Don’t Blame the Priest for Acting Catholic

I do think it’s a major issue that the priest is a dick.  No, absolutely, he shouldn’t serve the Eucharist to anyone he thinks is not in a state of grace.  He chose to single out the dyke because he knew she wasn’t, but chose to just let everyone else slide on the assumption that non-homosexuals would NEVER try to take communion if they weren’t a state of grace, rather than asking everyone if they’d been to confession.  But, you know, fine.  I’ll even be generous and assume he always does this for anyone who he knows is unfit to receive – if he knows someone is in an adulterous relationship, for example.  Let’s assume he treats all sinners the same if he knows of the sin.

The dickness is from him (a) not making this clear beforehand, (b) walking out of the eulogy, and (c) not going with the family and doing the final blessing.  That is him not doing his damn job and being a terrible, terrible priest.  Even if he was legitimately not feeling well (he says he had a migraine), you don’t do that to someone’s funeral without finding another member of the clergy to cover for you. 

Don’t Blame the Priest for Acting Catholic

Bullshit. This assumes there is only one way of being Catholic. Every day millions of people who the priest knows full well is living in some sort of sin take communion with no issue. Priests can and do use personal judgement to decide how to handle these situations. Often, they include taking parishoners aside for private conversations about the issue. The priest absolutely could have handled this differently and still be in agreement with his absurd dogma. There was nothing in his dogma that required him to walk out on her eulogy or bail out of accompanying the casket to the grave.

He won’t be reprimanded; he’ll be given a pat on his back.

A pat on the back? I doubt it. In fact, this prompted an official apology from his higher ups, something I think is worth linking to. The story includes this directive from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops:

“Since it is difficult to know what is in a person’s heart, it is also
important that when doubt arises regarding whether a person is properly disposed to receive the Eucharist, it is handled in a pastoral and compassionate manner, privately between the priest and the communicant.”

So as per the very standards of the Catholic Church, this priest handled the affair inappropriately.

I think it’s a little nuts for a lesbian to continue to be a member of the Catholic church, given that she’s both gay and a women. However I think she had a perfectly reasonable assumption that she would not be given such public, humiliating crap at her mothers funeral. Though a full on rejection of the entire organization would be best, I don’t think dismissing the concerns of people who want them to behave better is an answer.

My bad for expecting the priest to show compassion and love like Jesus was said to do.  I guess in their Bible, Jesus turned all kinds of unsavory sinners away.

Punishing the mother and her family is where the priest stepped over the line. I’m not surprised though and I also ask myself why people continue to attend a church that doesn’t want them?

That’s fair, he could have come out beforehand and said what he could and couldn’t do without creating a spectacle.

Of course, the problem would be that any Catholic priest who actually follows the faith structure would have had to do the same thing, which leaves them in the same position.  If they wanted a “real” Catholic priest then something like this was inevitable.

That’s what I don’t get.  This is what a Catholic priest would have to do so it seems like they were expecting a “Catholic” priest or maybe an actor who would go through all of the motions of a Catholic ceremony without the baggage of any actual belief system to get in the way.  To me that’s as absurd, selfish and irrational as anything else in this situation.

I’m guessing he molested a few kids to celebrate his intolerance and ignorance

“This assumes there is only one way of being Catholic.”
No it assumes the Catholic religion is what it is.   The Catholic church is a totalitarian hierarchy.   It is in fact those priests that fail to follow the rules that are not acting Catholic.   Sort of like those Nazis that refused orders to gun down the innocent, and helped Jews to escape.

She should have told him, in front of the congregation,  ”GO FUCK YOUSELF”!!!!!

 To pretend that the Catholic church is a single uniform entity is to deny the empirical reality that it is not. There are liberal Catholics (with liberal priests and even a few liberal bishops) and conservative Catholics. Even within the hierarchy there are differences of opinion.

But even if you wish to pretend that all Catholic priests everywhere are the same, this is still not in accordance with the orders of the hierarchy. The issue of whether or not to give the Eucharist is supposed to be discussed in private, and there is no order that required him to leave during her funeral or refuse to accompany the casket to the grave which, besides not being officially sanctioned, is supposedly doing a disservice to the dead persons soul. The fact that this was handled inappropriately even as per Catholic doctrine is shown in the fact that the woman recieved a letter of apology from the church.

I’m no fan of the Catholic church. There is so much horrific shit that they do, we don’t need to make a straw man church. The real church is quite bad enough.

No, not all Catholic priests would have done that. Jeez, I hate the CC as much as anyone, but not all priests are complete jerks.

Standard operating procedure is to discuss such concerns in private and not humiliate people in public. Moreover, there is nothing that required him to mess up the rest of the ceremony

 Oh, now I know why visiting church with my Catholic friend, I was told “No, you just sit back here while we go up…”
I wasn’t in a state of grace or some crap like that. Still, to a high school kid, the meaning of the church was there for me. Good donuts and lemonade.

A) Other commenters are right: whether or not the priest gave her communion is unrelated to whether he continued the funeral. He didn’t do the latter, and it makes him an asshole.

B) It really is fun to read these stories where Catholics, in essence, want a church whose ritual and dogma is democratically elected. Having a top-down, out-of-date, irrational structure is THE WHOLE POINT. If you want a more comfortable church, leave Catholicism, and if you want rationality, leave religion. But no, they are convinced (like the priests themselves) that if they kick up enough of a fuss, they will be granted changes. Look at Joan Walsh’s recent articles on Salon on the birth control flap for another example of “but surely, what the majority does must be more important than mere dogma”.

” If there were a strong link between the two, then atheism would have become the majority viewpoint in the world centuries ago. ”

Huh?  With the combined populations of communist China, the old USSR, NPR, atheist religions like Buddhism, and atheists in various other countries you don’t think if not a majority there is a larger proportion of atheists than say Muslims or Catholics?

There are other options than atheism of course.  There has in fact been a strong link in the minds of the religious between Church corruption and their beliefs, but it has channled them mostly into switching religions.   Protestants, Amish, Mormons, etc.   Happens all the time.

“and it tends toward justifying an unsympathetic attitude that they deserve the victimization. ”

Depends on how one understands the words deserve and victim, which depends on ones own world view.   The judgement of ones world view is also dependent upon the particular circumstances of the individual, family, country and other factors.   

It’s hard to believe that the person (and their family) in this example is not aware of all the many other options open, so it is hard to blame this mostly on the church.    It would be the responsibility of the gay person to inform the family of their situation, and then the families to decide to leave the church for another or not.   They certainly don’t live in a country where the church controls the government, and via that means keeps everyone ignorant and controlled.

Given that the priest knew she was gay I assume the family did and in addition decided to stay with the Catholic church instead of pursuing the many other options which included becoming atheists.    My grandmother in fact left the Catholic church when they refused to bury someone in a church cemetary for some ridculous reason or another.     So the choices can be made.   Her mother, or father could have decided to join the Unitarians or another church that was more accepting.    They didn’t and bear some portion of the responsibility.

I’m openly atheist and have been to many a Catholic funeral.   I don’t accept the eucharist.   I certainly didn’t feel victimized by not recieving a cracker, and some wine (with side dish of herpes).    That can hardly be viewed as a victimization.   If she’s willing to reject church teachings on being gay (and she is), then why not on cracker consumption.   I assume the priest would have been fine giving it to her if she hadn’t actually been acting on her sexual and emotional needs and had surpressed them like any good priest does.

People are responsible for their choices even when they find making the right choice to be hard.    Often the consequences of choices are a mixed bag an like any engineer the person making the choice chooses balances a mixture of consequences.    

If I choose McDonald’s over Burger King because I like the fries it is hard to argue I’ve been victimized because their chicken nuggets suck.   It doesn’t matter if I’m also finding it hard to switch because the rest of my family likes to go to McD’s and it would be inconvienient.

I’m also responsible for my false beliefs.   It may be very hard for me to change my mind on how something works but if I keep operating on the truth of certain beliefs than there is no one else but myself to blame when the consequences of my actions bite me in the ass.

In this case my understanding is that this particular priest broke with Catholic doctrine on not the issue of the eucharist but the rest of it, and in that case the entire family was victimized.

That she didn’t get the eucharist is her own fault, and guess what, she shouldn’t want it.

I have to point out the canon rule  refers to what the person receiving communion should do or not do.  It does not state what the person giving the communion should do and apparently other perhaps unstated rules are that the recipient must be personally warned ahead of time that they won’t be given communion before publicly refusing to give them it.   This did not happen.    The priest might have gotten away with it if he hadn’t then refused to listen to her eulogy of her mother or even worst refused to go with the body to the grave site to finish the service. 

Admittedly he might have really been feeling ill because everyone else at the church seems to have supported the daughter and shown it (another  eucharistic minister gave her communion immediately after his refusal).  Another priest, Peter Sweeney, finished off the service.   Catholic laity and the Catholic hierarchy seem to have split radically on certain issues (birth control, gays/lesbians, treatment of child raping priests being three) and this event seems to have shown it (though the priest in this case went further than the hierarchy felt prudent, fine to attack gays and lesbians as a group, bit more tricky individually when they are part of a large tithe paying family).   Pro-Catholic gays and lesbians will point to the actions of the congregation and Peter Sweeney as showing the goodness of the Catholic church; others will point to Father Marcel Guarnizo as showing the badness of the Catholic church.

So you’ve only provided more evidence that my original claim was correct, while providing additional arguments that are completely orthogonal, and no evidence against my claim.

I reject all your false strawmen.    I don’t need to believe any of your several straw men such as “To pretend that the Catholic church is a single uniform entity is to deny the empirical reality that it is not.” and “But even if you wish to pretend that all Catholic priests everywhere are the same,”

The fact remains that it is an authority heirarchy.   If the Church sent a letter of apology because there was a violation of Church doctrine that in no way disproves it is a hierarchy.  It in fact shows the priest is NOT supposed to violate church policy ( to act independently) as your argument assumes.    There may be a de facto disregard for policy but that doesn’t mean the Catholic church is anything like the Unitarians.

It wasn’t until I lost my mother that I truly understood the words “grief-stricken.”  If that priest had pulled that stunt on me, we would’ve made news for entirely different reasons, the main one being that I punched him in the fucking face. 

I organized my mother’s funeral in the manner she requested, out of respect for the last bit of autonomy she exercised in her lucid moments.  This included a religious funeral in a church and a bunch of other stuff.  Fortunately, the preacher was stellar. 

I’ll wager that your country, wherever you happen to live, hasn’t been entirely nice to you. Why haven’t you moved?

Sometimes it’s better to help reform your club than leave it. It depends on the club.

I agree completely; if you don’t want to follow the rules of a church, don’t belong to it.

Perhaps Rosa Parks should just have moved states?

 Key difference is that atheism has no particular holy book, holy leader/pope, holy rules, or anything else to define an atheist besides “I don’t believe in a god or gods”, whereas a particular religion is defined by all those things (or else why would anyone consider, say, Catholicism to be distinct from either Islam, Mormonism, or Protestantism, rather than just proclaim them all some generic “theism”?)  To assign this sort of thing to an atheist “club” you would need to look at the rules and definitions and philosophies of that particular group of atheists.  For example, “secular humanist”.  Or a group that is entirely focused on litigation regarding atheistic issues.  Or even Raelianism or FSMism, for that matter.

I would actually say that atheist “clubs” that embrace secular humanism as its guiding philosophy do have one hell of a good track record regarding treatment of women–perhaps not perfect, but excellent, ever-improving, and always ready to self-critique.

 When we went to my aunt’s funeral years ago, we had quite an entertaining time.  There weren’t a lot of people–some older folks and my cousins and their husband and boyfriend, who were *gasp!* black!  The priest was an older gent and didn’t make a spectacle or anything, but we noticed at the dinner afterward he got his food and made a beeline to my family’s table. Seemed like he was avoiding the daughters of the deceased–I mean, why go straight to sit with the distant relatives and not even look at the grieving daughters?   Everyone else was mostly crowded around my cousins and their SO’s and I imagine to him that we, being a nice white properly nuclear family all dressed properly for a funeral in the traditional style (no one was dressed for a funeral except my cousins’ husband and boyfriend and us) sitting apart from the crowd (we aren’t racist, but we’re not very close to that side of the family, we live too far away and only really see my other aunt once every couple years, but he didn’t know that), must have looked like a Godsend.  Little did he know….

He sits right down, we politely welcome him because we’re just nice like that, and he starts talking very confidently about Jesus and God and yadda yadda.  My father, who is like George Carlin without the stage flair, starts questioning him.  Uncomfortable questions.  Questions that are more like challenges, though they are phrased in the nice, even, polite tones one uses at a funeral dinner of course.  He starts eating a little faster and then pulls my mother into the conversation, probably figuring the wife will back him up.  My mother is the most religious person in the family, but not the way he would understand or approve, and she has little to no tolerance for priests.  And what she lacks in knowledge about the history of the church or of church doctrine in general or the history of the bible or textual criticism, etc.  she more than made up for with a very intimate knowledge of things that happened at his very parish, which she attended when she was young.  She would tell him something, he would be aghast and say “where did you hear that?”–thinking, of course, she heard it from some other source and he could say “well, that’s not our parish”–and she’s say “in this parish, in that catholic school that used to be across the road!” and he began eating even faster.

Then he decided, in some strange, last-minute, desperate move, to ask the children what they think because, after all, “the children are the future”.  What he was expecting from two such irreverant people I don’t know, but we politely agreed with everything we had just heard our parents say (I was in my late-teens/early twenties, my sister and brother were both mid- to late-teens).  He finished his meal in a flash and quickly excused himself, saying he enjoyed our discussion but he really should get going.  He immediately got involved in the main group–apparently the whole inter-racial couple thing isn’t quite as offensive or upsetting when compared with the Satan family over here!  Later, when my dad was turning onto the freeway to go home, he started chuckling and asked “did you guys see how quick he started eating once he started talking to us?”  He didn’t have a problem and was totally confident, like he was with “his own”, right up until he found out we aren’t what we might seem to him, and then he just got increasingly visible disturbed all through the encounter.  It was hilarious!

I like to think that we might have helped him reconsider his priorities about people and faith and interracial relationships and whatnot.  🙂

Key difference is that atheism has no particular holy book, holy leader/pope, holy rules […]

This is often cited as a key difference, but I don’t buy it. The culture of an organisation is influenced by its foundation and leadership, but it’s almost never defined by it.
The vast majority of Catholics in the developed world use contraception regardless of what any holy books, holy leaders or holy rules say. Catholicism is as much about cultural and ethnic identity as it is rules and hierarchy, if not moreso.

Pseudonym, I do not understand why you are replying to me with your remark about atheist clubs’ treatment of women. I did not say the remark about clubs, I quoted it from Atheist Pig, from the original post.

Then . . . it wouldn’t really be the Roman Catholic Church, would it?

Yes i did,why else would it be here?dosent make sense otherwise. In that case its up to the individual to decide if they should take communion

You are absolutely right Hemant. My first reaction to this story was emotional. I too thought the priest had acted in an unacceptable way and should be punished. But actually, he didn’t: he was abiding to the standards of discrimination that his church actually condones. She’s the one cherry-picking. How can people accommodate so much cognitive dissonance is beyond me.

The Catholic Church is not a democracy and there is no body that could play the role that the Federal Government did in the Civil Rights era. There is no plausible story about how the Church will reform itself given the decades that Woytila and Ratzinger have spent filling the ranks of Bishops and Cardinals with hardline conservatives.

Know what’s funny (as in odd) about this?  I was an RC and divorced (unabsolved), which in the eyes of the church is a sin worthy of keeping you from the eucharist.  But, since the church I attended didn’t KNOW THIS, they never balked at giving me the eucharist at communion.  Isn’t that a kick?  She was refused communion because the priest KNEW she was gay.  That’s all. 

On the opposite hand, I was an atheist when my mother died and I purposefully did NOT go to communion.  Man, I got a MILLION virtual dagger-looks from family and friends.  You just can’t win.  And the priest refused to shake my hand at the end of the mass as we filed out.  You just can’t win with the Catholic church….you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t, as the saying goes.  

Xactly!  The church has been operating this way for thousands of years.  Does anyone really think one gay woman is going to make them change now? 

 It is a mistake to assume that the populations of China and the old USSR are entirely atheist. Just because their systems of government were in no way implies that the people were. Christianity’s expansion into China appears to be serious enough for that government to implement some repression methods. As for the old USSR, a surprising number of the old republics(now independent countries) were Muslim.   State repression of a religion generally results in that religion’s resurgence when the state disappears. Besides, from what I hear, Christianity is currently seeing something of a resurgence in Russia and the Ukraine, at least.

It is a natural reaction to being humiliated in front of your family and friends at what is one of the most emotionally difficult times in a person’s life.

Except the southern states didn’t manage to get rid of their racist laws.   They were forced to.  First forced to end slavery by the Republican Yankees, and then forced to accept elimination of segregation by the Federal government, again when Republicans voted in larger numbers than democrats for the Civil Rights Act.   (Yes, I’m rubbing certain peoples noses in facts that they are not likely to know).

I was baptized Lutheran and my dad told me a story from when he was a kid that sounds about the same.   The minister (priest) had gone out of his way to tell a six year old girl her father was burning in hell because he died a drunk (or commited suicide).   The little girl ran off crying.   My father described it as child abuse.

 The often quoted statistic is that 98% of all American female Catholics use it

Same sort of nonsense goes on in Greek Orthodox only worse.   The political infighting and sniping is ridiculous.    Sometimes it comes to blows like this:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/12/28/144375924/video-monks-brawl-with-brooms-in-bethlehems-church-of-the-nativity

My wife is Greek Orthodox, but might as well be a Unitarian.

Not the same thing in the least.   You actually have to go out of your way to get up on Sunday and drag yourself to church for a bite of Jesus.

The whole purpose of these shibboliths is so that they can publicly identify and shame the sinner.

Perhaps apartheid-era South Africa is a better example.  It wasn’t a democracy, in the sense that the oppressed couldn’t participate in their government. There was no equivalent of the Federal Government; the UN or Commonwealth couldn’t force South Africa to do anything.

And yet it changed.

That statistic isn’t accurate. See the above for the actual figures.

The important (IMO) figure is that of Catholic women who are at risk of unintended pregnancy, 68% use a “highly effective method” of contraception, and 15% use condoms (which is not a “highly effective method” according to the terms of the study, which is odd).

Only 15% use no contraception or so-called “natural family planning”.

 As a South African, you don’t know what you’re talking about. There were tons of sanctions against us, we were feeling the pinch of being cut off from the world and eventually enough people woke up and said enough. Apartheid is wrong and as a country we’re suffering because of it.

I was mocking the impossible standard. Since you don’t care about the actual philosophy and policies of the groups then you get to tar them with responsibility for random unrelated behavior. You are also generalizing so that if there are hundreds of atheist groups and one group has one member who violates the standard (even if the group disapproves) then you get to tar and feather all the groups.

Now if all the groups shared a common document that instructed them they were allowed to take women as sex slaves, that women’s testimony was worth a quarter of a mans, etc. And then some random member acted on these teachings you could blame all the groups. that’s because it is in their philosophy. So the presence of deities that instruct you to be a bigot does make a difference.

Never criticize others on the lack of perfection. No one is perfect and that is even more true of collections of individuals. It is unfair and will piss people off. As in using the inept social skills of some random dude to smear a not just the group he was at but all atheists, as in, “I hate atheists.”. That’s wasn’t you but I’m pretty certain you are thinking of it.

So I disagree because your reasoning here is wrong.

I do know what I’m talking about, or at least more than you think. What happened in South Africa was pressure both from the inside and outside pressuring the regime to change. That could indeed happen to the Catholic Church.

Those oppressed had to be members of SA, whereas those who are members of the Catholic church do not.   It’s like the difference between being forced to work (slavery) and being an voluntary employee.

Different people in the church have different beliefs, but the actual RULES are the same for everyone.  They come from the higher-ups and you’re supposed to follow them–and if it’s something issued under the conditions of infallibility, then you HAVE to.

They allowed little boys to be used as sex slaves in modern times and we know their historical record on torture.

You’re pushing the definition of “sex slaves”. More to the point, what the Church (as in, the leadership and the organisation) is rightly accused of isn’t allowing it, but covering it up. Child sex abuse is completely against the rules, and always has been. It’s even condemned in the Didache, which predates the Bible.

It is also ridiculous because in part this priest was following church
rules in being “arsehole”.   Withholding the eucharist at a parents
funeral is quite a bit dickish, but them’s the rules.

Once again, what this priest is accused of isn’t withholding the eucharist, though it was arseholish to do it in public rather than in private. If it were just that, this wouldn’t have made news.  The first reply to this post makes the point:

The real offense was stepping away from the altar during the eulogy and
then refusing to accompany the body to the cemetery – with a blatant
lie, telling her that he doesn’t feel well.

The problem was that he went out of his way to disrupt a funeral that he was supposed to be officiating. That is the act of an arsehole.