Posted on 03/09/2012 4:33:00 AM PST by IbJensen
GAITHERSBURG, MARYLAND, March 8, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – The lesbian who is attempting to get a Catholic priest removed from his parish for denying her Holy Communion at her mother’s funeral is a Buddhist who describes herself as a “naturally born agitator” committed to a “culture war.”
Barbara Johnson created a national feeding frenzy after alerting the media that Fr. Marcel Guarnizo had refused to give her the Eucharist after asking her not to come forward to receive, because she is a sexually active homosexual.
On February 26, Fr. Marcel Guarnizo of St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland, covered the ciborium containing the Host as Johnson approached and whispered, “I can’t give you Communion because you live with a woman, and in the eyes of the Church, that is a sin.”
In the ensuing national media coverage, Johnson was repeatedly painted as the victim of prejudice, while the priest was lambasted as a bigot, even being censured by his own diocese.
But in the days following the incident, new information has emerged about the woman at the center of the controversy that raises questions about why she presented herself for Communion in the first place. In addition to personally asking Johnson not to present herself for Communion, the priest had publicly explained the conditions for receiving Communion during the funeral mass.
Johnson published a paper on Academia.edu entitled “Coming Out in the Heteronormative and Homophobic World of Education” that discussed her sexual and religion identification.
When taking a job as an art teacher in a Catholic high school, she wrote, “I felt I couldn’t allow myself to be put into a position to be closeted, even for a few months,” because doing so would leave her “feeling invisible and unworthy of knowing.”
“So in my interview with the principal we talked openly about my being a lesbian and a Buddhist.”
In a second paper she wrote, “As a Buddhist, my role model of an enlightened, highly realized, and happy human being is Gautama Buddha.”
Under canon law, only Roman Catholics are permitted to receive the Eucharist at a Catholic Mass.
In her paper about her experiences in Catholic education, Johnson portrays herself as committed to a “culture war,” insisting it is “important to note the place in which the issue exists in our society, a place of deep and historically violent conflict – war…Ironically, the group who most often portray LGBT people as a menace is the same group responsible for ‘virtually all rape, assault, murder, theft, child abuse, spouse abuse, and war.’”
She complained that her principal told her, “I’m no bigot” but warned her that some Catholic school parents object to teachers discussing their homosexual sex lives in class.
“I was forewarned, and now any problems I might have would surely be of my own making, and most likely, in need of my own solutions,” she wrote. “The decision was mine to make, and I made it with all the zeal and enthusiasm of any naturally born agitator who every now and again enjoys challenging the status quo. And how could I not take this opportunity to challenge this status quo where our laws ‘facilitate and nurture an educational system where schools are able to use tax money [or in this case government voucher money] to speak about respect while modeling bigotry’?”
In her paper, posted online “about a year ago” as a graduate student at Kutztown University, Johnson quoted John Howard Griffin’s statement that he wrote Black Like Me to show “the white majority how a small but powerful group of whites viciously oppressed blacks [while] well-meaning whites looked the other way.” She asked, “Isn’t it time the well-meaning heterosexual majority looked this issue straight in the eye?”
She went on to liken societal “heterosexism” to the Jewish blood libel and the lynching of blacks, and hoped her words would “propel all educators out of our comfort zones and into action.”
Decrying “the false sexual binaries of mascule/feminine and heterosexual/homosexual,” she wrote LGBT people must be “embraced as part of a new, more expansive definition of normal.”
“The next step must be for the public school system” to “celebrate both LGBT faculty and students for the unique perspectives and experiences we can provide the greater school community,” she wrote.
Johnson says she facilitated this celebration in her career by teaching “a project based on Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party,” which is “based on tikkun olam...the Jewish concept behind much of Chicago’s work.” Students were asked to discuss “discrimination,” then create art projects, displayed throughout the school, “to honor…marginalized groups.”
Joshua Bowman, who runs the blog the “Prolix Patriot,” wrote, “a quick glance at the Facebook and Twitter pages of [Johnson’s] art school (for children!) reveals a series of pro-abortion and pro-[gay] links which are clearly and explicitly at odds with the teachings of the Catholic Church.”
Canon 915 of the Roman Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law states those who are “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.” However, canon lawyers disagree about how much interaction is necessary before a priest may deny someone Communion in practice.
A source close to the incident, Diego von Stauffenberg, told LifeSiteNews.com exclusively that Johnson introduced herself and her “lover” to Fr. Guarnizo before the ceremony, and the priest asked her not to present herself for Communion. She then reportedly stormed out, with her lesbian partner blocking the door. After being denied the Eucharist by Fr. Guarnizo, Johnson went into another line and received Holy Communion from an Extraordinary Minister.
Von Stauffenberg’s account calls several aspects of Johnson’s story into question.
After the ceremony, Johnson wrote a complaint, leading to Archdiocese of Washington Auxiliary Bishop Barry Knestout penning a formal letter of apology blasting Fr. Guarnizo’s “lack of pastoral sensitivity.”
Popular Catholic clogger Thomas Peters writes at CatholicVote.org that, in light of Johnson’s history of activism, the entire ordeal constitutes “a blatantly political attempt by Johnson to generate sympathy and support for gay marriage and to foment public judgment against the Church.”
“The liberal narrative is that the Catholic Church is oppressing women,” Bowman wrote at Prolix Patriot, “but the truth is that radical liberals who do not believe in the Church’s teachings are manufacturing controversy with the help of manipulative media elites.”
OK What would really torque her off would be if someone would tell her that everyone who sympathized with her make believe story would pray for her.
It sounds like she purposely sought employment in a Catholic school so that she could raise sexuality "issues" and is probably disappointed if she hasn't had a lot of response or negative reaction from parents.
So yes, of course she used her own mother's funeral as an opportunity for political grandstanding. She almost demanded that the priest refuse her Communion so that she could raise a ruckus about it. The poor man was between a rock and a hard place. She's a despicable human being.
I'm not Catholic and have attended exactly one funeral Mass in my life. The priest made it perfectly clear who could and could not receive Communion. Not every Catholic present opted to receive it that day so I didn't see that not receiving it was any great issue one way or the other for anyone.
With Catholics, Holy Communion is a sacrament. One needs to be baptized and educated in Catholicism before receiving. One must also be in a State of Grace. In short, non-Catholics do not receive Communion. This woman wasn’t Catholic and she was in a sinful relationship. This barred her from receiving the Sacrament. To some non-Catholics, this may sound strange; however, it is simply the rules of the Church. She could have gotten in the Communion line, crossed her arms across her chest and received a blessing. Obviously she felt “entitled” to go against the Church. IMHO.
If I walked up to my pastor before Mas and introduced him to a married woman I was having sex with I’d get denied Communion too. But some people are “special”.
27 Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
28 But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.
29 For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.
I was raised Catholic, I received all of the Sacraments. However, I have not practiced Catholicism in many years and I would NEVER go to Church and receive Communion without first going to Confession and renewing my faith.
Why is it so hard for people just to show respect?
Nothing in your quote from the K.J.V., says "state of grace" I agree with everything it says and have no problem with you or anyone who pleases, phrasing it, "state of grace". Are you looking for an argument, where no grounds for one exists?
The homosexual priesthood was a scheme hatched in the Kremlin in order to bring down the Roman Catholic Church, which the Russians believed that second to the USA this was their enemy.
They clandestinely recruited queers to enter the seminaries to begin the contamination. As these were true sodomites they naturally gravitated towards the youngsters after their invalid ordinations.
Apparently you are a member or a facilitator of the homosexual agenda, possibly a lesbian, and I can understand, but not condone, your frustration.
“I was raised Catholic, I received all of the Sacraments.”
Well... obviously you haven’t received “all” of the Sacraments... you’re still here with us...
“As a Buddhist, my role model of an enlightened, highly realized, and happy human being is Gautama Buddha.”
Buddha would never have behaved like this. In addition, Buddha was heterosexual, and, until the recent pressure of Western Liberal malcontents was successful, homosexual behavior was, in my ancient Tibetan tradition at least, considered non-virtuous, i.e. sure to result in negative karma. This woman does not represent Buddhism, but her Narcissism brings dishonor upon it - not a light karmic matter at all.
Those interested in my review/rant on Western Liberal Buddhist shenanigans (entitled, “the best minds of my generation . . . “) may want to look up that Amazon review from March 1, 2012 for the book, Shoes Outside the Door, by Michael Downing. Sorry, can’t link directly to the link of that review anymore, but it’s not hard to find.
It’s all a communist conspiracy, right? and what was it five hundred years ago? or a thousand?
Only those who don't understand Christian doctrine have a problem with what the priest chose responsibly to do. In the old days, had the priest chosen the apparent path of least resistance, treating the Church like a public school and being concerned more about hurting someone's feelings than eternal damnation, the clerics would have burned him, the supplicant and all the chalices and utensils, etc.
This is a Catholic communion, after all. Even a "Protestant" Christian like me knows the context and would not seek Catholic communion out of respect for their beliefs that the service involves transubstantiation, and the very literal presence of the blood and body of Our Lord and Savior.
I'll save the notations on Paul's use of the adverb translated "unworthily," as in modifying the action and not the actor, for another more appropriate time.
Thanks again...
LOL!! Witty!
ping!
Yes, they are ......and the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church.
From previous threads on this topic, I understand she introduced her gay lover, as her lover, to the priest prior to the funeral. He was on moral grounds to refuse her communion just on the basis of those facts.
These were the verses I was thinking of also as I agree with your point. By the way, I'm a Lutheran whose church practices close communion for this reason.
Receiving Coommunion in an unrepentant state just results in yet another sin, namely sacrilege. I think that, because of his pastoral concernfor her, thew spriest was trying to prevent her from getting into even more serious sin.
May the Lord come to her assistance so that she may be blessed with repentance and eternal blessedness.
Calm down. My post to you was for clarity in the conversation, not a provocation. May God bless you.
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