Project: gay and catholic in the Maria Hilf community
The project: gay and catholic in the community Maria Hilf (PSK) is a gay and lesbian staff community on a Roman Catholic basis in Frankfurt am Main .
organization
The full name is: Project: gay and catholic in the Maria Hilf community. Christian community by and for gays , lesbians and their friends . The name affix was added in 2001 because lesbians who joined the group felt that the original name excluded them. Since the beginning of the project, gays have always been in the majority, at times lesbians have not participated at all. PSK is organized on a voluntary basis. The service takes place regularly as a mass celebration according to the Roman Catholic liturgy .
PSK is factually, theologically, content-wise and sociologically a congregation that organizes itself around its regular church service , but does not form a personal parish under canon law . This also gives rise to the somewhat crude term “project”. PSK is - as the only municipality with such an orientation in Germany - secured by an agreement with the local diocese , the diocese of Limburg . The two visits of the then Bishop of Limburg, Franz Kamphaus , made PSK recognized as part of the Roman Catholic Church. PSK is located - as already described in its name - in the Frankfurt Roman Catholic parish Maria Hilf . The aspiration of PSK is emancipatory and basic church . There are a number of networks in the gay scene and the churches , for example with the local Roman Catholic community, the Frankfurt City Church , the Ecumenical Working Group on Homosexuals and Churches (HuK), the Gay Theology working group , AIDS-Hilfe Frankfurt, and not only the project community for lesbians and gays - Frankfurt am Main and other groups. PSK is a member of the European Forum of Christian Lesbian and Gay Groups and of the Association of Lesbian and Gay Worship Communities (LSGG), which was founded in Frankfurt in 2002 with the help of PSK and is also regularly present at Protestant Church and Catholic Days through them . Also at the Christopher Street Day in Frankfurt PSC shall since 1992 (at that time: "Homo Solidarity Week") on a regular basis in cooperation with the domestic consumer and gay and lesbian communities of other denominational orientation from Frankfurt. On the eve of the CSD, the PSK usually also takes part in the ecumenical service on this occasion. PSK has also been represented at the "round table" of the department for same-sex lifestyles in the Hessian Ministry of Social Affairs since 1997.
history
The foundation date is the first church service of the community, which took place on April 7, 1991, White Sunday , in the chapel of the university community of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main in what was then the Alfred Delp House in Beethovenstraße. A few weeks later, on May 12, 1991, the Sunday before Pentecost , the service was celebrated for the first time and since then has been celebrated regularly in the Maria Hilf church in Frankfurt's Gallusviertel . The original name, Catholic gay community , had to be given up in 1992 following a canonical objection. Since then, the designation project: gay and catholic has been used, a designation that was also recognized in 1996 in the agreement with the diocese of Limburg, established and given the addition “in the community of Maria Hilf”. The addition "Christian community by and for gays, lesbians and their friends" was added in 2001 and reflects the effort to include lesbians who do not appear in the canonically granted name.
In 2007/2008 there was a crisis that at least drastically reduced the number of church services. The cause was the departure of a large number of volunteers. Until then - with a few exceptions - a service was celebrated every Sunday, which was unique in Germany at least for a gay and lesbian community. That has now been reduced to once a month. The central point of the conflict was the question of how close or how far the PSK could or should position itself from the Roman Catholic Church with its official anti-gay statements.
literature
- Björn Berndt: 25 years “Project gay and catholic”. The cross with the cross. In: gave 220 (April 2016), p. 10 f.
- Burkhard Cramer: Christian community by and for gays, lesbians and their friends - Project: Gay and Catholic in the Maria Hilf community, Frankfurt am Main . In: Wolfgang Schürger, Christian J. Herz, Michael Brinkschröder (Ed.): Schwule Theologie. Identity - Spirituality - Contexts (= Forum Systematics. Volume 23). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-17-018885-3 , pp. 162-164.
- Klaus Mertes : "Face to Face". The Catholic Church and Homosexuality. In: Thomas Bauer u. a .: religion and homosexuality. Current positions (= Hirschfeld Lectures. 3). Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1325-5 , pp. 17–35.
- Gregor Schorberger: Gay and Catholic. A Christian worship community . epubli, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-8442-4999-6 (also Diss. University of Dortmund 2012).
- Georg Trettin: Catholic gay community in Frankfurt . In: AIDS-Hilfe-Frankfurt e. V. (Ed.): Intern June 1991, p. 7.
- Georg Trettin: Gay and Catholic: a project . In: Werkstatt schwule Theologie 6 (1999), pp. 160–162.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Schorberger: Gay and Catholic , Document 12, p. 353 f.
- ^ AG Gay Theology .
- ^ Homepage of the project community .
- ↑ Homepage of the LSGG .
- ^ Dietrich; Mertes, p. 35.