Maybe you heard that Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron wants to damn me to hell. Well, you probably didn’t hear it put quite like that, but that’s the upshot of Vigneron’s comments about gay marriage and Communion.
Catholic doctrine says Communion is an essential sacrament for salvation, so when Vigneron says pro-gay marriage Catholics shouldn’t take Communion, he’s essentially consigning those Catholics to an eternity in the lake of fire.
This is a very bad business. I could argue it’s hypocritical for an archbishop to sentence some of the flock to hell for disagreeing with the church on this civil matter, while tolerating dissent on other civil issues like the death penalty or immigration reform. And I could point out the hypocrisy of a church that welcomes a thrice-married moral pig like Newt Gingrich into its fold, while damning those of us who think two men wed in a Unitarian service should be afforded the legal protections of civil marriage. Or I could simply mention that an American Catholic hierarchy that has protected pedophiles and attacked their victims no longer has much moral authority on these matters.
But I won’t do any of that. You’ve heard all those things.
Instead, I’d like to remind Vigneron and his supporters that this objection to communion for pro-gay marriage Catholics smells like the neo-clericalism Pope Francis warned about last year when he was still Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
Vatican Insider, 9/5/12: In this “hijacking” of the sacrament that marks the beginning of Christian life, the Jesuit cardinal sees the expression of a rigorous and hypocritical neo-clericalism which also uses the sacraments as tools to affirm its own supremacy. For example by rubbing the fragility and wounds of faithful in their faces or by dampening the hopes and expectations of those who supposedly do not fulfill the “requirements” in terms of doctrinal preparation or moral status. Not only are such pastoral models misleading, but according to Bergoglio, this modus operandi distorts and rejects the dynamics of Christ’s incarnation, which is reduced to a mere doctrinal slogan to serve the interests of religious power. “Jesus did not preach his own politics: he accompanied others. The conversions he inspired took place precisely because of his willingness to accompany, which makes us all brothers and children and not members of an NGO or proselytes of some multinational company.” . . .But according to Bergoglio, by clericalising the Church, the hypocrites of today “drive God’s people away from salvation.” They are the followers of the “Pharisees’ hypocritical Gnostisism,” which Jesus always turned his back on, “appearing among the people, the publicans and the sinners.”
Frankly, Vigneron’s attempt to use “the sacraments as tools to affirm [his] own supremacy” seems a far greater sin than the supposed sin of a Catholic attending Adam and Steve’s Episcopalian wedding. Maybe the archbishop should spend a little more time heeding the wise words of our new pope and a lot less time holding souls hostage over a secular matter like civil marriage.
However, if Vigneron remains set on damning me to hell, fine. Huck Finn said it best when he decided against turning in Jim: "All right, then, I'll go to hell."
