Remembering the Gay 'Saint of 9/11'

On Sept. 11, 2001, the worst terrorist attack ever to take place on American soil leveled the World Trade Center in New York.

In the days that followed, televangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell laid the blame for the attacks on gays and lesbians, among others, claiming that God was punishing the United States by allowing terrorists to succeed in the attacks.

Others beseiged the quickly established victims' compensation fund with demands that gay and lesbian survivors whose life partners had been killed not receive federal monies earmarked for bereaved families.

But in the middle of the anti-gay sentiment that welled up among certain quarters after the attacks there was a story of heroism involving a gay Catholic priest, Mychal Judge, a New York City Fire Dept. chaplain. Even as the American mainstream media focused on the indelible chain of events ten years later, a British newspaper recalled Judge.

"When he heard about the disaster at the World Trade Centre, he donned his Catholic collar and firefighter garb and raced downtown," columnist Amy Goodman noted in the Sept. 7 piece, which appeared in the Guardian.

"At 9:59 a.m., the South tower collapsed, and the force and debris from that mass of steel, concrete, glass and humanity as it hit the ground is likely what killed Father Mychal," the column continued.

"His was the first recorded death from the attacks that morning. His life's work should be central to the tenth anniversary commemorations of the 9/11 attacks: peace, tolerance and reconciliation."

A vigil for Judge took place on Sept. 4 in New York, in front of the St Francis Church where Judge lived and worked, just down the block from the ladder 24/engine 1 firehouse.

The man behind the vigil, which takes place every year, is Steven McDonald, Goodman reported. McDonald had been a police officer when, in 1986, he was shot by a suspect and left paralyzed. Judge counseled McDonald and helped pull him through a terrible personal tragedy.

Judge "reaffirmed my faith in God, and that it was important to me to forgive the boy who shot me," McDonald told Goodman. "And I'm alive today because of that."

Goodman wrote that Judge had worked with the poor and with people living with HIV; he had also traveled to Northern Ireland, a nation torn by deep and persistent religious and political differences, to promote peace and reconciliation.

Judge himself was not fully reconciled to the world in which he sought to bring healing, Goodman noted. "In his private diaries, the revered Catholic priest wrote, 'I thought of my gay self and how the people I meet never get to know me fully,' " the columnist reported.

"The diaries were given to journalist Michael Daly by Judge's twin sister, Dympna, and appear in Daly's book, 'The Book of Mychal: The Surprising Life and Heroic Death of Father Mychal Judge.' "

Goodman noted that one film about Judge, "Saint of 9/11," was produced in 2006. A new film, also about the gay priest, called "Remembering Michael" is nearing completion. Both films were made by Brendan Fay, a GLBT equality advocate. Fay told Goodman that Judge had been part of Dignity, a Catholic group supportive of GLBTs.

"He ministered to (us) during the Aids crisis, when there were few priests available to our community," Fay recalled.

Judge was not the only gay hero on 9/11. Goodman recalled, "Mark Bingham, a rugby player and public relations consultant who also joined in the fight to prevent the hijackers from using [United Flight 93] as a weapon, was openly gay. As was David Charlebois, the co-pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon."

A few articles about Judge have appeared in the American press. A Sept 11, 2011 Tampa Bay Online op-ed reported, "He was giving last rites to a firefighter when he was hit by debris and died." The article noted that Judge was "a gay man who kept his sexual orientation private, while keeping his priestly duties of celibacy," and called Judge "a source of love for those untouchables for whom the Gospel was created."

Over and over, Judge was dubbed "The Saint of 9/11." But while gay Americans found a source of pride and spiritual uplift in the story of Judge's heroism and courage in the face of unparalleled national disaster, some sought to stifle the message that Judge was a role model not only for straight people of faith, but for gays of any, or no, religious persuasion.

One article, also published on Sept. 11 of this year, recalled Judge with words of praise, but warned that the gay cleric "Must Not Be Used for Cultural Revolution." That article appeared in Catholic Online.

"Some within the homosexual equivalency movement [sic] are trying to use this Ground Zero hero to foment a social and cultural revolution," the article asserted. "They should be ashamed. Homosexual equivalency activists insist that we all recognize a moral and legal equivalency between true marriages and cohabitating practicing homosexuals or face legal punitive consequences."

The article went so far as to question whether Judge really was gay, or whether that was a fabrication. The article quoted the head of the anti-gay Catholic League, Bill Donohue, as saying, "It has been said that Fr. Mychal Judge, the first of the First Responders to die on 9/11, was gay. Not everyone agrees."

The Catholic Church teaches that gays and lesbians do not "choose" their sexual orientations, but persists in the claim that gays suffer from some form of pathology and are "relationally disordered." The Church also insists that gays and lesbians are "called" to lives of celibacy in which they ought to renounce the hope of forming their own families, and regards civil marriage between two persons of the same gender -- whatever their religion might be -- as sinful. The Vatican has gone so far as to declare that same-sex parents, no matter how caring and attentive they may be, do "violence" to their children by raising them in home with two parents of the same gender.

The Catholic Online article clung to the Church's orthodoxy on the matter of homosexuality.

"Ironically, even if Fr Mychal Judge had suffered from same sex attraction, he would better be viewed as a living witness to the liberating truth of chastity proclaimed by the Church which he served with love and devotion," the Catholic Online article declared. "He lived a life of consecrated celibacy with great joy and fidelity. His example of chastity should be considered by those who now try to use him for their own revolutionary ends."

But as described by National Public Radio in a Sept. 5 article, Judge was a brave, strong, and talented man who simply happened to be gay.

"He had a deep voice, like a man's man, you know?" retired firefighter Craig Monahan related. "I could picture him, chopping down a door with an axe. He would love to do that, too. He'd love to get in on the drills and practice with the Halligan, swinging it, breaking the door or something. He fit right in, you know?"

The article noted that Judge was captured on video at the scene of the World Trade Center in the midst of the crisis, thanks to the fortuitous presence of a pair of French documentary filmmakers. In the resulting movie, Judge is shown in one scene looking out as the falling bodies of those who jumped from the building's upper stories crash down outside.

"And if you look closely at that film, you'll see his lips moving," Friar Michael Duffy, a friend of Judge's, told NPR. "Now, for those of us who know him, he wasn't one that talked to himself. He was praying. And absolving people as they fell to their death."

There is an active movement to have the church declare Judge a saint. The movement has broad support among New York Catholics. There have even been miracles attributed to him, such a 4-year-old boy who suddenly was cured of a severe speaking disability after praying to the dead priest. Perhaps not coincidentally, the boy's father is a firefighter in Rhode Island. Firefighters (along with gay men) have been at the forefront of the canonization movement.

The Vatican is notoriously slow in canonizing controversial figures. It took 600 years for Joan of Arc to be beatified and then canonized. Dorothy Day, the socialist leader of the Catholic Worker Movement (also a New Yorker) has been declared a "person of interest," first step toward sainthood.