DELIBERATIONS IN HAMPTON: KILLING SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

 

Last night, Wednesday, February 5, 2025, the Deliberative Session (DS) considering the warrant article which awards taxpayer funds to a religious school (Sacred Heart) was debated.

For the first time in town history, since this warrant article was introduced likely as long as 30 years ago, the Budget Committee and the School Board both voted to not recommend to the town voters that they vote for taxpayer funds for the religious school. This all happened before the DS, and some of the speakers are reacting to this. The vote which counts is the vote by Hampton citizens going to the polls to vote yes or no, in March. The DS is supposed to be the town hall meeting where people meet to inform, persuade and come to an understanding.

The primary and fundamental argument against this warrant article (#5 this year) funding of Sacred Heart is it violates the First Amendment's "establishment clause," that government (in this case the town government of Hampton) violates the separation of church and state by paying invoices presented to a town official who writes the checks out of an account (slush fund) of taxpayer money.

How can a government "establish" a church? Only two ways to do tha: 1. Declare such and such a church the state (or town) church 2. Pay for the church, i.e., fund the church.

Clearly, openly, Hampton does the latter.  Nobody disputes that. Why Hampton would do that, why voters vote every year to pay for church school supplies and computers is another story, but it can be briefly summarized: there are enough members of the congregation of the Catholic church to vote through this measure.  In a town of 20,000, a congregation of 4,000 can swing a lot of political weight, especially if there is no countervailing political force.

Hampton's practice of local nullification of the First Amendment is particularly pure. In other cases which have come before the Supreme Court in Washington, there were always extenuating circumstances: In one case, Everson, the town had extended school bus service to all students but refused to bus kids to a Catholic school, and the Court ruled you cannot withhold funds you offer to all, on the basis of religious exception. Ditto for playground repair: If you undertake to re-asphalt all town school playgrounds, you have do the Catholic school playgrounds, too. And in Maine, kids who wanted to go to a religious school had no practical non religious school as an option. 

But in Hampton, there is a public school next door to the Catholic school and there are plenty of empty seats in public schools available to students who choose to attend the Catholic schools. 

What Hampton does is to simply provide a slush fund, and whenever the Catholic school wants to buy a new computer, it presents the invoice to the treasurer of the school board, who pays the invoice. 

In the past, it was always claimed these checks paid for only "non religious" items, but it turns out the treasurer writes checks for things which could, and likely do, serve religious functions.

This particular pork barrel boondoggle can happen in this town because the local church has a voting block which can propose a warrant article and mobilize three thousand congregants to vote for it, no matter what the First Amendment says.

At the end of the comments, Bob Ladd, who voted for the article as member of the Budget Committee, cited a principle of "Mutual Aide" as a justification for the community paying for Sacred Heart's computers. He noted that the fire department does not refuse to go to extinguish fires at the Catholic school, or at churches and this principle applies to cover funding the church school. 

Of course, this is a false analogy: we do not ask accident victims whether they are Catholic before putting them into an ambulance, or rescuing them from a riptide at the beach. The offering of life saving services does not violate the proscription for the government not to establish a church. We are not, after all building  a church or a school by rescuing it from fire, but we are protecting that structure, and other nearby structures, from destruction as a measure of public health and safety.

A better example might have been government funds used to support a church soup kitchen: Government cannot do everything, but when a church steps in as a helper in meeting a need, where the government has opted not to develop a program, partnering with that effort may not violate church and state and the establishment clause.

The other argument Mr. Ladd presented was that making a fuss about this warrant article or voting against it exacerbates divisions in the town, which left Mad Dog wondering: does that not apply to the Church as well, the church which pushes this warrant article every year over increasingly rancorous objections?  Does this $50K really matter so much to the Sacred Heart School which is funded by the archdiocese of Manchester? 

Mr. Ladd demonstrated his lack of ability to abstract with a final comment about Texas Governor Anne Richards.  The sole  speaker who opposed the warrant article, and who spoke in favor of separation of church and state, had told a story to illustrate how personally difficult and wrenching having to embrace the separation of church and state can be: Governor Richards had to tear down a nativity scene which was built on government grounds, outside her office, when the Court ruled that violated church and state, and she expostulated, "Damn! It's a crying shame! I really hate doing it! Because, in Austin, at the Capitol, this is the only time of year when we can ever gather together, in one place, all at the same time, three wise men."

This elicited laughter, even among the audience which was stacked with congregation members from the Catholic Church. 

Mr. Ladd, apparently unwilling to allow the opposition to have the last laugh said, "Well, but Governor Richards also said of George W. Bush that he was born on third base and thought he hit a triple!"

Which set Mad Dog's head spinning, as he tried to fathom what that had to do with anything being discussed that night about the warrant article.

That the audience had laughed with the citizen who opposed the warrant article apparently hit a nerve with its supporters. The principal of Sacred Heart began her remarks by saying she stood to speak "not to take a mocking tone" as "others who have spoken" that night had taken. Laughter, apparently, is a threat and not to be tolerated.

Another respondent, Patrick S., began with a sneer at "our constitutional lawyer" to say that just because someone says something is unconstitutional doesn't mean it actually is unconstitutional, and there are lots of examples of government giving money to religious institutions, not that he bothered to cite any. 

But anyway, Mr. S. asserted, we in Hampton are only "mere mortals" and the justices of the Supreme Court know a lot more about it, and decide cases with a lot less emotion than the self styled "constitutional lawyer" who had spoken that night had shown. Best to leave the Constitution to the real experts, Mr. S advised: a naked appeal to closing down your mind. Just have faith in the experts down in Washington, D.C., the justices on the Supreme Court of the United States.  That argument about the funding of a religious school violating the First Amendment is "dead," Mr. S. concluded with what can only be described as a smirk.

In Mad Dog's brain danced the refrain from Dylan's song: "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

Mad Dog briefly considered leaping up to the microphone to say, "As was said earlier, the Constitution was not written for lawyers, but for the Common Man. You don't need 3 years in law school to know when government funds a church, that violates the First Amendment, if you have ever had a middle school Civics course, at least in a reasonably competent public school, or failing that, you can draw conclusions if you know how to read." 

But then he asked himself: "Who are you trying to persuade here? Who are you talking to? What do you gain by ridiculing a man like Patrick S? "

In that room, the wind was blowing, had always blown, for the Church. Hundreds of people file in every year, and not more than a dozen are not members of the Church.

 

Watching the video of this 90 minute session, Mad Dog understood why discussion of topics like this is unlikely to ever change anyone's opinions. People sat in the audience tapping away on their cell phones and applauded the proponents of giving taxpayer money to Sacred Heart, no matter how inarticulate or incoherent the speaker. 

Scanning the faces of a crowd sometimes tells you more than all the focus groups, all the telephone polls, all the pundits writing in the New York Times can possibly tell you. 

Mississippi Cop on Trial for Murder of Negro

The possibility of deliberation, persuasion seems remote in this mob. One wonders if it is ever a possibility. Can you see the United States Senate shifting from one position to another after a vigorous debate, where the reasoning of one Senator actually changed the mind of another? 

Which is not to say we should give up on democracy, but it suggests that the orator, the man who might persuade, may be an extinct species. Barack Obama may have changed minds, but not about issues like separation of church and state. He could change minds about how people saw him, by being erudite, articulate and non threatening. But he could not persuade anyone on issues, which is why he said some people cling to their guns and their religion and there was no changing them.

People come to the Deliberative Sessions with their minds made up. As Lincoln once remarked, you can show up with twelve angels blowing horns and you would not change anyone's mind on certain topics.

If you are interested enough to sit through the DS, here it is, unedited. Heaven help you. (Tip: you really should scan forward to minute 39 or even 42, as the first 40 minutes are mostly people chatting, like those dead zones on CNN Congressional hearings.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDED5cDt5hg&t=873s

Nullification: Don't Tell Me About the Law; Tell Me About the Judge

 

STATEMENT TO THE HAMPTON SCHOOL BOARD

(Considering the Warrant Article giving a taxpayer money, an annual stipend, to a local church, the Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Catholic Church.)

One of the most cynical, and yet truest pieces of advice ever given a President was this: "Do not tell me about the law. Tell me about the judge." (Roy Cohn to Donald Trump.)

Law, of course is abstract. People are flesh and blood. Unless people follow the law, unless it is enforced, there is no law.

When I visit New York City, Manhattan, I often cross the street despite the electric "Don't Walk" sign. But I walk anyway. I can look down the grid in both directions and see no car, and I walk. And I'm often accompanied by a policeman walking next to me, or a dozen citizens, all of us violating a law. We ignore the law, and in doing so we nullify it. George Wallace stood in the school house door in Alabama to nullify a law to desegrated schools, and he was voted in--the will of local folks over the Constitution.

The Supreme Law of the Land, in New Hampshire as in Alabama, is the Constitution of the United States, and the very first words of the First Amendment to the Constitution say government shall not establish a church or any religion. And what can that mean? Well, as far as I know, there are only two ways to establish: simply stating a church is the official state church--the Church of England is the state church of England, or, Miraculous Medal is the official church of Hampton. That's one way to establish a church or religion. 

The other is simply to give government/taxpayer money to a church, just as you might establish a college by giving money.

Now, Justice Alito and Justice Thomas have ruled from their office in Washington, D.C., that separation of church and state is unconstitutional. Curious finding: The Constitution itself is unconstitutional! 

This is not my observation: Justice Sotomayor said this after the Court ruled that the State of Maine could not deny taxpayer dollars to a religious school simply because it is a religious school, teaching religion. Doesn't matter what the First Amendment says--the justices say different. Nullification. An instance of nullification of the Constitution from the Court.

Don't tell me about the law; tell me about the judge.

Well, here in Hampton, New Hampshire, we cannot change the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, D.C.

But as a member of the Hampton School Board, you can say "No." You can say, "the law matters." It may be abstract, but embodied in the First Amendment is something we care about, something we think is a good thing: separation of church and state. We know the sorry, sordid, bloody history of states which mixed religion and state. Wives literally lost their heads when church/state mixed.

But tonight, right here in New Hampshire, you can, as elected members of the School Board, vote to embrace rather than nullify, you can choose to resist those who blithely violate the Constitution.  You can say, "NO!" Enough!

You can say nullification of the law can in some instances be benign, but in other instances it is not benign; it can be a willful act from the dark ages, an insurrection against the enlightened principles we have held dear, and which have served us well over the course of our nation's history--the temporary tenures of Supreme Court justices notwithstanding. 

You have, at least, that much power. 

But unless you use it, there is no law.  There is only local willfulness, indifference to principle, the cynical pursuit of mon-ey placed above what is true and right. It is a lesson, for better or for worse, for our schools and for our children right here in Hampton.

Public Funds for Church School: The Ghost of JFK

 

"I believe in an America where separation of church and state is absolute, where no public funds are ever granted to any church, or to any church school. Today the finger of suspicion may be pointed at me, but tomorrow, it may be at you. Until the whole  fabric of our harmonious society is ripped."

--John F. Kennedy

Hampton Union Publicity 

Yesterday, the Hampton Union published an article about the fight over a Hampton warrant article, voted in every year, which sets up an account ($55,000 this year) from which bills are paid, after being presented by the Sacred Heart School (parish school of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal) to the SAU treasurer. 

The Hampton Union quotes an attorney parishioner, who claims that despite the clear language of the New Hampshire constitution saying, "But no person shall every be compelled to pay towards the support of the schools of any sect or denomination," state supreme court decisions say otherwise. No response to that assertion was solicited or elicited by the reporter, Max Sullivan. The fact is, despite what Ms. Nevins (who always identifies herself as "attorney Nevins") says, this is by no means settled law. Mr. Sullivan simply quotes her, but never investigates whether or not this is true.

Beyond that, Ms. Nevins allowed that the 1969 decision public funds may go to religious schools "if sufficient safeguards are provided," and clearly there are no safeguards with respect to this tithe to the school. The treasurer of the SAU, Mariah Curtis, has on several occasions admitted she has no idea what the bills for supplies are used for, although "everything is audited."  As opponents have suggested molding clay may be used to fashion crucifixes for classroom walls, and computers may be used to stream religious services--there is no safeguard at all. Ms. Curtis admits in all the years she's been presented invoices from the church school, she's never once refused to pay for an invoice

The history of this warrant article is reported to date to a time when public schools were crowded and diversion of students to the church school was seen as a way of saving money, but the reporter failed to say that is no longer true in Hampton, and, in fact there are empty seats at Hampton public classrooms, and the SHS award diverts needed funds from public schools. That $55,000 could pay for a desperately needed school custodian.

The principal is quoted as saying this is all about educating Hampton students, whose parents pay taxes in the town, but she does not say that only 25% of the students at the school are from Hampton; the rest are from out of town. 

So what the taxpayers are really paying for is to support families from anywhere who want to educate their kids in the Church.

This phrase, "It's all about the kids," particularly galls opponents because it says really, "it's only about the kids," which of course is not true. It's also about separation of church and state. Not to mention there is something so sanctimonious about saying "I am all about the kids'" as if you are more about the kids than the opponents of the article, who feel they are just as much "about the kids."

The warrant article process is, of course tainted by a state law which requires that the School Board and the Budget Committee vote to either recommend or to not recommend voters vote for the article and those recommendations are printed right below the article and right above the checkboxes "yes" or "no" where the voters marks their ballots.

One might ask why the state wants these boards to put their thumbs on the scale so flagrantly, but one look at the 20 page "ballot" and you know why. Voters are allowed to vote based on what the authorities in town recommend, authorities who have presumably given more thought to the article than the voter who has only thought about it for a minute.

This year, Mr. Sullivan tells us, the School Board voted 2 in favor to 0 against to 3 abstentions to recommend. He tells us two of the 3 who abstained abstained because they were parishioners. He does not mention these two parishioners voted public funds to their own church last year when the warrant article vote came up, but this year they were called out for that at a public School Board meeting, and they abstained rather than being accused of doing what they had done in the past--voting for public funds to their own church. 

The 3rd abstainer, Wendy Rega, had voted against the article last year, but this year she thought it would be defeated only if she abstained, because if she voted no, then a majority of the Board would have voted, (i.e. 3 out of 5) and it would be carried as a 2-1 vote. But with her abstention, it was a 2-0-3 vote and that meant the majority had not voted. It was a tactical move. Mr. Max Sullivan reported none of that.

He also did not mention that Ginny Bridle Russel, the chairperson of the school board voted for the warrant article as a School Board member and again as a Budget Committee member, so she got to cast deciding votes twice.

He did not mention that the Budget Committee voted 4-3 to recommend, and it is not known how many of those 4 voters were parishioners. And he did not report what the three No voters had said to explain their votes. Sullivan explained why the abstainers abstained--but he did not give equal space to those who voted against the article.

So, according to the Hampton Union, the fight over separation of Church and State is over in Hampton.

As Justice Sotomayor has noted, with the current United States Supreme Court it may be that separation of church and state is now unconstitutional. It certainly is in Hampton.

And it's too bad, really.

What was that "finger of suspicion" JFK was talking about? Well, in 1960, I well recall being told by my neighbors, "Oh, you can't vote for a Catholic to be President. You may as well move the Pope into the White House. Your taxes will go right to the Church."

JFK promised that would not happen and he kept that promise. It is his legacy, his sacred legacy, that nobody ever asks if a candidate for high office is Catholic anymore.

I've met plenty of people who do not even know Joe Biden is Catholic. Never comes up. John F. Kennedy did that for us. This abstract notion, separation of church and state, which elicits nothing but dull stares and slack jaws from so  many, has very real, practical consequences.

So, when the voters at the Deliberative Session on February 5th, mustered out to vote for the warrant article, to support their Church and their faith, they will actually be doing just the opposite.

They will be voting to destroy the legacy of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, which allowed Catholics to fully participate in the politics of their nation, without that ugly "finger of suspicion" pointed at them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CClNXNeYBIw&t=7s

Hampton School Board Splinters Over Sacred Heart School Warrant Article

Tuesday, December 12, 2023, a night which will live in epiphany. 

The Hampton School Board has 5 members. 

It is still not clear whether that coveted box at the bottom of the ballot saying "Recommended by the School Board" will be attached to the ballot article. Someone has to "check" on it with someone. 

School Board meetings have agendas and rules, and they open with a time for public comment and members of the public are allowed 3 minutes to speak their minds and then the chairperson cuts them off. Nobody gets to hog the microphone.

So, the public, all three of them, got their 3 minutes each.

The link below shows the whole meeting, but the parts of the meeting devoted to the Sacred Heart School (SHS) funding begins after the Pledge of Allegiance with public comment, and then there are about 2 hours of meanderings through committee reports and idle chatter, then the vote and then a bizarre post mortem comment session. You just have to scan through it.

None of the School Board members explained the reasons for his or her vote, except for Frank DeLuca, who said he had to abstain because he is a parishioner of Our Lady of The Miraculous Medal church, and one of the speakers had remarked that any parishioner of the church voting to funnel public funds  for his own personal church would violate his public trust as a public official, and apparently Mr. DeLuca got that message.

While none of the School Board explained a vote, in the prior meeting the chairperson had said she was voting public funds to a church school because she care about "every Hampton child," including those attending SHS. That was addressed by one of the speakers who remarked that she had failed to mention that 75% of the SHS students are not even from Hampton, and that even if you focused on the 25% of students who live in Hampton, "caring about the children," as he did, did not mean he wanted to pay for their first communion dresses. He said that was the job of the parents, not the taxpayer. 

He also went on to say that while some argue this issue is not about separation of church and state, but instead it's simply "all about the children"  (even those attending SHS,) the truth is that while this may be about the kids,  it is not only about the kids: It's also about the principle of separation of church and state.

To make that point, a famous speech by John F. Kennedy got read, and is there for all to see on Channel 22, in which he says, "Because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured...So it is apparently necessary for me to state again, not what kind of church I believe in, for that should matter 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 church or church school is granted any public funds...Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped."

Instances of the ripping of that fabric in Hampton, New Hampshire were recounted: men driving by, shouting profanities, while children played in their yards, online vilification of Hampton women as being "God hating," all because these mothers had  signed a petition for separation of church and state.

(Apparently, John F. Kennedy would have been called a "God hater" by these people.)

And the vote came, amid some confusion. 

The Vote:

To recommend: Virginia Bridle Russell

                             Les Shepard

Abstained:          Wendy Rega

                             Andrea Shepard 

                             Frank DeLuca

Although a majority of the School Board did not vote to recommend (a majority of 5 is 3), it is not clear what the white box with the recommendation will say. Do you need a majority (i.e. 3 Board members) or simply a plurality for that coveted "Yes, recommended by the Board"?

To Mad Dog's mind a "recommendation" should mean, we affirmatively recommend this. But when the majority say they can neither recommend nor oppose, that is not a recommendation. But that may not be what the powers that be think.

Mad Dog actually liked the post show show: Because, apparently, there is a rule that there should be 30 minutes in total of public comment, and the chairperson had limited the three public commenters to 3 minutes each, interrupting any speaker who went past 3 minutes,  there were only 9 minutes of 30 spent in public comment. 

So after the vote was taken and safely stowed away, they called for the other 21 minutes of comment from the crowd of 2 people who constituted "the public." Only one actually spoke and he was told he had better limit his remarks to  3 minutes. (Not clear what happened to the remaining unspoken 19 minutes.)

During this session Frank DeLuca asked the lone speaker why, after all these years, after voting through this warrant article every year since 1994, anyone would now find a reason to oppose it. The reply was simple enough: the man who rose to oppose said he was not living in town in 1994, but even if he had been, he said, simply doing something over and over because "we've always done it that way" is not always a good idea, especially if an important principle has been ignored by that custom. He cited the racial segregation of schools, which had always been done that way, but eventually we decided that custom was unprincipled.

This was a particularly rich moment because in the previous School Board meeting, when asked if he was disturbed at the article which gave public funds for religious purposes,  Mr. DeLuca said he said he hadn't seen the warrant article yet, so he couldn't possibly comment on an article he had not yet seen. But tonight he said, well this same, identical article has been presented the same way every year for the past 29 years, so what are we arguing about?

When Ginny Bridle Russell said she supported the warrant article and she would never abstain, but would always take a stand--but she hoped voters would vote their own conscience. The member of the public replied, "Well, but then you are taking a stand to try to influence voters." 

This exchange finally aroused Les Shepard, who raised his hand and object to the public addressing the chairperson in such a manner. The public man was told that School Board meetings do not allow for "back and forth," between the School Board members and the public, which, of course, was exactly what Ms. Russel had precipitated.

Watching this youtube now, it is apparent that the chairperson of the School Board has taken the idea of a "Bully pulpit" into a new realm of "The bully from the pulpit."  The chairperson cut off criticism of herself, declared herself immune, declared herself righteous and outspoken and then withdrew to allow her fellow Board members to close ranks around her. 

If ever there is a contest for "most controlling personality" we have our candidate for the honor right here in Hampton.

So, all and all, it was an exciting night. Two and one half hours of dreary boiler plate declamations, interrupted by 30 minutes of the fog of war.

The youtube video below shows the discussion of the warrant article beginning right after the Pledge of Allegiance at 1 minute, with three speakers from the public, each speaking 3 minutes and that ends around 12 minutes. Then there is a nearly 120 minute interlude during which the School board discusses a variety of things, including, literally the paint on school walls but the vote on the article occurs at 2:02, two hours after the meeting began. So if you can scan ahead, go for it. The vote is worth watching. (If anyone knows how to edit a youtube video so only the 15 minutes devoted to the Sacred Heart School warrant article shows, please let me know.) It was during this exchange, the Board said only they can ask questions but they do not answer questions from the public.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7Mo0VoF7oA

Sound and fury signifying something. 

We don't yet know what. 

Is Separation of Church and State Anti-Catholic, Anti-Christian, Atheistic?

 My first introduction to anti-Catholicism was not from the Ku Klux Klan, although it had a presence where I grew up.

I had read about anti-Catholic sentiment when I was in elementary school, in a book which depicted the campaign of Al Smith for President, and the role anti-Catholicism played in defeating him.

But all of that seemed remote and unreal to me. 

Although not Catholic myself, many, if not most, of my friends were. There were pictures on the walls of their houses showing Christ opening his chest to show his heart well before cardiac surgery was feasible, and I asked my parents about these and they responded cryptically, a little uncomfortably, that they were religious and left it there. I had no better luck asking them about the bloody Christ on the cross artifacts on the walls.  

I knew in my seven year old mind there was something different about my family from Sean O'Rourke's family, but whatever that was it didn't seem to matter when Sean and I went out to throw a football or explore the neighborhood with our friends, or have sandwiches his mother made in her kitchen. She always smiled at me and she and my mother would sit on the porch and laugh and chat.

No, it wasn't until I was 13 and John F. Kennedy ran for President that I heard that in some parts of the country his being a Catholic was a problem. 

"But Sean's Catholic and he's going to run for President and I'm going to be his Vice President," I told my mother. 

"And why aren't you running for President?" my mother asked. 

"It was Sean's idea," I explained. "He has Dibs."

Seeing Kennedy campaign in the South, in West Virginia, in the Baptist Bible Belt, and looking at the way those Southerners looked at him, the wariness, the distrust, brought it home to me.

But I loved the way Kennedy went right at the problem, directly, courageously telling them, "Don't vote for me because I'm a Catholic, but don't vote against me because of that."

His famous statement, below, thrilled me.

"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."

I was even more moved when he won, when he faced down that prejudice, that hate, and emerged victorious and put to rest all those suspicions. 

Even now, that Joe Biden is Catholic never comes up as a reason to suspect he is under the power or sway of the Pope.  The current crops of crazies find other reasons to hate Biden, but the Catholic thing simply has no resonance any more. 

Kennedy did that, as far as I'm concerned.

Real Hate

In my mind, JFK vanquished anti-Catholicism. All that was just a relic of some dark age.  Catholics were glamorous, open minded, looking to the future, modern, unencumbered by  past doubts.

My friends married without a thought about religion--Jews married Catholics, Catholics married Protestants with hardly a mention, at least in America. 

In Ireland, Catholics and Protestants still hated one another, which baffled me and my friends. It was hard to imagine that could be true, to us Americans. Here in America, with our Constitution, religions simply did not clash, not any more.

I've seen plenty of marriages performed by Catholic priests where the groom steps on a glass wrapped in a cloth napkin, as is the tradition at Jewish weddings. 

All that business about "mixed" marriages is just a relic now. It might have meant marrying "outside the faith" once upon a time, but now it means a Democrat marrying a Republican.

But whenever we discuss separation of church and state, in Hampton, in 2023,  there is a certain element of the Catholic parish who respond that whoever favors drawing a barrier between the church and the state is anti-Catholic, hates Catholics, wants to discriminate against Catholics. 

Because, if you saw the Church properly, you'd know it is a good institution, a wonderful source of joy and truth and morality and bonding of humanity, so why would you ever want to exclude the Church from the benefits of social organizations like the government? Only those hostile to religion, like Thomas Jefferson, would want to draw a line between the Church and the state.

But Kennedy can hardly be said to be hostile to the Church and he was, as anyone can plainly see, emphatic about drawing that line.

Actual Anti Catholicism 

Could it be he saw that drawing the line protects the Church as well as the state, that it allows people to retain the benefits of religion, just as a Catholic wife does when she goes to mass and leaves her husband home watching a football game? 

It gives everyone much needed space.

Now, in Hampton, we have a group which insists separation of church and state persecutes the Church, is motivated by the most vile and hateful motives.

And roving goons drive by in cars and shout obscenities at mothers who have signed petitions in favor of separation of church and state, while  children look up from their play in their front yards. 

We do not know who those goons are, or even if they are members of the congregation, but we can have no doubts it was the opposition to the warrant article that sent them rumbling through town. They are part of the blinded crowd.

THE FEAR

We had Kennedy who brought us so far, and now look what that blinded crowd has done. Oh, how far we have fallen...

What Rep. Boebert Knows: Separation of Church and State Ain't No Thing

 Standing before a crowd of 300 Hampton citizens, on two occasions over the past two years, I have seen the eyes of at least 200 citizens in that crowd, on each occasion, staring back at me blankly, as I urged them to embrace the separation of church and state. 

These occasions were the meetings to vote on a warrant article which allocates taxpayer funds to pay for a Catholic church school in town.

These 200 odd citizens had pulled on their winter coats and boots and driven to the Academy, where the meetings are held to vote money for their Catholic church school and no amount of persuasion, no appeal to reason was going to change their minds. They came to vote for their church and that was that.

To these folks "separation of church and state" was an affront to their fate. By saying the state should not write checks to support their beloved institution the clear message was there is something wrong with their church in the eyes of those who would erect a wall between church and state.

If the church is a good thing, then why would you not want the state to embrace this good thing?

I pointed out that the Constitution says, government "shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion."

But Lauren Boebert, a United States Representative (R-CO) has said: "I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk. This is not in the Constitution, it was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like what they say it does." 

And, it's pretty clear, that's where those 200 citizens are.  What does it mean to make no law respecting the establishment of religion any way?

Does it mean if you want to make a law respecting the establishment of religion, to forbid establishing a religion, well then, you cannot do that?

I mean, if the government should stay separate from all churches, why not just say that?

Boebert was right about that stinking letter, which was written by Thomas Jefferson, who was always hostile to churches becoming involved in politics. He really did not like organized religion, and he wanted to keep churches in America from playing the same role churches in Europe had played in God and Country type countries like England, France, Spain, Italy and Russia.

Trying to "separate" churches from state funding is an act of hostility. If the citizens of Hampton want to vote money to pay for computers and religious festivals at the church school, well isn't that their right to do that? It's their taxpayer money, after all. 

And, they're right, at the core. The reason Jefferson and I both fear the Church immersed in government is the history of what happens when you have that: holy wars, wars over religion, governments ruled by Ayatollahs which beat women to death for refusing to cover their hair, blood baths in Jerusalem as Crusaders chop at Muslim defenders, beheadings by crazed jihadists defending their faith. But as soon as you go down that road, you are saying the church can do harm rather than good and you've lost them.

"Who are these people who are objecting to giving money to the Church of the Miraculous Medal?," they ask. The Church of the Miraculous Medal has never done any of those things.

It's true, that church removed books from its book sale that depicted homosexual behavior, but homosexuals are sinners who have made a bad choice, and the Church is simply protecting its children.

The Church is a good thing. People in town love the Church.  Who are these protesters who hate this beloved church?

Looking into those uncomprehending, offended faces of the good folk of Hampton, I knew a lost cause when I saw one.

To these folks, words like "the Constitution" or "the first amendment" or "the establishment clause" were all just incomprehensible abstractions. All they knew is they loved their church and I was trying to take money away from their church and they wanted that money.

If the Church is good, then why would you want to defund it?