Oh, and before I forget it, in my previous news round-up, I meant to update my story about Father Marcel Guarnizo of Gaithersburg, Maryland, who denied communion to Barbara Johnson at her mother's funeral recently:
Michelle Boorstein reported in the Washington Post late Sunday evening that Guarnizo has now been placed on administrative leave from ministry by the Washington archdiocese. According to Boorstein, a letter by Bishop Barry Knestout, top managerial official of the D.C archdiocese, was read at Guarnizo's parish, St. John Neumann, this past Sunday. It stated that Guarnizo had been
engaging in intimidating behavior toward parish staff and others that is incompatible with proper priestly ministry.
In other words, according to this document, Guarnizo's pastoral offenses have gone beyond covering the ciborium when a lesbian approaches for communion at her mother's funeral, and telling her she cannot receive communion because she lives with another woman. And so there are two ways to read the official archdiocesan statement.
It is cleverly crafted to avoid placing the archdiocese in the line of fire coming from the Catholic right, who would howl with fury if Guarnizo had been suspended solely because he had denied communion to a lesbian (since, as some commentators responding to Michael Sean Winters's summary of this story at NCR are arguing, being authentically Catholic is all about denying sacraments to people who don't meet purist Catholic moral and theological standards.)
But, on the other hand, the statement also suggests that Guarnizo may have behaved in a similarly imperious and unpastoral way to other co-workers and co-ministers at his parish, and the Johnson incident was only the straw that broke the camel's back, since it went very public.
I'm inclined to think both of these factors lie behind the rationale the D.C. archdiocese is using to get Guarnizo out of ministry for now. No Catholic officials anywhere in the U.S. are brave enough these days to buck the loud and mean right-wing Catholic minority.
But whenever a priest feels licensed to behave so grossly and so cruelly towards a gay or lesbian fellow Catholic, you can also be sure he has long felt licensed to behave in similar fashion to all lay Catholics and anyone else who might disagree with him or challenge his exalted sense of ordinational superiority.
Since it's all about narcissism, and my being the only person in the room, and my way or the highway, with priests who turn out to be abusers. And abuse runs the gamut from sexual abuse of minors to abuse of lay Catholics in one's clerical interaction with them, to firing people with no good reason. Just because you can, as a Catholic priest above the law.
And removed from normal human ontological status when the bishop lays his hands on your head.
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