In last Friday’s edition of the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead*, reporter Erik Burgess advanced the story of Lennon Cihak, the Barnesville MN teenager denied the sacrament of confirmation by his pastor, Fr. Gary LaMoine of Assumption Parish, for Cihak’s public support of same-sex civil marriage.  Burgess reported, among other things, that:

• a classmate of Cihak’s also was denied confirmation, and for the same reason;
• in an open letter to the parish, Fr. LaMoine maintained that Cihak voluntarily chose not to seek confirmation; however,
• Fr. LaMoine told a reporter that he would not have confirmed Cihak anyway;
• Fr. LaMoine apparently became aware of the issue because “My secretary Googled his name“; and,
• both Bishop Hoeppner and diocesan spokesman Msgr. David Baumgartner remained unavailable for comment.

Here at dotCommonweal we’ve had a lively and far-ranging conversation about this situation (see here and here) and what it says (or doesn’t say) about the wider Church.  In addition to reading those threads (thanks to all the commenters!), I took some time over the weekend to check out Lennon Cihak’s Tumbler and Twitter feeds.  It helped disabuse me of an overly simplified notion of “parallel churches”—if only because I’m not sure which church would have room for a music-making, gay-marriage-endorsing, chocolate-milk-drinking, abortion-opposing, Romney-supporting, Obamacare-hating, part-time grocery-store worker with an (appropriately) adolescent sense of humor, who roots for his high school’s football team and loves his grandma.  (I’m also not sure whether he’d be interested in joining either of those “parallel churches”.)

All of which is to say that Lennon Cihak reminds me of so many 17 year olds:  fearfully and wonderfully made, bursting with surprises and contradictions, full to the brim with possibilities.  He also reminds me that one of the things I’ve always loved about the Catholic Church is the way it’s a church for people who otherwise have nothing in common—other than their love of God and the nourishment they find in the sacraments.

*Thanks to John Hayes for linking to this article in one of the threads, and to Eric Buygis for his post on this topic.

Assumption Church is in Barnesville, Minnesota, a town about 30 minutes southeast on I-94 from Fargo, North Dakota.  Fr. Gary LaMoine is the pastor at Assumption who (apparently) has decided that supporting same-sex marriage is grounds for being denied the sacrament of confirmation.

“If you want to be a Catholic, you have to be 100 percent Catholic.

That’s the lesson one family here learned after their 17-year-old son was denied confirmation after the priest at the Assumption Church here found a pro same-sex marriage post on the teen’s Facebook.

The decision by the Rev. Gary LaMoine to deny the religious rite of passage for Lennon Cihak in mid-October shocked his mother, who said her son has gone to church every week and volunteered around the community in preparation for his confirmation this year.

“You kind of know the Catholic beliefs, but I never thought they would deny somebody confirmation because you weren’t 100 percent. I guess that’s what shocks me,” Shana Cihak said.”

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“When I moved to Canada in 2008, I was a die-hard conservative Republican. So when I found out that we were going to be covered by Canada’s Universal Health Care, I was somewhat disgusted. This meant we couldn’t choose our own health coverage, or even opt out if we wanted too. It also meant that abortion was covered by our taxes, something I had always believed was horrible. I believed based on my politics that government mandated health care was a violation of my freedom.”

That’s the opening paragraph of a detailed and thoughtful reflection titled “How I Lost My Fear Of Universal Health Care” by “Melissa”, a young mother of self-described “Protestant Fundamentalist” background, writing about how her experience of Canadian health care has worked on her, and both calmed some of her fears and changed some of her thinking over the past few years.

Despite the fact that Melissa comes at these issues (including abortion) with a different theological and ecclesiological background that most Roman Catholics do, she shares many of the same concerns.  And, despite the fact she share many of those concerns, some of her conclusions most likely aren’t the ones many of us would come to.

But what I like most about her essay—and why I think it’s worth discussing—is that it’s an excellent example of the power of lived experience.

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