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CHICAGO, May 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Pentecost has come and gone, and the sky has not fallen. For members of the Rainbow Sash Movement (RSM) nationally it was a time of deep prayer. Around the Nation members of the Rainbow Sash Movement entered Cathedrals and parishes. Such as Rochester New York where individuals tried to block the way of Rainbow Sash Members from receiving communion. Eventually the Rainbow Sash Members received communion with the support of fellow parishioners. In the Archdiocese of Chicago Cardinal Francis George issued orders that Rainbow Sash Movement members were not to be given Communion at Holy...

Today: May 15, 2005 at 16:12:57 PDT Priest Denies Gays' Supporters Communion By JOSHUA FREED ASSOCIATED PRESS ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - A Roman Catholic priest denied communion to more than 100 parishioners Sunday, saying they could not receive the sacrament because they wore rainbow-colored sashes to church to show support for gay Catholics. Before offering communion, the Rev. Michael Sklucazek told the congregation at the Cathedral of St. Paul that anyone wearing a sash could come forward for a blessing but would not receive wine and bread. A group called the Rainbow Sash Alliance has encouraged supporters to wear...

A group of about 100 gay Roman Catholics and their supporters were denied Holy Communion at Pentecost Mass at the Cathederal of St. Paul today.

CHICAGO, May 15 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Peter LaBarbera, executive director of Illinois Family Institute, released the following statement today in response to the latest protest by the homosexual group "Rainbow Sash" in Catholic churches on Pentecost Sunday (May 15):"Illinois Family Institute encourages Catholics throughout Illinois to ignore the homosexual activist group 'Rainbow Sash,' which stoops to a new low by using the Sunday Mass as a platform for advancing a sinful lifestyle. We applaud Cardinal Francis George of Chicago for properly rejecting Rainbow Sash demands-- and for not welcoming them as have some Catholic leaders, including Cardinal Roger Mahoney of...

(CNSNews.com) - A group of homosexual activists plan to protest Mass at Catholic churches nationwide Sunday in opposition to the church's stance on homosexuality. The group, Rainbow Sash, explained on its website that they "stand opposed to homophobia at the Eucharistic table" and "make no apologies for God's gift of our sexuality." The group encourages its members to wear the Rainbow Sash in a parish or cathedral as "an act of faith in the Lord, who works through weakness." "This year, Rainbow Sash has upped the ante," Catholic League President William Donohue said in a statement. He pointed to a...

Responding to a directive from the Vatican, Archbishop Harry Flynn has advised all parishes in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis to deny communion to anyone wearing a rainbow-colored sash. For the past four years, supporters of the Rainbow Sash Alliance USA -- a group of Catholics who are active in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community -- have worn the sashes to receive communion at the St. Paul Cathedral on Pentecost Sunday, the anniversary date of the group's founding in 1998. Last year the service was disrupted when a group of 40 laymen protested the activists receiving...

Sash Wars V: The Archbishop Strikes Back 05/07/05 Four years ago, St. Paul-Minneapolis Archbishop Harry Flynn opened the cathedral’s doors to open homosexuals who desired to change Church teaching. Every Pentecost since, members of the Rainbow Sash Alliance have donned multicolored sashes for Sunday Mass and were given the Eucharist. This year that changes. In a move that surprised both members of the Rainbow Sash Alliance, and Catholics in the archdiocese and neighboring dioceses, Archbishop Flynn sent a letter to Brian McNeill, leader of the Rainbow Sash Alliance USA, a local affiliate of the international Rainbow Sash Movement —...

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Protesters who want the Church to change its teaching on the morality of homosexual acts will be denied Communion in the Cathedral of St. Paul if they step forward wearing a rainbow-colored garment Pentecost Sunday. For the past four years members of the Rainbow Sash Alliance have donned multicolored sashes for Pentecost Sunday Mass at the St. Paul Cathedral and were given the Eucharist.The organization is the U.S. affiliate of the international Rainbow Sash Movement. Because the movement’s actions have been perceived as a protest, St. Paul and Minneapolis Archbishop Harry Flynn has told the local...

Responding to a directive from the Vatican, Archbishop Harry Flynn has advised all parishes in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis to deny communion to anyone wearing a rainbow-colored sash. For the past four years, supporters of the Rainbow Sash Alliance USA -- a group of Catholics who are active in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community -- have worn the sashes to receive communion at the St. Paul Cathedral on Pentecost Sunday, the anniversary date of the group's founding in 1998.

Rainbow Sash Movement Calls for Integrity and Justice from both Pope Benedict XVI, and Cardinal Francis George VP of the NCCB, on Pentecost Sunday, May 15, 2005 Monday May 2, 6:00 am ET CHICAGO, May 2 /PRNewswire/ -- The Rainbow Sash Movement (RSM) with its supporters will be entering Cathedrals and parishes around the nation on Pentecost Sunday, May 15. We are inviting our supporters to join us, and wear the Rainbow Sash as a symbol of dignity and inclusion. We continue to call for public dialogue with Cardinal Francis George Vice President of the National Council of Catholic Bishops....

Archbishop Harry Flynn has told gay-rights supporters they will not be allowed to receive Holy Communion while wearing rainbow-colored sashes because the practice has come to be perceived as a protest against Catholic teaching and is unacceptable to the Vatican. Flynn's decision, conveyed in a letter this week to the Rainbow Sash Alliance USA, reverses his four-year policy of not interfering with sash-wearers receiving Communion at the Cathedral of St. Paul. Rainbow-sash supporters in St. Paul and elsewhere have typically organized their presence around the Christian celebration of Pentecost, which this year is May 15

Rainbow Sash Movement Calls for Integrity and Justice from both Pope Benedict XVI, and Cardinal Francis George VP of the NCCB, on Pentecost Sunday, May 15, 2005Monday May 2, 6:00 am ET CHICAGO, May 2 /PRNewswire/ -- The Rainbow Sash Movement (RSM) with its supporters will be entering Cathedrals and parishes around the nation on Pentecost Sunday, May 15. We are inviting our supporters to join us, and wear the Rainbow Sash as a symbol of dignity and inclusion.We continue to call for public dialogue with Cardinal Francis George Vice President of the National Council of Catholic Bishops.In the weeks...

New York's Gov. Al Smith not only opposed Prohibition, but in 1928 he became the first Roman Catholic ever nominated by a major party to be president. This resulted in some of America's worst anti-Catholic expressions of bigotry – including a rumor that Gov. Smith was planning to invite the pope to make an extended visit in order to supervise the conversion of this nation to a Roman Catholic country. When Gov. Smith lost to Herbert Hoover by 444 to 87 electoral votes, he had the good sense of humor and sportsmanship to announce that he had just sent a...

Vatican Cardinal Ends Debate: No Communion for Pro-Abortion Politicians or Rainbow Sashers Says "Are we going to change Divine Law, how God made us?" VATICAN CITY, February 16, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, the top Vatican Cardinal in charge of the sacraments of the Catholic Church has made it plain in an on-camera interview with EWTN that pro-abortion politicians may not be admitted to Holy Communion. A February 11 EWTN broadcast of the news program, World Over Live, with host Raymond Arroyo, featured an interview with Arinze, the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline...

A Vatican official who is considered among the leading candidates to become the next pope has said activists who demonstrate support for gay Catholics by wearing a colored sash to mass are showing their opposition to church teaching and should not receive communion. The statement from Cardinal Francis Arinze, the Vatican's head of liturgy, amounts to a rebuke of a practice that has quietly gained favor among gay activists in the Twin Cities, where Archbishop Harry Flynn has accepted Rainbow Sash wearers when they appear at mass. A handful of people have appeared for the past four years wearing sashes...

  ST. PAUL — The pro-homosexual rainbow sashers appeared again at a Cathedral of St. Paul Mass, and Catholics Against Sacrilege also returned, praying the rosary in reparation.  This November 7 episode was the second time this year the groups have confronted each other at the cathedral of the St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese. (See The Wanderer, June 10, 2004, p. 1 for an account of the May 30 protest and counterprotest.)  At the May 30 Mass, the Ushers of the Eucharist knelt near the altar to try to block sashers from receiving Communion.  This time, before Communion, Fr. Ralph Talbot of the cathedral asked that...

Dear fellow-priests, When I was ordained a priest, the bishop reminded me of the threefold task to which I was committing myself: to be a priest, to be a shepherd and to be a prophet; serving God at the altar (sacraments) and in prayer, leading the flock and keeping it together, preaching His Word of faith, hope and love and thus setting God's people free. Priests are in all this cooperating with the bishops and at the same time they also have their own responsibility. The words YHWH spoke to Jeremiah when He called him, have always been a source...

CHICAGO, June 5 /PRNewswire/ -- The Rainbow Sash Movement has just been notified that Cardinal McCarrick of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC has agreed to host a "Listening Session" on the weekend of the National Council of Catholic Bishops meeting in November. According to Joe Murray, spokesperson for the Rainbow Sash Movement, "I have been in direct communication with the Cardinal's representative since January 2004," trying to develop this "Listening Session," and I am thankful to God for this opportunity. A Listening Session is an ancient practice of the Catholic Church. The goal is to listen to the faithful, thereby...

<p>Roman Catholic laymen clashed with gay Catholics and their allies Sunday in a nonviolent confrontation over gays participating in the eucharist.</p> <p>About 40 men from a recently formed group, Ushers of the Eucharist, collected in the central aisle in the Cathedral of St. Paul during holy communion and asked the Rainbow Sash Alliance not to take part.</p>

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Priests denied Holy Communion on Sunday to a group of rainbow sash-wearing gay activists who showed up to protest a directive from Chicago's prelate that they violated church teachings by advertising their homosexuality. The volatile issue of denying Communion to Catholics who disagree with church teachings, a controversy that has recently entangled U.S. politicians, was fueled in Chicago after Cardinal Francis George sent a memo to priests in the second-largest U.S. archdiocese, ordering them not to offer Communion to sash-wearers. More than a dozen men and women activists sang and prayed with other parishioners filling the pews...