The Catholic Church is an institution with a track record of abusing children.

In recent years, courts across the globe have required the church to pay out millions upon millions of dollars to victims. Some were young women in Ireland and elsewhere held against their will in what were known as “mother and baby homes” in which the mothers and their children were often horrifically abused, many to death. 

Also in Ireland, more than 10,000 girls and women were confined to Magdalene Laundries between 1922 and 1996. This included sex workers, unmarried mothers, the daughters of unmarried mothers, victims of rape and even some girls who had never had sex but had been deemed promiscuous. At the Magdalene Laundries, the girls and women provided slave labor, were ubiquitously and monstrously abused. Again, many died.

You might be saying, “Ah, but that’s Ireland.”

The sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests during the past seven decades in every state in America and in many other countries is now well documented. The numbers of priests who raped children and the number of children they raped is staggering. 

Not only did bishops, archbishops and cardinals know priests were abusing children, they went to great efforts to hide the abuse and protect the abusers. To this day, state attorneys across the nation continue to investigate victims’ claims and produce reports of rampant abuse.

Time and again, those with power in the Catholic Church wield that power over those who have little to no say in the choices being made for them.

In this tradition, the Diocese of Cleveland announced in September its hardline stance against any students, faculty or staff in its schools who openly identify as LGBTQ+. Even rainbows are forbidden on diocesan school properties.

Leaving Christ’s compassion outside the church and school doors, the diocese’s new policy requires parental notification of students who are in some manner exhibiting LGBTQ+ behavior or symbols. The diocese claims it won’t tell families if the student would face physical abuse at home. Right. The Catholic Church claiming expertise at sussing out which families are physically abusive is not very reassuring.

In its statement on the new policies, the diocese claims every person is welcome to the church — as long as they are, or pose as, heterosexual. The diocese further claims that people who are LGBTQ+ are experiencing “gender dysphoria” and “gender confusion,” exposing the diocese’s willful ignorance of biology, which has never been as simple as two types of genitalia.

The Diocese of Cleveland insists that LGBTQ+ people are behaving “contrary to the divinely revealed reality of our true, God-given human nature.” If God is responsible for all creation, the diocese’s assertion that God wants only heterosexual expression in humans devalues, indeed brazenly questions, divine omniscience.

People who grew up in times and places where they felt unsafe revealing that they are LGBTQ+ often describe it as feeling invisible, wearing a costume or living a lie. They feared being discovered and then being physically harmed. That stress often takes a huge toll on mental health.

Fewer than 10% of American youths are LGBTQ+ but 24% of 12- to 14-year-old Americans who die by suicide are LGBTQ+, while 40% of homeless youths are LGBTQ+. It doesn’t take a logician to figure out why. Even today, many families kick out children who are gay. Other LGBTQ+ youths run away from home to escape physical abuse.

Some homeless LGBTQ+ children couch-surf at the homes of friends and family. Others wind up in shelters or live on the streets. Many end up trafficked. In his book “Dear America,” Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jose Antonio Vargas describes how he came out in high school when he was 16. Though he was a good student and never in trouble, Vargas’ grandparents, who were Filipino immigrants and Catholic, kicked him out when they learned. 

Suddenly homeless, Vargas went to the home of a 38-year-old man whom he’d met in an internet chat room for gay men. He remained with the man until his grandparents asked him to return home. For many homeless LGBTQ+ youths, like all homeless teens, the enticement of shelter and meals makes them easy prey for human trafficking.

If the Catholic Church as an institution is unable to reflect on its innumerable recent crimes committed against children and stop new abuses, including this anti-LGBTQ+ policy, it might consider the financial consequences.

Many families in Northeast Ohio are watching to see if the Catholic schools their children attend will adopt the new anti-LGBTQ+ policies of the Diocese of Cleveland. Many Catholic parents are committed to instilling the virtues of compassion and love for all humanity in their children and will not spend their money on schools that promulgate bigotry and hypocrisy.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on October 8, 2023.