London West End Church Continues To Celebrate Britain’s Sole Catholic Service For Gays

On the eve of the United Kingdom papal visit, a report on the only Roman Catholic Mass celebrated solely for gay men and women – a gay Mass held at Our Lady of the Assumption and St Gregory in London’s West End. According to the parish priest, Monsignor Seamus O’Boyle, “People had been used to meeting at the nearby Anglican Church of St Anne’s and there was a feeling that it was time to find a way of finding Catholic premises.” He says that a series of drafted documents were shared by top ranking Cardinals in Westminster and the Vatican, necessary to agree on basic rules. The Church wanted an assurance that the services would not be manipulated as a means to challenge Catholic doctrine, so one of the protocols in place reads “Information about the Mass will be sensitive to the reality that the celebration of Mass is not to be used for campaigning for any change to, or ambiguity about, the Church’s teachings.” Joe Stanley, one of the members of the Soho Masses Pastoral Council, says “This is not a place which offers a platform for voicing criticisms of church doctrine. The emphasis is on pastoral care. Sometimes people come here and have tears in their eyes, because for the first time, two really important parts of their lives have come together: their Catholicism and their sexual identity.”