Posted on 02/19/2024 8:40:35 PM PST by SeekAndFind
What happened last week at St. Patrick's Cathedral at a funeral that forced the archdiocese of New York to order its pastor to conduct a Mass of Reparation? Readers wondering the answer to that question should look elsewhere than the mainstream media. Since the funeral of transgender activist Cecilia Gentili, the media has suggested that the outrage over the funeral relates entirely to Gentili's 'identity,' rather than the behavior of the participants.
Today's report from the Associated Press provides a good example of this narrow coverage. Nowhere in the opening three paragraphs is there any reference to what actually happened at the funeral Mass:
The funeral of a renowned transgender activist in a New York cathedral elicited a denunciation of the event by a senior church official, who called the mass a scandal within one of the preeminent houses of worship in U.S. Catholicism.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York condemned the funeral of Cecilia Gentili, which was held in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan and drew a large audience on Thursday.
Gentili was known as a leading advocate for other transgender people, as well as sex workers and people with HIV. A post on her Instagram account announced her death on Feb. 6 at the age of 52.
The first mention of behavior only comes in the fourth paragraph, and only in a quote from the pastor of St. Patrick's Cathedral. In fact, the only reporting on any behavior in the entire article at all is in the fourteenth paragraph, and is as generic as possible:
Videos of Gentili’s funeral mass show an estimated audience of more than 1,000 celebrants, including transgender people and other friends and supporters chanting her name, applauding, singing and offering praise of her stature as a leading light of the city’s LGBTQ+ community.
Want to know what really happened? Catholic News Agency offers more specific reporting than AP on why the funeral was so outrageous and offensive to Catholics. In the first place, the funeral organizers deliberately hid Gentili's biological sex from the parish in order to secure access for the funeral, a fact first reported (in fairness) by the New York Times:
Organizers reportedly did not disclose to the cathedral that Gentili, who died Feb. 6 at age 52, was a biological man who identified as a woman.
“I kept it under wraps,” Ceyeye Doroshow, the service’s organizer, told The New York Times.
We'll get back to that deception in a moment. It served to open the door of the cathedral to a mockery of the Catholic faith, its teachings, and its saints during the liturgy itself. Among the lowlights:
Many of the 1,000 in attendance wore drag and scanty outfits. At the foot of the altar stood an image of the Argentinian-born Gentili with a halo, surrounded by the Spanish words for “whore,” “transvestite,” “blessed,” and “mother.”
Trans activist Oscar Diaz told Time it “felt appropriate” to say farewell to Gentili with a funeral service at St. Patrick’s, describing the event as an act of bestowing “sainthood” on the transgender advocate. ...
A rendition of the “Ave Maria” by the cathedral cantor was interrupted when an attendee shouted “Ave Cecilia!” and danced down the center aisle.
A mid-liturgy lay reflection given from the sanctuary compared Gentili’s advocacy for normalizing sex work and lobbying for gender-related health care to Christ’s ministry to prostitutes and outcasts.
In another reflection, Diaz described the deceased as “this whore, this great whore, St. Cecilia, mother of all whores.” Those assembled stood and applauded as Father Dougherty remained seated in the presider’s chair, his chin in his hand.
That's a lot more than just "singing and offering praise" to Gentili. This despicable demonstration of twisted theology and political activism in a Catholic sacred space is an assault on its community of faithful, conducted under deception. It even drew a rebuke from LGBT advocate Fr. James Martin, who initially endorsed holding the funeral at St. Patrick's but backpedaled after details of the event emerged.
The media wants people to think that the outrage is an act of bigotry, when the real story is the acts of bigotry by the participants. That anti-Catholic animus and the targeting of the parish of St. Patrick's are what's at issue here. And the media will try to bury that aspect of the story as much as possible.
However, there are more important aspects of this story than just the media's refusal to report it correctly. What took place was an assault on the church and on faith in God, and deliberately so. If Gentili's friends wanted a funeral service for their demonstration, they could have held it at any number of secular venues, especially since Gentili was a self-professed atheist in the first place.
So why did the organizers seek out St. Patrick's Cathedral, and lie to get access to it for this demonstration?
Doroshow said that Gentili’s friends requested that the funeral service be held at St. Patrick’s because “it is an icon,” which is how they thought of Gentili.
They sought out this venue because it's an icon -- an icon in the theological sense. Catholics, and even more so Orthodox, see icons as art that has special meaning in faith that allows devotion to flow to the Lord. These are sacred because they transcend material reality and orient us to the spiritual kingdom of God.
The organizers of the funeral deliberately chose a theological icon in order to debase it and promote their materialist sense of iconography. The degradation of the faith and the church was the entire point. In that, there's little difference between this and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, which is why Catholics got angry with the Los Angeles Dodgers for honoring their insulting bigotry and intolerance with a community award last year. The SPI and the contingent at St. Patrick's Cathedral mock our beliefs so as to orient people to the material rather than the spiritual and to their reordering of Creation to their own uses and appetites.
All of this is a battle which has been going on since the Garden of Eden. Whether we worship a Golden Calf or indulge in idolatry to be welcoming and open to our neighbors, it's still the same spiritual battle. As we have seen since Sodom and Gomorrah, since the Roman empire, and are experiencing anew now, the popular culture will always tempt us into abandoning our spiritual salvation by debasing its precepts and mocking those who remain faithful to them. It's long past time for the Christian Church to recognize the danger of secularism and especially the explicit hostility and destruction preferred by the trans/queer activist movement.
Because as our friend Chad Felix Greene reminds us, they certainly know what they're doing.
LGBTQ activists seem uniquely obsessed with attacking Christianity as a significant part of their activism and identity.— Chad Felix Greene 🇮🇱 (@chadfelixg) February 19, 2024
Yet the alphabet mafia would never try their little stunt at a mosque for obvious reasons.
Because the mosque would never allow it.
I remember a time when you had to be a member of a church to have them hold funeral services.
When my husband and I got married, it was at the Catholic church where he was confirmed. When our children were christened, we were members of that church.
Everyone knew we were not MINOs or doing it for “show.”
Many years ago, I marched in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in NY. That was the year that Dinkins forced the Ancient Order of Hibernians to allow guys to March. Their behavior was appalling. My entire group turned their backs when they went by. I didn’t. I wanted to see for myself what was happening.
It was full on raunchy and rude.
We’ll get back to that deception in a moment. It served to open the door of the cathedral to a mockery of the Catholic faith, its teachings, and its saints during the liturgy itself. Among the lowlights:
Many of the 1,000 in attendance wore drag and scanty outfits. At the foot of the altar stood an image of the Argentinian-born Gentili with a halo, surrounded by the Spanish words for “whore,” “transvestite,” “blessed,” and “mother.”
Trans activist Oscar Diaz told Time it “felt appropriate” to say farewell to Gentili with a funeral service at St. Patrick’s, describing the event as an act of bestowing “sainthood” on the transgender advocate. ...
A rendition of the “Ave Maria” by the cathedral cantor was interrupted when an attendee shouted “Ave Cecilia!” and danced down the center aisle.
A mid-liturgy lay reflection given from the sanctuary compared Gentili’s advocacy for normalizing sex work and lobbying for gender-related health care to Christ’s ministry to prostitutes and outcasts.
In another reflection, Diaz described the deceased as “this whore, this great whore, St. Cecilia, mother of all whores.” Those assembled stood and applauded as Father Dougherty remained seated in the presider’s chair, his chin in his hand.
The desecration of Christian holy places is an abomination. The trannies are evil.
The level of blasphemy really speaks to what drives these people, whose conscience is seared with a hot iron. It’s so Satanic that it’s hard to keep reading about the events. They were celebrating a wicked person’s descent into hell while not only attacking Catholics but all of Christianity.
He was an atheist.
No where can I find what he died of. That in itself is suspicious.
They nailed one thing: he was definitely a WHORE.
I thought this was a good article. I skimmed this issue yesterday, and like many, thought that the church itself must have colluded with this, as it is standard practice for the clergy at a Catholic Church to learn a little bit about the person, and must have been deliberately blind.
But as I thought further on it, I realized all it would have taken was lying on the part of the people who set it up as they spoke to the priest: “I know Ms. Gentili loved Jesus, grew up as a Catholic, and believed in God. She wasn’t a practicing Catholic, did not attend services at any specific church, but she would have wanted this...”
(I deliberately used “her” and “she” because it is what those people would have done)
I don’t see any circumstances under which the church itself, when presented with a plea like that, would have refused services. This acceptance of performance of funeral rites for someone who never participated or went to a church in their entire adult life happens in many churches of all denominations every day across this country.
In this case, the people putting on the show for the public such as singing “Ave Cecilia” in the aisle, had exactly that in mind. Putting on a show.
These people are morally corrupt, and using the Catholic Church as a prop for their deviant behavior is what they do as a matter of course.
I side with the church in these events. (Note: I grew up Roman Catholic, but have not practiced it for decades. I am searching for God in other Christian venues, such as the Baptist Church at this time)
This is my opinion.
This is outrageous, evil behavior.
I would have thought the people running St. Patrick’s would be a bit more sophisticated. If you’re told there’s going to be 1,000 people attending a funeral, you might wonder just who it is being buried. Can’t believe they got duped like this.
He will not be mocked. I’d be very interested in knowing what happens to these folks in the near future. How many will die or suffer some sort of terrible illness? I said GD once and got shingles the next day.
That was my first impression, but if the “organizers” setting it up with the church said “This is a person who has a huge following in the LGBTQ community, so we expect a lot of people, but...he still wanted to be buried as a Catholic...” they would probably go along with it.
Until the services started, I suspect they would have thought it would be a funeral with a lot of non-Catholics attending.
I am certain the LGBTQAXYX people setting it up would just lie up front and say everyone would be appropriate and respectful in mourning.
It is interesting to consider, that tropes like “all cultures are equal” and “everyone is the same” is a product of what I see as a cleavage zone between Leftism and Conservatism.
That cleavage zone is a Subjective view of reality, and an Objective view of reality.
The Subjective view of reality is a completely childish, Leftist construct, while the Objective view of reality is largely the Conservative view.
The subjective view of reality is the view that something IS the way that one wants it, rather than the way it is. And it is the path to ruin.
Thomas Sowell calls it the "vision of the anointed". It is impervious to reason, facts, and evidence.
Great book. One of my favorites. I realized recently, I have read something like nine of his books I think.
The church was stupid or evil.
If Catholics want to pick one go for it.
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