CV NEWS FEED // In an exclusive LOOPcast interview, theology student and activist Anna-Kate Howell shares her awe-inspiring conversion story with CatholicVote’s Erika Ahern.
Howell is open about being a faithful Catholic who experiences same-sex attraction. Her June 9 tweet petitioning Cardinal Wilton Gregory to cancel a “Pride Mass” in Washington, D.C., went viral. Although this particular Mass went forward, Howell’s activism did succeed in putting a halt to a similar pride Mass that had been scheduled to take place in Pittsburgh, earlier this month.
Howell’s social media handle is “Anna-Kate, Who Loved God Late,” a nod to her fellow convert St. Augustine of Hippo’s famous line from the Confessions, “Late have I loved thee, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new.”
Howell herself previously considered the Episcopalian “priesthood,” and she discusses her remarkable journey with Ahern, including the moment she decided to leave her previous life behind to follow God.
>> LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE <<
Howell begins the interview with recounting how she “came out fairly young.” She says there was “no resistance whatsoever” from her family, school, church – as she was Episcopal at the time – or community at large.
It wasn’t so much a celebration like there would be now. There wasn’t a Gay-Straight Alliance Club or anything like that. But it was more like, “Okay. This is this person and this is her situation, and it’s not really our place to have an opinion about that. I grew up in that environment.
Howell who “exclusively had romantic relationships with women” became “engaged” to another woman at age 23 and entered into a same-sex “marriage.” She separated from her ex-“wife” at the time she decided to go to college with the goal of becoming an Episcopal “priest.” Out of convenience, she matriculated at Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic Benedictine school “very much with the desire to keep my head down, get my degree, and get out.”
But as Howell explains, “that did not happen. I thought I was going to become an Episcopal priest after I graduated, but as it turns out, I was not even going to be an Episcopalian.”
“Have you ever heard that if you want to make God laugh tell him your plans?” Howell jokes in the interview. “That’s going to be on my tombstone.”
It was Easter Sunday my sophomore year, and my academic advisor, who’s this wonderfully sweet man from Milan – a very faithful man as well – asked me what my Easter plans were.
And I said that I don’t have any Easter plans. This was 2021 and my church in Charlotte wasn’t open yet … And I was probably going to sit at home, watch church on my computer, and order a pizza.
And he said, “No, you’re coming with me to my house and eating lunch.” And he’s from Italy. Feeding people is like a compulsion.
And a giant cauldron of risotto and many hours of hanging out with them later, somehow it became a weekly thing that I went over to their house, and “By the way we know your church isn’t open, we’d be glad to take you to Mass with us.”
>> LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE <<
Howell started going to Queen of the Apostles, “a beautiful little church with the most joyful people” she ever met in her life.
There were times where her advisor’s wife would “take the kids to go shopping or to the park” and it would be just Howell and him at the house. She noted that his PhD was in Moral Theology.
I would ask him questions like, ‘Why does the Church teach this about this?’
And some of them were things that I already agreed with the Catholic Church on, like transgender stuff, like abortion. I’ve been very pro-life my whole life. You can thank my father for that, who is an atheist by the way.
One day, Howell states, she asked him about the Church’s teachings on same-sex “marriage.”
And he looked like, “Really? You want to do this?”
Howell adds that if you ask Epsicopalians about same-sex “marriage,” “you’re going to get a lot of feelings, a lot of inclusion.”
She sat on the couch with her theology professor, “I was expecting a lot of feelings and things, just on the other side. I would just evaluate which feelings made more sense.”
What I got was Aquinas and natural law … I got the purpose of marriage, the purpose of the marital act, why does sex exist, and what is it for.
And I’m sitting there thinking, this makes sense.
She notes that “Episcopal apologetics aren’t really a thing.”
My professor was very gentle with me, but he was very clear. He was not shy about saying exactly what the Church teaches and exactly why. Although he certainly did so without being crude and without being unkind. He was never ambiguous either.
At one point I started to cry and he said, “Anna-Kate, I’m so sorry. Was I not gentle enough?”
I said, “No … I’m not upset about that. I’m upset because I think I’m wrong.”
Before she knew it, Howell was asking a campus minister about RCIA. After he explained the process, she says, “I opened my mouth to say ‘no,’ and I said ‘yes.’”
>> LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE <<
It was around this time that she began to go on Catholic Twitter. She observed that there were some issues there, especially with the way many users “talk about same-sex attraction.”
Many Catholics online “have this very uncharitable, very unkind” view of the issue, she said, that purports that same-sex attraction is a “choice” and “can be changed.” Both of these things, Howell says, are false.
She also stressed that, contrary to what much of the media and culture believes, the Catholic Church teaches that same-sex attraction itself is not a sin, unless it is acted on.
On the other hand, Howell says that another group of online Catholics take an approach reminiscent of liberal priest Father James Martin – “Who am I to judge?”
Howell concludes by saying that both opposite lines of thinking are “equally uncharitable. Because, to love someone is to will their ultimate eternal good.”
“I think,” she adds, “that in today’s society when we talk about ‘love’ we mean affirmation. And affirmation of something that’s bad is called ‘enabling.’ And that is diametrically opposed to love.”
>> LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE <<
