world isn’t catholic!

The church teaches against homosexual acts and not against loving someone of the same sex!

And so the average gay person growing up is utterly confused and often do not know who or what to listen to!

In their confusion they may talk to a priest. Talk to 10 different priests they’ll get 10 different answers!

So then they may try a quack! Same story, a hundred different theories!

And then one day they walk into a church upset and confused and they meet Sheila, Rosie and Thomas!

They have the misfortune to share their struggle and confusion and instead of being loved and listened to with compassion and understanding, they are accused, condemned, judged and expulsed!

Suicice among gay people is very high. Often because they have been pushed to it be self-righteous holy-joe’s instead of being adequately helped!

And so the real question is not whether or not gays know what they are doing but rather if those who judge them know what they are saying!

If you are gay then you will know what I mean by cuddles. If not you are about to learn and it may give u a better insight into the heart of gay people!

So what is “cuddles”?

Cuddles are exactly what the name suggests! Two people cuddling eachother!

Straight people do it too so it’s not exclusive to the gay world!

I first came accross cuddles when I accepted I was gay at about 25.

I grew up in a family without much affection and certainly not male affection. Touch from my dad was limited to him smacking me, ironically or prophetically often on the backside or ass for those of you unfamiliar with english!

So when I started meeting guys and going on some dates I was very surprised that some guys were not looking for sex, they were simply looking for a cuddle!

If i am honest I thought that this was pathetic. “Real” men didn’t behave like this, what a bunch of sissies!

Of course my image of men was largely limited to what I saw as a child. It went like this.

Say “fuck” as much as possible in every sentence! Real men do this. It’s a sign of being hard.

Never pass a comment on colours or what you like or not. Real men are not sensitive. Sensitivity is for girls and gays and we all knew that gays were filth.

Make as many comments as possible on girls boobs. Stare and drewl. The more of a man you are the more women you’ll screw.

Never express emotions, never cry and never say “I love you”.

So….as you can imagine a guy asking me for a cuddle did not fit in at all to this template!!

However over the years as I got more and more healing my heart softened and so often I craved a hug.

Priests and religious seemed to have come from the same school of masculinity as me and I’d have had a better chance of getting a hug from my dad as from them!

Eventually I met some charismatic priests and people and they were not affraid to hug. My stony heart began to melt and often I’d cry spontaneously as love entered where it was previously banned!

And so going back to cuddles! Us gay guys are real sensitive. Touch is a big thing for us as is giving and receiving affection!

Alex was the first gay guy I cuddled with. He too was catholic and all we did was cuddle. When I told my pentecostal friends and catholic mentor they told me that I was deceived by Satan. They cost me a major breakdown and yet maybe it was a major breakthrough!

Away from them and back in Ireland God showed me that guys can love guys without having sex with guys and that my need for male affection was normal!

He showed me that His plan for gay people was not that they should live alone starved of affection and intimacy but rather that they could live together and that their love would purify.

He showed me His crazy love for me and for gays and His sadness at how closed and cold so many church people are to us gays!

And so Jesus has taught me the art of hugging and cuddling and in expressing love in other ways besides lust.

Of course to some people this is “gay without the sex” because some people are hell bent on making gays straight.

But for anyone out there who is gay or who has a gay child, you may indeed understand this and know that God desires gays to live fulfilled lives too and to have some of the “life in abundance” promised in the scriptures!

So, if you meet a gay person today. Smile, give them a warm hug and tell them that God has a plan for them too!

Bless you all and if anybody is feeling generous some financial help would be much appreciated.

Mike