Wednesday May 24, 2006
Homosexual Activists Again Vow to Disrupt Catholic Masses on Pentecost
By Gudrun Schultz
CHICAGO, Illinois, May 24, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Members of the Rainbow Sash Movement, a homosexual activist group demanding the Catholic Church accept homosexuality, have said they will once again disrupt mass in Catholic Cathedrals on Pentecost Sunday.
The group wears rainbow-coloured sashes while attending mass to indicate they are actively living a homosexual lifestyle, but intend to receive communion regardless. The demonstration challenges the Church's teaching that homosexual behaviour is gravely immoral and constitutes a mortal sin. Under church teaching, a Catholic cannot receive Holy Communion while in a state of unrepentant mortal sin.
The demonstrators were allowed to receive communion in several dioceses during past demonstrations, including the St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese of Minnesota and the Los Angeles diocese. Last year, however, the Vatican issued a definitive word that the protestors were not to receive communion.
Commenting on the notification from Rome, the head of the Vatican's office of Divine Worship and Sacraments, Francis Cardinal Arinze said in an interview on EWTN, "These rainbow sash people, are really saying, 'We are homosexuals, we intend to remain so and we want to receive Holy Communion.'"
"The Catechism of the Catholic Church…says it is not condemning a person for having homosexual tendency. We don't condemn anybody for that. But a person stands condemned for acting on it."
Despite the Vatican's statement, last year's Pentecost service at the Cathedral of the St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdioceses degenerated into something of a free-for-all, according to one attendant, as sash wearers attempted to pluck communion off of the plate in passing, and one person began distributing broken bits of communion to other demonstrators in defiance of the edict.
See previous LifeSiteNews coverage:
Homosexual Activists Disturb Masses, Some Denied Communion, Some Steal It Anyway http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/may/05051701.html
US Archbishop Finally Bows to Rome and Sort of Denies Communion to Homosexual Activists http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/may/05050609.html
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