Ursula Halligan in Conversation with Sister Jeannine Gramick 

Wonderful interview ! Thank you Ursula and Sister Jeannine.

Great interview, very enlightening. Thank you.

Delighted Sr Jeannine has just now ( October 2023)been received by Pope Francis , with the staff of New Ways ministry. A well deserved vindication after the unjust persecution...

If only more Catholics were like this lovely Sister. Wonderful interview.

When did this interview happen, sounds like it took place prior to the synodal process?

Heresy pure and simple!

You don't have to change church teaching, to reach out to LGBT people in a positive/christian way. You could maybe also do an interview with someone like Father Philip G. Bochanski from Courage International, a Catholic apostolate for those who experience same-sex attraction and are seeking to live chaste and faithful lives. Love is not a sin. But love by itself doesn't justify sexual acts. That's actually something most people believe. If sexual morality is only about love and not about procreation, then incest and polyamory should be fine as well as long as there's love. You could even argue that it's ok to have sex with an animal this way, because surely there's also a lot of love possible between people and animals. And how much love is necessary? If you fall in love with someone, can you have sex the first day you met, because it's love? And with regards to homosexuality, promiscuity and open relationships between two men are very common and acceptable and they will call that love too. Their slogan 'love is love' has never stopped them from promoting promiscuity during gay pride events. With regards to marriage, you don't have to be a catholic or even have faith in God, to know that same sex marriage is based on a false concept of marriage. Marriage is not simply about love. If it was, then there would not be a worldwide prohibition against siblings marrying each other. The reason marriage exists, is because the relationship between man and woman is so unique and essential, as without it, we wouldn't exist, that cultures all around the world, for thousands of years have wanted to celebrate it and regulate it for the good of society. This is a tradition that should be respected by everybody and for christians it can be related also to the commandment to honor your mother and father. When you would legalize polygamy you undermine the value of monogamy. When you legalize gay marriage, you undermine the value of the relationship between man and woman and the importance of the relationship between children and their mother and father. That's also why pope Francis, as then Cardinal Bergoglio, had written to the Carmelite Nuns of Buenos Aires in 2010: "The Argentine people will face, in the coming weeks, a situation whose outcome may gravely injure the family. This refers to the project of the law regarding marriage of persons of the same sex. What is at stake here is the identity and survival of the family: father, mother and children. At stake are the lives of so many children who will be discriminated against in advance, depriving them of the human maturation that God wanted to be given with a father and a mother. At stake is the outright rejection of the law of God, engraved also in our hearts." Pope Francis is certainly not in favor of same sex marriage. And please stop acting as if condemning homosexual behavior means that we are reducing gay people to second class citizens. All people have some kind of inclination towards sin and sin exists in many ways, homosexuality being just one form of sin. Saying that homosexuality is sinful behavior isn't any more discriminating than saying that stealing, lying, cheating is sinful. It's all related to our human condition, in a world where we have lost the harmony with God, with nature and with each other due to original sin. It is on the contrary important to point out that the homosexual lifestyle is unhealthy through various of its risky sexual acts and high rate of promiscuity. Homosexuality can also be addicting, which increases the danger it poses in particular to young people. I think we started giving too much focus to homosexuality as an identity, which then has become a greater cause for stigma. This started in Western culture at the end of the 19th century with the invention of the word homosexual. When society focuses a lot on the difference between gay and straight people and treats homosexuality as something bad, then this can obviously hurt people and make them feel excluded. My hope is that once people understand more about how sexuality can become connected to many things like all kinds of fetishes, they will also understand that we should be very careful to classify people as bad or second class, just because they may have some kind of weird sexual fantasies. At the same time, that does not mean that we should think that acting on your sexual fantasies should only be measured by love and nothing else. Gay people can of course still love others. They simply have to accept that they can't give in to certain sexual fantasies. And this goes for most people. We can all have certain sexual fantasies that we shouldn't act upon. And this way, gay people shouldn't feel stigmatized, because everybody has to deal with certain sinful inclinations.