The family of a Gaithersburg woman buried this weekend is describing what
they call a “disgusting” scene at her funeral Mass, where the priest denied
Communion to the woman’s lesbian daughter — beside the coffin — and then left
the altar while she was delivering a eulogy.
The Rev. Marcel Guarnizo, a priest at St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg, put his hand over the cup and the wafers and told Barbara Johnson, a Mount Rainier artist, that she could not receive Communion “because she was living with a woman in a state of sin,” Larry Johnson said of the incident involving his sister.
“She just walked away, clearly stunned,” he recalled.
The scene at the Saturday morning funeral of Loetta Schoenholz Johnson has picked up fast fuel around the blogosphere, and the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington is commenting only with a brief statement that says the priest’s actions were against “policy” and that officials would be looking into the incident as a personnel issue.
Read More http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-archdiocese-denying-communion-to-lesbian-at-funeral-was-against-policy/2012/02/28/gIQAlIxVgR_story.html?tid=sm_twitter_washingtonpost
The Rev. Marcel Guarnizo, a priest at St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg, put his hand over the cup and the wafers and told Barbara Johnson, a Mount Rainier artist, that she could not receive Communion “because she was living with a woman in a state of sin,” Larry Johnson said of the incident involving his sister.
“She just walked away, clearly stunned,” he recalled.
The scene at the Saturday morning funeral of Loetta Schoenholz Johnson has picked up fast fuel around the blogosphere, and the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington is commenting only with a brief statement that says the priest’s actions were against “policy” and that officials would be looking into the incident as a personnel issue.
Read More http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-archdiocese-denying-communion-to-lesbian-at-funeral-was-against-policy/2012/02/28/gIQAlIxVgR_story.html?tid=sm_twitter_washingtonpost
