Filled with Christ’s Love

Catholic Archbishop Harry Flynn, head of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, has announced that the LGBT community and their supporters who celebrate gay tolerance by wearing rainbow sashes to the Cathedral of St. Paul will no longer be allowed to receive communion as long as their continue to wear their sashes. According to Flynn, the sashes, which have been worn by the group for four years without incident, are symbolic of a protest against Catholic teaching and are unacceptable to the Vatican.

A gay-rights leader said sash-wearers would continue to attempt to receive communion at the cathedral.

The Rainbow Sash movement is an organization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Catholics and their families and friends.

[…]

Last year, a group of Catholic men stationed themselves in the aisles at the Cathedral to disrupt the procession of sash-wearers to receive Communion.

Charming.

After the recent appointment of the new pope, who is a staunch believer in an alleged “intrinsic moral evil” of homosexuality, I wrote:

I reject this pope, I reject his church, and I reject its teachings. I reject the notion that people I love are evil for being gay, or that any expression of love between two consenting adults is somehow sinful. There’s nothing sinful about love, and there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the way I love Mr. Shakes, and the way Pam loves Kate, and Mr. Furious loves Mr. Curious; I reject all claims to the contrary. And if that consigns my eternal soul to the fires of hell, then off I go, tra la la. I never fucking liked harps, anyway.

In reply, someone commented, “I'm sure the Church will be so sad. You were the top recruit.” Such a comment exemplifies the problem with modern Christianity, which has largely become (with a few notable exceptions—I’m talking to you, UCC) a place of exclusion, a place of judgment and scorn.

The things is, I should be the church’s top recruit. By the definitions of just about every Christian denomination, I am a sinner, a soul in need of saving. But I am of little interest to most modern Christians, aside from my convenient position as a target of their blame and ire. I am the face of the secular Left—the believer in evolution, the feminist, the queer appeaser—and I am much more useful as an object of their scorn than a lost sheep to be brought into the fold. They’d much rather hate me than save me.

It’s fine with me, as I don’t particularly want or need saving, but that such an attitude is exacted upon those in their midst, who desire participation in the church, who long for a grace they cannot find in earthly things, is truly indicative of how far the church has strayed from the beliefs of the man upon whose words its foundation rests.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

While America’s Christians wail and moan and organize multicasts to stir their adherents with riveting stories about how they are being oppressed, they busily endeavor within their own ranks to oppress those with whom they disagree. If it is as difficult for a rich man to get into heaven as a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, I can only imagine the contortions required of such shocking hypocrites to reach the pearly gates.