Citing New York Archbishop Timothy
Dolan's response to a gay homeless shelter, Joseph Amodeo has
resigned from the junior board of the city's Catholic Charities.
The
Associated Press reported that Amodeo quit on Saturday over
the cardinal's attitude.
Carl Siciliano, who heads the Ali
Forney Center, a homeless shelter dedicated to gay, lesbian, bisexual
and transgender youth, started the conflict when he sent a letter to
Dolan, a vocal opponent of the state's gay marriage law, in which he
stated that Dolan's “loud and strident voice against the acceptance
of LGBT people” creates “a climate where parents turn on their
own children.”
“As youths find the courage and
integrity to be honest about who they are at younger ages, hundreds
of thousands are being turned out of their homes and forced to
survive alone on the streets by parents who cannot accept having a
gay child,” Siciliano wrote.
Dolan denied the claims in a letter
dated March 28.
“For you to make the allegations and
insinuations you do in your letter based on my adherence to the clear
teachings of the Church is not only unfair and unjust, but
inflammatory,” Dolan wrote in his letter. “Neither I nor anyone
in the Church would ever tolerate hatred of or prejudice towards any
of the Lord's children.”
The action led Amodeo to quit his seat
on the executive committee of the junior board of the New York branch
of Catholic Charities.
“The comments that His Eminence has
made regarding same-sex couples, the LGBT community in general, and
his recent in-action in response to the Ali Forney's plea for
pastoral assistance, has left me with no other choice but to resign,”
Amodeo wrote in his resignation letter.
“Mr. Siciliano's comments were not
inflammatory, they were truth; they were a call for help; and they
were expressive of the cry in the wilderness that LGBT people have
been making for far too long.”
“As a gay Catholic who teaches
religious education, is active in parish life and supports Catholic
organizations, I'm afraid that the Archbishop has caused my heart to
ache and my soul to feel pierced.”
Dolan strongly opposed passage of New
York's gay marriage law, calling it an “ominous threat” to
society and “a violation of what we consider the natural law that's
embedded in every man and woman.”