The “LGBTQ Catholic Ministry” Outreach, founded in 2022 by James Martin, S.J., recently offered the following queer-friendly “adaptation” of the Confiteor:
I confess to our Loving God
and to you, my siblings,
That I have fallen short
in my prejudiced thoughts and my biased judgements
in my careless words and my degrading self-talk
in what I have done to cooperate with injustice
and in what I have failed to do to resist it;
Through my fear, through my complacency, through my worst errors.
Therefore I ask all my spiritual ancestors, queer saints,
and you, the human family,
to pray with me,
that together we might build a better tomorrow.
Amen.
This prayer comes from an article called “An LGBTQ Catholic guide to the Mass: Praying the Confiteor,” authored by Ariell Watson Simon, who describes herself as “queer” and lives in Missouri with her “wife.” Her essay “begins a series that explores praying with the Mass from an LGBTQ perspective.”
The Therapeutic Mentality
Simon, like Martin, relies heavily upon—indeed, is deeply rooted in—a therapeutic mentality. Eduardo Echeverria, in a two-part Catholic World Report essay that critiques Martin’s ministry and his bestselling book Building a Bridge (HarperOne, 2017), describes the therapeutic mentality as
a gospel of personal happiness in which happiness rests on the justification of self-authenticating experiences. This therapeutic way of life is pervasive throughout the domain of, for example, homosexual sexual experiences in which “no criteria of validity [for those experiences is offered] other than the therapeutic experience of conviction.” (The partial quote is from Christendom Awake [1999] by Aidan Nichols, O.P.)
Put another way, it’s the belief that feelings and experience are the first and final ground of truth and reality. Thus, Simon writes of how, when she “first came out as an LGBTQ Catholic,” she recoiled at saying, “I have greatly sinned.” Why? Because she was concerned that those around her at Mass might think “queerness is a great sin.” But, she says, “I don’t believe that my sexuality is wrong. I’m proud of who I am.” A problem, she insists, is that there is an “overemphasis on sexual morality in our tradition.”
We hardly need to be theologians to recognize the ideological and deeply secular nature of Simon’s attempt to pervert the words and focus of the Confiteor:
I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. Therefore, I ask Blessed Mary ever virgin, all the angels and saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.
In the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chysostom, we Eastern Catholics pray the following before receiving Holy Communion:
O Lord, I believe and profess that you are truly Christ, the Son of the living God, who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first. . . . O God, be merciful to me, a sinner. O God, cleanse me of my sins and have mercy on me. O Lord, forgive me, for I have sinned without number.
The intent, in both the East and the West, is acknowledging that I am a sinner, in constant need of mercy and conversion. Period.
Furthermore, implicit in these prayers is a fact that cannot be erased, even if Martin, Simon, and company seek to do so: it is Jesus Christ and his Church who tell us what is sinful and what is good—not our emotions, passions, or desires, no matter how strongly they press upon us. As Nichols writes, “it is not experience we should trust but the transmutation of experience by Scripture and Tradition.”
The Underlying Hubris
Secondly, and directly related, is the overt assumption made by Martin, Simon, and others that the pro-LGBTQ stance is true and moral. There is little, if any, attempt to argue for it. Martin’s book simply assumes as settled fact that being “LGBTQ” is a good and wonderful thing. As Echeverria rightly points out, Martin “does not argue for the authority of experience as self-justifying; rather, it is a presupposition of his work.”
This helps to explain the thinly veiled hubris evident in Martin’s work and many Outreach essays. Having tapped into their “true” identities and having discovered their “authentic” selves, such folks have attained a pseudo-gnostic knowledge, and anything contrary to it is rooted in fear, “homophobia,” and pre-modern prejudices. Who are we to disagree?
And so, for example, Martin often posts quotes and citations from liberal theologians “showing” that Sacred Scripture does not, in fact, condemn homosexual relationships at all. He has, in recent years, become more open in his rejection of the Church’s perennial teaching. When asked recently by Ross Douthat if he could live with the Church’s teachings on homosexuality remaining unchanged, Martin said, “No. I think we should always be open to the signs of the times and what science teaches us and what we understand about the human condition.”
Considering that the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that the Church’s moral teachings about homosexuality are based on Sacred Scripture, tradition, and the natural law (2357), we can reasonably conclude that whatever Martin is professing and teaching about these matters, it is not Catholic.
An Anti-Human Anthropology
Forty years ago, on October 31, 1986, then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation (now Dicastery) of the Doctrine of the Faith, released a “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,” which stated that
increasing numbers of people today, even within the Church, are bringing enormous pressure to bear on the Church to accept the homosexual condition as though it were not disordered and to condone homosexual activity. Those within the Church who argue in this fashion often have close ties with those with similar views outside it. These latter groups are guided by a vision opposed to the truth about the human person, which is fully disclosed in the mystery of Christ. They reflect, even if not entirely consciously, a materialistic ideology which denies the transcendent nature of the human person as well as the supernatural vocation of every individual (8).
This identification of the pro-homosexual movement as a materialistic ideology, which denies the created nature and supernatural vocation that all are called to in Christ, is important. The notion of “queer”—a term that a variety of meanings over the centuries—was taken up in the early 1990s, “not as a synonym for gay, but as a critical and political identity that challenged normative ideas about sexuality and gender.” Queer theory critiqued “the idea any sexuality or gender identity was normal or natural. This showed how particular norms of sexuality and gender were historically contingent.”
In sum, according to queer theory, God did not create man and woman, sexuality, or even marriage to be understood in an objective and ordered way. It’s all up for grabs, depending on what floats your alphabet boat. Or, in the words of Simon, in a May 2026 essay for Outreach,
God speaks to each person through their inmost desires and sense of self. For example, through sexuality, God reveals our relationality and points to God’s own relational nature. . . . Just as at Pentecost, God chooses to communicate this message in a multitude of ways, speaking the language of each of our sexual orientations. The Holy Spirit whispers to each of us, through our own desires, “Reach out, connect, relate.”
Ratzinger, reiterating the Church’s two millennia of teaching (itself rooted in the Old Testament and the commandments), wrote, “It is only in the marital relationship that the use of the sexual faculty can be morally good. A person engaging in homosexual behavior therefore acts immorally.”
Homosexual acts are sinful. But, for Simon, being “queer” and engaging in homosexual acts is not only not sinful, but a gift from God.
To this I say: choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve—the true God and his true teachings, or the gods of this age and their false teachings (see Josh. 24:15).