Over 100 people gathered to protest at a Minneapolis Catholic church after its archdiocese barred an annual gay pride prayer service from taking place inside.

Saying they don't want to go back in the closet, gay and lesbian Catholics and their supporters took their annual prayer service celebrating gay pride outdoors Wednesday night.

Protestors marched around St. Joan of Arc in objection to the ban.

Gay and lesbian groups said the service is a tradition that’s several years old.

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, City Council Member Gary Schiff and state Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, attended.

Rybak said that anytime there are people in need, Joan of Arc members are the first to respond. "We want them to know the community stands with them," he said.

Michael Bayly is the executive director of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM), a grass-roots coalition promoting acceptance of gays in the Catholic Church. He helped organize Wednesday’s protest and short prayer service that followed on the front steps of the church.

"This word lifestyle is a propaganda word. They never explain what they mean by it. They limit a person's life to their sexual activity, but there's so much more," Bayly told KSAX-TV.

Lucia Engelhardt, 2, was helping her sister Anna, 9, carry a sign reading "Gay love is not a mortal sin."

Their 7-year-old sister, Ingrid, also carried a sign supporting gays in the Catholic Church, Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

"We're here to support our gay friends," said their mother, Stephanie Vagle. "And to show our displeasure with the Catholic Church over this issue," their father, Bill Englehardt, quickly added.

The service, which was led by lay people, included readings, songs and prayer.

Instead of the annual "LGBT Pride" service, the archdiocese suggested a "peace" service with no mention of rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

"That descriptor (LGBT) was not possible on church property. We suggested they shift it, change the nature of it a little bit, and they did," said archdiocese spokesman Dennis McGrath.

"The reason is quite simply because it was a LGBT pride prayer service, and that is really inimical to the teachings of the Catholic Church," he told Minneapolis Star Tribune. 

He's quoted in St. Paul Pioneer Press with this explanation: "Celebrating the GLBT lifestyle is contrary to the teachings of our church -- plain and simple."

The ban has caused an uproar inside and outside the church, which for years has been known as a liberal bastion supporting GLBT people.

Officials with CPCSM see the action as an attack by Archbishop John Nienstedt, who took the helm of the archdiocese in May, Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

This is "yet another volley of dehumanizing spiritual violence directed at GLBT persons and their families under Archbishop Nienstedt's reign of homophobic hatred," David McCaffrey, a CPSM board member, said in an e-mail Monday to members, reports St Paul Pioneer Press.

But church officials insisted that it wasn't a decision made because of the new leader.

"It was not something that happened because there's a new regime," McGrath said. "If (previous Archbishop Harry Flynn) had known of it, the same thing would have happened."

This year, he told the Star Tribune, "several people" came to the archdiocese to inform church officials of the event at St. Joan of Arc.

The Rev. Jim Cassidy, acting pastor of St. Joan's, told the Star Tribune Wednesday that the ruckus over the service erupted when the diocese received e-mails depicting the service as an official gay pride event.

"That's never been the case,'' Cassidy said. "It's an in-house prayer service that celebrates the GLBT members of our community."

Bayly said he saw signs of an ongoing "chilling effect." Usually, gay-friendly parishes advertise in the "pride guide" in advance of the Twin Cities Pride festival; this year, none did. The 2008 festival is this weekend.

"I think most of the parishes are in a terrible bind," Bayly said.

McGrath said Nienstedt is simply following Catholic doctrine, like previous archbishops.

McGrath declined a request for an on-camera interview with KSAX-TV but said in a statement, "We welcome and embrace people from the gay and lesbian community in our churches. However, it does not extend to a full gay and lesbian lifestyle."

"We can pray with gay and lesbians members," Cassidy told the Star Tribune.

But under the guidelines set by the archdiocese, St. Joan of Arc won't celebrate their identity, Cassidy said.

Full article: ksax.com - Hundreds protest ban on gay prayer service in Mpls.
Uproar over prayer service for gays grows | Minneapolis Star Tribune
Archdiocese halts church's annual gay pride prayers | St Paul Pioneer Press
Church takes gay pride service outside | Minneapolis Star Tribune