What is the church? Who is the church? Today that question is difficult to answer. A real marvel of contemporary Catholicism has been its ability to maintain within one church differing and sometimes blatantly opposed groups of believers. Throughout the United States pockets of church offer a spectrum of church experiences. Among those pockets are some 116 local chapters of DIGNITY, Inc., a lay organization of lesbian and gay Catholics and their friends, founded in Los Angeles in 1969. To a growing number of American Catholics, Dignity offers an alternative experience of church. Indeed, for most of its members, Dignity offers the only possible experience; without Dignity they would simply forget about being Catholic.

Certainly Dignity is on the fringe of official Roman Catholicism. Some believe that the October 30, 1986, Vatican ‘Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons’ officially proscribes Dignity. But only consideration of what the Dignity chapters actually are would determine whether or not they provide an authentic Catholic experience of church. So here a priest who has ministered to various Dignity chapters for over ten years offers an inside picture so judgments to be made may be based on the evidence.