Up here in the barren northland, there\u2019s been a dust-up in the ongoing struggle of the church in America to accept GLBT persons. \u00a0This time it\u2019s the Catholic church, the St. Paul & Minneapolis Archdiocese of which recently mailed tens of thousands of copies of a DVD opposing gay marriage<\/a> to its communicants. \u00a0Of course, the DVD is timed to arrive as we approach mid-term elections. \u00a0From where I sit, social issues are playing a\u00a0negligible\u00a0role in these elections. \u00a0I don\u2019t even hear Crazy Michelle Bachmann talking about them.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s what the Catholic church wants its people talking about and voting on. \u00a0Oh, would that they sent out a DVD about developing a just economy or about extricating ourselves from foreign wars. \u00a0But, no, their primary interest this fall is making sure that GLBT persons are not afforded the right to marry.<\/p>\n In an odd radio interview<\/a>, the local archbishop, John Nienstadt, claimed that he had no idea who gave the money for the production and distribution of the DVDs nor did he know how much the campaign cost. \u00a0That denial very much strained the bounds of\u00a0believability\u00a0for me.<\/p>\n But, regardless, ship the DVDs they did. \u00a0A local Catholic visual artist decided to collect as many copies as she could<\/a> and make them into a sculpture advocating Catholic inclusion.<\/p>\n All that is fine, it seems to me. \u00a0Freedom of speech and all that. \u00a0The archbishop and his anonymous funder have just as much right as anyone to try and influence public opinion.<\/p>\n But then the StarTribune broke another story: It seems that the archbishop just last month denied communion<\/a> to a couple dozen college students at St. John\u2019s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. \u00a0Here\u2019s the pertinent part of the story:<\/p>\n That Sunday, according to those at the mass, about two dozen worshipers positioned themselves to receive communion from Nienstedt, who was saying his first student mass at the abbey. Some reached for the communion wafer but were denied it. Rather, the archbishop raised his hand in blessing.<\/p>\n The archdiocese long has denied communion to members of the Rainbow Sash Movement, who wear the colors to mass in protest of the church\u2019s stance in opposition to homosexual relationships. Its leader, Brian McNeil, said the action at St. John\u2019s was not connected to his group.<\/p>\n Archdiocese spokesman Dennis McGrath said the church has told McNeil\u2019s group \u201cfor years you cannot receive communion if you wear the rainbow sash, because it\u2019s a political statement, a sign of protest. Going to the communion rail is the most sacred part of our faith, the eucharist. We don\u2019t allow anybody to make political statements or any kind of protest.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Well, this is a strange kind of thing for the archbishop\u2019s spokesman to say, especially in that denying the Eucharist to these students was itself a political act<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Indeed, the leading theologian in his archdiocese, William Cavanaugh, has written persuasively\u00a0in his book, Torture and the Eucharist<\/a><\/em>,\u00a0that the Eucharist is, by its very nature, political:<\/p>\n Torture is both a product of\u2014and helps reinforce\u2014a certain story about who \u201cwe\u201d are and who \u201cour\u201d enemies are. Torture helps imagine the world as divided between friends and enemies. To live the Eucharist, on the other hand, is to live inside God\u2019s imagination. The Eucharist is the ritual enactment of the redemptive power of God, rooted in the torture, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Jurgen Moltmann, in The Church in the Power of the Spirit<\/a><\/em>, says that communion is an \u201ceschatological sign of history\u201d \u2014 both a remembrance of the past and a repeatable sign of hope in God\u2019s promised future. \u00a0Therefore, he writes,:<\/p>\n The theological doctrine of the Lord\u2019s supper must consequently not be allowed to exercise any controversial theological function through which Christians are separated from Christians.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He goes on to say,<\/p>\n Hierarchical legalism spoils the evangelical character of the Lord\u2019s Supper just as much as dogmatic and moral legalism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I have come so far from my seminary days in which I was trained that what ultimately mattered in the sacrament of communion was the the \u201cwords of institution\u201d were correctly stated by a properly trained and ordained clergyperson. \u00a0Archbishop Nienstedt\u2019s refusal to serve communion to his fellow Catholics because he didn\u2019t like the buttons and sashes they were wearing shows that it doesn\u2019t matter how much training and hierarchical heft a clergyperson has. \u00a0He can still royally screw up the sacrament that Jesus hoped would bring us all together.<\/p>\n UPDATE: You know what? Something else occurs to me. \u00a0And it\u2019s this: the archbishop refused the students communion not because any of them had had gay sex in front of him, but because of what they were wearing. \u00a0In his opinion, what they had on represented something that he found offensive. \u00a0And yet he himself was vested with liturgical garments that themselves bear all sorts of meaning, most of which I find offensive. \u00a0Of course, I\u2019m not a Catholic, so he doesn\u2019t really care what I think.\u00a0But I wonder, if a high school kid came up to the altar to receive the Eucharist, and the archbishop noticed that he was wearing a t-shirt bearing the logo of Trojan condoms, would he withhold communion then as well?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Photos from communion at Journey<\/a> in Dallas, Texas, taken by Courtney Perry<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Up here in the barren northland, there\u2019s been a dust-up in the ongoing struggle of the church in America to accept GLBT persons. \u00a0This time it\u2019s the Catholic church, the St. Paul & Minneapolis Archdiocese of which recently mailed tens of thousands of copies of a DVD opposing gay marriage to its communicants. \u00a0Of course, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2299,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,17,22,39],"tags":[105,144,231,398,557],"class_list":["post-2297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christianity-in-america","category-glbt","category-minnesota","category-theology","tag-catholic-church","tag-communion","tag-eucharist","tag-lords-supper","tag-sacrament"],"yoast_head":"\n