By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS Staff Journalist Members of the Rainbow Sash Movement, a national homosexual activist group, are planning to wear their sashes to Mass throughout the country this weekend and challenge priests and bishops to give them Communion. “On Pentecost Sunday, May 23, members and supporters of the Rainbow Sash Movement will be entering Cathedrals nationally and internationally,” says a statement by the group’s board of directors posted on its website. “As is our tradition we will put Rainbow Sashes on when the Liturgy begins. The Rainbow Sash self identifies us Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender people and our allies.” The group is particularly targeting cathedrals where activists will have a chance to come face-to-face with bishops in order to “clarify a misunderstanding based on homophobic notions of LGBT people.” The California Catholic points out that while the group claims to want to “dialogue” with bishops, their May 14 press release uses harsh and accusatory language to attack the Church and its prelates, including the pope. “There is something bipolar about a Church that will not give members of the Rainbow Sash Movement communion because they self identify as gay publicly, while at the same time elevating men to the office of Pope, Cardinal, Archbishop, or Bishop who placed the reputation of the Catholic Church ahead of needs of innocent children who were sexually victimized by both predator priests and Bishops,” said the Rainbow Sash press release. “The only word that comes to mind to describe such a dichotomy, in charity, is hypocrite.” The same release announces that the group will specifically target the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago this Sunday. Cardinal George issued a statement in 2004 saying that the “policy of the U.S. Conference of Bishops is to not give Communion to those wearing the Rainbow Sash.” His statement was backed up a year later by Cardinal Francis Arinze, then prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments who said in a January, 2005 letter: "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." The group’s Pentecost protest is an annual event that has caused disruption and worse at Masses throughout the country, such as sash-wearers attempting to steal consecrated hosts or turning their backs on the altar after being denied communion.   © All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace®  http://www.womenofgrace.com