>
>
> More than 50 gay rights activists wearing rainbow-colored sashes were
> denied Holy Communion at a Pentecost service yesterday at the Roman
> Catholic Cathedral in St. Paul, Minn., parishioners and church
> officials said.
>
Oh great, here we go......
>
> In an act that some witnesses called a "sacrilege" and others called a
> sign of "solidarity," a man who was not wearing a sash received a
> Communion wafer from a priest, broke it into pieces and handed it to
> some of the sash wearers, who consumed it on the spot.
>
I can find no appropriate words to express my rage.
Let's just say Sacrilege is a soft word for what happened.
>
> Ushers threatened to call the police, and a church employee burst into
> tears when the unidentified man re-distributed the consecrated wafer,
> which Catholics consider the body of Christ. But the Mass was not
> interrupted, and the incident ended peacefully, said Dennis McGrath, a
> spokesman for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
>
Violence had already been done by this point.
> "It was confrontational, but we decided not to try to arrest the guy,"
> he said.
> The dramatic episode capped several years of increasing acrimony over
> the Rainbow Sash Movement, an effort by gay Catholics to counter what
> they view as homophobia in the church.
>
The Roman Catholic Church was standing up for the orthodox and
traditional Christian doctrine.
> Beginning in 1997 in England, some Catholics have worn the sashes over
> their left shoulder to Mass each year on Pentecost, the day on which
> the New Testament says the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus's disciples.
> Because the holiday is a celebration of God's gifts, "we think it is
> an appropriate time to celebrate the gift of our sexuality," said
> Brian McNeill, a rainbow-sash organizer in Minneapolis.
>
The gift of sex has been perverted.
>
> For a few years, sash-wearers were allowed to receive Communion in
> some U.S. cities, including Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Los
> Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Rochester, N.Y. But since 2004, most
> U.S. bishops have cracked down on the movement.
>
> Last year, Cardinal Francis Arinze, head of the Vatican department in
> charge of worship, wrote a letter to Archbishop Harry J. Flynn of St.
> Paul, stating that the rainbow sash is a sign of protest against the
> church's teachings on sexuality and that the Mass is not an
> appropriate forum for protests.
>
HalleluJah!
>
> The movement's leaders insist that wearing the sash is not an act of
> protest.
>
Let me wear a leather jacket to a PETA meeting and lets see if it is
taken as a protest.
> "When Archbishop Flynn and Cardinal Arinze say it's a protest, I say,
> 'But you guys aren't the ones wearing it -- we are, and we see it as a
> celebration,' " McNeill said. "The premise of the sash is that gay
> people are part of the Catholic community, part of the people of God.
> We are there proudly celebrating Mass."
> The number of those wearing rainbow sashes has never been large, and
> it appears to be declining. The largest single gathering was last year
> in St. Paul, where about 125 people were turned away from Communion.
> In most cities, there have been only a few wearing sashes.
>
> None were reported yesterday in the Archdiocese of Washington, which
> has a policy of denying Communion to anyone wearing a visible sign of
> protest.
>
