Introducing… Mark Guevarra our newest CLC Planning Group member

Greetings everyone! My name is Mark Guevarra, I’m the newest Planning Group member of Concerned Lay Catholics and I am thrilled to be part of this exciting organization. I’d like to share with you a little bit of my faith story in the hopes of explaining why being a member of CLC is so important to me.

Like so many Canadians, my parents settled in this land with nothing but their skills and dreams for a better life. As Filipinos, they also brought their Catholic faith to sustain them through the unknowns. My Catholic formation was enriching but also challenging. Seared into my memory was the phrase “objectively disordered” and “intrinsically disordered.”

I attended Vancouver College, a Christian Brothers high school. I had good teachers including a Christian Brother who passionately formed students to be faithful servants of Christ. However, it was in this time that I came to see the sins of the church I loved. The Christian Brothers also administered Mount Cashel Orphanage in Newfoundland where horrifying abuses took place. Our school needed to be sold to pay off settlements. This shattered my image of the church as a perfect community. I was left wondering how such a beautiful faith tradition could also be capable of great sin. After high school, I attended the University of British Columbia and studied religion and history. My education in a large secular institution opened my eyes to the diversity of thought and religions. In my second year, I began to explore being gay – learning about the culture, making friends, disclosing to friends, and exploring my sexuality. In my third year, I took the first course ever offered at UBC in LGBT studies. I was deepening my embrace of my gay identity. At the same time, I continued to live out my Catholic identity.

At the time, my parish priest, a Dominican, enabled me to use my gifts to serve as music minister, youth minister, and catechist in our parish religious education program for children who attended public schools. I enjoyed serving the church and passing on the faith. Never in my college years did I feel duplicitous. I simply walked the path before me. After university, I wanted to deepen the knowledge of my Catholic faith. I took courses offered by the Archdiocese of Vancouver and subsequently I applied to do a Master of Religious Education at the University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto. My time in Toronto was pivotal in many ways including opening my eyes to the richness of Catholic theology and coming to appreciate the diversity of Christian theology outside of Catholicism. At Our Lady of Lourdes parish in downtown Toronto, I found a spiritual home. I formed friendships with many in the congregation – gay and straight, including a Filipina theologian and professor at the Catholic seminary. She helped me to embrace my own Filipino identity, an identity that is naturally halo-halo, which literally means “mix mix.” In other words, being Filipino was inherently being open to hybridity. During this time, I felt God reached into my core and helped me to see that I am beloved, and that God rejoices in me. I met my partner, also named Mark, and after graduation, we moved to Edmonton where I pursued more study at the University of Alberta and Newman Theological College.

I have had many varied experiences in ministry since then, from university ministry, to teaching to parish ministry. The path has had many twists and turns, barriers and hurts, some inflicted by the institutional church, some by individuals. Ultimately, I was fired for being both gay and in a committed relationship. Despite doors being closed, the challenges have sparked in me a greater desire to advocate for LGBTQ+ Catholics in the church. After careful discernment I decided to pursue a PhD in theology. When I began my doctoral program, I wanted to focus on LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Catholic church, however I came to realize there is a more fundamental issue, besides revising the church’s official teaching on homosexuality. I think the church suffers from an inability to discern the Holy Spirit speaking in the lives of the faithful. Perhaps providentially, it was also at this time that Pope Francis proclaimed a new way of being church – being synodal. This is where my passion now lies – in helping the church walk the synodal path. More specifically, as we have begun the synodal process, we have indeed heard the cries of those who have been marginalized including LGBTQ+ Catholics. It is my work to consider means in which these marginalized Catholics might be restored into a more synodal church that is inclusive, in which lay people have a place in building up the church, and clericalism is laid to rest because of the Spirit-given wisdom in the voices of the faithful who have been calling for greater Christian authenticity.

Being part of CLC is my way of adding my voice to the decades old chorus of voices calling out to implement the vision of Vatican II – that we may be a church that reaches out in solidarity with the marginalized and poor, that listens, learns, repents, and reconciles with those it has harmed. And, in so doing, fulfilling the mission of Jesus Christ.