and LOOK at me when i'm talking to you!

By Diogenes ( articles ) | May 09, 2007

The Rainbow Sash Movement is reconfiguring itself as a rainbow ribbon revue for this year's Whitsunstunt -- presumably on the grounds that a slenderer middle finger flipped at the Church will make those clergymen who refuse the flippers communion appear the more unreasonable.

The Rainbow Sash Movement (RSM) announced today that they will be challenging the practices of the Catholic Church this Pentecost Sunday, May 27. RSM members wear a simple 2-inch wide ribbon of rainbow colors across their shoulders, and respectfully present themselves to receive communion.

Priests have withheld communion from people wearing the rainbow sash in prior appearances by the RSM. According to Joe Murray, US Convener for the RSM, parishioners have taken it upon themselves to share their wafer with ribbon-wearing churchgoers, much to the consternation of the priests.

"For some reason," says Murray, "Church officials have chosen to go against their own teaching, that individual conscience is paramount in guiding the individual to spirituality. These ill-advised bishops cannot possibly know our hearts when they deny us communion. They actually turn the Holy Eucharist into a weapon of division and exclusion."

Got it exactly backwards, chum. If Catholic church doors were guarded by bouncers and dobermans specially trained to sniff out persons with same-sex attraction -- irrespective of dress, demeanor, or declaration -- you might have a point. But in reality there is no such screening. There never has been. The logic intrinsic to Catholicism makes it the case that, because the Church's children are agreed that her teaching is true and her sacraments salvific, those children don't care what particular weaknesses their brethren drag with them through the doorway. All gather as sinners drinking at the springs of salvation and -- as has been stressed on other occasions -- even if you have reason to suspect your fellow Catholic has a vulnerability to one particular sin, you have no grounds whatever to think he doesn't accept the Church doctrine pertinent to it. Your brother has to go out of his way, he has to stand on his head, he has to garb himself in wacky multi-color livery, in order to ANNOUNCE his disturbance and his dissent to the other worshipers. He has to shake you to get your attention.

So you think the Church is wrong, Joe? Well, lots of folks do: more than 80% of the world does. They call themselves Buddhists, Muslims, Methodists, agnostics, etc., and manage to steer clear of Sunday Mass with no damage to their civil rights. What they don't do is seek out that particular body of Christians -- who, being Catholic, believe the truth the Church teaches in the year 2007 she taught in the year 57 and will still be teaching in the year 10,007 -- in order to 1) declare to them that they're mistaken, and at the same time 2) demand to share in their highest act of Communion.

Complains Murray, "These ill-advised bishops cannot possibly know our hearts when they deny us communion." Well, if you didn't do everything in your power to wear your heart on your sleeve -- in the form of polychrome polyester -- it wouldn't even occur to them to deny you. But for your ceaseless insistence to the contrary, they'd assume you came to church to find God.