Stop the Church

**Stop the Church** was a demonstration organized by members of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) on December 10, 1989, that disrupted a Mass being said by Cardinal John O'Connor at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. One-hundred and eleven protesters were arrested, 53 of whom were arrested inside the church. The main objective of the demonstration was to protest O'Connor's opposition to the teaching of safe sex in the public school system, and his opposition to the distribution of condoms to curb the spread of AIDS. During planning, the protest was joined by Women's Health Action and Mobilization (WHAM!), who opposed the Catholic position on abortion rights.

The protest was condemned in media editorials and by national figures such as President George H. W. Bush, and was controversial in the gay community. The protest, and especially the desecration of the Eucharist, made headline news in the US and several European countries. The protest was a major effort for ACT-UP.

## Background[แก้ไขต้นฉบับ]

See also: Catholic Church and homosexuality, Catholic Church and abortion, and LGBT rights in the United States

ACT UP opposed the public position of the church on condom use and safe sex education to control the spread of AIDS, and identified pronouncements such as O'Connor's statement that "Good morality is good medicine" as harmful. The protest was organized following a meeting of senior clergy where they had reinforced doctrine opposing the use of condoms. ACT UP nicknamed the cleric "Cardinal O'Condom." They also opposed the church's anti-abortion position. In the 1980s, O'Connor wielded a great deal of power in both the church and in society at large. WHAM! subsequently joined the protest, swelling its numbers and adding the issue of abortion rights.

## Protest[แก้ไขต้นฉบับ]

Stop the Church was held on December 10, 1989, at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. The idea had originated with ACT UP members Vincent Gagliostro and Victor Mendolia. Cardinal John O'Connor was celebrating a Mass attended by Mayor Ed Koch and other political leaders. Koch and the other dignitaries attended as a sign of support to O'Connor.

The protesters had indicated in advance that they planned to protest. While pretending to be church ushers, some handed out flyers explaining why they would disrupt the service to those entering the catherdral. The crowd outside grew to 4,500 people. The demonstrators stood outside the cathedral shouting and raising placards that read "Eternal life to Cardinal O'Connor now," "Know your scumbags," "Curb your dogma," "Papal Bull," and the like. Some tried to "storm" the church, but police stopped those who were obvious protesters from entering. Plainclothes police officers, expecting trouble, were sitting in the pews during Mass.

At the outset of Mass, O'Connor said he knew there were a number of protesters in attendance but asked for a peaceful service. Originally, the plan was a silent protest with a "die-in" during the homily portion of the Mass. When it appeared that the protest was having little effect on O'Connor, who continued on with Mass, Michael Petrelis stood on a pew and shouted, "You bigot O'Connor, you're killing us!" The cathedral then descended into "pandemonium." A few dozen activists interrupted Mass, chanted slogans, blew whistles, "kept up a banshee screech," chained themselves to pews, threw condoms in the air, waved their fists, and lay down in the aisles to stage a "die-in."

Ann Northrop was inside the Cathedral and said, "I happened to be the last person carried out, and by that time, everything had calmed down and was silent. So I started saying — and it was ringing through the cathedral — 'We're fighting for your lives, too. We're fighting for your lives, too.'" O'Connor asked worshipers to "pay no attention to" those disrupting the Mass. The organist also played in an attempt to drown the protesters out.

One protester, Tom Keane, took the consecrated communion wafer (Eucharist) from the priest, crumbled it into pieces, and dropped the pieces to the floor. He then lay on the floor of the church in an attempt to prevent others from receiving Communion and was later arrested. Keane's desecration of the Eucharist became the biggest news story in the days to come. Years later, Keane said he decided to act in the moment and, while in hindsight he might not have repeated the act, he felt no regret.