Cardinal Ouellet
doesn’t believe in punishing children for their
parents’ sins—that is, unless their
parents’ sin is homosexuality
I was 10 when I
dragged my younger brothers and sister to Sunday Mass in
Hoopeston, Ill., just after we moved to this small town that
called itself “The Sweet Corn Capital of the
World.” The parish priest spotted us the minute
we came through the door and invited us into his office
after Mass.
My brothers and
sister twisted nervously on the couch as the priest
turned to me, perched on the edge of a small chair.
“You’re the oldest, aren’t
you?’
I nodded.
“Where’s your mother and father?” he
asked.
“They’re at home,” I replied.
“Why
didn’t they come to Mass today?”
“They
don’t go to church.” I’d never gone to
church with my parents; it was only because my
grandmother took me that I knew anything about
Catholicism at all.
“And why
not?”
“I
don’t know. I guess they don’t want
to.” Mom said it was our choice to go if we
wanted; she had become Catholic only to marry my dad.
Whenever his mother asked if he went to church, my dad
always said he went to St. Mattress on Sunday
mornings.
The priest could
barely hide his disapproval. “It’s a mortal
sin for your parents not to attend Mass. You have a
responsibility to get your parents to come. You
don’t want them to burn in hell for their sins, do
you?”
“But how
can I make them do something they don’t want to
do?”
“Ask God
to help you find a way.” With that, he stood up, made
the sign of the cross over our heads, and walked us to
the door. “Next week, I want to see your entire
family here.”
My mom was
furious when I told her what the priest said. “What
gives him the right to hold you responsible for what I
do? That’s plain wrong.” It was the last
time I went to Mass in the two years we lived in that town.
I hadn’t
thought of that incident until I read about the archbishop
of Quebec’s threat to Canadian lawmakers last
week. Once Canada’s same-sex marriage bill
becomes law, Cardinal Marc Ouellet announced, the church
could refuse to baptize children of gay parents.
Suddenly I burned
with the same anger my mother had displayed more than
30 years ago. By now, I’ve long grown used to the
hypocritical stance of the Catholic Church toward gay
people; Benedict XVI’s latest pronouncements
roll off my back just like the bluster of blowhard Jerry
Falwell.
But denying
children the rite of baptism, which is the first sacrament
in the church and symbolically opens the door to
enable a person to have a relationship with God, is
something entirely different.
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