Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence aren't anti-Catholic, they're anti-homophobia

A group of men (and a few women) who dress up in fake nun's habits, some of whom wear KFC chicken buckets on their heads and others who adorn their derby hats with feathers, lots of feathers, may play an outsized role in this year's governor race.

It's hard to believe we've come to this, but one of the few issues — life-saving pandemic actions being another — that Republicans are choosing to focus on this year is a picture that Gov. Andy Beshear took with a group of gay and lesbian "nuns" following a gay rights rally at the Kentucky capital in 2020.

Homophobia at it's finest.

But it's not just here that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are making the headlines these days.

In California it was the on-again, off-again, on-again, ceremony honoring the group – a “queer and trans” charitable organization that dresses in drag and parodies nuns − at a Pride event during a baseball game at Dodger Stadium in June.

The Dodger Stadium thing, of course, brought the most attention to the group, which has been around for more than 40 years and raises money to support groups that work to help marginalized communities.

But the Beshear thing has gotten some attention, too. Expect to see more.

The "sisters" use parody and irreverent humor to make their points.

In some of the 50 U.S. chapters, the sisters have things like drag shows. In Louisville’s Derby City Chapter, they largely just show up in their habits and make people smile.

There's also a chapter in Lexington − The Kentucky Fried Sisters. They're the ones with the chicken buckets.

You can go online and find videos of some of their shenanigans around the country that many believe cross a line, like a mock crucifixion that includes a half-naked man pole-dancing on the cross. The group in Louisville holds annual “Hunky Jesus” and "Foxy Mary" contests.

They also hold bingos to raise money for charity. That's where they got $1,000 to donate last December for Christmas presents for clients at the House of Ruth, an organization that helps patients with HIV AIDS.

The U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops opposed the honor for a California-based chapter at Dodger Stadium, and in a letter to the Dodgers, said, “This is not just offensive and painful to Christians everywhere; it is blasphemy."

And back here in Kentucky, Republican gubernatorial candidate Daniel Cameron attacked the group as being “anti-Christian” and the Kentucky GOP called the group “anti-Catholic.”

I didn't see it that way, but I might not be the best person to ask.

I'm Catholic and I like religious humor, particularly when Catholicism is the butt of the joke. I laughed hysterically the first time I saw "Monty Python's Meaning of Life" and a Catholic couple played by Michael Palin and Terry Jones (in drag) sing the song "Every Sperm is Sacred" − along with their 63 children.

Father Guido Sarducci, a gossip columnist and rock critic for the Vatican newspaper, was one of my all-time favorite characters on Saturday Night Live.

Now, my sainted mother, rest her soul, didn't share my sense of humor.

She would have been appalled, just as she was in 1978, just weeks after Pope John Paul I died just a month into his papacy, when Jane Curtain announced on Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" that "entire college of cardinals died in their sleep last night. So, in an unprecedented move, the Brooklyn high school of music and art will elect the new pope."

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So, I figured I'd ask a real live, actual nun what she thinks about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. That's when I called Sister Jeannine Gramick, a member of the Kentucky-based Sisters of Loretto.

For the last half century, Gramick has been ministering to members of the LGBTQ community and was one of the co-founders of New Ways Ministries, a national organization aimed at trying to make people who are gay, lesbian, transexual and bisexual feel welcome in the Catholic Church, which hasn't always done things to make them feel welcome.

Gramick is a bit uncomfortable with some of the organization’s “questionable” activities − like pole dancing on a crucifix, I would imagine − and she wishes they wouldn’t wear habits. But she understands what they're doing, and she supports them.

“The first time I heard about them, I was offended because I was professed in the traditional habit," said Gramick, who added that like so many other Catholic sisters, she no longer wears the old garb.

But Gramick said she met some of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at a conference in 2000 and it changed her feelings.

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“I understand why some may have donned this clothing, how they have been hurt by institutional religion and in particular, the Catholic Church,” she said.

Over the years, Gramick said, members of the LGBTQ community were thrown out of confessionals, told they were going to hell and that “the devil was in them."

“Whatever problems and disagreements I had over their choice of clothing, it really doesn’t compare to the suffering they have gone through because of organized religion,” she said.

She also supports the charitable work they do − noting that a chapter in San Francisco gives grants to an organization there that supports deaf LGBTQ people "who are often doubly oppressed, misunderstood, or forgotten by society."

Anti-Christian?

Nah.

Anti-Catholic?

“I think it depends on who you speak with,” Gramick said. “I wouldn’t say anti-Catholic. They are responding to hurt from Catholicism.”

Christopher McDavid, a member of the Derby City Sisters who goes by the name Sister Petty Davis, said the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence aren't attacking nuns – in fact they see themselves as doing much of the same type of service work that Catholic sisters have for years.

Over the decades Catholic sisters have been the most consistent supporters of the gay community. Four Sisters of Charity of Nazareth were among the eight founders of the House of Ruth, which the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence now supports.

And it was the Catholic women's religious orders that opened shelters to serve AIDS victims in the early days of the disease when many people turned their backs on those afflicted out of fear or disgust.

“We use parody to challenge some of the oppression that has been leveled toward queer people and women,” McDavid said.

“Do we poke fun at the church? Certainly we do," he said. "They have a long history oppressing queer people.”

Gramick, who lives in Maryland, said she not only approves of Beshear getting his picture taken with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, she wishes other politicians would do that sort of thing.

"I wish we could get over this idea that you only pose in pictures with people you agree with," she said. "I think it's so important that we sit down and talk with each other and cease being so divisive and work together for the people in our communities."

Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence drawn into Kentucky governor's race