Detroit's Catholic archbishop draws a new line that he says worshipers who support same-sex marriage shouldn't cross.
Receiving communion while advocating that position is "a double-dealing that is not unlike perjury," Archbishop Allen Vigneron said Sunday, Niraj Warikoo reports in the Free Press. Communion is a key part of Catholic identity.
Archbishop Allen Vigneron of DetroitLast month, Vigneron said at a news conference that maintaining views that oppose abortion and support traditional marriage are important for Catholics.
"Were we to abandon them, we would be like physicians who didn't tell their patients that certain forms of behavior are not really in their best interest," said Vigneron, who oversees 1.3 million Catholics in southeastern Michigan.
On Sunday, Vigneron said about supporting gay marriage and receiving Communion: "For a Catholic to receive holy Communion and still deny the revelation Christ entrusted to the church is to try to say two contradictory things at once. . . . This sort of behavior would result in publicly renouncing one's integrity and logically bring shame. . . ."
Vigneron said the church wants to help Catholics "avoid this personal disaster."
Warikoo also quotes a blog post by Edward Peters, who teaches Catholic canon law at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.
"Catholics who promote 'same-sex marriage' . . . should not approach for holy Communion," he wrote March 27. "They also risk having holy Communion withheld from them . . . being rebuked and/or being sanctioned."
