Catholic professor Edward Peters of Detroit and Detroit
archbishop Allen Vigneron have stated that Catholics that support gay marriage
should not really be receiving communion since they are acting contrary to
Catholic law.
This was reported in the Detroit Free Press by Niraj Warikoo
in an article titled: GAY MARRIAGE REVIVES CATHOLIC DEBATE…4/9/2013.
Nancy Kaffer of the same paper responded with her article:
CHURCH STANCE ON COMMUNION, GAY MARRIAGE IS NO REVELATION.
This is not a new argument as Catholic bishops in the past
have tried to deny communion to public figure Catholics who espouse pro-choice
positions and support gay marriage rights. Among those are Nancy Pelosi,
Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, Andrew Cuomo, governor of
New York and former governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm.
The divide and disconnect between Catholic leaders and the
Catholics they are supposedly leading is because normal Catholics are evolving
socially way faster than the stodgy old church.
Statistics show that 86% of Catholics find birth control
measures as morally acceptable in total disagreement with church
pronouncements. Normal Catholics cannot understand why condoms should be banned
even in areas like Africa where HIV/AIDS is running rampant.
And many normal Catholics are asking how dare the church
hand down all these moral “absolutes”
while struggling with a catastrophic priestly pedophile scandal that church
leaders tried to cover up; the current church does not have a moral leg to
stand on.
Nancy Kaffer asks if it is normal to be a member of a religion
with which you have some strong moral disagreements. Well obviously American
Catholics have huge disagreements with church teachings but they keep going to
church because they somehow by pass church leadership and use their time in
church to speak directly to their god as my most Catholic mother told me she
does.
So the Vatican and Catholic leadership, at least in the
United States, are becoming irrelevant in the greater religion scene here. I have
even read about priests and bishops that are grumbling about the Vatican
ordering them to support teachings that are insupportable because those
teachings clash with basic reason as in the condom use prohibition; something
has to give.
As far as keeping communion, the central theme of the
Catholic faith away from Catholics that do not agree with church teachings; I
have heard that is a minority position among priests and bishops in the U.S.;
they are losing too many members as it is, they cannot alienate anymore; who
would drop coins in the collection baskets?
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