Posted on 12/08/2006 7:16:15 AM PST by NYer
A Roman Catholic couple say they’re being driven from the church over the archbishop’s opposition to their same-sex union.
After Daniel Poirier and Jack Murphy of Meteghan Centre got married in May, the two 69-year-olds placed an announcement and photograph in The Chronicle Herald.
When the notice appeared, the couple’s priest at Stella Maris in Meteghan told them that Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, head of the Halifax archdiocese and administrator of the Yarmouth diocese, which includes Meteghan, had directed that they could no longer receive communion or assume any leadership position in the church.
That meant Mr. Poirier could no longer serve as a director of the choir at Stella Maris.
"It really was a blow," Mr. Poirier said Wednesday. "When we went to church there, it was like going into a warehouse; it was cold, because when everybody got up to receive communion, we had to sit down.
"One day we went and the priest talked about love and sharing and charity and all that, and I said to Jack, ‘No, I can’t take this anymore.’ So we walked out. I was almost in tears and my heart was broken."
Mr. Poirier and Mr. Murphy subsequently joined Beacon United Church in Yarmouth, where they felt more welcome.
Rev. Leslie Robinson said his church has benefited from having two new members with a different Christian background.
"That is enriching for us," he said. "We can kind of challenge each other and bounce ideas off each other that come across initially as being different.
"It just helps to sharpen the discussion, which is great."
But the men maintain they’re Roman Catholic and still attend a service at Stella Maris once in a while.
"By being there once in a while, it’s reminding the people of how we’ve been treated," Mr. Murphy said. "This is an injustice."
The men said they were told there would have been no problem with their living situation if they had kept it quiet but that Archbishop Prendergast took exception to the publicity.
"Your state of life — after having celebrated a same-sex civil marriage and spoken about it publicly on radio and television — has established your relationship as a public scandal," the archbishop wrote to them in a letter dated Aug. 18.
"This disciplinary measure is to remind you of the objective seriousness of your present state and to invite you to renounce it and to return to living according to Christ’s injunction to ‘sin no more.’ "
Archbishop Prendergast couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday; his secretary said he was out of the country.
But the Halifax archdiocese issued a statement Wednesday reiterating his call for Roman Catholics to encourage their members of Parliament to support the definition of marriage as being the committed relationship between one man and one woman.
Archbishop Prendergast expressed concern in his Aug. 18 letter about other Roman Catholics seeing Mr. Poirier and Mr. Murphy marry and receive communion and thinking the situation was harmless.
"Fellow believers, seeing this and the nonchalance of Catholics, would be led astray and weakened in their faith," he said.
Mr. Murphy said that’s not the case.
"For seven years, we’ve been accepted by the people of the community and the people that go to church," he said. "There hasn’t been a problem."
The archbishop is denying them something that’s integral to their faith because renouncing their way of life is out of the question, Mr. Murphy said.
"We were born this way," he said. "God has created us this way and the way that we live is blessed by God."
Devout Catholics? Perhaps only for selected teachings ... how do they reconcile that? And think about all those past trips to the confessional booth ... were they devout and honest back then too?
I bet they were SO surprised when the church that they totally flipped-off with their behavior then reciprocated.
Devout Catholics? Really? Perhaps in their own minds but not in my Catholic church! Congratulations to the Archbishop!
>>"We were born this way," he said. "God has created us this way and the way that we live is blessed by God."<<
All of us were born sinners. No sin is greater than any other. If you repent and go to confession, you can receive the Eucharist.
The key here is repent. If one continues to live the life of sin, then you are not worthy. Whether it's cursing or sodomizing, it's all the same in the Eyes of God.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it Mr. Murphy.
A bit like Madonna taking communion on stage. Only the stage is smaller.
They ARE still Catholics, they're excommunicated Catholics and, at the kindest, Catholics in very grave doctrinal error and moral and spiritual peril.
But they want to give themselves the appellation of Catholic without the humility of obedience that we lay folks sometimes have to show.
How they fail to understand the problem and to make the choice -- they COULD say,"We repudiate the Catholic Church and its detestable enormities," but they just say, "We don't believe what the Church says we should believe or do (or avoid doing) what the Church says we should do (or eschew), but we're still faithful sons of the Church."
"I love my mother. I have contempt for what she thinks, and I do the things she asks me not to do and don't do the things she asks me to do." O-o-o-KAY!
You can be a moron without being an oxymoron.
Yeah, and it sucks
Ahhhhh........those wascally, wascally Catholics!!!
Just so mean and.....and.....awful!!!
They look like grandfather and grandson together. I love the "all about me " vibe of the article. Its all about them. Its like in the secular world you break the law you pay the penalty and go to jail.
To these two I say get over it!
In other words, "we reserve the right to call ourselves Catholics and force the Church to change her teachings to suit ourselves". That is not freedom of religion -- that is tyranny of the dissenter.
Well, I a friend who left the Catholic church after getting remarried because the Catholic church doesn't recognize her marriage either. So, it's not exactly a matter of discrimination, it simply a matter of theological definition.
The men are mistaken.
D - E - N - I - A - L
Good.
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