Freedom of religion is an important value in American society, right?
This week, if you’re the Catholic Diocese of Burlington, apparently freedom of religion means the freedom to rape little boys with impunity.
It’s hard to believe, but that’s exactly what they’re arguing. According to the Burlington Free Press, in a brief filed in the United States District Court this week, here’s what they say: “The State cannot infringe on a protected freedom by imposing damages and penalties that the church cannot pay,” . . .
“If the protections of the First Amendment are to mean anything, the government should not be allowed to shut the doors of a church and put it up for sale,” church lawyers Kaveh Shahi and Tom McCormick wrote.
Yes, you read that right: if they are required to pay damages to the victims of their criminal conspiracy to cover up rapes by their employees, and to move their employees around to where they could rape more victims, that would be a violation of their freedom of religion.
In the view of their lawyers, making the church pay damages is taking away the right of Catholics to practice their religion.
Is it just me, or does this seem to put the Catholic seal of approval on child rape to an unprecedented degree?
Color me unsympathetic.
Yeah, as an old ex-Polish Catholic, I was once an Altar Boy (BRIEFLY), until our new young priest asked me in confession one Saturday if I had committed any “sins of impurity.” Creepy shit for a 12 year old. I never went to his confessional again, quit altar-boying, and eventually quit going to church at all when I was fourteen. I didn’t know back then when I was 12, but I ‘sensed’ something–and it wasn’t Jesus.
This crap with the Catholic Church has been going on so long, and not just here in America. (Read some Ken Bruen on how priests are now regarded in Ireland). Anti-birth control, anti-abortion, anti-gay–and they’re talking about religious persecution??? This is like that Corporations Are People shit. Perhaps Wall Street will start the Church Of Unrestrained Unregulated Capitalism, and ask the Feds for protections under the First Amendment. As the old saying goes: “JESUS CHRIST!”
Thank you for this, Jack. It’s like they want a Freedom To Oppress Amendment to the Constitution.
Freedom of religion does not exempt any person or organization from the law.
May we presume you’re tunneling to hell?
“Bless me, Fadder, for I have sinned. I ate a Hot Dog on Friday and…’
“You WHAT, my son?”
“Ate a hot dog. I…”
“Whose hot dog, my son?”
“Er…well this guy had a hot dog stand, Fadder, and me and my friends…”
“Your friends? Are they Catholic, my son?”
“Well…two of them are.”
“Do they go to church here, my son.”
“Oh yeah, Fadder. They…”
“Listen, my son. Next Saturday I will be having my very own private post-confession weenie party in the Rectory. You and your friends are invited.”
“Hey, thanks, Fadder.”
“Now, my son, to purge your sins of impurity, let’s see you give me a big Moon For Jesus.”
“Hanh?”
“And let them be not tempted by the woman with the apple, but let them gain their sustenance from the Hot Dog of the One True God.”–The Book Of Pedophiles, Chapt. 22.
Just last week Obama said that insurance companies have to pay for birth control, and the Catholic Church freaked out saying, “Not allowing our organization to enshrine discrimination against whomever we want to is a violation of our 1st Amendment Rights to Freedom of Religion.”
To the Right-Wing, preventing a church from brazen and pointless discrimination is discrimination.
I wonder if this is a desperation play – knowing they don’t have much else of a defense – or they are getting back-channel signals from the conservative block on the Supreme Court that is it ready to do another bit of Citizens-style activism? Declaring the Catholic Church immune from civil law is downright medieval. Fits right in with the rest of their agenda.