Scott_Pomfret's Blog

I have a new defense for all those self-proclaimed orthodox bloggers who might criticize Saint Anthony Shrine for being welcoming of gay and lesbian Catholics:

At least we don't have a Buddha.

<o:p> It seems that down in Australia, a bishop there has issued a warning to a "renegade" parish "where women can preach, homosexual couples can be blessed and social justice is championed." It seems the church is "operating outside practices and policies acceptable to the Roman Catholic Church." (God forbid the Church should champion social justice.) The bishop concluded that whatever good the parish might be doing, it is decidedly not Catholic. (The crisis was, of course, precipitated by a person not a member of the parish who came in and took surreptitious photographs - yet another Catholic snitch on a self-appointed crusade to purify the Church. If you're worried about impurities, my friends, try Lysol.)

It always amazes me how quick the self-proclaimed orthodox are to declare others "not Catholic." In the Jewish tradition, there are orthodox, reformed, conservative, etc., each with radically different practices, and yet they never regard each other as "not Jewish." (They may regard each other as wrongheaded, but that's different.)<o:p>

Can this impulse toward exclusion be anything more than an effort by the self-proclaimed orthodox to elevate themselves above the masses, perhaps to secure reserved seating in the Hereafter?

<o:p>All this talk of purification and exclusion reminded me of an online exchange I had with a straighter, more conservative brother. He wrote,

"How can you be a Eucharistic Minister and a practicing homosexual at the same time? I would not be handling the Blessed Sacrament while living in mortal sin."

<o:p>I wrote back:

"Set your mind at ease, brother. The friars at Saint Anthony Shrine keep a Sam's Club-sized pump bottle of Ritual-Impurity-B-Gon in the Sacristy. I thoroughly scrub my hands before Mass.

<o:p> "We make the menstruating women use it, too. And the lepers, of course."

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<o:p>
Speaking of exclusion, you know it must be election season again when bishops are again directing that politicians be denied the Eucharist. Not all politicians, mind you. Not politicians that favor war and random killing in foreign nations, or who wish to banish today's lepers (we call them "illegal immigrants") to their misery. No, these bishops are focused solely on Democratic politicians. Thus, with our new VP being a Catholic, Archbishop Chaput of Denver has responded seasonally and predictably.