Universal Life Church

The relationship between the church and government with respect to marriage equality has come to the forefront in Washington, DC, where local leaders have sought a compromise with the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington over the officiation of same-sex marriages.

Although the current proposal would not compel churches to perform same-sex weddings, the archdiocese has asked the DC Council to take a further step and exempt the church–which holds contracts with the city–from providing employee benefits to same-sex partners. According to the Associated Press, “D.C. Council members are asking the church to explore the positions taken by the Catholic Church in San Francisco and by Georgetown University”, which offers employee benefits to any “‘legally domiciled adult’,” regardless of sex or sexuality. Georgetown University is the nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit University.

The crux of the issue is whether any government—municipal, regional, national, or otherwise—should compel religious contractors to provide such benefits. One looming threat is a potential impingement on religious freedom; however, as one commenter pointed out in an article in Washington’s The Examiner, “If the church didn’t want to recognize interracial or interfaith marriage, would the DC Council ‘compromise’? I think not.”

The comment forces us to weigh the importance of different civil rights causes, to compare resistance to heterosexist practises with resistance to anti-miscegenation and religious discrimination. If a civil freedom approaches its limit where it interferes with another such freedom, we must wonder whether the Catholic Archdiocese is unjustly manipulating the local DC government into making exceptions regarding civil rights in relation to the church.

Ultimately, the question is whether churches have the freedom to deny employee benefits to same-sex partners when it is working in conjunction with a civic entity requiring the granting of such benefits; The Universal Life Church Monastery asks, whether the religious freedom to cherry-pick civil rights applies in contexts where the state carries equal authority with the Catholic Church.

Source: Washington Examiner

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The controversy surrounding child abuse by Catholic priests took a complex twist recently when it was revealed not only that the Vatican ignored requests by an Irish commission for reports on abuse investigations, but also that Irish police officers played a role in covering up evidence. A closer look at the issue shows that the church has uncannily similar interests to those of local officials.

The inquiry charged church leaders with concealing decades of abuse—a period from 1975 to 2004—by clergy of the Archdiocese of Dublin. While the Papal Nuncio—the Vatican’s ambassador—ignored the request itself, Vatican officials did inform the Irish Foreign Affairs ministry that the request had failed to follow diplomatic protocol for negotiations between the Irish Republic and the Holy See. The commission, however, argued that it was independent of the government and was therefore exempt from following diplomatic procedures in their request for information. According to BBC News, “Earlier [in 2009], the commission again failed to receive a reply after sending the Papal Nuncio extracts from its draft report which referred to him and his office, as it was required to do”, while “The Vatican told The Irish Times it ‘was a matter for the local church involved’ “. Nevertheless, according to the same source, the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, as well as Cardinal Sean Brady, apologised for the alleged child abuse as well as its concealment.

Perhaps even more disconcerting than the Vatican’s “blind eye” to child exploitation is the allegation that Irish police officials participated in the obfuscation of child abuse by local priests: “The report also found that on occasion senior police officers colluded in the cover-up”. The purported co-conspiracy between senior local officials and a presiding religious institution echoes the savage murder of 19-year-old Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado, the gay teenager who was stabbed to death, decapitated, dismembered, partially burned, and found in Cayey, Puerto Rico, in 2009. Mercado was supposedly dressed as a woman and seeking employment as a prostitute. Boston’s Edge records former police investigator Angel Rodriguez as stating, “When these [sic] type of people get into this and go out into the streets like this, they know this can happen to them,” after which statement the Puerto Rico Police Department removed Rodriguez from the case.

According to Laura Gonzalez, “the majority of Puerto Ricans are Catholic and/or Christian”, while according to DeCarlo, et al, “cultural influences such as machismo, familismo, and homophobia may be internalized by Latino gay men”. Like those who seek to obscure the reality of child abuse in the Catholic church, people like Rodriguez often seek refuge in religion and tradition in order to justify violence, even when most Catholics condemn it as horrific. Evidently, the most provincial forces often ally with the most powerful to attack the innocent for their own benefit.

Local police forces have sometimes played significant roles, alongside the church, in the continued exploitation of children and oppression of sexual minorities. It is time for non-denominational churches such as United Life Church to stand up for the rights of children—an under-recognised minority. As adults, we claim that we can speak for children; if so, then we should remember who we were (or who we should have been) as children, and ensure that each child has the right to a childhood full of innocence and loving stability. Whether or not this is what a given religion believes, it is what our local, religiously neutral police unit should be enforcing—the safety of children.

Sources:
Gonzalez
DeCarlo, et al

BBC News
NY Daily News
Boston Edge

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November 13, 2009 – Much has been said about the proposed universal health-care bill. Politicians from the left and right side of the aisle have expressed their constituents concerns towards views on various issues that would impact them once the bill passes. Perhaps the most troublesome part of the bill for legislators and administrative officials is determining how to reconcile differences in opinion and opposing social views on abortion funding, spending and the government’s role to satisfy the forthright majority, which adamantly opposes tax dollars being used for abortion services.

What would you think though if you heard that excluding abortion services or providing language to exclude abortion services is being considered unconstitutional and a violation of First Amendment freedoms? This is the claim that was presented in a recent article on the Examiner website written by Marc Rubin. Whether or not he is correct in his analysis of the abortion vs. universal health-care issues, he does make several valid points in his First Amendment argument for the case, something that people from all faiths and backgrounds should be discussing openly with one another. Mr. Rubin argues that,

1. “Thomas Jefferson specifically wrote in his letters that the First Amendment regarding religion was designed, in Jefferson’s words, “to build a wall between the government and the church”. The Founders wanted to make sure the church would never have any official influence or hand in the affairs of state.”

2. “The wall established by the Constitution was taken down by Nancy Pelosi and Barrack Obama when they caved in to political pressure by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops who are credited with creating the anti- abortion language in the health care bill.”

3. “The bishops were acting no doubt out of a sense of morality based on their religious beliefs, but beliefs not shared or even accepted by tens of millions of people.”

4. “They [founding fathers] did not want legislation affecting tens of millions, or now hundreds of millions, written by politicians, that were influenced by the religious beliefs of any one particular religious entity.”

Sources:

Examiner

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (Letter to Congress)

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