The Los Angeles Dodgers have announced a relaunch of their “Christian Faith and Family Day” following a recent controversy over the guest list for an upcoming Pride Night event hosted by the team.
The Los Angeles Dodgers, an American Major League baseball team based in Los Angeles, have recently become embroiled in a dispute between the LGBTQ + community and a number of key U.S. Catholic leaders, with the club coming increasingly under fire from members of both groups.
The Los Angeles Dodgers are bringing back their Christian Faith and Family Day in the wake of a controversy involving their decision to invite, un-invite, and then invite again a group of drag performers who dress in nun garb to the team’s Pride Night.
Without providing many details, the team announced on Friday that the Christian Faith and Family Day will take place at Dodger Stadium after the game on July 30.
“Excited to announce the relaunch of Christian Faith and Family Day at Dodger Stadium on July 30th. More details to come — but we are grateful for the opportunity to talk about Jesus and determined to make it bigger and better than it was before COVID. Hope to see you on July 30th!” pitcher Clayton Kershaw tweeted.
The announcement follows a controversy that arose due to an earlier statement from the Dodgers announcing that a drag group called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence was to perform and be honoured at a Pride Night hosted by the Dodgers in June.
The sisters, who describe themselves as trans and queer nuns, dress in drag while wearing traditional nun garb, most notably cornettes.
The MLB baseball team immediately came under criticism from key Catholic voices such as CatholicVote, Sen. Marco Rubio, and Bill Donohue, president and CEO of the Catholic League.
Donohue emailed Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred to urge the team to remove the group from the guestlist, calling the sisters “an obscene anti-Catholic group.”
The group was subsequently uninvited from the event by the Dodgers.
However, last week, following a successive wave of criticism from LGBTQ groups, the team released a statement apologising to the Sisters and re-inviting them to the event.
“After much thoughtful feedback from our diverse communities, honest conversations within the Los Angeles Dodgers organisation and generous discussions with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the Los Angeles Dodgers would like to offer our sincerest apologies to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, members of the LGBTQ+ community and their friends and families,” the team said in its statement.
The sisters have since accepted the apology and will receive the Dodgers’ Community Hero Award at the Pride Night event on June 16th.
However, this fresh U-turn by the Dodgers has sparked an even greater backlash, with Catholic groups such as the Archdiocese of Los Angeles criticising the team for reneging and alienating their large Catholic fanbase.
“The decision to honour a group that clearly mocks the Catholic faith and makes light of the sincere and holy vocations of our women religious who are an integral part of our church is what has caused disappointment, concern, anger, and dismay from our Catholic community,” the Archdiocese said in a statement.
They were not alone in their condemnation.
“Shamefully, (but not surprisingly) the @dodgers have been bullied into apologizing to & ‘re-inviting’ a group of anti-Catholic bigots,” tweeted Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida. “Today our great country is controlled by socio-political ruling elites who don’t just tolerate anti-Christian bigotry, they encourage [it].,”
“This is an anti-Catholic hate group of homosexual men that dress up as Catholic nuns and engage in blasphemous and sacrilegious activities such as blessing themselves with sex toys, pole dancing on a cross, and inverting the words of Christ saying ‘go and sin some more,'” Brian Burch, the president of CatholicVote, a conservative political advocacy group, told Fox News.
“The Dodgers are sending the message that Catholics don’t matter to them, that they are more interested in satisfying the extreme elements of the LGBT movement and that Catholics can go pound sand”.
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