Father Guarnizo Tells His Story: "A Warning to the Church"

And speaking of popcorn-worthy theater: Father Marcel Guarnizo has now responded to his recent disciplining by the archdiocese of Washington with an exclusive interview published by CNS News.  The title of the interview: "I Did the Only Thing a Faithful Catholic Priest Could Do."

Guarnizo's side of the story, in essence: as other accounts have stated, before her mother's funeral, Barbara Johnson came into the sacristy and introduced the woman with her as her lover.  Guarnizo states that Ms. Johnson then left the sacristy, he tried to follow her, and the woman with her blocked the door so that he could not follow Ms. Johnson.

There's more, which you can read for yourself.  What I want to focus on quite specifically here is Guarnizo's stated rationale for denying communion to Barbara Johnson at her mother's funeral.  

Guarnizo writes,

But I am going to defend my conduct in these instances, because what happened I believe contains a warning to the church. Such circumstances can and will be repeated multiple times over if the local church does not make clear to all Catholics that openly confessing sin is something one does to a priest in the confessional, not minutes before the Mass in which the Holy Eucharist is given. 

I am confident that my own view, that I did the only thing a faithful Catholic priest could do in such an awkward situation, quietly, with no intention to hurt or embarrass, will be upheld. 

Otherwise, any priest could--and many will--face the cruelest crisis of conscience that can be imposed. It seems to me, the lack of clarity on this most basic issue puts at risk other priests who wish to serve the Catholic Church in Washington D.C.

Translation: when Barbara Johnson introduced her partner to him and used the term "lover," she imagined she was confessing a sin.  She wasn't engaging in the kind of polite introduction that is customary at funerals at which family members do not know the priest officiating at the funeral (and this is now commonplace across the U.S. with Catholic families--a point I'll discuss further in a moment).  

She was confessing.  And confessing sin.  And she ought to have known that one confesses sacramentally in Catholic churches only in the confessional.

Hence he had no choice except to deny communion to a woman who had just publicly confessed to him a sin for which she was not shriven (one can evidently deduce from the term "lover" that sin is involved--and so please be forewarned that trouble may ensue if you request "Jesus, Lover of My Soul" at your next Catholic family funeral).  And so this story becomes a parable, a "warning" to the Catholic church about the cruel crises of conscience that face priests officiating at family funerals.

But here's the thing: as I've just noted, due to 1) the far-flung living situations of families these days, and 2) the gradations of practice or non-practice in far-flung Catholic families, any Catholic family gathering anywhere in the U.S. these days for a family funeral is likely to 1) contain members unknown to the priest officiating at the funeral, and 2) not a few family members who are no longer practicing Catholics, or whose lives in one way or another do not adhere to strict magisterial teachings.

We can assume the latter, I would maintain, by looking at one single statistic among many others: 90%+ married Catholics have used birth control at some point in their married lives.  And the use of "artificial" contraception is forbidden by magisterial teaching on the very same grounds that having a "lover" with whom one is sexually active is forbidden.

And so, per Father Guarnizo's logic, priests throughout the U.S. and in many places in the world face these "cruel crises of conscience" over and over in their pastoral ministry: they're officiating at family funerals at which they do not know everyone present, and in almost all far-flung Catholic families, there are now family members who are not practicing Catholics and/or whose lives transgress magisterial teaching in areas like sexual ethics.

What to do?  Guarnizo seems to assume that a really Catholic funeral will include the opportunity for confession ahead of time.  I've been to quite a few Catholic funerals over the years, and I have to say, this assumption seems odd to me.  I don't recall a single funeral I've ever attended at which a point is made of encouraging families gathering to mourn a loved one to consider their need to go to confession before the funeral liturgy.

There's something . . . not quite in good taste, and decidedly not in pastoral good taste . . . about such an insistence.  Families gather to mourn a loved one, celebrate the loved one's life, and not to hear the kind of sermon I heard from one of my cousins who is a Baptist minister when my brother died (yesterday was the 21st anniversary of his death, so this is much on my mind now).  My reverend cousin used the death of my brother, who had died as a result of severe alcoholism, to issue an altar call to all the unredeemed sinners in the church.

And I was beyond furious at this use of the death of a beloved family member to make a moral lesson--as were many other members of my family.  A funeral is not the place to hammer home moral lessons about sin and repentance.  

What Guarnizo and his supporters are implicitly proposing with their similar brand of draconian logic is the following: every bona fide Catholic funeral should be preceded by the opportunity for confession (though for years now, the large majority of American Catholics no longer go to confession routinely, and will likely not ever return to that practice as long as Rome insists on face-to-face rather than communal confession).  And when known sinners in a family do not go the confession route before the family gathers for the eucharistic meal, the love feast celebrating the life of their deceased loved one, a faithful Catholic priest has not only the right but a sacred obligation to make a point of covering the ciborium or chalice when the sinner approaches for communion, and informing her or him at the moment of communion that she or he is being denied communion.

A faithful Catholic priest has not only the right but a sacred obligation to engage in public shaming rituals of any family member he considers an unshaven unshriven* sinner, at a faithful Catholic family funeral.

Can you imagine the chaos and misery that would ensue if faithful Catholic priests put these rubrics into practice at almost any Catholic family funeral these days?  And, in particular, if they imposed these rubrics on the non-gay and non-lesbian "sinners" in the family circle?  Do they really want gatherings at family funerals to become chapters of faults, at which everyone in the family circle accuses everyone else of sin and failure to abide by Catholic moral or doctrinal norms?

Or will it be easier, all things considered, just to keep selecting out the gay sinners and using them as convenient scapegoats at such gatherings?  So that the rest of us can imagine we're sin-free?

P.S. Catholics defending Guarnizo are accusing Barbara Johnson of having politicized her mother's funeral.  If you want to understand the political context of what's going on in this discussion, have a look at what Right Wing Watch has to say about the CNS venue in which Guarnizo makes this statement.  Or have a look at what Media Matters has to say about the parent organization of CNS, Media Research Center, and its founder Brent Bozell.

Politics galore at work here.  But I think it's safe to conclude that they're not emanating from a woman who simply sought to receive communion along with other family members at her mother's funeral, and who was publicly shamed by the priest celebrating the funeral.

The graphic is an illustration of a eucharistic gathering at the Host website of a house-church community affiliated with Maidstone Deanery of the Anglican diocese of Canterbury.


*Drat that spellcheck thing!  I had typed "unshriven,"and am only now seeing that the sly little minx changed the word to "unshaven."