Gay Couple Denied Communion In Northern Minnesota Church

Hallelujah!!!

Of course, the story is causing ex-Catholic Joe Perez to spew vitriol.

Five children between them, and somehow their sexual impulses trump everyone else’s claims on them? It’s what I’ve been saying all along: parents will avow, if asked as a hypothetical, that there’s nothing they wouldn’t do for their child, even to volunteering to be put to death in his place. But to maintain a less-than-ideal marriage and to curb one’s desire to snog off the reservation, in order to give them a united home and both parents on the spot, is Just Too Much To Ask. No doubt about it: this is the land where Nooky is King.

If it weren’t for their victimhood, they’d be Episcopal bishops….

The priest did all the right things, but I think it is also a very unfortunate situation for the two men and their children. Being excluded from the church’s life isn’t good for any of them. These men and their kids – and who knows how many others like them around the world – need our prayers in a very special way.

Many homosexuals would like to twist the words of God to justify their own sin. Many of our fellow catholics would to to twist the Act of Mercy of “admonishing the sinner” to just a big hug. They need to get right with God. Their salvation is at hand – unless, you believe there is no hell. Bravo! to priests such as Rev. Larry Wieseler. A true believer in the Word of God.

Here’s the original (and longer) story picked up by AP.

Grand Forks Herald (ND)

May 9, 2004
Section: A
Edition: FINAL
Page: 01
Column: RELIGION

TURNED AWAY FROM THE TABLE
GAY COUPLE TOLD TO LEAVE COMMUNION IN WARROAD PARISH

PRIEST SAYS CHURCH TEACHING IS CLEAR
Stephen J. Lee, Herald Staff Writer

Dale Sand and Tom Pepera say they are hurt and angry over being told they no longer should take Communion or sing in the choir in their church, because they are living together as a gay couple.

The move by their pastor, the Rev. Larry Wieseler, priest at St. Mary’s parishes in Baudette, Williams and Falun, Minn., was spurred by Sand’s letter to the Herald published Easter Sunday.
In that letter, Sand, responding to previous letters warning against gay marriage and homosexuality in general, wrote that being gay wasn’t a choice and said God had made him that way.

“I am a gay man in a committed relationship with another man whom I love, as you should love your spouse,” he wrote.

Sand, 43, and Pepera, 49, have been together for five years. Each was married when they “got together,” at a Catholic retreat. Both were soon divorced. Pepera has three children, and Sand has two; their children visit them one weekend a month.

The two men have been active as a couple in their parish for four years, leading the singing and serving Communion, first in Warroad and the past two years, in Baudette, in the same church where Pepera was born, baptized and confirmed.

The priest Pepera, in fact, remembers as a teenager seeing Wieseler get ordained as a priest in Baudette. Wieseler remembers that day, too: He was 34, and it was 1969. He’s spent half of his priestly career since as a missionary in Venezuela

It’s clear when he talks about it that Wieseler has struggled with how to rightly minister to the first gay couple he’s known about in his four parishes. He’s talked to the two men more than once about the church’s teaching on sex outside traditional marriage.

Two weeks after Sand’s letter appeared, Wieseler telephoned him and said he and Pepera no longer should come up to receive Eucharist during Mass nor serve Communion to others or sing in the choir.

It led the two men to quit the parish and Sand to write another letter to the Herald, which appears on Page 3D today.

The situation reflects a related national controversy over whether certain Catholic public figures should refuse or be denied the Eucharist because of their views on abortion.

Last week, the governor of New Jersey announced he was going to obey his bishop and stop going up for Communion in the diocese because of the bishop’s teaching that political leaders who support abortion rights have made themselves unfit for the Eucharist.

The same issue has created controversy over Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry, who also is a Catholic who supports abortion rights. He continues to receive the Eucharist, but some Catholics have called for him to stop or for church leaders to refuse him.

Differing views
Catholic priests and bishops differ on how to apply the church’s teaching on who is welcome to receive the Eucharist.

April 25, Bishop Samuel Aquila of the Catholic Diocese of Fargo, which covers eastern North Dakota, said in a sermon – posted on the diocesan Web site at http://www.fargodiocese.org – that Catholic politicians such as Kerry put their souls at risk when they support abortion rights.

It goes way back in the church, Aquila said, citing St. Justin Martyr from 165 AD: “No one may share the Eucharist with us unless he believes that what we teach is true, unless he is washed in the regenerating waters of baptism for the remission of his sins, and unless he lives in accordance with the principles given us by Christ.”

“While we may never impose the Gospel message or force someone to believe in Jesus Christ, we must always propose the truth,” Aquila said. “As citizens, the catechism of the Catholic church teaches us that we ‘are obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order.’ We must obey God rather than men.”

Wieseler said he’s tried not to be “hard-nosed,” about it, but that when Sand went public, he had to do something.

“I was just suggesting that he should not come to communion,” Wieseler said. “I said that because you are publicly manifesting that, unless you repent of that, you should not come to receive the Lord, because you are not one with him. You are sort of biting the hand that feeds you.”

Wieseler said he did not deny Communion to the men, illustrating the nuances in applying church teaching.

“I never said explicitly that I would not give Communion. I try to avoid the situation. Last Sunday (Sand) was here at Mass, and I took the other side (at the altar, serving communion). I never told anyone not to give him Communion. It’s not explicit what we should be doing. I have some things to learn, too. I always wait for our bishop to talk,” Wieseler said.

Bishop Victor Balke heads the Catholic Diocese of Crookston, hasn’t spoken directly to the issue recently, Wieseler said.

However, while all the etiquette of how to handle such things may not be so clear, church teaching is, Wieseler said.

“You have to recognize there are certain objective norms, things that are right,” he said. “You cannot profess this is OK, when it’s not OK. When this thing of scandal comes in, when by doing this you give the impression that it is all right, that is where you have to draw the line.”

Wieseler’s sermon
A few Sundays ago, Wieseler gave a sermon on why same-sex marriage isn’t approved by the church. Some liked the homily, some – including Sand – didn’t, he said.

Father Wieseler is doing the right thing, said Monsignor Roger Grundhaus, chancellor of the Crookston diocese that includes Warroad, and chief assistant to Bishop Balke.

The church teaches that being homosexual is not sinful, but that engaging in homosexual practices violates natural law and Christ’s teaching, Grundhaus said.

The Catholic church teaches that any sexual activity outside of marriage between a man and woman is sinful, Grundhaus said.

How to minister to people living in ways that openly are at odds with church teaching is a difficult problem for all pastors in the 21st century, Grundhaus said.

State of grace
But every Catholic is taught they must be in a state of grace before taking the Eucharist, Grundhaus said. “They jeopardize their own salvation by taking it lightly.”

Sand and Pepera each were born into Catholic families and say they take their faith very seriously.

Pepera, in fact, says it was the Catholic teaching on communion that brought him back to the church a decade ago after he had lapsed.

“At Communion, you are truly receiving the body and blood of Christ,” he said. “To attain eternal life, you must take Communion.”

Sand, too, says being banned from Communion hits him hard because of the faith he was brought up in, to believe the peculiar Catholic doctrine that during the Mass, the bread and wine become miraculously the body and blood of Christ.

“Partaking of Communion has been a very, very important part of my life. The basis of my faith is to believe the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ and that through that, we all are saved.” Sand said. “Not being able to partake of Communion is basically denying me salvation.”

Love, acceptance
Sand sees love and acceptance as deeper, more important truths in Catholicism and Christianity than teachings about sexuality.

“I have no hopes of changing church doctrine,” Sand said. He knows the church sees sex between two men as wrong. But he sees the promise of forgiveness as bigger than the law against sin. “Before Communion, we always pray, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word, and I shall be healed.’ I don’t hear any exceptions in that.”

Both Pepera and Sand say they are not “standing on soapboxes,” and are not part of gay activist groups.

“I’m not trying to force the issue,” Sand said. “But at the same time, I’m not going to hide anymore. I have for 40 years of my life.”

Sand grew up in Richardton, N.D., going to church in the famed and beautifully spired church at the Assumption Abbey, a Benedictine monastery. As a boy, he often would slip into the basement after working in the garden there, to secretly listen to the monks singing Gregorian chants in Latin.

In high school he began to realize he was homosexual.

After graduating high school there in 1978, Sand served four years in the Marine Corps, came back and at 27, married a woman he met while working at the state school in Grafton, N.D.

“I did not want to be gay. I grew up at a time when being gay was wrong and against the church. That was so firmly instilled in me that when I got married, I thought if I do this, that part of me will go away. And that just doesn’t happen.”

‘Married in heart’
He always remained active in the church, Sand said. He was organizing a Cursillo weekend, a devotional Catholic retreat, and recruited Pepera, whom he knew only slightly through church activities. They soon had left their wives and were together.

Both he and Pepera say they never were attracted to a promiscuous lifestyle that stereotyped gays in the 1970s, and neither had had a homosexual relationship before they started going together.

He and Tom aren’t seeking a civil union or a church wedding at this point, they said.

They wear identical gold bands on their right hands but have never had any sort of marriage ceremony.

“We consider ourselves married in the heart,” Sand said. “To us that is what is really important.”

Living openly with another man has been a huge relief to him, Sand said.

“I struggled with my faith so much,” Sand said. “I finally realized that God doesn’t make mistakes. God made me who I am, made me the way I am. Anything else would be a lie to God. To me, the biggest sin was living a lie and not being who God made me to be.”

Little discrimination
They have lived openly as a gay couple in their parish for several years, they said. Two years ago, their priest asked them to stop doing the song-leading together, because some parish members thought it looked unseemly when the two men hugged during the sign of peace at Mass.

Their house got egged by someone last month, but they are not sure if it’s linked to their being gay, Sand and Pepera said. Overall, they have experienced little or no discrimination or overt opposition and love living in Warroad.

“Our neighbors are wonderful,” Pepera said.

After his divorce about four years ago, his ex-wife also got an annulment in the Catholic church, Sand said. “I think she wanted to distance herself from me,” he said.

She lives with their two children nearby in Greenbush, Minn.

Pepera’s former wife lives in Baudette.

Their families, including their children, siblings and others, have been mostly supportive of their relationship, the men said. Their ex-wives are good mothers and cooperate with the children’s visitations, the men said.

But now, they feel the church suddenly is being “discriminatory and judgmental,” Sand said.

“When Dale and I got together, we reached out to our church community. We were not turned away. But now, it seems punitive, almost.”

Wieseler says that’s not the intent.

“They are the ones excluding themselves. Jesus always gives many opportunities to repent and change,” Wieseler said. “This is what the church teaches. You don’t have to (live as a gay couple.) You can come, but then you have to be one with us. It’s really their decision, whether they want to conform with what the church teaches, or what they want to do.”

Sand and Pepera say they are not yet sure what they will do, churchwise.

“We could go to church anonymously, to Roseau or Rainy River, and no one would know,” Pepera said. But neither wants to live secrets anymore.

They still are welcome to attend Sacred Heart, without singing in choir or taking communion.

“But that’s like they are saying ‘you are welcome to come in my door but not eat at my table,'” Sand said.

Pepera says he told his fellow Baudetter Wieseler he never again would attend a parish where he was the priest.

Rather, they are looking at other denominations that might welcome a gay couple to be fully active members.

Pepera said man’s laws can’t affect his faith or his partner’s.

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Copyright (c) 2004 Grand Forks Herald