Commentary by Susan Brinkmann,OCDS

The Washington Post, the same newspaper that gave lesbian Barbara Johnson front-page headlines after a priest denied her communion, is now trying to justify the fact that she is also a Buddhist.

Michelle Boorstein of the Post published a lengthy column yesterday about Johnson’s Buddhism, a fact left out of most news stories in the media’s haste to pillory the Church for taking the intolerant position of denying communion to people living in sin. After trying to bully the Church into changing 2,000 years of doctrine to suit the gay community, now the Post is attempting to question whether or not Catholics should be allowed to practice other faiths as well.

Naturally, Boorstein takes the usual tack and uses polls to show how out of touch Catholics are with the rest of the civilized world.

“Johnson’s depiction of her own blending of the faiths, while infuriating to purists, appears to put her in the mainstream of American religion,” Boorstein writes. 

“One recent Pew poll on multiple religious practices shows 88 percent of white Catholics cite at least one non-Christian religion that they believe can lead to eternal life, a higher percentage than the number of black Protestants (81 percent) or white mainline Protestants (85 percent) who said so. The same survey also found that roughly a quarter of Americans believe in reincarnation and a similar number believe in yoga not just as exercise, but as a spiritual practice. Among Catholics, the number expressing these beliefs is 28 percent and 27 percent respectively.”

In other words, if the polls say it’s okay, the Church ought to lighten up.

She also cites Trappist monk Thomas Merton who “embraced and deeply studied” Buddhism before his death in the 1960s, as well as two Episcopal priests, including a bishop, who claim to be followers of Christ and other faiths, one in Zen Buddhism and the other Islam.

“Johnson also reflects the blending trend that’s called religious pluralism by some, and religious consumerism or apostasy by others,” Boorstein rationalizes. “It also reflects the powerful cultural pull affiliated particularly with some faiths, including Judaism and Catholicism, even for those who don’t have a regular religious practice.”

Speaking of which, it also came out in her interview that Johnson had not been attending Mass regularly. “Johnson says she never stopped seeing herself as a Catholic, and never stopped attended Mass or taking Communion – albeit not very regularly.”

So let’s get this straight, Johnson is a lesbian living with a partner of 20 years, considers herself to be a Buddhist and hasn’t been attending Mass regularly. How many rules does she have to break before a priest is allowed to deny her Communion?
 
Boorstein is simply unwilling to accept the fact that the Catholic Church has a right to her beliefs, and goes on to paint Johnson in the most sympathetic light possible. She  describes the painful inner conflict with Church teaching that Johnson felt while wrestling with her sexuality and watching the clergy sex abuse crisis unfold. She also attended services at other churches, Unitarian, Baptist, Episcopalian.

“During that time I found a lot of answers in Buddhist teachings and texts,” Johnson told the Post.

But when she returned to her high school, Elizabeth Seton High School, to teach art, she said it was part of a process of “coming back to Catholicism on her own terms.”

“This is so surreal because I was getting closer and closer to my faith,” Johnson said about the Catholics who are outraged at her behavior. “I had really integrated my Catholic identity into my larger identity as someone who is very influenced by Buddhist teachings.”

She adds: “The words in the Mass have been my guidepoint. It says, ‘Lord I am not worthy to receive you,’ and these words, before Communion every Mass I’ve said those words with as much conviction in my body and soul as possible, and been guided by the feeling of what was in my body and my conscience. If I felt I wasn’t worthy, I wouldn’t go.”

Despite the Post’s attempts to “fix” this pitifully reported story, the faithful aren’t buying it.

“The only controversy here is that manufactured by Barbara Johnson. The gay-friendly media have painted her the teary-eyed victim with grossly misrepresented and omitted facts about Ms. Johnson and Catholic teaching in order to further attacks on the Catholic Church,” writes Paul Rondeau of the American Life League.

“Ms. Johnson knows full well that the Church considers practicing homosexuality as ‘intrinsically disordered’ and a grave sin. This by itself would bar her from presenting herself to receive the blessed sacrament of Communion. Moreover, in an interview just last year, Johnson claimed Buddhism as her way of life, not Catholicism. Either of these states disqualifies her from Communion. She nevertheless presented herself and then took the denial of the Blessed Sacrament to the liberal media for political purposes where she was welcomed with open arms to conjure yet another anti-Catholic story.”

Rondeau voices what many believe to be true about the whole Johnson affair, that she “selfishly manipulated the funeral of her own mother, a lifelong Catholic, in an attempt to force Father Guarnizo to allow a sacrilege, then accused him of bringing politics into the Church. This selfish anti-Catholic activism shows that Ms. Johnson’s statement that Catholics should put aside ‘political points of view’ is sheer hypocrisy.”

Rather than give Johnson an apology, Rondeau is demanding that Johnson be the one who seeks forgiveness.

” . . . (I)t is Ms. Johnson’s disgraceful behavior that obliges an apology to both her mother and her mother’s lifelong Church.”

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