ITEM: At her mother's funeral last week, in front of all of the mourners in the cathedral, the daughter stood before the priest to take communion. The priest looked at her, covered the wafers with his hand, and told he could not give her the body and blood of Christ because her lifestyle is a sin in the eyes of God. See, her partner of 20 years, who was standing beside her, is a woman. They're lesbians. So this bigot dressed up as a man of God devastated her and her entire family in their hour of deepest grief. And he then, without warning, skipped the burial. His name, because he deserves for it to be printed here, is Rev. Marcel Guarnizo of St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg, MD. If there is any justice in the Universe, he will come back in the next life as a gay man. Not that we have any way of knowing his orientation now.
ITEM: After a years-long struggle, Maryland finally legalized gay marriage this week. Amid the battle, a top public figure declared that churches should never have to grant marriage rights to gays. Who was this? Why, Edwin O'Brien, the former Archbishop of Baltimore, who was recently promoted to The Vatican.
ITEM: In one of the largest Catholic churches in my hometown of Rochester, NY, a large number of parishioners broke away when the established parish, backed by threats from the Archdiocese bosses, forbade recognition of gay unions or of women taking charge in the pulpit. The breakaway church is now a large and thriving Catholic congregation – Spiritus Christi Church – that celebrates gay unions, has a strong woman reverend in the pulpit, and runs a slew of health and service programs in neighborhoods and in prisons. (Pop quiz: which church – the Archdiocese-approved sanctuary of bigotry or the rebel house of open-hearted love – do you think Jesus would prefer?)
I have an old friend who was raised Catholic and whose mother was devout in her faith and her dedication to her congregation. One of the things I learned from watching her, as I have also observed in every other religion I have personally witnessed, is that the most corrupt, destructive, and amoral force in religion is generally the bosses and the operatives, not the parishioners. Name the issue affecting Catholicism, for example – divorce, contraception, gay rights, abortion – and polls show that rank-and-file Catholics are light-years ahead of the robed and brutally hypocritical executives who run the corporation. Which is why ordinary Catholics are among those supporting the gay rights law that Baltimore's Catholic CEO promises to torpedo.
Like leaders of other global enterprises, church rulers are resolutely bringing up the rear when it comes to matters of societal morality.


