Pastoral care for gay Catholics consists of the ministry and outreach the Catholic Church provides to LGBT Catholics.
There are official organizations, such as Courage International, as well as stand-alone events, scholarly studies, comments, and teachings from the highest levels of the Catholic Church, as well as individual parish outreach.
Vatican
Pope John Paul II
During the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a letter that asked "the bishops to support, with the means at their disposal, the development of appropriate forms of pastoral care for homosexual persons.”
This letter, addressed to all the bishops of the Catholic Church, was entitled On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons. This was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as prefect. The letter gave instructions on how the clergy should deal with, and respond to, lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. Designed to remove any ambiguity about permissible tolerance of homosexual orientation resulting from the earlier Persona Humana—and prompted by the growing influence of gay-accepting groups and clergy—the letter was particularly aimed at the church in the United States.
It affirmed the position that while homosexual orientation is not in itself a sin, it is nevertheless a tendency towards the "moral evil" of homosexual activity, and therefore must be considered "an objective disorder". The letter went on to say that when homosexual activity is the result of deliberate choice, it is not made inculpable by natural sexual orientation. Furthermore, the letter argues that this natural homosexual orientation is "essentially self-indulgent" since homosexual sexual acts are not procreative and therefore not genuinely loving or selfless.
The letter condemned physical and verbal violence against gay people, but asserted that condemnation of violence did not mean that the homosexual orientation was good or neutral or that homosexual sexual acts should be permitted. However, it added that human beings, being made in the image and likeness of God, could not be reduced to either heterosexuals or homosexuals. Instead, it affirmed that every person, gay or straight, "has a fundamental identity: a creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life."
The letter also said that accepting homosexual acts as morally equivalent to married heterosexual acts was harmful to the family and society and warned bishops to be on guard against, and not to support, Catholic organizations not upholding the Church's doctrine on homosexuality—groups which the letter said were not really Catholic. This alluded to LGBT and LGBT-accepting Catholic groups such as DignityUSA and New Ways Ministry, and ultimately resulted in the exclusion of Dignity from Church property.
Critics have described the document as teaching "that a gay male or lesbian sexual identity is not to be celebrated, nor is it properly seen as a source of pride". The claims that accepting and legalizing homosexual behaviour leads to violence were seen as controversially blaming gay people for homophobic violence and encouraging homophobic violence. Referring to the AIDS epidemic, the letter, McNeill writes, blamed AIDS on gay rights activists and gay-accepting mental health professionals: "Even when the practice of homosexuality may seriously threaten the lives and well-being of a large number of people, its advocates remain undeterred and refuse to consider the magnitude of the risks involved". Andrew Sullivan called this comment "extraordinary for its lack of compassion" and added that "some of [the letter's] clauses read chillingly like comparable church documents produced in Europe in the 1930s."
In a statement released in July 1992, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith expanded on the letter and stated that discrimination against gay people in certain areas, such as selecting adoptive or foster parents or in hiring teachers, coaches, or military service members, is not unjust, and thus permitted.