Group to return 3,000 DVDs to archbishop

A group of Catholic protesters will go to the archbishop's office in St. Paul Friday to return about 3,000 DVDs the archdiocese mailed out to support a ban on gay marriage.

The project's organizer, Bob Radecki, of Burnsville, said the group was denied a meeting with Archbishop John Nienstedt to discuss the DVD controversy. Nienstedt directed them to put their concerns in writing.

The DVDs were mailed by Minnesota bishops just before the November elections to about 400,000 Catholics in the state. In the DVD, Nienstedt stresses there should be a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in Minnesota.

In response, Radecki, his wife and a half-dozen like-minded Catholics from various metro parishes created ReturnTheDVD.org, which urged people to send them the DVDs and use the website to donate to causes that aid the poor. He said the group has received more than $10,000 in donations.

"These Catholics feel the church hierarchy's priorities are misguided and that the DVD mailing was an extreme measure targeting a group of people who deserve the same love, compassion and acceptance that Christ shows each of us," according to a letter from the group addressed to Nienstedt.

Radecki said the group received more than 3,500 DVDs but gave about 1,000 to artist Lucinda Naylor, who used them to create a wave-shaped sculpture as a symbolic protest.

Naylor was a part-time artist at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis for 15 years until she created a Facebook site seeking discarded copies of the DVD to build the sculpture. Days later, she was suspended from her job indefinitely. The archdiocese has said neither Nienstedt nor anyone on his staff was behind Naylor's suspension, though they supported the move.

Archdiocese spokesman Dennis McGrath confirmed the group would not be meeting with the archbishop on Friday.

"The bishops of Minnesota have communicated what the purpose of the DVD production and mailing was," he said. "And that was to reaffirm that centuries-honored institution of marriage as a union instituted by God between one man and one woman. There's no reason for future dialogue on these fundamental beliefs of the Church."

Radecki said he would have liked to meet with Nienstedt, "but that wasn't our goal. It was to give people an outlet to let them express themselves on how they felt about the DVDs."