It wasn’t the Diocese or the larger Church that refused him the funeral. It was the very congregation that he had supported all of those years. Are you really expecting people to believe that they completely changed their teachings and beliefs AFTER Mr. Sanfillippo died and never expressed it to its congregants prior?

And I wonder, do they refuse funerals to all their divorced and remarried parishioners?

Now a paedophile, for example – that would be quite a different matter. Read the story of a London priest here:

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2011/06/20/why-didnt-the-rosminian-order-tell-us-the-truth-about-fr-kit/

Centuries ago, around the time of the Enlightenment, the Church offered companionate marriages to same sex couples. Usually they were wealthy or from powerful families. To be able to marry, they had to donate money or bequeath their property to the Church. So this wasn’t a trend among the masses.
This is also why the Church required celibacy in priests. To assure his assets would go to the Church, rather than heirs or widows.

The CC is quite mercenary in their tactics, while at the same time choosing which part of their religious convictions to forget when convenient.

Sanfillippo’s survivors shouldn’t have to sue for the money back. The Church should have no qualms about doing it on their own.

The more orthodox the group, the more gay clergy (and often, gay laity) it seems to have. This realization- and correlation- is causing incredible cognitive dissonance among RR activists. Which results in all these denial mechanisms and seemingly inexplicable hysterias, notably one about gay clergy potentially using the secular laws to change matters inside “their” churches by reactionary activists.

I don’t think anyone said that was the church’s fault.

TampaZeke, you are right. It wasn’t the church’s fault that this person left money to a church that despised him. He should have known better.

It’s a similar situation with the republican party (for the most part).

No Tampazeke, its the church. The deceased wasn’t hurting anyone, the church however is doing its best to hurt gays – the church is the only a*hole here.

While its likely Sanfillippo knew about the Catholic hierarchy’s anti-gay stance its also clear that the local church ignored the hierarchy’s policy, welcomed him for many years and never made an issue out of his orientation. Its not surprising or unreasonable that he’d expect them to continue this acceptance after his death.

If you think expecting the Catholic church to revise its anti-gay position makes one an a*hole then, yes you most certainly are “the bad guy”.

I’m certainly not defending the Catholic Church or their actions, they are shameful and disgusting; but rather I’m pointing out that the deceased was a willing and active participant in how he was treated and how other people are treated by the Church that he supported and promoted. As horrible as that is to think about, it’s undeniably true.

This is a perfect example of the moral of Aesop’s fable about the Farmer and the Snake (or the Frog and the Scorpion). Snakes BITE, Scorpions STING and the Catholic Church HATES openly, actively, gay people. Any Farmer who doesn’t understand that; any Frog that doesn’t understand that; and any Person who doesn’t understand that WILL (not might) get Bitten, Stung or Fucked respectively. You can’t nurture a viper and then be surprised when it bites you. IT’S WHAT VIPERS DO!