Last week, a story broke about a Catholic woman in Maryland who was denied communion at her mother’s funeral because she is a lesbian.

I read comments about this on social, media and saw many outraged Catholics criticizing the priest in question. While I think it shows how far the LGBT movement has come that this is a huge news story and so many people are outraged on Barbara Johnson’s behalf, it frustrates me. I think it’s a good sign that so many people are feeling compassion for this woman – even religious straight people. But this whole controversy is at the heart of why I left the church, so it touched a nerve for me.

In 2004, the Archbishop of St. Louis publicly stated that John Kerry could not receive communion in his diocese because he is pro-choice. This was the last straw for me. I knew that it would only be a matter of time between denying communion to pro-choice public figures and all pro-choice parishioners. Not every bishop denied communion to Kerry, but Archbishop Burke was not reprimanded in any way – his behavior was fine with the hierarchy, and there would be nothing to prevent similar actions from taking place in the future. I felt sick – I was no longer welcome in my own church. And a few years later, Pope Benedict was elected, the man who wrote memos in favor of pro-choice politicians being denied communion. This was evidence that people like Benedict and Burke showed the true direction of the church, not more moderate leaders who wanted to put as many people in the pews as possible, regardless of their disagreement with church doctrine.

The situation with Barbara Johnson is sad on many levels. It’s sad that her mother died. And it’s sad that a priest, who was supposed to comfort her rejected her in such a public way. Receiving communion is a big deal for Catholics. To be told that you may not do so can feel like a devastating rejection. This is why so many Catholics are outraged. It’s not just the denial of communion, which people seemed ambivalent about in John Kerry’s case. It’s that the rejection happened on a day when Johnson was mourning her mother’s death. This outrage comes from the compassion people are feeling for any person who is suffering because a loved one had died. If this had been on any other Sunday, or if Johnson had gone to the press because her priest had refused to marry her and her partner, this story would not have made such a splash. To me, this signifies that the outrage is not over denial of communion or the churches position on homosexuality, it’s that the priest publicly humiliated a woman who was mourning the death of her mother.

There are some Catholics taking the position that “a no-sin rule would bar all from Communion” but this misses the point. Most of the people who make the news for being barred from communion do so because they disagree with the church’s position on divorce, choice, or gay rights – that is their positions on sexuality. No one is barred for being a crooked businessperson, for supporting the Iraq war or the Death penalty – the first of which is a violation of the Ten Commandments, and the latter two the church could not be more clearly against. This is entirely political and it’s entirely the politics of sex and patriarchy. Being outraged that the church has turned the Eucharist – the rite most scared and holy to Catholics into a political weapon is the reason why I left the church. The hypocrisy of proclaiming it to be essential to spirituality and a relationship with God, and then denying it to people because of their personal sexual choices or opinions is the utmost hypocrisy.

The Archdioceses of Washington has issued a weak apology, but it misses the point. I find myself in solid agreement with this Catholic blogger who states that the preist was “thrown under the bus for following Canon Law.” I don’t think that homosexuality is a sin, of course. But I do think the this Father Marcel Guarnizo was in fact, simply following the rules of the church. And that is the source of my frustration with the Catholic response to this story. These people who attend Mass, give money and time to the church find themselves outraged that the church is following it’s own rules. This is nonsensical. If you are outraged, why are you still Catholic?



There is no way for any average parishioner or even priest to change the course of the Catholic Church. You can stay, seething in outrage, you can complain – as if you were complaining to a brick wall, or you can leave, and free your conscience from the burden of supporting an institution that treats people so cruelly. *

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*Exit, Voice and Loyalty