Doing The Right Thing And Then Paying The Price

I am not Roman Catholic, so I didn’t want to say too much about this incident, but DaTechGuy, who is Roman Catholic and understands these things wrote a terrific article about it. Recently, at a funeral Mass at St. John Neumann Parish in Gaithersburg, Md., a Priest very quietly refused communion to someone requesting it.

The incident involved Fr. Guarnizo, a priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Moscow, Russia—not of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., where he has been practicing his vocation in recent years. On March 9, the Archdiocese of Washington withdrew his “faculties” to administer the sacraments within its borders.

Fr. Guarnizo refused communion to a woman who minutes before the service had introduced him to another woman she described as her lover. His side of the story can be found at CNS News.

DaTechGuy reports:

So what did Fr. Guarnizo know and when did he know it concerning the lady in question? Funny you should ask…

A few minutes before the Mass began, Ms. Johnson came into the sacristy with another woman whom she announced as her “lover”. Her revelation was completely unsolicited.

and was not all that polite about it either:

As I attempted to follow Ms.Johnson, her lover stood in our narrow sacristy physically blocking my pathway to the door. I politely asked her to move and she refused.

It sounds to me like we have another Sandra Fluke, a person who was looking for confrontation and even worse, was using the occasion of a death of her mother to do so.

Fr. Guarnizo nails it here:

Ms. Johnson was a guest in our parish, not the arbitrer of how sacraments are dispensed in the Catholic Church.

Fr. Z in charity to the diocese says this:

Fr. G was subsequently put on administrative leave in that Archdiocese for reasons, so it seems, other than the lesbian/Communion event. More information is forthcoming and in justice I need to post it.

It seems as if there is a group of people who have taken upon themselves to target the Catholic Church. It matters how the Church handles this. I believe the Priest was Biblically correct in the way he handled the situation. It is a shame that the Church is not upholding its own rules.

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