Sent to The Boston Globe on 2004-04-30
Archbishop O'Malley is shocked--shocked--that "some people seem determined to make our liturgical services a political battleground."
As long as the Catholic Church continues its flagrant disregard of the line between church and state, as it has for millennia, nobody should be surprised that the Church is treated as a political organization as well as a religious one. Two recent examples include O'Malley's warnings about publicly pro-choice politicians taking communion and the Pope's "direction to Catholic politicians" regarding homosexual marriage.
It is worth emphasizing, as Marcia Wood does in her April 30 letter, that the Church explicitly warns Catholic politicians not only that they must toe the line personally, but also that they must legislate that line for all of us, Catholic or not.
If O'Malley and the rest of the Catholic Church don't want to be treated like politicians, they should stay out of politics.