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.”
The priest receives communion first and this is an official rule. There is no deviation from this.
Typically, those handing out Communion, Altar boys, the choir, etc. go next. But I can’t seem to find a reference that this is mandatory. I do not think it is mandatory - it is just custom.
What happens during Communion is the priest, with God’s help, turns the bread into the Body and Blood of Christ and he turns the wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. During transubstantiation the priest uses the words that say he is turning the bread into the Body of Christ, but that does not mean that it is not also the Blood of Christ. Same thing for the wine - he uses the words “this is my Blood”, but it is also the Body of Christ.
Theologically, we know the wine becomes both and the bread becomes both because of:
1 Corinthians 11:27
27 So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.
The key word above is “or”, leading to a sin against both.
So receiving either “species” (that is the word we use) is sufficient because you receive ALL of Jesus with either one, according to St. Paul. So there is no requirement to receive from the Chalice if you have already received Jesus from what was bread. A large percentage of people do not receive from the Chalice. But since it was present at the Funeral I see know reason they could not have also received from the Chalice. Maybe it was something as simple as they didn’t line up for it.
Thanks for asking the questions you have asked. It is always a blessing to tell people about the Catholic Church.
Thanks for the explanation. We were all very curious about this. It is nice that you can ask a question without seeming disrespectful or mocking. It is nice to have respectful dialogue. That doesn’t always happen around here. Blessings.
Her and Fluke sound like two peas in a pod. Kind of a fluke that they both make national news coming up against the beliefs of the Catholic Church with immorality at about the same time.
Mrs. Don-o, if you hear anything more about what happens, please let me know.
Females cannot be priests. Therefore lesbians cannot be priests. Those men who feel they have strong attractions to men are told that they cannot be priests. Those who are openly gay definitely cannot become priests. If someone who is already a priest commits a sexual act then he must repent. If he does not repent and plans on doing it again then he is breaking his priestly oath (e.g. a priest falls in love with a woman and they are planning to continue being intimate). At this point he would be stripped of his priestly duties. Defrocking is the long next step, I believe - just as it is a long process to become a priest.
Someone needs to re-read John 4:4-42 and re-learn the lesson of Jesus and the woman at the well so as to be gentler with their tongue (and typing.)
So one receivces the whole, living Christ even if one receives just a drop from the chalice or a tiny frangment of the consecrated Host.
Why the family did not receive from the chalice, I don't know. Sometimes if a person has an alcohol problem, they just receive the Host. Sometimes if a person has, say, celiac disease, and is allergic to wheat gluten, they receive just the Lord's Blood from the chalice. This is all OK. But I don't know what might have been the reason in their particular case. Blessings to you!
The code word has been sounded from lips of Obozo: unleash the Republicans anti-woman voter campaign. It will help us cover up the eggregious comments made by our faithful followers. Of course calling a Governor of Alaska a cunt isn’t any worse than a talk show host calling a lovely student, devoting her life to education, who has more sex in a day than Biden gets in a year a slut is just more grist for the wheel.
Hey, man let me see that million bucks from Maher. So, the penis-nose has given me a million. Get him over to the White Hut, I want to kiss him.
There are so many extra-biblical precepts in the Catholic church it's sometimes confusing as to the way the bible is viewed.
You are right about extra-biblical precepts. But it is a biblical precept that paves the way for the extra-biblical precepts.
For Jesus’ words on the matter see Matthew 16:18-20 and Matthew 18:18.
“....a Buddhist who describes herself as a “naturally born agitator” committed to a “culture war.”
I thought Buddhism was all about “peace.”
Buddhism is what atheists use to appear to be spiritual.
Bingo. She’s not a Buddhist either. Seems obsessed with forcing people to think about her private matters just so she can tell them not to.
This ‘Buddist’ is the American-bred. She knows as much about Buddism as a pig knows about Sunday school.
this is the rainbow sash BS without the sash.
She went in advance to MAKE SURE there would BE a problem.
The lesbian worships a false god.(Buddah,that is)
I don’t think they even believe in G-d.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.