The Sister takes the Judge to the woodshed

Here is Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations for the USCCB, over at the WaPo "On Faith" blog:

The judge's placing religion and government at odds amounts to Constitutional irrationality. It is no small irony that his anti-religious position is enshrined in a ruling deemed to oppose bigotry. The U.S. Constitution guarantees citizens freedom for religion. That precludes government from weighing in on the "acceptability" of religious beliefs.

Judge Walker, in his decision, backed his bigotry with errors, including the misstatement that the "Catholic Church views homosexuality as sinful." The fact is, the Catholic Church sees homosexuality as a condition, an inclination in a person, something not intrinsically sinful. The church calls for pastoral support, not condemnation, for people with this inclination. The Catholic Church makes clear that it is homosexual activities it deems sinful, because it holds that all sexual activity belongs within marriage between a man and a woman. At the same time the Catholic Church opposes all unjust discrimination against gays and lesbians and abhors violence against them.

The Catholic Church also holds that marriage is a unique institution with a privileged place because it is foundational to the good of society. The church is not alone in holding that a family headed by a mother and a father is the optimal place in which to raise a child. Judge Walker begs to differ, however, and says with grand aplomb that research that supports the contrary view "is accepted beyond serious debate in the field of developmental psychology." If there's ever been a statement open to debate it's that one.

Read the entire post. Of course, for many liberals, the Church is always at odds with the State, in part because the State is their church—and they don't like competition.

Comments

[Brian J. Schuettler]

In the courts and in the government there always had been an element of service to the country and a kind of dignity underpinning the system, a kind of shared camaraderie, that seems to have been tossed in a ditch by the cult of expediency,greed, and the lust for power on a mass scale. What had been the exception is now the rule, at least beneath an urbane, oddly secular piety.

When the judges and politicians were doing something wrong back then at least they knew it, and they were ashamed of it, despite the usual bluff and bravado. A stiff conversation with a federal prosecutor would make a Congressional staffer's blood run cold. Now it is more like business as usual, and even getting caught constitutionally challenged is not all that bad, given the current trend to bipartisan professional courtesy devoid of moral or natural law foundations.

Greedy relativism is now the greater good, the fatal flaw behind the decline of the 'me generation.'

The law, that much maligned government of regulations and restraints, abused and fallible as it sometimes was, the bulwark of functional society, was the only thing standing between the people of a civilized society and packs of ravenous wolves.

Those who would tear down the law in some misguided pursuit of a secular agenda, or of an adolescent anarchy or a utopia of 'no rules' at all, might find it hard to stand when the cold winds of avarice and tyranny of power blow across the land, with no laws to stop or restrain them. The madness serves none, consuming all.

Traditional common law understanding of "equal protection" under the law is the best safeguard that the average person enjoys. Remove the law and you remove the protection, and it is every man for himself, at the mercy of a constitutionally perverted tyrannical government.

This is why the unlawful usurpation by the courts of the legislative and voting rights secured by the Constitution of 1787 and its amendments must be restrained, and the legal system reformed, with balance restored to the legitimate process, before there can be any sustained recovery of Judeo-Christian values. Underpinning all of this is the integrity of the regulatory and law enforcement process, and a serious pass at reform and limitation of the power of large corporations and organizations to buy influence.

The story of the 21st century will be the struggle of the individual versus the organization, the machine controlled by the elite few. A cyclical theme no doubt, but the powerful few seem to become more efficient in their promotion of tyranny with each subsequent manisfestation of power.

[Louis Di Venuta]

I WOULD HOPE AND PRAY THAT ALL PEOPLE AND ESPECIALY JUDGES UNDERSTAND HOW CLEARLY AND CORRECTLY THE SISTER TAKES THE JUDGE TO THE WOODSHED

[gene firn]

Liberals/progressives are all for tolerance except when they get in power and then its totalitarian. My way or the highway. I'm right and you're wrong and you have to believe, think and act according to their way. If you don't, you'll be demonized, ostracized and pressured to silence or change. The persecution is going to get worse. Seek the Lord.

[Jon]

Those who would tear down the law in some misguided pursuit of a secular agenda, or of an adolescent anarchy or a utopia of 'no rules' at all, might find it hard to stand when the cold winds of avarice and tyranny of power blow across the land, with no laws to stop or restrain them.

Reminds me of Thomas More speaking to Roper in A Man For All Seasons. Or another way to put it is, if justice is not done and injustice allowed to flourish then the Book of Judges is followed by the Book of Kings.