The Catholic constitution

‘The Confraternity of Catholic Clergy’ attempts to throw its weight around.

The Confraternity of Catholic Clergy (a national association of 600 priests & deacons) respond to the sacrilegious and blasphemous desecration of the Holy Eucharist by asking for public reparation…We find the actions of University of Minnesota (Morris) Professor Paul Myers reprehensible, inexcusable, and unconstitutional. His flagrant display of irreverence by profaning a consecrated Host from a Catholic church goes beyond the limit of academic freedom and free speech.

Unconstitutional? How’s that?

The same Bill of Rights which protect freedom of speech also protect freedom of religion. The Founding Fathers did not envision a freedom FROM religion, rather a freedom OF religion.

Clever; we’ve never heard that before. But however fresh and original, it’s still stupid and wrong. Freedom of religion of course does include freedom from religion. Freedom of religion necessarily includes the freedom to say No to all the choices on offer; it even includes the freedom to say No to any possible choices. If it doesn’t it isn’t freedom of religion, it’s freedom among religions, which is a much smaller and pettier freedom.

In other words, our nation’s constitution protects the rights of ALL religions, not one and not just a few. Attacking the most sacred elements of a religion is not free speech anymore than would be perjury in a court or libel in a newspaper.

No; wrong again. Our nation’s constitution does not protect the rights of religions. Religions don’t have rights; rights are not things ascribed to abstractions or institutions, they are ascribed to people or people and other sentient beings (animals). Rights are connected to the ability to experience something. Religions don’t have rights. Individual believers have rights; religions do not. And as for the second sentence – that’s just a flat-out absurdity. It’s simply obviously not true. Clearly the priests would like it to be true, but it isn’t true, because the US is not a Catholic dictatorship.

[P]ublicly burning copies of the Christian Bible or the Muslim Koran, especially by a faculty member of a public university, are just as heinous and just as unconstitutional.

No. These guys just can’t get their facts right. Burning copies of the Bible or the Koran is not unconstitutional. It just isn’t.

Individual freedoms are limited by the boundaries created by the inalienable rights of others. The freedom of religion means that no one has the right to attack, malign or grossly offend a faith tradition they personally do not have membership or ascribe allegiance.

Oh, godalmighty…These poor schmucks are so delusional. No, no, no, you saps, the freedom of religion does not mean that no one has the right to ‘malign or grossly offend a faith tradition’ unless they belong to it. Jeezis. I, for one, have the right to malign your horrible faith tradition, that does its best to prevent women from being able to limit how many children they have, that does its best to prevent men from wearing condoms during a raging pandemic of a lethal STD. We all have that right. And people like you telling us we don’t just motivates us to exercise that right all the more. If you stopped trying to force everyone to genuflect to your particular piety, we wouldn’t take the time to play with crackers. But as it is – well gee, bring out the Cheez-whiz.

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