Bishop Thomas Paprocki Prevents Blasphemy, Stands Up to Homosexual Rainbow Sash Movement

Bishop Thomas Paprocki was heroic in his stance and deserves our prayer and open, public support.

The Rainbow Sash Movement is numbered among a segment of the homosexual and lesbian community which insists that the State use its police power to enforce a legal equivalency between marriage and homosexual and lesbian partnerships. However, that is apparently not enough for the Rainbow Sash Movement. They wanted to enter into a consecrated church on Tuesday evening and commit a blasphemous and sacrilegious act. A courageous bishop stood in their way.

P>SPRINGFIELD,ILL (Catholic Online) -  The courageous leadership of Bishop Thomas Paprocki deserves to be commended. On Tuesday, October 22, 2013, the Rainbow Sash Movement called for a blasphemous, scandalous, and sacrilegious recitation of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The purported intention of this rosary was to somehow ask God Himself to endorse behavior which is intrinsically immoral - homosexual sexual acts. Such an act, if completed, would have constituted an act of blasphemy. The group intended to do this right within the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception - right before the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The leaders of the Rainbow Sash Movement called for this rosary to be said in support of what is now routinely called the marriage equality movement in the media. In reality, it is a movement against true marriage. The effort is more accurately called a homosexual equivalency movement. Proponents insist that there is a moral equivalency between marriage and the lifestyle of cohabitating practicing homosexuals or lesbians. They also want a legal equivalency to be written into the positive law of the Nation, at both the State and Federal level. 

The Rainbow Sash Movement is numbered among a segment of the homosexual and lesbian community which insists that the State use its police power to enforce such a legal equivalency between marriage and homosexual and lesbian partnerships. However, that is apparently not enough for the movement. They wanted to enter into a consecrated church on Tuesday evening and commit a blasphemous and sacrilegious act. A courageous bishop stood in their way.

The Catholic position on homosexual sexual practices as objectively disordered enrages the Homosexual Equivalency Movement. The Catholic Church insists that the truth about marriage is revealed in the Natural Moral Law and serves the common good of every society. Marriage and family have been inscribed by the Divine Architect into the order of creation. Marriage is ontologically between one man and one woman, ordered toward the union of the spouses, open to children and formative of family.

Further, that marriage as existing solely between one man and one woman was not an idea manufactured by religion or civil government. It precedes both. The truth that marriage can exist only between one man and one woman is not based on religion or revelation alone, but on this Natural Moral Law, which is written on the human heart and discernible through the exercise of reason.

That is one of the reasons the activists in the homosexual equivalency movement have a special disdain for the Catholic Church. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Catholic Church wrote in 2003:

The Church's teaching on marriage and on the complementarity of the sexes reiterates a truth that is evident to right reason and recognized as such by all the major cultures of the world. Marriage is not just any relationship between human beings. It was established by the Creator with its own nature, essential properties and purpose.

No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman, who by mutual personal gift, proper and exclusive to themselves, tend toward the communion of their persons. In this way, they mutually perfect each other, in order to cooperate with God in the procreation and upbringing of new human lives.

The Rainbow Sash Movement wants to flaunt its open defiance right within the sanctuaries of the Catholic Church. This offense against the Church masquerades as a call for equal rights. In reality, the movement seeks to censor and limit the Catholic Church from teaching the truth about marriage. They seek to radically reconstruct western culture in accordance with their agenda.

Those in our midst who struggle with same sex attraction need to be given the truth which will help to set them free. They should be shown true compassion such as that offered by authentic ministries to homosexual persons like Courage which is faithful to the teaching of the Catholic Church.

This is not the first time that the Rainbow Sash Movement has sought to enter the sanctuary and commit what would have amounted to a blasphemous act. In June of 2010, the Rainbow Sash announced their plan to disrupt the celebration of the Holy Mass throughout the Nation on pentecost Sunday.

They specifically announced they were going to openly confront one of the great Churchmen of the United States, the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, Francis Cardinal George, OMI. They made their plan clear on their own web site with these defiant words:

Members of the Rainbow Sash Movement will be entering Cathedrals across the nation on Pentecost Sunday, May 23, 2010. In Chicago Cardinal Francis George will be directly challenged in his Cathedral at the 11AM Mass. Cardinal Francis George of Chicago is one of the Vatican's generals in the war against Gay Families. Here is someone you should get to know because he would deny your right to employment, housing, marriage, adoption if you are Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender. Nobility would call him to resign, but ego will not allow it.

Cardinal George stood firm aginst the bullying. He was also not daunted by the tactics of the Rainbow Sash Movement. Now, Bishop Thomas Paprocki has shown the same strength of leadership. We thank God for his heroism and invite all of our readers to do the same.

He issued the following public statement in response to the announcement of the intention to use the Cathedral under the auspices of saying a rosary to promote their attempted cultural revolution:

The Rainbow Sash Movement has encouraged Roman Catholics to come to Springfield to "have a loud Catholic presence for marriage equality." They have announced plans to gather at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception at 4:30 p.m., just before the 5:15 p.m. Mass, to stand in the Cathedral and indicate that they are there to pray the rosary for "marriage equality."

It is blasphemy to show disrespect or irreverence to God or to something holy. Since Jesus clearly taught that marriage as created by God is a sacred institution between a man and a woman (see Matthew 19:4-6 and Mark 10:6-9), praying for same-sex marriage should be seen as blasphemous, and as such will not be permitted in the cathedral.

People wearing a rainbow sash or who otherwise identify themselves as affiliated with the Rainbow Sash Movement will not be admitted into the cathedral and anyone who gets up to pray for same-sex marriage in the cathedral will be asked to leave.

Of course, our cathedral and parish churches are always open to everyone who wishes to repent their sins and ask for God's forgiveness.

The statement worked. The attempted blasphemy was averted. The clarity and courage of this fine Bishop not only prevented the group from proceeding with their attempted blasphemy - but shines forth as an example for others who will soon face these kinds of bullying tactics. They will only increase as these folks who claim they are tolerant and progressive demonstrate how woefully intolerant they are of Classical Christians and others who disagree with their agenda.

A summary of Catholic teaching was set forth by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under the leadership of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) in the "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons" promulgated in 1986. Here are a few of the paragraphs:

The Church, obedient to the Lord who founded her and gave to her the sacramental life, celebrates the divine plan of the loving and live-giving union of men and women in the sacrament of marriage. It is only in the marital relationship that the use of the sexual faculty can be morally good. A person engaging in homosexual behavior therefore acts immorally.

To choose someone of the same sex for one's sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator's sexual design. Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living.

This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves; but when they engage in homosexual activity they confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent.

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As in every moral disorder, homosexual activity prevents one's own fulfillment and happiness by acting contrary to the creative wisdom of God. The Church, in rejecting erroneous opinions regarding homosexuality, does not limit but rather defends personal freedom and dignity realistically and authentically understood.

This is the teaching of the magisterium of the Church. It cannot be changed and will not change. Groups like the Rainbow Sash movement, by calling some Catholics to an open defiance of this teaching, undermine the authority of the Church, confuse those who struggle with same sex attraction and scandalize the faithful. Thay also confuse the public as to what the Catholic Church teaches.

The dissenting or confused Catholics who support the Homosexual Equivalency movement within the Church insist that the Catholic Church adopt their new doctrine - which amounts to heresy; what St. Paul warned of as "another Gospel" (Gal. 1:8,9; 2 Cor. 11:14). They will not succeed.

Bishop Thomas Paprocki was heroic in his stance and deserves our prayer and open, public support.

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