Without a crystal ball, I cannot predict the future. The parade will have been proceeding for several hours before these words make print. It is a safe guess, however, that this year's gay pride rally will have drawn a larger crowd than it did a year ago. One reason for that is the ill-conceived and nasty anti-gay rights demonstration that occurred last Saturday downtown. Violence manifests itself in many forms, and violent words often accomplish only one thing: they stir more violent feelings yet and, sadly, may draw more violent words.

My eyes blinked at these violent words in the press in a local paper last Sunday: “. . . hundreds of Christian anti-gay activists took to the streets yesterday in Taipei.” A pastor was quoted, “The church does not promote hatred and does not hate gays . . . We welcome gays, just as we would welcome murderers, rapists, and robbers in the church.”

Don't you wonder how Jesus would respond to talk like that?

A perhaps not so important language issue comes to mind here. Let us handle that before moving to the heart of the matter.

As is clear in the italicized words that appear in parentheses at the end of this column, I am a Catholic priest (“shen-fu”). That means I am a Christian.

Many a time I've heard Taiwan friends say something like, “Oh, so you're a Catholic. Well, I'm a Christian.” The speaker seems to mean that the one term excludes the other. This is a mistake. In fact, the word “Christian” in English applies to all people who believe Jesus is the son of God, and who accept him into their lives as their personal savior. Catholics are just as Christian in the linguistic sense of the term as our friends who worship God as Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans, or as members of any other Protestant congregation.

The word “protest” is imbedded in “Protestant” because Martin Luther, a frustrated and devoted Catholic priest, protested (in many ways justifiably) against corruption in the Catholic church of his time (the 16th century) and broke away from it to establish a group of followers that in time came to be known as Lutherans. Soon other “reformers” followed Luther's example, and Protestant communities appeared all over Europe. Students of American literature here in Taiwan often read the account of John Bradford, who chronicled the early story of that group of “dissenters” known as the Puritans in the American colonies.

The Bible is a complicated collection of “books” and, frankly, “stories” that come to us today through thousands of years of history. The Bible is many things all at the same time. Many of us read it for spiritual or even psychological comfort and light. Writers not known for fond feelings for organized religion, such as Bertold Brecht and John Steinbeck, respected the Bible highly, and read it repeatedly, moved by the quality of its literature and its mystery.

It is true that in certain places, the Bible condemns not the fact of homosexuality but its practice (classically, in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, Gen. 18 - 19, 28) and in rules for behavior (Leviticus, 20,13.) St. Paul famously condemns homosexual acts (I Cor. 6, 9-10 and Rom. 1, 24-32). At the same time, the Bible speaks forcefully of the wrongness of playing God and of passing judgment on others. Jesus spoke scathingly of some of the Pharisees, for example, who thought they knew the meaning of moral truth better than anyone else (see Luke 18, 9-14 and 16, 14-15, and Mark 7, 6-13.)

I believe many Christians among Protestants and Catholics can agree that sexuality and its many mysteries in human nature cuts into the very flesh and bone of our humble, fallible humanity. Who among us dares presume he or she can know with complete certainty the mind of our creator on every last question of right or wrong in life?

The world would be a lot better off if we all showed a bit more respect and honest care for people who may be different than we are and who may have different views on some issues than we do.

Father Daniel J. Bauer SVD is a priest and associate professor in the English Department at Fu Jen Catholic University.