The Boston Globe, wishing a Catholic was Massachusetts governor, instead of a Mormon, so he could tell the Church he’s not going to legislate his personal faith in the style of St. JFK, castigates Mitt Romney for daring to suggest that Catholics be allowed religious freedom. Now, I’ve already said that Romney’s proposal for an exemption for Catholic Charities in Boston is a ploy for presidential votes. Yet it’s not the idea itself that is at fault, just the unrealistic expectation that the rest of the political establishment in Massachusetts won’t kill it after Romney’s long gone.
Anyway, the Globe’s editorial sounds like the worst kind of Know Nothing rhetoric. It even accuses him of “accepting instructions on public policy from the pope.”
Romney said yesterday he would seek to exempt Catholic Charities from the law because its members ‘‘should be able to follow the practices of their religion.” But why, on a matter of public policy, should a religion’s practices trump the state’s?
I think it’s called the First Amendment. You know, that separation of Church and state thing? The Globe goes on to ask rhetorically whether religious groups who want to discriminate against blacks or even Catholics (how clever!) should also be given exemptions. As the BG’s editors well know, civil rights law recognizes race and religion as protected from discrimination. Not so homosexuality, although many people want to equate the lifestyle of homosexuality with the deep-rooted beliefs of religion or the unalterable reality of race.
Romney should tell the Church what to do and believe
Technorati Tags: adoption, Boston, Catholic, Catholic-Charities, homosexuality, media-bias, politics
We need to be on the side of the poor, even if it means that we disobey federal laws. We also need to be on the side of the unborn and to stand for the traditional family.
Catholics need to be very cautious when they are dealing with the issue of immigration reform. I for one would be the first person helping the thirsty and the hungry even if they were crossing our borders illegally.
Our charity is not confined to borders but to the Body of Christ and most of those who cross into the United States from Mexico are our Catholic brothers and sisters.
They are members of our church first andwe have an obligation to help them. Shame on us if we don’t.
I think you mean to comment on the next blog post, not this one. If that’s the case, you miss my point. It wasn’t on whether the law is just or not (there is some dispute over whether the law actually says what Mahony et al says it does), but in the unbalanced treatment of the liberal media of the Church’s entry into the public sphere. When the Church engages in a way that liberals approve, then it’s just fine.