Remarks on the Warrant Article
(Again)
February, 2024
Well, here we are again.
For me, it's the third time.
Looking about this room, watching people file in, I'm guessing we have about 300 people here tonight, about 200 of whom are congregants, or friends, of the Church of the Miraculous Medal. A priest in his collar is here, and I'm betting he is connected to that congregation.
And all these folks have come to vote to in favor of recommending this warrant article which allows taxpayer funds to pay for invoices from the Church of the Miraculous Medal, Sacred Heart school: invoices for paper crowns which may used for religious pageants, or computers for streaming religious services. At our last meeting, a year ago the Treasurer who writes the checks, Ms. Curtis, admitted she had no idea how those specific items were used, for religious ceremonies or not.
The members of the School Board have voted to endorse the warrant article, although last year they declined to answer my question about whether using taxpayer money for religious purposes bothered them. Their answer was in their votes.
Or, actually, what some of the School Board members said, by implication, is we are not sure if taxpayer dollars fund these religious icons, but we really don't care if they do. Qui Tacit Consentit--silence implies consent.
Of course, I have no illusions about changing anyone's mind tonight. What I hope is that once you have cast your ballot to invalidate the First amendment of the Bill of Rights, you might reflect on what John F. Kennedy said about not allowing trying to be a good Catholic get in the way of being a good American.
This is what John F. Kennedy had to say on this subject:
"Because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured—perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again—not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me—but what kind of America I believe in.
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute—where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote—where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference...
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish—where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source—where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials—and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker—or a Unitarian—or a Baptist. It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson’s statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim—but tomorrow it may be you—until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.
Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end—where all men and all churches are treated as equal—where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice—where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind—and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood."
For some years, and even now, it is possible to believe we have swung in exactly the direction JFK had hoped we would: President Biden, it turns out, is a devout Catholic and yet you almost never hear a word said about that. He is attacked for being many other things--a senile old man, a Communist, a crook, but never "a Catholic."
Nobody here tonight will argue that Sacred Heart School is not worthy of support. I myself have supported it using my own private checking account. I have no objection to supporting Sacred Heart School. I encourage others to do it. But I object to using taxpayer funds to do it.
Some have said this is all a tempest in a teapot: The amount of money whether it is $65,000 or $55,000 in a given year is a pittance compared to the overall town budget. I can only say that single dollar of taxpayer funds is too much.
.
Is this warrant article unconstitutional?
Of course, it is, unless you subscribe to the cynical belief that what is unconstitutional or constitutional is whatever the current presiding Supreme Court says it is.
Justice Sotomayor has said that the current Supreme Court has said that separation of church and state is unconstitutional. She places those 5 justices in the same boat as Representative Lauren Boebert who has declared separation of church and state is nowhere in the Constitution--her own willful blindness--and she has said furthermore that if it were there, it shouldn't be, because the United States is a Christian nation and always should be. And they call her Representative Boebert for a reason: she does represent her constituents. But I hope she could never represent constituents in New Hampshire.
It's a source of sadness, to see Hampton cling to this practice of sending taxpayer monies to a church which many people in Hampton love, to a school of that church which I've heard such good things about, I was moved to dip into my own bank account for that school.
But, I have to admit, in the end, this insistence by some members of that church, which has enriched so many lives, seems to me somehow unworthy of that church, and is profoundly disappointing.
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