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The Vatican has also ordered bishops to withdraw support from groups that either are "ambiguous" or "neglect" the church's teaching. That was aimed especially at Dignity/USA, an organization that has 5,000 members in 100 chapters and formerly held Masses with church approval in dozens of cities. In the wake of that attack, the national Dignity convention last September declared clear-cut opposition to the church's moral teaching.
With growing support from liberal theologians, the gay activists insist that Christianity has unjustly repressed a perfectly moral alternative life-style. For Catholics, the dispute is a classic test of loyalty to the Pope and the magisterium, or teaching authority, of the church. For Protestants, it is an example of the deep-seated conflict between the traditional and liberal approaches to the Bible.
"This is not an issue of morals," asserts Michael Hiller, assistant pastor at San Francisco's St. Francis Lutheran and openly homosexual. "It's an issue of justice." It is also a large and continuing problem for ordinary churchgoers, Protestants and Catholics alike, many of whom feel it would be morally wrong to undercut a tenet that Christianity has held with such confidence over so many centuries.