John J. McNeill


John J. McNeill was an American Roman Catholic priest, psychotherapist and academic theologian, with a particular reputation within the field of queer theology.

Life and academic career

Ordained by Cardinal Spellman through the Society of Jesus in 1959, he obtained a Ph.D. from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium in 1964 and later taught at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, New York, and at Fordham University in New York City. In 1972, he joined the combined Woodstock Jesuit Seminary and Union Theological Seminary faculty as professor of Christian ethics, specializing in sexual ethics. He died at a hospice in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on September 22, 2015, at the age of 90.

Support for gay rights

McNeill played a part in widening the activities of DignityUSA, a support group for LGBT Catholics.
In 1976 he published The Church and the Homosexual. In the obituary for McNeill, the New York Times described the book as "the first extended nonjudgmental work about gay Catholics, a subject that had long been taboo in official church discourse. It has been credited with helping to set in motion the re-evaluation of the religious stance toward gay people – not only among Catholics but also among those of other faiths – that continues today."
According to Charles Curran, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith systematically attempted to silence authors critical of the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church concerning homosexuality, citing the "highlighting" of errors by the Congregation in McNeill's The Church and the Homosexual. McNeill was expelled from the Society of Jesus in 1987 at the request of the Vatican, but remained officially a priest.
He was openly gay, and in 2008 he married Charlie Chiarelli, his long-term partner.
McNeill was the subject of a 2011 documentary film, Taking a Chance on God, by director Brendan Fay.

Published works