Free Republic

Writing for the Christian Post Reporter, Michael Gryboski notes that, "A Roman Catholic diocese in Massachusetts that refused to sell a historic mansion to a gay couple is facing mounting legal pressure. Massachusetts' Attorney General Martha Coakley recently filed a brief in support of the gay couple who are suing the Diocese of Worcester alleging discrimination. Filed before superior court earlier this month on behalf of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Coakley argued that the diocese's actions constituted 'sexual orientation discrimination.' 'The commonwealth's compelling interest in protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination derives from their status as a politically vulnerable minority...

WORCESTER — Attorney General Martha Coakley is supporting a gay couple's legal battle against the Diocese of Worcester after the pair was allegedly denied the right to buy a church-owned mansion in Northbridge. Two Sutton men, James E. Fairbanks and Alain J. Beret, a married gay couple, filed a civil suit in Worcester Superior Court in 2012 against the diocese and its real estate agent after their offer to buy the Oakhurst Conference and Retreat Center, a 44-bedroom mansion in the Whitinsville section of Northbridge, was rejected by the Diocese of Worcester.

Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand reminds us, in his essay entitled "Is Unity among the Faithful the Highest Value?," that, "There is another great danger which goes together with the distortion of love of neighbor: the danger of putting community above truth, and of implicitly making peace the highest value. Unfortunately this tendency to regard community as more important than truth is very widespread in the holy Church today. The first great error which we find here is the separation of community from truth. All genuine community among men presupposes that they encounter one another in a certain realm of goods....