Christ Church welcomes LGBT Catholics

For members of the northwest Bronx’s LGBT community, the path from Catholicism may lead directly to Christ Church Riverdale.

That is the trajectory followed by at least one Riverdale resident who spent a decade pursuing formation as a Jesuit priest in the Roman Catholic Church.

Benjamin Brenkert, who left the Society of Jesus last July, said he looks forward to being received and confirmed through an official rite into the Episcopal Church in the coming months.

As Mr. Brenkert wrote in an op-ed column in these pages in August 2014, his decision to leave the Catholic church was carefully deliberated.

“The closer I came to ordination, the more alienated I felt from my more traditional minded peers, the more I felt betrayed by my faith, the more confused I felt about my authentic place in the Church,” he stated.

In a recent interview, Mr. Brenkert confirmed that over time, he came to see both the Vatican’s and the Archdiocese of New York’s absence of activism on the part of its LGBT parishioners and priests as a kind of hypocrisy. Mr. Brenkert said that while individual parishes or churches might try to bridge the divide with their LGBT parishioners, those members should be welcomed at all levels of the church.

Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York, confirmed that his organization had no records of LGBT parishioners or any active outreach programs targeting the LGBT community, despite other plans including the “Making All Things New” initiative. It “seeks to address how the Archdiocese can best meet the religious, spiritual and pastoral needs of the people of God now and into the future.”

“Ministry to that community would only be effective at the parish-level,” Mr. Zwilling said.

Although he did not attend regular mass at a Riverdale Catholic church while pursuing formation, Mr. Brenkert said he looked forward to attending service locally at Christ Church Riverdale once he has been received. He currently attends services in the West Village, at the Episcopal Church Saint Luke in the Fields.

To Christ Church Riverdale’s acting priest, Mr. Brenkert’s story is familiar.