New Bishop to reach out to homosexuals

The first Barbadian Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church will be exploring how the Church can reach out to members of the homosexual community when he takes up his duties in another three months.

During a meet and greet with members of the media via Zoom today, 55-year-old Bishop-elect Neil Scantlebury stressed that everyone needed salvation, as all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory.

“My sin may not be your sin, and your sin may not be my sin, but yet we are all sinners, and being sinners we need the mercy and grace of God. Experiencing God’s forgiveness and mercy and knowing what God desires of us will indeed help to push us in the right direction,” he said.

Father Scantlebury, who was announced as the new Bishop on Monday, said the Church also needs to reach out to those who are unwilling to accept the life chosen by homosexuals. He said homosexuals need to be shown love, kindness, and charity, in addition to how to do good and right.

“It is helping other people to understand the whole homosexual act . . . is not an act that is pleasing to God, and to come to that point that they too can live a chaste life and to ask God for that grace. It is not a matter of what I want and what I feel like doing and I do. There is a higher order and we turn to God for that guidance of what to do and what we should do,” he said.

“Of course, some of them will say ‘well, this is how God made me and this is it’. Well, I hear that, but that doesn’t mean that you have to act out the homosexual act. They don’t have to live that way. It is just like a single person that is heterosexual – they don’t have to go out and have three and four women, a woman in every parish. No, they have to live out a celibate life, a chaste life. God gives them the grace to do that.”

The incoming Bishop said he will be engaging fellow priests in discussion on practical ways to reach out to homosexuals.

Father Scantlebury succeeds Bishop Jason Gordon, who served as Catholic Bishop from September 2011 to October 2017. He has been serving in the Diocese of St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands since his ordination to the priesthood on May 18, 1995.

The Bishop-elect said he was heartened to start another chapter in serving the Church and looked forward to and embraced the new journey the Lord had asked him to take.

“It is honestly and truly a moment of joy. I am humbled at the support and the love and all the prayers. People have texted and called. I thank God for this time and for this experience,” he said.

The past student of Combermere will be ordained during an Episcopal ordination on March 17, 2021, the Feast Day at the St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cathedral.

After serving as a priest for the past 25 years, he said he quickly said “yes” when asked to take up the new post.

“It makes me reflect upon when our blessed mother was asked about being the mother of the Saviour. She probably stopped and pondered for that brief moment, ‘what is God doing? What is possible?’ And then she says ‘yes’. And so I prayed about this a while and I said ‘if I should be asked I would say yes; I am not seeking this, I am not running this thing down. If you want to pass me over Lord, let your will be done’. And so I said ‘yes’. It was a moment of ‘okay’ it is finally here, okay, yes’. I breathed a sigh of relief and said the ball has started to roll,” Father Scantlebury said.

He explained that his duty would entail working closely with the priests and clergy who are on the frontlines interacting with the people, to give them further direction on how to address various issues affecting society.

“So that’s pretty much where I will start the ball rolling. Once we get the priests moving and get the ball rolling, then we can look and see what areas need to be fully addressed,” Father Scantlebury said. (AH)