Christian help group has 'no approval' from Catholic Church

New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based group that works with gay people, "has no approval or recognition from the Catholic Church", a Catholic leader has warned.

New Ways Ministry does not speak for the Catholic Church, says Cardinal Francis George of Chicago. According to the CatholicCulture.org website, George has said that New Ways claims to be Catholic but denies central aspects of church teaching. The source says that the group's founders, Sister Jeanine Gramick and Father Robert Nugent, were warned by the Vatican 11 years ago "that their public statements on homosexuality contained 'ambiguities and errors'. They were ordered not to speak or write on the topic – an order that Nugent has observed but Gramick has defied." New Ways says it's astonished by the declaration. The Catholic News Service quotes George as saying that, since the founding of New Ways Ministry in 1977, "serious questions have been raised about the group's adherence to church teaching on homosexuality". He adds: "No one should be misled by the claim that New Ways Ministry provides an authentic interpretation of Catholic teaching and an authentic Catholic pastoral practice." New Ways Ministry is based in Mount Rainier, Md, and describes itself as a "gay-positive ministry of advocacy and justice for lesbian and gay Catholics and reconciliation within the larger Christian and civil communities".