priests

The Catholic Church is running damage control. Pope Benedict XVI won't resign and he can't be defrocked. And Catholics worldwide are enraged. The Church now needs a quick out, an easy solution and a fall guy to tamp down our rage and to explain away its decades-long pedophilic problem. Just recently the Vatican's second-highest authority, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, belted out the solution. It's us gays! Of course, linking homosexuality to pedophilia.

A priest in Missouri bars a lesbian parishioner from receiving communion at her mother's funeral.

Before a jubilant crowd of 400 guests on New Year’s Day, the Rev. Mally Lloyd, former pastor at Christ Church in Plymouth, and now a ranking official of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts married the Rev. Katherine Ragsdale, dean and president of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA. And Bishop M. Thomas Shaw, the state’s highest ranking Episcopal official, presided.

The Catholic priest who denied a lesbian communion at her mother’s funeral in Maryland has been suspended, but church officials say the disciplinary measure is unrelated to that action. Father Marcel Guarnizo, the vicar of St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg, has been placed on administrative leave from ministry for “engaging in intimidating behavior toward parish staff and others that is incompatible with proper priestly ministry."

The Catholic archdiocese of Washington, D.C., has apologized to a woman who was denied communion during her mother’s funeral because she is in a same-sex relationship, but she still wants to see the priest responsible to be fired.

A Maryland Catholic priest’s denial of communion to a lesbian during her mother’s funeral is receiving criticism from her family and others. Sunday, Ann Werner described the scene, saying that Father Marcel Guarnizo denied communion to a woman Werner identified only as “my friend Barbara.” According to Werner, Guarnizo said, “I cannot give you communion because you live with a woman and that is a sin according to the church.” He also left the altar when Barbara delivered a eulogy for her mother, Werner reported.

Since the liberal arm of the U.S. Episcopal Church passed a resolution in July to bless same-sex unions, particularly in states like Massachusetts that legalize such marriages, so too has, at least, one black congregation within the Massachusetts diocese. On August 30th St. Bartholomew Episcopal Church in Cambridge housed the marriage and blessed the union of its mayor E. Denise Simmons and her lifetime partner, Ms. Mattie Hayes.

The Vatican has expanded the statute of limitations for people seeking to report sexual abuse by a priest amid accusations that the Catholic Church has done little to protect victims of abuse. Officials doubled the statute of limitations in abuse cases to 20 years following the victim's 18th birthday, Vatican sex crimes prosecutor Monsignor Charles Scicluna and spokesman Federico Lombardi announced on Thursday.

A Catholic school in Hingham, Mass.  has withdrawn its acceptance of an 8-year-old boy with lesbian parents, under the grounds that their relationship was "in discord" with church teachings. The mother of the boy said she planned to send her son to third grade at St. Paul Elementary School but she learned that her son's acceptance was later rescinded.  She was notified of the decision during a conference call with the school's principal Cynthia Duggan and the parish priest, the Rev. James Rafferty.

Thirteen activists calling for the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" have been arrested for handcuffing themselves to the White House fence Monday afternoon. Among those arrested by the U.S. Park Police were former Army lieutenant Dan Choi and the Reverend Geoff Farrow, a Catholic priest who has spoken in favor of marriage equality. The group is calling on the Senate and president to act on a campaign promise, which has been repeatedly reiterated, to repeal the law barring gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military.

A volunteer for the LGBT advocacy group Integrity Uganda was found beheaded on a farm during a search for a missing priest. Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin points to the Anglican blog Changing Attitude, which says that searchers found the head of Pasikali Kashusbe in a pit latrine on the farm of Badru Kiggundu, the electoral commission chairman, in Makindye Sabagabo, Wakiso District. They were looking for the Rev. Henry Kayizzi Nsubuga, who disappeared last month after delivering a sermon supporting gay people.