Quest Conference 2008
LONDON
‘What it means to say “I am a Catholic”’
Impressions of Conference
By Philip S
The attendees at the Quest Conference formed a lovely group of wonderful people. What a group! I enjoyed the company of everyone who spoke with me at different times throughout the weekend. New friends are sometimes easier to talk to than old friends. The stories I heard have inspired me to be free and out, proud of my faith and my sexuality, with my family and parish.
My faith journey began in the Methodist tradition, a happy and carefree time, but in 1994 a friend was killed in a road crash, she was 12 years old and a Catholic. Her funeral mass was so moving, surprisingly cheerful and happy, despite the tragic loss to her family, that soon after I contacted the parish priest and was received into full communion at the Easter Vigil in 1997. In my local parish I am now an altar server, a role I take very seriously. Being gay seems like another world, but the conference weekend proved we can be both happy and holy in more ways than one!
It is possible to be gay and Catholic and proud of who we are. It is of first importance to be open at least to ourselves and maybe some day the world will come to accept us. Throughout the Bible we are reminded that ‘God is love’ and that we are his children, the sheep of his loving flock. If this statement is true, why can’t our parishes face the truth that we are out and proud of our faith and our sexuality?
I extend my greeting and every good blessing to all my new friends and everyone in Quest and I can hardly wait for the 2009 Conference.
By Nick H
I would like to thank David Newbery and everyone who helped in the organisation of the recent Quest conference at Roehampton University. This was my first time at a Quest conference although it is nearly 15 years since I started to get involved with the Quest Glasgow group. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience, including the social side and food, the serious side of considering what it is to be Catholic and in particular the spiritual side. I was very impressed with the strong sense of togetherness that I felt in all of the evening prayer and morning prayer sessions and masses. Perhaps we should set up a Quest choir? I thought that the singing and music were excellent.
I felt spoiled a bit with the delicious food including the bbq on the Friday night and the lunches on both Saturday and Sunday and especially by the gala banquet on the Saturday night. Listening to the guest speakers was particularly enjoyable as they considered this year’s topic, What it means to say ‘I am a Catholic’.
I also gained a lot from the DVD which was shown on the Saturday afternoon ‘For the Bible Tells Me So’. We can only pray that people’s prejudices and misunderstandings of what it is to be gay will in time be diminished and replaced with an acceptance and understanding.
I myself became a Catholic by choice as I was brought up in the Church of England and became involved with evangelical and Pentecostal churches while I was in my late teens and early twenties. I converted around the same time that I came out and identified a lot with all the guest speakers when they talked about converting from other faiths to Catholicism. What particularly impressed me was the question why are we still Catholic? At the time of writing this, I still have to feed back to the Glasgow group at our August meeting and will have to make more notes of what I will say to them. In essence though I can only reiterate what a wonderful experience it was and I would encourage other members of Quest to attend next year’s conference in Leicester.