On Saturday afternoon, 22 members of the group knelt on the sidewalk in prayer and were arrested by Capitol Police, with the prayer rally (and possible arrests) planned to continue through Oct. 2.
The group says that the only basis for their arrest is that the sidewalk in front of the White House is a “restricted zone” for free speech.
Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life told WND, “We have stood up for life and religious freedom in hundreds of cities. Today we do so at the president’s house. I am delighted to be here.”
The group says that the president is “dictating to Christians how they should live their faith” and that they are taking a stand, while risking arrest for doing so.
The Thomas More Society says that the law and the Bill of Rights is on the bishop’s side, and promises a “free and aggressive legal defense to any religious leaders targeted or victimized for the robust exercise of their free speech rights.”
“The Internal Revenue Service has no legal right to investigate, let alone threaten or penalize the Catholic Diocese of Peoria for illegal ‘electioneering’ after Bishop Daniel Jenky, C.S.C., referred to policies of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin while delivering a robust, wholly legitimate critique of current federal efforts to quash and curtail religious liberties,” says Thomas Brejcha, president of the Thomas More Society.
“References to egregious, historical mistakes on the part of political leaders of the past in messages to congregations, even in an election year, are fully protected by the First Amendment, whether those messages are delivered from the pulpit or on soap boxes in the public square,” he continued.
“We think the law is very clear,” said Brejcha.
“Well-settled federal law does not prohibit churches and other tax-exempt non-profits from speaking out against government policies at odds with the common good or – as in this case – constitutionally obnoxious.”
But as neighborhoods have changed and parishioners have migrated toward the suburbs, grand buildings like St. Philip Neri have become a drain on the archdiocese’s budget. The building is now ensconced in scaffolding, and most of its 1,700 seats stay empty on Sundays.
“A lot of the work done in the past, we’re now correcting,” said the Rev. Thomas Belanger, pastor of St. Philip Neri. “We’re left with nothing in the bank. With the ongoing costs of trying to heat these monstrosities, you wouldn’t build something like St. Philip Neri today.”
Editor’s note: Is anyone else offended by this priest’s unfortunate choice of words?
Besides a large number of military chaplains, few church leaders in America spoke up publicly against the Obama administration’s campaign last year to pass the repeal in Congress.
Notably, while the Vatican had released a statement in 1992 supporting a ban on open homosexuality in the military, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops remained silent on the repeal effort, leaving military Archbishop Timothy Broglio to defend the ban alone. When questioned on the controversy in December 2010, Washington’s Cardinal Donald Wuerl demurred, saying “there isn’t a specific Catholic Church position” on the issue.
…I think a lofty church inspires because there is something sacramental about it. Everything in a gothic church points up. When you enter the heart lifts because the building lifts. The gothic structure of solid stone seems to be made instead of something lighter. The delicate tracery, the pointed arches, the finials and filigree transforms the stone and suddenly I am longing that my heart of stone might be re-made and transformed into a heart of fire and light.
Then as the pointed arches rise I see my hands placed together in prayer like little pointed arches themselves and I want to be a sacrament of stone and light. I want my heart to arch up to heaven and become a temple of the Holy Spirit–a dwelling of peace and beauty that speaks silently of grace and welcomes sinners home.
I look and see high stained glass windows, too far away for my mortal eyes to see the detail and to understand and I know that the joys of heaven are as beautiful and distant and complex and colored and mysterious as those high windows. Further down I can see some windows where saints are pictured and I want to be like that–a saint standing in eternal stillness radiant through with the light from beyond.
