ANGER AS PRIEST REFUSES COMMUNION TO LESBIAN WOMAN
A priest in the United States has refused to give a woman communion during her mother’s funeral after he discovered that she is lesbian.
A grieving Barbara Johnson attended her mother’s funeral at the St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg, in the state of Maryland, last Saturday with her partner of 20 years.
According to the woman, when she stepped up to Father Marcel Guarnizo to receive communion, he refused to do so.
“He put his hand over the body of Christ and looked at me and said, ‘I can’t give you Communion because you live with a woman, and in the eyes of the church, that is a sin,’ ” Johnson told The Washington Post.
The priest had apparently learned just minutes earlier that she was romantically involved with another woman.
The shocked Johnson did not protest at the time in an attempt to keep the funeral dignified.
Later, when she delivered her eulogy in the church, Guarnizo added insult to injury and left the alter, only returning when she was finished. He also refused to attend the burial.
Johnson wrote a letter to Guarnizo in which she said: “You brought your politics, not your God into that Church yesterday, and you will pay dearly on the day of judgment for judging me. I will pray for your soul, but first I will do everything in my power to see that you are removed from parish life so that you will not be permitted to harm any more families.”
The Archdiocese of Washington sent Johnson a weak letter of apology after the incident.
“I am sorry that what should have been a celebration of your mother’s life, in light of her faith in Jesus Christ, was overshadowed by a lack of pastoral sensitivity,” wrote the Rev. Barry Knestout.
“I hope that healing and reconciliation with the Church might be possible for you and any others who were affected by this experience. In the meantime, I will offer Mass for the happy repose of your mother’s soul.”
Johnson welcomed the apology but remains insistent that Guarnizo must be removed from his position.
I am rather saddened to hear this.
As a catholic and gay, this is totally unacceptable.
The church teach tolerance and love, principles instituted by Christ himself. If the priest had issues with her sexually, the catholic thing to do is to offer prayer for the ones you find yourself in conflict with. Basic catholic teachings that should have been instilled by way of catechism.
However, seeing that the priest represents the church, and by her being a homosexual, she is not “really” in communion with the church and he is therefore right to deny her holy communion. Cannon law dictates so in circumstances where a catholic or christian are not totally inline with what the church teaches. Likewise with Anglicans, the divorced etc. so this is not an unique incident.
However, when the priest found himself in conflict with the family he should have asked another priest to celebrate the requiem mass to ensure his personal feelings does not create a problem for the family and how the church service is being conducted.
It is a sad case, but the priest is also human with faults, lets put it down to that.
Pray for him too.
Then behind our backs hes does the boys!!
GO BURN IN HELL BASTARD!!!!!DISSAPOINTED CATHOLIC!!!WHO GIVES THE PRIEST
THE RIGHT TO JUDGE!
A man in a dress condemning a woman in dungarees. Mind you, by the look of that sour little mouth, it’s probably good that he took a vow of celibacy.
This priest simply acted according to Catholic teaching (ie according to Canon Law). In the eyes of the church, he did what was expected from him. It is for this and many other reasons that I left the church years ago. It is no use insulting him. If my gaydar serves me correctly, I think he’s a closet case.
Gay Catholic
I like your tolerant (loving) approach to all parties but I do need to ask you one or two one questions. Are folk who lie, folk who lack love, folk who “see past” the poor and suffering and commit numerous other sins of omission in communion with the church? Of course a priest might not know of these things and that is way it is bad, extremely bad to make judgements on what is seen and that from hearsay apparently. And could you tell me why are churches, particularly the RC church, so hung up on things sexual??