Posted on 05/16/2006 7:12:41 AM PDT by Unam Sanctam
A reader from LA writes with this: am in the archdiocese of Los Angeles.
I would be interested to hear what you and your blog readers think about what happened in parishes in our diocese yesterday. In the middle of mass, after the homily and before the Creed, Fr. C. stood up and said that Cardinal Mahony asked all priests in the diocese to pass out post cards to the parishioners regarding immigration reform, addressed to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. The ushers passed them out with pencils, then picked up the completed forms. It took about 20 minutes. Here is the text of the post card:
Dear Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist: I urge you to enact realistic and humane comprehensive immigration reform this year that: (1) includes a path to citizenship for hard working immigrants and their families. (2) provides an effective visa program for future immigrants that protects their rights and includes a path to citizenship. (3) keeps families together, (4) protects our civil rights and civil liberties, and (5) does not criminalize immigrants or their allies. Our immigration laws and our leaders should recognize that immigrants strengthen our economy and contribute to the fabric of our country. Signed: City & Zip:
While this is a social justice issue, and most people do agree that immigration laws need to be reformed in some way, it becomes a political issue when parishioner are asked to sign their names to something to be sent to a member of the Senate.
What really angered me about this, is that a couple of months ago, a group of us asked Fr. C. if we could collect signatures after Mass on the patio to get the parental notification act back on the ballot. We were told that Cardinal Mahony said we could not collect signatures on church property for a political issue, so we stood on the sidewalk to collect signatures. We were totally fine with that, and did so with no complaint whatsoever. I would not have minded if there was an "immigration reform table" on the patio after mass and if there was an announcement about it at the end of mass, but to interrupt the holy sacrifice of the mass for a political agenda is completely inappropriate.
We had active, faithful parishioners stand up and walk out of mass yesterday. This is going to be very divisive. I sure wouldn't want to be answering the phone in Cardinal Mahony's office this week!
I'm glad you admit to having no concern of the Bill of Rights whatsoever.
Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion.
But the power to tax is the power to destroy, so you seek to tax speech and tax churches.
As a long-suffering Catholic in what passes for the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, I am counting the days until the cardinal is sent packing.
He turns 75 in exactly 4 years, 9 months, and 11 days.
A bottle of Dom Perignon champagne will be opened in this household on that happy day, God willing.
A bottle of same in Virginia will be opened for you on that day! Good Catholics like you have already been through Purgatory having Mahony at the helm!
*Donny P? That's FRENCH
Try an American Champagne, or some California Cabernet from the Rutherford area
"But the power to tax is the power to destroy, so you seek to tax speech and tax churches."
Only if they choose to force their politics (not their religion) on their members.
Don't be so melodramatic. These no-tax laws for churches exist for a reason.
Religion implies politics. For those who live their faith, there is right and wrong. Or are you trying to dictate what a religion can and cannot teach? That's what it sounds like. You're the worst kind of anti-religious authoritarian.
These no-tax laws for churches exist for a reason.
Yes, and that reason is LBJ.
To clarify, the no-tax laws for churches are because of the freedom of religion and freedom of speech, while the restrictions on churches' freedom of speech and threatened taxation comes from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Administration.
Fine. So change the LBJ law, rather than just blatantly break it, ala illegal immigration.
No law was broken. Catch a clue.
Even the socialist religion-hating ACLU agrees:
Churches and other non-profit organizations that hold 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status must abide by Internal Revenue Service regulations barring any involvement in partisan politics. The blanket prohibition concerns only races for public office, not issues.
"Churches and other non-profit organizations that hold 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status must abide by Internal Revenue Service regulations barring any involvement in partisan politics. The blanket prohibition concerns only races for public office, not issues."
So...races for public office are NOT affected by this particular church's position?
LMAO
Your point is interesting, yet clouded by your apparent unwillingness to characterize the problem as being one of illegals, since you used the 'Hispanic Immigrant' tag more than once.
Mahoney knows the vast majority of immigrants are Catholic, and therefore, like the other businesses that relay on Latino immigrants, he is all for immigration.
Your point is interesting, yet clouded by your apparent unwillingness to characterize the problem as being one of illegals, since you used the 'Hispanic Immigrant' tag more than once.
I'm sorry my use of incorrect terminology confused you. I was trying to make a point as to how religious identity and loyalty seems always to be completely swallowed up in racial/ethnic identities (witness even rightwing Jews attending meetings dedicated, not to Judaism or Jewish moral teachings, but "white civilization"). I was not trying to fudge the illegality issue and I'm sorry if it sounded like it did. However, the true root of the entire debate is precisely this "clash of civilizations" which completely obscures the fact that both "civilizations" allegedly share the same religion. Yet Latin American immigrants, legal or illegal, make up an ethnic political block allied with abortionism and homosexuality despite their own "retro" form of Catholicism (see my reference to Black Fundamentalists, who are by no means "immigrants" of any kind, and the complete annihilation of the influence of Black Fundamentalism on Black politics).
The fact is that no one is upset with illegal Irish immigrants (except maybe me). The immigration debate is about a "war of civilizations" with English-speaking European Catholics and Protestants on one side and "non-European" Spanish(!!!)-speaking Catholics and Pentecostals on the other.
If people truly lived their religions instead of making them a mere badge of cultural identity the world wouldn't be in the mess it's in today. Instead advocates of morality are joining with atheist racialists to promote "white civilization" and the pro-"gay" Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton join together with the anti-"gay" Louis Farrakhan, with nothing joining the groups in either alliance but skin color. I'm sorry, but this disgusts me.
So many "religious" people cast aside their religious identities for ethnic ones that sometimes I wonder if anyone is really religious at all. After all, rural American (white) Fundamentalist Protestants, despite subscribing to a theology in which "race" doesn't even exist, have always become "civilizationists" when the prospect of integration with co-religionists of a different color has been threatened.
No wonder so many liberals think that "G-d" is merely a projection of ethnicity. Too many of us act as if He were (G-d forgive us!).
I don't know what more I can say to get my point across.
LOL! I think nearly 5 years more is going to be too much for LA. But I read some place that the Pope is leaving Roger Dodger there to cope with the problems that he caused/permitted. Law, while he may not have dealt with Boston very well, was not in charge when the things that were the subject of the lawsuits happened and had been sent in to "handle it," which he obviously didn't do very well. But Mahony was there for most of the things that happened, knew about them, and should be the one who has to solve the problem or pay personally for them.
If the Church gets out and speaks to Hispanics, they will be a great conservative force. But if Mahony speaks to them, he's going to destroy them, not only as a force in this country, but personally and individually.
Many Mexicans converted to Pentecostal and Evangelical churches in Mexico because after VatII the Church went over to liberation theology/social gospel garbage. Interestingly enough, many former Protestants are now converting to Islam, because the Muslims are working heavily Protestant territories such as Chiapas.
I think Mahony is being left in place to deal with the mess he created. But maybe he needs a coadjutor bishop? LA is a huge and important diocese, and turning it over to a heretic like Mahony, even on a punitive basis (for him) until he retires in five years could be very dangerous to the faithful there.
The illegals in my little town must be in the minority. They rarely show their faces in church. They seem to be in pursuit of their own gods, money and sexual license.
They left the restrictions of church and family behind when they came to El Norte.
I might have been inclined to cross out the pre-printed "principles" and fill in five of my own choosing.
#1 No amnesty. It was a disaster in 1986 and it won't work now.
It is most dismaying that the Creator of the Universe dwindles away to a mere localized idol of "hearth and home" whenever politics rears its head. But the sad fact is that the vast majority of new Hispanic residents of the US (legal or illegal) will live their lives out in segregated and ethnic ghettoes where their conservative religious beliefs will be completely swallowed up by their alliance with abortionists, homosexuals, Communists, etc. It is also troubling that the only alternative to this that people like Pat Buchanan can come up with is not G-d's laws but rather "European civilization."
"Palaeos" often lament the declining birthrate in the US. There aren't enough Americans, they tell us. Yet the idea of millions of new Americans belonging to the wrong "civilization" to them is nothing but a tragedy.
When the primary political dispute of our age is between co-religionists (Pat Buchanan and most Mexicans) then G-d and religion have become very small issues indeed.
I sometimes wonder if extreme "Europeanist" Catholics would prefer to see non-European Catholics practice birth control, contraception, or abortion?
Wideawake: see also my previous posts to this thread.
Truly excellent points.
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