Since I’ve already taken on one hot-button topic today, might as well keep the ball rolling:

One of the main complaints brought up when a bishop or priest threatens to deny the Eucharist to a politician who supports legislation that is contrary to Church teaching is that it is a violation of the separation of Church and State. This is another one of those ridiculous assertions that has no basis in the truth.

For there to be a violation of the separation, one or the other must have some authority in the other. As an example, if the bishop could say that the politician couldn’t be elected because of his views, THAT would be a violation of the separation. Similarly, if the state could dictate who could have Eucharist in the Catholic Church, that too would be a violation of the separation. But that’s not what is happening in this case.

All the bishop is doing is saying “Look, when you step inside my building, you’re now on the Church’s turf. Here, you play by our rules.”

That’s no different than the government saying to the bishop as he enters the court-house for his speeding ticket saying “God has already forgiven me”, the court can say the same thing to him.

Why is this so hard for people to understand?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 4:32 pm and is filed under Catholicism, Catholicism - Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.