Attempted Communion Without Consent

I caught an interesting article in USA Today about a week ago. They reported on a Catholic priest’s refusal to grant communion to a lesbian woman at her mother’s funeral and the consequent uproar. But think about it for a minute: who’s the ‘bad guy’ in this situation? Which of the characters is making a political statement? Don’t we automatically believe that the priest was unreasonable? Have some compassion for crying out loud! 

The Catholic Church has to deal with the denial of communion to its parishioners for violations of various moral standards and they have a procedure to deal with such things. From my understanding of communion in the Catholic Church, the parishioners get up from their seats, and move to the front of the church to receive communion from the priest. Parishioners who are guilty of various moral infractions simply remain seated and do not receive communion. So it’s sort of like being the religious guy at the family gathering when all the uncles are going to the bar. We know you’re not going, so we’re not going to ask you if you want to come along. (Notice how I’m playing both sides of that equation?)

With regard to this lesbian woman at her mother’s funeral, we all feel compassion for her loss. But we must also realize that she was the one who initiated the confrontation over communion. She forced the priest to make a decision about serving communion which clearly violated his conscience, requiring him to refuse the cup and wafer. You might even call this a rape of conscience…

Her political statement and the priest’s response is interesting, but it brings to mind something deeper. In society's quest for ‘tolerance’ we see conflicting tensions about ‘social control.’ What’s social control you might ask? In a nutshell, social control is that aspect of a culture which identifies and attempts to correct deviant behavior. In this situation, the woman wanted to publicly call out the man’s deviance, with his crime being that of intolerance. His response was to exercise social control by denying communion. In this situation, (and many others) social control gets applied against ‘older’ societal norms, and particularly matters of Christian conscience, without thinking critically or Biblically about the situation. Without a standard against which to judge our actions, we remain subject to the whims of society, and Christians will become the object of an extreme form of social control: persecution.

Sinful sinners sinning sins.

For sinners, sin is a touchy subject... and we are all sinners.

Everyone at some time or another has not only committed a sin, but has also excused wrong behavior as a mere weakness or slight violation. Left unchecked, this becomes a pervasive environment which diminishes moral wrongdoing and cheapens our understanding of the cost of sin to ourselves and to our society. As Christians, we need to stand firm on the wrongness of sin as a violation of natural and Biblical law.

Many people mine the Scriptures to support opinions as to how Christians must act with regard to sin. For some, the commandment to love overrides all judgment about wrongdoing, saying something like: “Christians are called to be a loving presence in the world.” While this is a true statement, it isn’t a complete statement, nor is it a full understanding of what God wants from us. The first part of the greatest commandment is that we love God beyond all else.

“And He said to him, “'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.'
This is the great and foremost commandment.” (Mat 22:37-38 NASB)

One simple misunderstanding of this passage stems from the word ‘love.’ In our modern cultural context, we view love as an emotional attachment, reading the passage as an admonition to be passionately attached to the divine Person. Do you love God? Of course you do; even if you have no idea of whom I am speaking. But love is much more in Biblical context. This passage wants more than your emotional attachment to a Deity that lives in a far away happy place where everyone gets to go when they die. This passage is about absolute commitment to the Judeo-Christian God and His standards for life.

When we understand love as commitment, our first responsibility is toward the person of God: to know who He is and what He has spoken in His word, the Bible. When we commit ourselves to Him, then we start the journey of understanding Him more and more and representing Him to other people. This ambassadorship has at least two aspects: compassion and honesty. Without either of these, we are not truly caring for others. Without compassion, our honesty smacks of hypocrisy and unjust judgment. Without honesty, our compassion is hollow and lacks substance.

Perhaps no issue raises the ire of sinners, Christian and non-Christian alike, more than the issue of homosexuality. The pro-homosexual community has done an effective job of pushing the debate into the realm of genetics, claiming that sexual orientation is determined at birth and, as such, an issue which is not subject to moral rules. Objectors are admonished to ‘just love’ the homosexual person, because that’s what Jesus would do. The fallacy here is that genetic orientation never justifies moral behavior. If someone is born with a tendency toward alcoholism or racism or hatred this does not excuse drunkenness, acts of discrimination or violence. In fact, we commend people who overcome accidents of birth or environment and become functional persons. We recognize good behavior and bad behavior in our common humanity as either sinners who have become Christians or as sinners who haven’t. The Bible clearly condemns homosexual practice (and a whole host of other things), but that isn’t the only standard by which the practice can be judged. The standards of the natural world demonstrate that male and female partners produce offspring. This natural law communicates a standard; the normal, productive relationship is between male and female.

Sinners who have become Christians would do well to seek a balance between loving all people and condemning all sins.