James Martin’s Ministry Publishes ‘LGBTQ Confiteor’: What Does the Rewritten Prayer Change?

Outreach, the Catholic LGBTQ ministry founded by Jesuit priest Father James Martin, has published a contributor's adaptation of the Confiteor that invokes "queer saints" and reframes the traditional confession around prejudice, injustice and harmful self-talk. The text raises questions about how efforts to make worshippers feel included affect the language of sin, responsibility and repentance.

According to The Christian Post's October 29 report, chaplain Ariell Watson Simon presented the prayer in an October 25 essay titled "An LGBTQ Catholic guide to the Mass: Praying the Confiteor."

Simon describes how struggles surrounding her sexuality shaped her experience of confession during college. She argues that attention to sexual morality distracted her from examining other aspects of her conduct, including her responsibility towards others.

Her adaptation addresses God as "our Loving God" and fellow worshippers as "my siblings." It confesses prejudiced thoughts, biased judgments, careless speech, degrading self-talk and participation in injustice. It also acknowledges failures to resist injustice.

These concerns give the prayer a specific moral focus. But the changes extend beyond adding examples of wrongdoing.

Where the traditional Confiteor repeatedly acknowledges personal fault, Simon's version names fear, complacency and errors. Where the traditional prayer requests the intercession of the Virgin Mary, angels and saints, the adaptation appeals to spiritual ancestors, "queer saints" and the human family. Its closing emphasis falls on praying together to build a better future.

The resulting question is theological as well as pastoral: does the revised language sharpen an acknowledgment of sin, or soften the distinction between committing wrong and experiencing human weakness?

Simon's concerns also pose a challenge to churches. An examination of conscience that addresses sexual conduct while overlooking racism, cruelty or indifference to suffering risks becoming selective. Yet the same question applies to an alternative confession: does it invite worshippers to examine every area of life, including those in which their own assumptions may need correction?

The reference to "queer saints" warrants further explanation. The passages reproduced in the report do not identify whom Simon means or establish the basis for applying that description to particular saints. Without that clarification, readers are left to interpret a phrase carrying considerable historical and theological weight.

The status of the adaptation matters, too. The supplied report describes a contributor's essay published by Outreach; it does not establish that the text has received approval for use in the Catholic Mass. Publication on a ministry's website should not be confused with an authorised revision of Catholic liturgy. Nor does the report establish that Martin personally composed the prayer.

At the heart of the discussion is the relationship between welcome and repentance. Churches must consider how confession can confront wrongdoing without encouraging destructive self-condemnation. Those proposing new language must also explain how their revisions retain an honest acknowledgment of personal responsibility.

Simon's adaptation brings both concerns into view. The test is whether its words help worshippers recognise wrongdoing more fully-and become more willing to change.