I'm pretty much
done with this nonsense.
A Detroit professor and legal adviser to the Vatican says Catholics who promote gay marriage should not try to receive holy Communion, a key part of Catholic identity. […]
In a post on his blog last week, [Edward Peters] said that Catholic teachings make it clear that marriage is between one man and one woman. And so, "Catholics who promote 'same-sex marriage' act contrary to" Catholic law "and should not approach for holy Communion," he wrote. "They also risk having holy Communion withheld from them ... being rebuked and/or being sanctioned."
The notion has the backing of the archbishop of Detroit, presumably because Detroit has no other notable social problems to occupy the good man's time:
On Sunday, Vigneron said about supporting gay marriage and receiving Communion: "For a Catholic to receive holy Communion and still deny the revelation Christ entrusted to the church is to try to say two contradictory things at once: 'I believe the church offers the saving truth of Jesus, and I reject what the church teaches.' In effect, they would contradict themselves. This sort of behavior would result in publicly renouncing one's integrity and logically bring shame for a double-dealing that is not unlike perjury."
I have never once heard a prominent member of the Church demand that those that support or even outright enable the death penalty abstain from Communion. Not supporters of war, even the "preemptive" kind. Not politicians who champion fewer rights for minorities, or less help to the poor, or less aid to the sick. I have never heard of a politician being warned off attending the Sunday Mass because he could have expanded our nation's ability and will to feed impoverished children, but instead rejected it and championed a tax cut for the fabulously wealthy instead. Perhaps such things happen, but I have not heard of them.
If I were to suppose who should or should not be held in good graces with the Holy Church, I would have to believe that those that have so corrupted its message as to focus the Church's most public efforts only on matters of sex, an obsession unsupported by any non-insane close reading of the gospels you might care to partake in, would be among the worst of all possible sinners. If you could either feed the poor or prevent a gay man from having sex and you choose the latter as worthy of your attention and drive, your holy creed is rotten. If you could either hold fierce public and political battles against the execution of prisoners or against insurance coverage for contraceptives but it is the insurance coverage bit that truly stirs your soul, your soul is not worth half as much as you reckon it to be.
Withholding communion or threatening excommunication have for decades been the two tools used by the American church hierarchy to publicly rebuke unruly political members and keep them in line. I can't remember anytime in the last 20 years when such threats were deployed for any ideological strayings other than those explicitly revolving around penises or vaginas. I don't know what other evidence the Church (my old church, etc., etc.) needs to provide in order to prove to their own flock that they have lost their way. Lost their way, and then some.