Standing Up to the "Smiling Usurpers"

A statement from David Pence and the Ushers of the Eucharist.

And there is a mighty fine writer amongst them.

I don't know if you've heard, Faithful Reader, of how Catholic laymen in Milwaukee knelt in prayer to impede the sacrilegious communion of homosexualists in the cathedral, Pentecost Sunday. Via Fr. Wilson, a statement from them, to which I have added some paragraph breaks and made some minor corrections silently.

We are Catholic laymen devoted to the Eucharist as the center of Catholic life. In our diocese, priests disloyal to the bishop have performed liturgies celebrating disordered sexuality as a form of Christian love. The folks of the rainbow sash have been misled by these wayward priests. The rainbow sash is meant as a public refutation of Church teaching concerning sexual love and the restricted nature of Eucharistic reception.

The first sash protesters in Washington DC were met by bishops who safeguarded Christ by refusing them communion. Last year in our own diocese Christ was handed over. Across the country the Eucharist has become a special target of activist homosexuals and pro-abortion politicians. As the last vestige of the sacred in a vulgarized culture, reception of the Catholic Eucharist is meant to sanction the taboos of abortion and homosexuality. Catholics are targeted precisely because our Eucharist has a real meaning. No one is breaking into Unitarian services.

We are here today as a sign of fraternity with the bishop. Across the country, the authority of Catholic bishops is being challenged at a fundamental level. For years Catholic politicians have disregarded the U. S. bishops' statements about public policy. That is understandable. The authority of the bishops in the Mass however is a very different matter. The bishops are not experts in public policy but they are the legitimate authorities over the Eucharist.

Abortion and homosexual acts are grievous offenses against the Body of Christ. To publicly advocate such sins as "human rights" and then demand incorporation in the Body of Christ through communion is a desecration of the Eucharist and an insult to the bishop. Across America our bishops are being cast as helpless eunuchs unable to protect the Eucharist in the face of the crushing secular power of the feminist and homosexual movements. This is a blatant power play by these wealthy, politically powerful and media-connected secular movements to seize the Eucharist from the hands of our priests. They remind us of Napoleon crowning himself in mocking defiance of church authority.

The homosexual and feminist activists have many friends in the Catholic bureaucracy. Church dissidents have already transformed the mission of many inner city parishes, closing schools for the urban poor in order to become celebration centers for middle class narcissists. Like the secular homosexuals who kicked the Boy Scouts out of the urban schools, they have transformed social justice from serving the needy to gratifying their own desires.

A significant subculture of homosexual priests and sympathizers lives comfortably in this atmosphere of deceit. Unbeknownst to the archbishop, they have encouraged the rainbow sash movement. A white middle class culture of entitlement and dissent pervades our diocese's newspaper, the schools and the archdiocesan bureaucracy. The homosexual movement is the most blatant form of this notion that religion is a birthright not a call to conversion and creed. The Church's property, status, and jobs are the targets of these smiling usurpers who have replaced the gospel of Christ with their own self serving theories of pacifism, feminism and gay rights.

We come today to place ourselves between Our Lord and those who would desecrate Him in the Eucharist. We also will not receive communion today since our actions may tempt us to a state of anger or pride. We apologize for not asking the priests of the Cathedral for permission to take this action but we do not want to place them in a compromised position with the bishop. The horrendous abuse in the Church was largely caused by the infidelity of homosexual priests and the unwillingness of the bishops to confront and expel them. Today's brazen desecration in the Cathedral by the sash movement shows the corruption continues in our local church.

Ushers are Catholic laymen who serve by keeping good order in the Church. Catholic ushers are not just here to collect money. If the mystery of the Eucharist is violated then the mission of the Church is compromised. This is the feast of the Pentecost when the apostles stopped cowering in their hiding place to proclaim the Gospel of Christ. We call the people of the sash to conversion. We call our bishop to be courageous in service of an event larger than all of us — the mystery of the Eucharist.

Look. I'm not sure that I approve of what the Ushers of the Eucharist did the other day. But I applaud them for their faith & courage, and I applaud them for their will to act & their choice to act.

And I am sure of this: if the bishops and priests would do their jobs — would do what they were ordained and appointed to do, would do what they're paid to do — instead of being (at worst) subversive traitors or (at best) spineless cowards, nobody would think there's any need to protect the Blessed Sacrament from profanation. Because there would be no need to do so.

If those who should act, will not act, then others who perhaps should not act, will act. Maybe because they must act.

And make no mistake about this: some of the folks who are having conniption fits because of what the Ushers of the Eucharist did — and you know, Faithful Reader, there are some people having conniption fits about it — some of them are furious merely because somebody did something.

Somebody more than talked; somebody more than wrote; somebody more than committeed; somebody actually did something.

O. my. God.

P.S. Did the writer know how charged with meaning is the statement Last year in our own diocese Christ was handed over? Our word "tradition" comes from the Latin traditio, to hand over. Our word "traitor" also comes from the same Latin root.

I think he knew. Now you do, too.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 06/02/04 07:08:30 PM
Categorized as Religious.