[FOX40] A church in Michigan denied Holy Communion to a state district court judge because she is married to a woman.Judge Sara Smolenski, the chief judge of Michigan’s 63rd District Court, received a call from the priest at St. Stephen Catholic Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, requesting she not attend communion.
"This is not about me against the priest, and it’s not really me against the church," Smolenski told CNN. "This feels like selective discrimination. Why choose gay people, and why now?"
Smolenski, 62, said that the Rev. Scott Nolan, the priest at St. Stephen for approximately three years, called her on November 23 and told her, "’It was good to see you in church on Sunday. Because you and Linda are married in the state of Michigan, I’d like you to respect the church and not come to communion.'"
Smolenski was baptized at St. Stephen. She and her nine siblings attended the church’s school from first through eighth grade. Her parents were married in the church in the 1940s.
Communion is a significant and sacred act in Catholicism. Through this sacrament, Catholics unite with Christ and symbolically form a single body, according to Catechism of the Catholic Church on the Vatican’s website. To be denied communion is essentially to be denied one’s right to the holiness of Catholicism.
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