Do This In Protest for Me?

An incident that took place at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral on Sunday was not covered by the major local papers, as far as I can tell, but was front page news in a paper that I found on the bus this morning (Chicago Free Press—A Common Voice for a Diverse Community; yes, it’s basically a ”gay” paper):

Obeying the Vatican and Cardinal Francis George, celebrants at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral denied communion to two people wearing rainbow-colored sashes May 15, then watched as others receiving communion shared their wafers with the Rainbow Sash protestors.

While one might distrust the reporting of such a newspaper, there is no reason to believe that they got anything wrong here. According to the paper, Cardinal George said in a statement:

”The policy of the US Bishops’ conference, a policy that I did not invent, was to refuse communion to anyone who used its reception to protest against the Church’s teaching.”

I don’t know what canon law, or Cardinal George, would say about a layperson taking the consecrated Host and breaking it and giving it to someone who had just been denied Communion by the legitimate authority of the Church. Does it constitute a grave offense against the Sacrament that would in turn warrant excommunication?

One of the consercrated Host breakers and sharers was Sister Donna Quinn, a Catholic nun who said,

”We were told many years ago, ‘Do this in memory of me,’ and that meant sharing and that meant the eucharist, for anyone.”

Anyone? As an Orthodox, just as it is the case for Roman Catholics, I can be denied Holy Communion for any one of a number of reasons—for my own good. St. Paul’s admonition to discern the Body and the Blood is not a suggestion, but an apostolic principle.

In a similar story in St. Paul, 100 people were denied communion by a Roman Catholic priest. While the Rainbow sash protestors complained,

Parishioner Larry Pavlicek was not sympathetic. As a divorced man, he said he has to live with the church’s teaching that he cannot remarry and cannot have sex outside of marriage.

”If you’re going to be a Catholic, either live with it or call yourself something different,” he said.

At least he knows his Catholic faith better than Sister Donna.