The Springfield Catholic Diocese canceled a scheduled performance by The Pioneer Valley Gay Men’s Chorus in a concert held over the holidays at Saint Teresa’s church in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
Members of the chorus told New England Public Radio they were deep in rehearsals for the concert and were “uninvited from participating after the Springfield Catholic Diocese received complaints.”
“It’s upsetting and disappointing and shocking that this would happen in Massachusetts,” chorus member Henry Gibson told NEPR. “It’s overall very accepting and progressive in the issue of gays.”
Neither the church’s pastor nor its Bishop Mitchell Rozanski would comment when NEPR reached out to them. Nor would they comment on the cancellation when Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen reached out to them for his column in The Boston Globe.
Wrote Cullen:
Gibson, one of the chorus leaders, told me the annual December concert is ecumenical and it rotates among South Hadley’s churches, where they have performed before without incident. His chorus had been practicing for months for the St. Theresa’s show when, around Thanksgiving, they were disinvited.
“Our understanding is the complaints came from outside the parish,” said Gibson, who added it was shocking that such open bigotry was appeased.
I wanted to know what drove the bishop to exclude the chorus, but his spokesman, Mark Dupont, told me the diocese would not comment.
Too bad, because I’d like to ask the bishop how what he did squares with Pope Francis’ admonition to clergy to be a little nicer to and tolerant of gay people.
I also wanted to ask the bishop what he would think if someone suggested it might be prudent for him to ban himself and any and all of his successors from attending holiday concerts, given that at least three of his predecessors covered up the sexual abuse of children and minors by priests. One of those bishops was criminally charged with sexually abusing boys, while another has been accused of doing the same.
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