Vatican Advisor Edward Peters Tells Marriage Equality Supporters That They Should Not Receive Communion

Edward Peters is a Detroit professor and the Vatican's US legal advisor. He's also the father of NOM's Thomas Peters.  This weekend the elder Peters warned Catholic supporters of same-sex marriage that they should not attempt to receive Holy Communion at Mass or else they'll be "rebuked or sanctioned."

Peters said that Catholic teachings make it clear that marriage is between one man and one woman. And so, "Catholics who promote 'same-sex marriage' act contrary to" Catholic law "and should not approach for holy Communion," he wrote. "They also risk having holy Communion withheld from them ... being rebuked and/or being sanctioned." Peters didn't specify a Catholic politician or public figure in his post. But he told the Free Press that a person's "public efforts to change society's definition of marriage ... amount to committing objectively wrong actions." Peters, an attorney and the Edmund Cardinal Szoka chairman at Sacred Heart, was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 to be a referendary of the Apostolic Sinatura, which means he helps advise the top judicial authority in the Catholic Church.

The elder Peters has previously said that prominent Catholic politicians such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi and NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo should be denied communion for their support of gay marriage.

Yesterday Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron echoed Peters' words, saying that it would be like "perjury" for pro-gay Catholics to receive communion.

"For a Catholic to receive holy Communion and still deny the revelation Christ entrusted to the church is to try to say two contradictory things at once: 'I believe the church offers the saving truth of Jesus, and I reject what the church teaches.' In effect, they would contradict themselves. This sort of behavior would result in publicly renouncing one's integrity and logically bring shame for a double-dealing that is not unlike perjury."