Some people make me ashamed of the fact that I share a faith with them. I’m not going to repost any part of that blog entry here because I do not want anything like that to even appear in a place that represents my opinion. Father Sibley has done a good job of putting the verbiage into the public domain without any help from me.

That post makes me angry. Catholicism is not about hate. It is about spreading the Good News first taught by the Son of God himself. That Good News is that our sins are forgiven because our God is such a loving God that he sent his own son to die for our redemption! With such an example, how can a Christian promote anything but love? Jesus sat to table with sinners, not the righteous. He made it clear that God willed a certain lifestyle but he did not make malicious remarks or offer condemnation about those who did not live that lifestyle. Go get your Bible and read his condemnatory remarks carefully. When he condemned the Pharisees and Sadducees, he condemned them because they were supposed to be leaders of the spiritual community and were doing such a lousy job that the community was suffering.

Catholicism also cannot be politically labeled. Catholic Social Teaching is a unique mixture of liberal, socialist, conservative and reactionary teachings. It is consistent: it supports the protection of life, all life, from the moment of normal conception to the moment of natural death. But it does not neatly fit into either the liberal or conservative political categories. Many of us who subscribe to the Consistent Life Ethic come across as political liberals, but there are some parts of the Democratic and Progressive platforms that we emphatically do not support. An example of this is the “right” to abortion on demand¹.

Christ did not subscribe to labeling. Church teaching does not subscribe to, and is not consistent with, labeling. How dare Father Sibley suggest that labeling is not only acceptable – but preferable?

Further, as several commenters to that post point out, prayer in school is legal. In fact, it’s a right under the free speech provisions of the First Amendment – and it’s a right this “liberal” defends. What is illegal – and what this “liberal” opposes – is the official sanctioning of any sort of religious tradition by government-sponsored public schools. That violates the edict in the First Amendment that the government will “make no provision” for any specific religious tradition.

The really ironic part of this post is the fact that one of the reasons Catholicism can be freely practiced in this country is the First Amendment. The first English colonies were established by groups that were vehemently anti-Catholic. Some of their leaders’ writings refer to Catholicism as devil worship and a good many of the colonies prohibited Catholic practices! Yet as the freedom-of-religion concept developed, it was clear that such a freedom had to allow, among other things, the practice of Catholicism. Even so, the last state laws prohibiting Catholics from holding public office were abolished during my lifetime.

Some people may remember that the primary reason I opposed the placement of Ten Commandments displays in public buildings was because the version displayed was the Protestant version. Catholics hold to the same commandments, but order them differently enough to create a couple mild differences in emphasis. As a Catholic, I considered those displays discriminatory unless our version was also displayed. That logic, of course, leads to the logic of displaying non-Christian literature. Displays of the Ten Commandments alongside other religious literature are legal.

And anyone who’s ever been in the rural South knows that anti-Catholicism is alive and well; I was frankly afraid to openly wear a crucifix while I was growing up. Make no mistake: if it weren’t for First Amendment edict against favoring any specific religion, Catholics would be subject to discrimination in this country. Considering that, I find it terribly ironic that a Catholic would hold a position supporting public, government-sponsored prayer of any type. Further, the First Amendment right to free speech doesn’t say anything about compelling anyone to listen. Sanctioned school prayer, however, does exactly that².

Although my surname is British, more than half of my ethnic background is actually German. Those Germans, who were on both sides of my family, emigrated to the United States during the 1800s because of the Kulturkampf laws in Germany, which legalized and encouraged persecution of Catholics. When they got to the United States, they found themselves in an area full of Lutherans and Methodists. Some of them were actively hostile to Catholics. Yet because freedom of religion was so entrenched in this country, my forefathers were left alone and permitted to practice their faith. The First Amendment protects Catholics. As far as I am concerned, anti-First Amendment speech is tacit support of persecution against Catholics. It certainly shouldn’t be coming from a Catholic.

1. I have stated that I don’t support making abortion illegal. That doesn’t mean I think abortion is okay; I firmly believe it is murder. My political stance reflects the fact that I believe making abortion illegal would be counterproductive in terms of actually stopping the killing (and ending abortion is something I have not seen Dubya actually address). That is a long, long way from being pro-choice and I legitimately reject that label. As far as the “murder is illegal” argument, my response is that murder is very legal in this country: capital punishment, tolerance of situations that allow starvation or death from curable disease, lenient “self-defense” definitions, and so forth.
2. I should know. I was forced to say Protestant prayers, at least one of which directly contradicted Catholic doctrine, in my public elementary school. It was blatantly illegal, but social support of the idea was so strong in that geographic area that those who had a problem were powerless to do anything about it.