BISHOP SUSPENDS PRIEST FOR DEFENDING CATHOLIC FAITH

TheBlaze.com is running a story we found simply incredible. In a nutshell, a Washington priest, Father Marcel Guarnizo, refused to give Holy Communion to a lesbian, who, by the way, is an avowed Buddhist.  For that, he was suspended by Bishop Barry Knesthout.  I was sufficiently incensed to write the following:

Father Marcel Guarnizo

Dear Bishop Knestout:

Bishop Barry Knestout

There used to be no need for a layperson to lecture a prelate on the fundamentals of Catholicism, but that seems not to be the case today.  You, and clergy like you are among the reasons the majority of Catholics, especially American Catholics are Catholics in name only.  Where we look for truth, you offer us a way out and call it love.  You take the rules of God and pervert them, making them little more than base interpretations with political agendas.  That you removed a priest for refusing to give Communion to someone who obviously lives the perversion St. Paul so clearly warned against, and for which he staunchly advised ostracization, is bad enough, but to couch his removal in liberal-speak is shameful to an almost unbelievable degree.

Denying Ms. Johnson Communion was not an act of meanness or “intimidation,” it was an act of courage in the defense of our faith.  Homosexuality and lesbianism are as much sins in Catholicism as abortion.  That you, as bishops, have somehow taken it upon yourselves to make fine distinctions between what are venial and mortal sins does not make them any less in the eyes of God.  The Old Testament tells us homosexuality is an abomination.  St. Paul tells us God handed such people over “to degrading passions.  Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another.”  You may have another interpretation for this passage, but if it is not that homosexuality and lesbianism are absolutely abhorrent in the eyes of God, then it is entirely wrong.

What could be the motivation behind your decision to suspend a priest for withholding the body and blood of Christ from someone who openly admits to being in the state of sin as well as not of our Catholic faith?  I have seen firsthand, and so have you, how the homosexual agenda is spread throughout our faith under the hypocrisy of it being love through some form of perverse diversity.  Priests like you have perpetrated this myth and it can only be for two reasons, you actually believe that Christ would sanction such behavior, which of itself is as much as saying the Pharisees had a point, or you yourself are a part of the agenda, and therefore find little wrong with it unless you would be forced to turn on yourself and face your own sin.

Your day as shepherd is coming to a close.  There are those of us, Catholics not only in our hearts, but in our souls, who want our faith back, and we will have it if it means shedding half those who claim to be Catholics today, you members of the hierarchy especially.  If His Holiness is incapable of addressing this most monumental issue of right and wrong, then Christ must be served by his flock in forcing His shepherds to do His will by turning the Church back onto the righteous path, for it becomes more clear to us every day that you and yours are hopelessly entwined with the secular world, thus unable to deal with the functional realities of our Catholic faith which include far more than openly condemning abortion.

It is ever a wonder to me, and perhaps to hundreds of millions of other Catholics, how it is you shepherds of Christ’s flock have been able to hide behind the abortion issue as if it is sufficient lucre for you to act like heathens otherwise.  You should be ashamed, but sadly our Church, not our faith, has inculcated us with the need for obedience to its princes and bishops.

The charade however, is over.  We have had our epiphany, and you are exposed.  You are precisely like the Pharisees, you “preach but do not practice.”  You “tie up heavy burdens [hard to carry] and lay them on people’s shoulders,” but you “will not lift a finger to move them.”  You sanction sin by preaching “tolerance” when you know Christ and all those bound to Him tolerated no such things.  Were you capable of shame, I would admonish you to recognize your own, but you have clearly shown you are not so it is useless to advise.

This is not your faith, it is ours, and if we have to wrest control from you in order to make it right in the eyes of the Lord, we will.  Priests like Father Guarnizo, though there may be other issues concerning him, are the kinds of priests we need and want, not closet homosexuals who are more desperate to push that agenda than Christ’s, or worse, pervert the saving grace of Christ into a potion which somehow makes sin into virtue.

We are coming for you, and we will prevail.  There are many things that can be taken from us in this world, but you will not be allowed to take from us our promised rewards in the next.

Regardless of other issues, Ms. Jonhson should never be offered Holy Communion, it is the height of mockery, and you know it.  Christ may have died for her sins as well as all others, but He should not have died in vain at hers or your hands.

Sincerely,

Peter J. Fusco