Gay Marriage a Threat to Religious Liberty

From The Liberty Blog:

The Court’s decision now elevates homosexuality to the same legal status as race, a protected class. This Court has refused to grant religious freedom the same status as a fundamental right, instead expressing doubt about the free exercise of religion and ruling against religious freedom consistently in a series of decisions over the past fifteen years. The net result is a legal imbalance where gay rights enjoy maximum protection, and the rights of individual religious conscience enjoy very little protection. …

The experience of Catholic Charities in Boston is an ominous warning about the risks faced by many religious organizations. It is important to understand that the goal is to equate the religious moral position regarding homosexuality as the equivalent of racism. …

The hostility to individual conscience was evident in arguments presented to the California Supreme Court earlier this week in a case pitting the rights of a lesbian couple to receive artificial insemination services from a medical clinic against the rights of Christian doctors to refuse to provide services in violation of their conscience. Lawyers representing the lesbian couple argued that there simply is no religious defense to such discrimination. In other words, if they can prove discrimination, there is no balancing of the rights of conscience. The rights of conscience have no legal standing. …

Although we have long assumed that religious liberty enjoys a preferred status as a fundamental constitutional right, this has not been true either in California or the United States Supreme Court for nearly two decades. The Supreme Court practically discarded the First Amendment’s protection for the free exercise of religion as a “luxury that a well ordered society can no longer afford” in an infamous 1990 decision, Employment Division v. Smith. Although California has not explicitly followed suit, the California Supreme Court has ruled against religious liberty consistently, in a series of cases since 1995.

One Out …

My oldest graduated from high school this afternoon. I’m still in shock.

Stunning Defeat for Texas in Polygamy Case

The Supreme Court of Texas has ruled the state did not have the authority to seize children from the FLDS settlement. Children are to be returned to families and allowed to go home.

Back Door Recognition of Gay Marriage in New York

From the ADF: the governor of New York has done an end run around the legislature and the courts by saying state agencies will recognize homosexual marriages done elsewhere.

Canada Court Rules against Religious Liberty

Susan Comstock asked that she be able to divert her union dues because of the union’s advocacy of homosexual marriage. She’s now been turned down at the third level, the Federal Court of Appeal.

She sought accommodation under a provision that exists for those who have religious objections to unions. She’s in a bind, however, because of the Catholic Church’s long record of unquestioning support of labor unions.

In hopes of strengthening her argument, Comstock had argued she should be able to divert her dues as a result of a collective agreement provision allowing union members to give their union dues to charity when they are members of a religious organization “whose doctrine prevents him or her as a matter of conscience from making financial contributions to an employee organization.”

The Federal Court, however, said that the Catholic Church does not oppose unions as a matter of practice and that, in fact, it has recognized the value of collectivities.

The court reasoned that if you’re part of a church that supports unions, you can’t divert your dues just because you disagree with one of its political stands.

This bears out the wisdom of those churches, like the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which has consistently opposed unions and seen them as a threat to religious liberty.

An Orthodox Rabbi on John Hagee

Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein comments on the John Hagee matter at Jewish World Review.

Ignorance and Paranoia

Dunkin Donuts has withdrawn an advertisement featuring Rachael Ray–because some ignorant and paranoid folks complained that her frilly black and white paisley silk scarf looked like a Palestinian keffiyeh. Leading the charge: Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs and Michelle Malkin. Yeah, her scarf and a keffiyeh are black and white. So are zebras and penguins. That’s all they have in common.

Blackwater: “A Terrorist Company”

So says an Iraqi policeman who witnessed Blackwater mercenaries open fire without cause on Iraqi civilians, killing 17. He and other witnesses are testifying before a federal grand jury.

Gay Marriage and Religious Liberty

Some naive folks tell us that the California ruling favoring gay marriage supports religious liberty, and could not harm it. Gay writer David Benkof disagrees.

Although California marriage-equality leaders won’t say what impact they expect the new decision to have on religious freedom, activists in other states haven’t been so shy. Openly gay Washington state Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, and a representative of the largest Michigan gay-rights group, the Triangle Foundation, have both told me that people who continue to act as if marriage is a union between a man and a woman should face being fined, fired and even jailed until they relent. …

Now, nobody gay in history has lost his assets, his job or his freedom for writing, teaching and running a business guided by his belief that marriage is a union of any two individuals who love each other. So why do gay activists support limitations on the freedom of speech, the media and religious expression for anyone who disagrees with them?

He also blogs at Gays Defend Marriage.

The Dark Side of Globalism

For some, “globalism” means an excuse to make a profit anywhere in the world without asking moral or legal questions. Jim Hightower comments on a trade show in China, where US and other manufacturers paraded their wares for Chinese military and police use. Via Tompaul.

But this is nothing new. It was the United Fruit Company (Chiquita Banana) that got us to overthrow a democratically elected government in Guatemala in the 1950s. And in the 1850s, northern cotton mills and shipowners profiteered from Southern slavery.

“The Rainbow Man”

Remember the guy who used to wear a rainbow wig at sports events? What’s he up to now?

“The Betrayal of Judas”

In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Thomas Bartlett writes of the fraud of National Geographic’s “Gospel of Judas”–”The Betrayal of Judas: Did a ‘Dream Team’ of Biblical Scholars Mislead Millions?“

When the Gospel of Judas was unveiled at a news conference in April 2006, it made headlines around the world — with nearly all of those articles touting the new and improved Judas. …

But almost immediately, other scholars began to take issue with the interpretation of Meyer and the rest of the National Geographic team. They didn’t see a good Judas at all. In fact, this Judas seemed more evil than ever. Those early voices of dissent have since grown into a chorus, some of whom argue that National Geographic’s handling of the project amounts to scholarly malpractice. It’s a perfect example, critics argue, of what can happen when commercial considerations are allowed to ride roughshod over careful research.

The manuscript itself was in poor shape.

As one scholar explains it, imagine that you have 10 pieces of paper with writing on both sides. Now take those 10 pages and tear them up into tiny pieces. Then get rid of, say, a third of those pieces. Take what’s left, place it in a shoebox, and shake it. Now try to reconstruct the original 10 pages, keeping in mind that the fragile pieces must match on both sides.

The article goes on to note the controversy that erupted immediately upon the airing of the program–Prof. April DeConick of Rice could tell instantly something was wrong. She wrote a critical essay and a book, then hosted a conference at Rice earlier this year. Even Marvin Meyer, the original translator, is not happy with how National Geographic handled the process: “The pressure to sacrifice truth for drama, he says, was constant.”

The animosity between defenders and critics is palpable. Bart Ehrman says Meyer has “effectively refuted” DeConick’s argument.

It’s tough to find anyone else who agrees. In an essay presented at the Rice conference, John D. Turner, a professor of religious studies at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, insists that Meyer’s use of a much later text to justify his interpretation of Judas “raises fundamental methodological questions.” In an interview, he is less courtly. “That’s a bunch of crap,” he says, part of last-ditch attempt to salvage an utterly discredited view.

Orthodoxy and Heresy in American History

Dallas Morning News Religion Blog quotes Rice University professor of religious studies Jeffrey Kripal:

When I look at American religious history, I see a long history of puritanism, of Christian fundamentalism. It’s been there from Day One. But I also see what some historians would call American metaphysical religion. I see people who are not religiously intolerant, people who have very open worldviews and who are very interested in metaphysical dimensions but are not literal about it. It’s the latter stream, the metaphysical stream that’s open to other cultures, and particularly those of Asia, from all the way back to Emerson and Thoreau and further back.

Kirpal, whose studies have included the history of Esalen and a controversial biography of Ramakrishna, clearly favors the latter.

Catholic Clergy Transfers

Parishioners and staff of Sacred Heart Co-Cathedral in downtown Houston are hurt and angry. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo is transferring the rector (pastor), Fr. Troy Gately. Bad timing, they say; he just completed construction of the new cathedral, and has started renovating a new administrative center (the former Federal Reserve Building). Why pull a pastor in the middle of such a campaign, they ask?

Troy says he didn’t seek the new position (as pastor of St. John Vianney, one of Houston’s largest and wealthiest parishes). He says he declined when asked. But when it was no longer a question, he had no choice–you obey.

As some who comment note, the Catholic church is not a democracy. Priests don’t stay in parishes forever (though Gately’s predecessor at St. John Vianney, Fr. Morphin, seemed to). There is one person in charge in a parish, the pastor (all boards are “advisory only”), and there is only one person in charge of a diocese, the bishop. Some have learned it is wiser to do a lot of consulting, and to have open conversations with people.

The new rector will be Fr. Lawrence Jozwiak, currently Judicial Vicar for the archdiocese.

Blue Thunder

They don’t say whether it is blue (or perhaps black), but a $10,000,000 sophisticated spy helicopter is keeping its eye on New York. Law abiding folks have nothing to fear … of course.

(Another page shows a picture, and lets us know it is silver).

Fr. Virgil Cordano, RIP

Fr. Virgil Cordano, OFM, a name and face synonymous with Santa Barbara in the eyes of many, died yesterday at 89. The funeral next Friday will be on the steps of the Mission, so great are the crowds expected. He was one of my spiritual directors, and his guidance to me is summed up in the book he recommended I read: Abandonment to Divine Providence, by Jean-Pierre de Caussade, SJ. Ours is not to worry about the future, says de Caussade, but to act faithfully in the present, doing what we know to be God’s will here and now, “lovingly accepting all that God sends us at each moment.”

Ryan Bell on Ministry in Hollywood

At re:frame, Ryan Bell is interviewed about ministry to postmoderns.

Theodicy

Cliff Goldstein tells about a lecture on theodicy ….

Corpus Christi

Today in the Catholic calendar is Corpus Christi, the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ–a day established to honor the Catholic church’s dogma of transubstantiation, the teaching that “by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood” (CCC 1376).

Fr. John Z. has photos of the papal celebration in Rome. The photos show the mass, and the procession of the Eucharist through the streets for the worship of the people. Interestingly, all those who received communion from the pope did so kneeling, and on the tongue. Update: Catholic News Service has a story about this, intending to assuage fears, no doubt, that this might become the norm again.

In a related matter, Pope Benedict XVI may set limits on the practice of concelebration.

Stifling Discussion

Under debate in the state next door: the Louisiana Science Education Act, which would, according to a news report, allow use of supplemental materials in classrooms which promote “critical thinking skills, logical analysis and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.” The National Center for Science Education and Americans United are agin it. They fear it is a way to get religious viewpoints into public schools. That’s not what the text of the bill says, though. It simply says that on these controversial issues, there should be discussion about the controversy. As amended, the bill would give the state board of education review authority over supplemental materials. The sponsor of the bill says critics are missing the point.

Nevers said science teachers need more freedom to explore evolution and other topics, especially since science  textbooks are only updated every seven years.

“All I am asking is to allow current data to be brought into classrooms that allow our children to objectively be taught science,” he said.

The state board of education says it will support the bill only if reference to evolution and origins and other specifics are removed.

Latest in Polygamy Case: Court Rules against Texas

The Third Court of Appeals has ruled against the state of Texas, saying it had no right to take children from the FLDS community, and has no right to keep them.

Tobacco Money vs. Academic Freedom

From Bruce Tomaso at the DMN Religion Blog, link to a NYT story: At One University, Tobacco Money Is a Secret. Tomaso comments:

The university’s vice president for research, according to the story, refused to say how much money Philip Morris gave for this “restricted research.” Apparently, he forgot that he works for a public institution — meaning that the taxpayers of the commonwealth, not the executives of the tobacco giant, are his boss.

Stephen Curtis Chapman Family Tragedy

Stephen Curtis Chapman and his family have suffered a double tragedy–his five year old daughter was struck and killed in their driveway … by her teenage brother.

John F. Haught’s Christless Spirituality

Catholic theologian John F. Haught of Georgetown University is interviewed at BustedHalo about spirituality, theology, ecology …

… and never gets around to mentioning Jesus.

The Push For a New Marian Dogma

For some years now, some Catholics have been pushing to get the pope to declare a new Marian dogma, that she is “mediatrix of all graces” and “co-redemptrix.” Mark Miravalle of the Franciscan University of Steubenville is one of the most vocal proponents of this. In January, five cardinals wrote to Pope Benedict XVI and their fellow bishops seeking their support. One of those, Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, has been interviewed by Zenit. He sees this dogma as a panacea for all the world’s problems:

Mary has through private revelations like those at Lourdes, Fatima, etc., made known that in the sad situations of the world today God wishes as an antidote the glorification of his mother through the recitation of the holy rosary, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, etc.

The fifth Marian dogma would certainly improve the world situation through the prayers of Mary to her divine Son. Many believe that the danger of Marxist Communism was averted by the apparitions of Mary at Lourdes, Fatima, etc., and the consequent increase in devotion to Mary.

The greatest threat that the Catholic Church faces today is consumerist relativism that has greatly affected the Western Church and even the Churches in Asia. I believe that it can be overcome by honoring Our Lady with the proposed dogma.

He scoffs at the idea that declaring this dogma could be a hindrance to ecumenical relations.

Note what he says–it is very interesting.

Not only will the solemn definition never hurt the ecumenical movement, but it will positively enhance it. I feel that it is God’s will that we should honor Our Lady in a special way at this juncture of world history. Only good can come out of doing God’s will. We should follow prudence born out of faith and not merely worldly prudence.

Almighty God is the Lord of history and he can always overcome the effects of disunity caused by human weakness. The Hindu communities in India are extremely open to the concept of “Mother,” and they enthusiastically participate in the Marian devotions of the Catholic Church. The Orthodox Churches with whom we live together, already believe in this doctrine.

Note that he doesn’t mention Protestants immediately, who would surely have problems with this dogma. Instead, he first mentions Hindus, and says they “are extremely open to the concept of ‘Mother.’” This is in fact the Protestant fear, that the Mary of Catholic devotion and apparition has more in common with Durga, Lakshmi, or Kali than Mary of Nazareth.

Later he goes on to admit, “It may sour Catholic-Protestant relations, but,” he says, “Our Lady knows how to heal this.”

He gives no Biblical justification for the proposed dogma, saying merely, “The truth of the proposed definition is in a true sense derived from God’s choice of Mary as the mother of God and the mother of all human beings.”

The Witness of Iraqi Christians

Iraqi Christians have condemned the death sentence for the killer of their archbishop.

“Monsignor Rahho, would not have accepted the sentence. Christian principles say it is not allowed to sentence someone to death, and instead it invites us to forgiveness, reconciliation and justice.”

The U S Embassy, however, celebrated the sentence.

Why We Have a First Amendment

In London, a 15-year-old faces charges for holding up a placard calling Scientology a “cult.”

A Minneapolis Charter School and Islam

The state of Minnesota has called for changes at a Minneapolis charter school accused of promoting Islam.

Religious Liberty Victory in Tomah, Wisconsin

The Tomah, WI, school district has been reminded that the First Amendment applies to students. As I blogged March 31, an art student was penalized for referencing John 3:16 in an art project–he was given a zero and two detentions. He was also penalized for using religious expressions in a jewelry making class. Other students who drew demonic representations were not punished. A faculty member with Buddhist and Hindu symbols in his classrooms was not punished. Alliance Defense Fund filed a federal lawsuit. The school district has settled.

When Catholic Laity Complain

Rod Dreher tells the story of a Catholic layman in Dallas who complained about a priest to then coadjutor bishop Joseph Galante. The layman, Steve Sandifer (a lawyer), had recently been received into the Catholic church by Fr. Art Mallinson. He learned that Mallinson was involved in a ring of homosexual priests.

The story Rod tells is one many Catholics can recognize.

…over and over in the sex abuse scandal, there were instances of bishops minimizing the seriousness of sexual misconduct on the part of priests, and telling laymen they were making mountains out of molehills. And the bad priests were left in place.

Laymen did complain, over and over. And it did them no good. They were told that they were the ones with the problem.

And this doesn’t just happen when lay people complain about sexually abusive priests–it has happened in church after church, diocese after diocese, when laymen have complained about anything wrong, whether financial, liturgical, or theological.

For details of what was going on in this particular case you can go to the webpage of Roman Catholic Faithful, the lay ministry that exposed St. Sebastian’s Angels in the year 2000. Be warned–the documentation is graphic. A point to emphasize is that RCF exposed this fully two years before this layman went to Bishop Galante to complain about Fr. Art Mallinson. In a recent DMN article, the spokesperson for the Diocese of Dallas claims Mallinson left SSA in 2001, when its webpage allegedly became more risque. In fact, RCF’s expose was in 2000, when Fr. Mallinson was, by his own admission, still an active member.