PRIDE MONTH 2025: Remembering Father John J. McNeill, a Prophet Who Was Ignored, Silenced, and Rejected

Susan Russell. RCWP

June 15, 2025

John McNeill was a Jesuit priest, theologian, psychologist, and activist. In the words of Sister Jeannine Gramick of New Ways Ministry, he was “a dear friend and colleague …a true pioneer in whose footsteps so many of us followed. I learned so much from his research and writing, but I learned even more from personal interactions with him by witnessing the passion and human concern he had for every LGBT person he encountered.”

Photo by Gigi Delgado (Global Cocktails blog)

“Pride is a celebration of diversity, a way to embrace the infinite diversity of the Divine. ‘For God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it was very good’ (Genesis 1:31). Ilia Delio explains, “God looks at what God brings into being and sees it is ‘very good’ because God is the vital core of every being, the invisible mysterious center of personhood who dwells within as fidelity in love, a love so great that every person whether gay, straight, trans, bi, queer is loved uniquely and unconditionally by God.”

~Ilia Delio, The Rainbow of Pride. Centerfor Christogenesis. June 10, 2019.

John McNeill’s groundbreaking 1976 book, The Church and the Homosexual, offered a profound and compassionate theological argument for the dignity and inclusion of LGBTQ individuals within the Catholic Church. Rather than rejecting Church teachings outright, McNeill sought to reconcile Catholic doctrine with lived human experience, arguing from a place of deep faith and scholarly rigor. Had the Catholic Church embraced his work instead of silencing it, the path of pastoral care and ecclesial understanding could have become markedly more inclusive and healing.

Embracing McNeill’s work would have required the Church to move beyond legalistic moral judgments and instead listen to the voices of LGBTQ Catholics as part of the living Body of Christ. McNeill's theological insights—rooted in scripture, natural law, and his experience as both a priest and psychotherapist—invited the Church to reconsider its understanding of human sexuality as a gift from God, not a deviation from it.

If the Church had welcomed McNeill's message, it could have become a model of compassion and justice, acknowledging that homosexual persons are not merely to be “tolerated” but fully accepted and affirmed in their capacity to love and be loved. Rather than marginalizing LGBTQ members, the Church might have grown in moral maturity, fostering dialogue, healing trauma, and modeling Christ's radical hospitality.

In choosing instead to censure and eventually expel McNeill from the Jesuits, the Church missed a pivotal opportunity for growth. Father John J. McNeill’s legacy remains a testament to the courage to speak truth in love and a continuing challenge to the Church to live up to its call to uphold the dignity of every person.

As we celebrate Pride Month in many cities around our nation and beyond, let us be reminded of the struggle for basic human rights faced by many of our LGBTQIA+ family and friends. Let our voices be heard.

Song for Reflection: Plowshare Prayer (song link) Spencer LaJoye (they, them), February 18, 2022.

Dear blessed creator, dear mother, dear savior

Dear father, dear brother, dear holy other

Dear sibling, dear baby, dear patiently waiting

Dear sad and confused, dear stuck and abused

Dear end of your rope, dear worn out and broke

Dear go-it-alone, dear running-from-home

Dear righteously angry, forsaken by family

Dear jaded and quiet, dear tough and defiant,

I pray that I'm heard. And I pray that this works.

I pray if a prayer has been used as a sword

Against you and your heart, against you and your word,

I pray that this prayer is a plowshare of sorts.

That it might break you open; it might help you grow.

I pray that your body gets all that it needs.

And if you don't want healing, I just pray for peace.

I pray that your burden gets lighter each day.

I pray the mean voice in your head goes away.

I pray that you honor the grief as it comes.

I pray you can feel all the life in your lungs.

I pray that if you go all day being brave

That you can go home, go to bed feeling safe.

I pray you're forgiven. I pray you forgive.

I pray you set boundaries and openly live.

I pray that you feel you are worth never leaving.

I pray that you know I will always believe you.

I pray that you're heard. And I pray that this works.

Amen on behalf of the last and the least,

On behalf of the anxious, depressed and unseen.

Amen for the workers, the hungry, the houseless.

Amen for the lonely and recently spouseless.

Amen for the queers and their closeted peers.

Amen for the bullied who hold in their tears

Amen for the mothers of little Black sons.

Amen for the kids who grow up scared of guns.

Amen for the addicts, ashamed and hungover.

Amen for the calloused, the wisened, the sober.

Amen for ones who want life to be over.

Amen for the leaders who lose their composure.

And amen for the parents who just lost their baby.

Amen for chronically ill and disabled.

Amen for the children down at the border.

Amen for the victims of our law and order.

I pray that you're heard. And I pray that this works.

I pray if a prayer has been used as a sword

Against you and your heart, against you and your word,

I pray that this prayer is a plowshare of sorts