NY Bishops Fight Back Against Passage of Sam-Sex "Marriage" Bill

In the wake of New York’s passage of same-sex “marriage” on Friday, one of the state’s Catholic bishops is launching a “protest” against Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other lawmakers who backed the legislation. The bishop says he will refuse the politicians participation in events at parishes and schools, and will turn down any honors the legislators award them.


Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn said the move is “intended as a protest of the corrupt political process in New York State.”

“More than half of all New Yorkers oppose this legislation,” he wrote in a statement. “Yet, the governor and the state legislature have demonized people of faith, whether they be Muslims, Jews, or Christians, and identified them as bigots and prejudiced, and voted in favor of same-sex ‘marriage.’”

The bishop’s announcement comes as influential canon lawyer Dr. Edward Peters of Detroit’s Sacred Heart Major Seminary has renewed his call for the state’s bishops to deny Communion to Catholic Gov. Cuomo, due to his persistent campaign for same-sex “marriage,” in addition to his public cohabitation with girlfriend Sandra Lee, a host on the Food Network.

Gov. Cuomo signed the same-sex “marriage” bill Friday night, scarcely an hour after it had passed the Senate in a 33-29 vote.

Dr. Peters says Cuomo’s efforts to secure same-sex “marriage” were “even more brazen” than his “public concubinage.” He noted that while his cohabitation “gives prominent bad example against marriage,” “his official actions in regard to ‘gay marriage’ have changed the very definition of marriage in the populous state under his care.”

“Cuomo’s long pattern of conduct in regard to ‘gay marriage’ triggers, in my opinion, an obligation on his part to refrain from approaching for holy Communion per Canon 916 and, should he approach anyway, upon ministers of holy Communion to withhold that august sacrament from ‘those obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin’ per Canon 915,” the canonist, who was recently appointed as a consultant to the Vatican’s Apostolic Signatura (the Church’s highest court), wrote on his blog June 26.

In the same-sex “marriage” campaign “no one played a more important, and indeed a constitutionally essential, role” than Gov. Cuomo, said Peters. “Without Cuomo’s long-standing and vigorous public support for ‘gay marriage’, without his unswerving political efforts to advance that project and, most specifically, without his signature on the bill (placed there with obvious enthusiasm and much self-satisfaction), New York would not have legalized ‘gay marriage’ on June 24.”

Peters suggested New York’s bishops issue a “public announcement” that Cuomo is barred from Communion, saying this “befits the markedly public character of Cuomo’s conduct and responds better to the danger of scandal presented to the faithful by his actions.”

The bishops’ response, he noted, “will undoubtedly serve as an example to other bishops confronting Catholic complicity in the push to grant the legal status of marriage to same sex unions in their territories.”

Peters also said he believes the governor’s conduct warrants a canonical investigation under Canon 1717, which applies a “just penalty” to those who “in a public show or speech, published writings, or in other uses of the instruments of social communications … gravely injure[d] good morals.”

In his statement, Bishop DiMarzio said Gov. Cuomo and the state legislature “have deconstructed the single most important institution in human history,” adding that the bill “will undermine our families and as a consequence, our society.”

“With this vote, Governor Cuomo has opened a new front in the culture wars that are tearing at the fabric of our nation,” he continued. “At a time when so many New Yorkers are struggling to stay in their homes and find jobs, we should be working together to solve these problems.”

The bishop insisted that political leaders “do not believe their own rhetoric.” “If they did, how in good conscience could they carve out any exemption for institutions that would be proponents of bigotry and prejudice?” he asked.