Imagine, if you will, that it’s January 2009. Let’s say Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, has been elected President of the United States and the day before his inauguration he appears at the National Shrine of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, where a bevy of bishops pray over him.
Let’s also imagine that, let’s say, Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz exults: ““We are here to celebrate the election of one of our own.” Then let’s imagine that, say, Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs, adds: “Tonight we are experiencing an answered prayer,” and then addresses President-elect Brownback: “You are on the inside now. Just unlock the door,” in reference to expectations that Brownback would provide special access for Catholics to the halls of power.
Now, imagining all that, imagine how the mainstream media would respond. The howls of the violation of the separation of church and state would ring through newsrooms across the land. Cries of “theocracy” would be accompanied by the sound of a thousand editorial quills being sharpened and dipped for the inevitable denunciations in the next day’s editions.
Of course, no Catholic bishop, least of all those I named above in my hypothetical, would be caught dead doing anything of the sort, nor would anything Catholic Republican contemplating a run for the presidency.
But the scene above did happen within a different context on Wednesday in Boston, which Harry Forbes alerts us to.
Technorati Tags:Boston Globe, governor, inauguration, Massachusetts, media bias, Patrick, separation of church and state
