The bully pulpit
Having rejected Governor Mitt Romney's request that he launch a desperate, last-ditch bid to thwart the implementation of the Supreme Judicial Court's gay marriage ruling, Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly ought to turn his legal attention to revoking the tax-exempt status of the Catholic Church.
Spare Catholic Charities, the parochial schools, and the social service providers who truly embody the religious mission of the church, but pull the ticket on the corporate entity that would turn Holy Cross Cathedral into a precinct hall and the Sunday liturgy into a political rally.
If the four Massachusetts bishops want to fashion themselves ward bosses, let them pay to play, like any other taxpayer.
Earlier this month, Boston Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley wrote in The Pilot, the house organ of the Boston Archdiocese, that the divisive gay marriage debate "demands unity in our opposition but charity in the way the debate is conducted." How does he square that with the scare tactics directed at parishioners from the pulpit and the threats directed at lawmakers?
"Doubtless many Catholics who are homosexual or have friends and relatives who are homosexual find the present climate of debate on same-sex marriages very distressing," O'Malley wrote. "We need to assure them that we disagree with the way the debate is being framed to exploit people's emotions." How does O'Malley square that with the decision of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, the church's well-financed lobbying arm, to distribute a videotape to parishes that, among other poisonous claims, contends that the poor and the elderly will suffer if same-sex couples are not denied their constitutional right to marry?
The voter registration drive to be rolled out in parish halls across the Commonwealth this spring is to be a nonpartisan effort to promote good citizenship, the bishops would have us believe. How does that square with the editorial last week in The Pilot that promised that "legislators who decide to vote to harm the institution of marriage -- either by allowing same-sex marriage to stand unchallenged or by creating civil unions -- will feel a backlash in November"? So much for O'Malley's call for civility in this debate. He is the publisher of The Pilot.
No one disputes the right of the Catholic Church, or any other religious institution, to be heard on the contentious issues of the day, but the bishops of Massachusetts want to rewrite the state constitution to conform to Catholic teachings. To assert that right, they persist in confusing sacramental marriage, which the SJC ruling leaves in their hands, with civil marriage, which is beyond their realm.
It was a Catholic legislator who spoke most powerfully to the danger of bending the constitution to the will of religious institutions. "Constitutional rights run to individuals, not to groups or organizations or institutions," Senator Marian Walsh told her colleagues. "So today I ask, what constitutional rights would individuals participating in religious activities like to give up? Would individuals who worship surrender their own religion, and enjoy a state religion? Would individuals who are clergy like to give up the authority to perform civil marriage ceremonies that this Legislature gave them in 1692?"
Article I of the Massachusetts Constitution speaks to the "equality of people and natural rights," the West Roxbury Democrat noted. "It doesn't say that, `All people are born free and equal and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights, except gays and lesbians.' Do we want to make that change? Do we want our compact with [one] another to say that some of us are not equal?"
By a narrow margin, the Legislature took one step in that direction. Reilly could take the Commonwealth a step the other way by insisting that one of the most powerful players in this debate stop dressing up its bare-knuckle politics in clerical garb.
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com.
