How the Defiant “Rainbow Sash Movement” Intimidated Priests and Bishops by Demanding to Receive the Eucharist

To understand better the action of the homosexual movement inside the Church, we are publishing excerpts from the recently published book, The Breached Dam: The Fiducia Supplicans Surrender to the Homosexual Movement. Authors José Antonio Ureta and Julio Loredo discuss the terrible process leading up to the release of the Vatican document Fiducia Supplicans, which allows priestly blessings to those in irregular or homosexual relationships. The following text describes the four arguments used to justify blessings for homosexual partnerships.

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The homosexual movement’s combined pressure inside and outside the Church is exerted mainly through defiance and blackmail.

Defiance seeks to denounce the Catholic Church’s doctrine and authorities through attention-grabbing cases spread by the mainstream media in which homosexual activists appear as victims. This creates the idea among the public that Church doctrine and authorities are discriminatory and offensive toward good people whose only handicap is same-sex attraction.

Get the book now! The Breached Dam: The Fiducia Supplicans Surrender to the Homosexual Movement is now available for $10.95.
Click here to get your copy now.

The Netherlands was the first country in which members of the Catholic hierarchy suffered a systematic onslaught with this confrontational technique. In 1979, Bishop Joannes Gijsen of Roermond declared that those living the homosexual lifestyle should not come to church and present themselves for the sacraments. “Thousands of [homosexual] and lesbian activists marched against the bishop on the Saturday before Easter, which they dubbed ‘Pink Saturday.’”¹

Turning the Rainbow into a Symbol of Sin

The first international example of this strategy was the Rainbow Sash Movement,² which began in England, where Nick Holloway was the first homosexual Catholic to wear a rainbow sash during Mass. From the U.K., it spread to Australia, where, in 1997, then-Archbishop George Pell of Melbourne refused to give Holy Communion during Mass to two openly gay Catholic men, one of whom was a priest.

In response, at the Pentecost Sunday Mass the following year, a group of seventy people wearing rainbow sashes ostentatiously presented themselves for Communion, which Archbishop Pell denied, something he courageously did in that city on ten other occasions. After his transfer to the Sidney archdiocese, on the first Pentecost, a group of about twenty homosexuals came forward to receive Communion, creating an incident widely reported in the media. Immediately after Mass, Michael Kelly, a Rainbow Sash spokesman and former Franciscan seminarian, revealed to the crowd the tactical aim of that challenge: “We’re here to break the code of silence and invisibility that the church has imposed on gay and lesbian people as their price for involvement in the church for so many centuries.”³

Get the book now! The Breached Dam: The Fiducia Supplicans Surrender to the Homosexual Movement is now available for $10.95.
Click here to get your copy now.

The movement spread from Australia to the United States. The movement’s leaders justified the choice of Pentecost for their actions and confrontation by claiming that the Holy Spirit distributed a great diversity of gifts on that occasion, including homosexuality. If denied Communion, they returned to their pews and stood in protest.

Facing Down the Intimidators

In 2005, faced with the proliferation of clashes organized by the Rainbow Sash Movement, the secretary of Cardinal Francis Arinze, then-prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, wrote in the cardinal’s name that “Rainbow Sash wearers…are showing their opposition to Church teaching on a major issue of natural law, and so disqualify themselves from being given Holy Communion.”⁴ The following year, the cardinal himself reaffirmed his denial in an interview with E.W.T.N.:

“These rainbow sash people are really saying, ‘We are homosexuals, we intend to remain so and we want to receive Holy Communion.’

“The Catechism of the Catholic Church…says it is not condemning a person for having homosexual tendency. We don’t condemn anybody for that. But a person stands condemned for acting on it.”⁵

Bishops Forcing Priests to Yield to Sinful Demands

Unfortunately, on the ground, many priests and eucharistic ministers lacked the same courage as Cardinals Pell and Arinze. Worse still, some bishops invited them to come with their banners to cathedral Masses. For example, shortly before Pentecost 2005, the animator of the Rainbow Sash Movement in the U.S.A. was contacted by the Director of Media Relations for the archdiocese of Los Angeles to inform him, on behalf of Cardinal Roger Mahony, that “members of the Rainbow Sash Movement who come to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels this Sunday will be most welcome to attend any of our Masses.”⁶

Get the book now! The Breached Dam: The Fiducia Supplicans Surrender to the Homosexual Movement is now available for $10.95.
Click here to get your copy now.

Another example of the use of this defiance technique, one with huge media repercussions, was the incident caused by Barbara Johnson, an American lesbian living in Maryland. Her mother, a parishioner at St. John Neumann Church, died in 2012, one week after the approval of homosexual “marriage” in that state. Johnson entered the sacristy with her lesbian partner immediately before the funeral Mass and told the young celebrant that the two had been living together for nineteen years. Her spontaneous declaration of living in public sin forced the young parochial vicar to discreetly refuse her Communion during Mass. She made a scandal and received Communion from a lay minister distributing the Holy Eucharist for another line. Faced with that insult, the young priest refused to accompany the procession to the cemetery.⁷

The incident created a national media scandal in which the priest appeared as the villain. Conversely, the lay Eucharistic minister and other Catholic attendees immediately sympathized with her and were presented as heroes. So was the parish priest who called Johnson to apologize upon learning of the incident. But the media’s main “hero” was the archdiocese of Washington, where the parish is located, which issued a statement repudiating the young priest’s attitude, although he did nothing but apply what the Code of Canon Law says should be done with public sinners seeking to receive Holy Communion (can. 915). Worse still, two weeks later, the archdiocese suspended the priest from ministry, supposedly for unrelated reasons!⁸

Thus, the way was practically open for pro-homosexual activists to come forward to receive Communion in similar situations, putting priests and Eucharistic ministers in such an embarrassing situation that many ended up giving in for fear of the media…and the bishop.

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