Journalist Clueless on Religious Freedom

You have to ask yourself: are they really this ignorant, or do they intend to mislead people?

Newsbusters points to a column by John Mashek in U.S. News where he says

Biden, like 14 other Democrats in the Senate, is both pro-choice and Catholic. So the bishop decreed that the party’s vice presidential candidate was not welcome at the communion rail. These Senate Democrats and many other Catholics—including this writer—do not necessarily favor abortion, but we do not feel our religious views should be foisted on others in a nation where church and state are divided.

. . .

That division of church and state has application here. No priest, minister, or rabbi should be telling the flock how to vote or for whom. Some do, and they are wrong.

Do what?

I don’t think I could say it any better than the folks at Newsbusters, so here it is:

Let’s make this as simple as possible for Mr. Mashek: the First Amendment prohibits the government from establishing a state religion. It does not prohibit people, including bishops, from practicing theirs. To the contrary, it forbids the government from passing laws that would prohibit that bishop from the free exercise of his religion.

The bishop has every right under the Constitution to deny communion to anyone he pleases. For that matter, like any other citizen, he has every right to encourage others to vote in a certain manner. Doing so from the pulpit could theoretically jeopardize his church’s tax exemption, but both as a matter of the freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion, a bishop is free to express his political opinion to his parishioners.

There simply is no constitutional restriction on religious people of any kind–including pastors–from speaking about moral truth or politicians who refuse to follow moral truth.

There is only a 1954 tax code amendment added by Senator Lyndon B. Johnson to silence his political enemies–which itself violates the Constitution.

The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is launching Pulput Freedom Sunday next Sunday September 28 to begin taking back this freedom.

It’s time we took the muzzle off America’s pastors…and time journalists got a clue about the Constitution and religious freedom.

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