2003-08-02

Not Sacred, Profane

If anyone doubts that the Catholic Church has stepped beyond the world of religion into the world of politics, those doubts have been eliminated by Pope John Paul II's Considerations Regarding Proposals To Give Legal Recognition To Unions Between Homosexual Persons, which makes even more explicit the Church's long-standing desire to take its faith-cloaked bigotry outside the bounds of its own flock and into secular governments around the world.

This document has a number of consequences. Here are three:

It is rational, not intolerant, for voters to be suspicious that any candidate who's a practicing Catholic might take these commands seriously.

The United States should reconsider the Catholic Church's tax-exempt legal status, which is based on the Church being a religious organization, not a political one.

And lay Catholics, who have been bombarded of late with evidence that the Church's shepherd metaphor is perhaps more apt than they had realized, might finally gain the courage to escape from the bleating flock to freedom.

Jonathan Dreyer