Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. -- First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America
Because John Mashek is apparently so utterly unfamiliar with it, I've set out the text of the First Amendment for his ease of reference. According to his column in U.S. News, the Roman Catholic bishop of Scranton, PA violates the First Amendment by denying Joe Biden communion because of his support for abortion rights.
Writes Mashek [emphasis added]:
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.
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.
At least as bizarre as Mashek's trampling of the First Amendment is his justification for doing so:
As a Catholic since birth and one raised by a devout Irish Catholic mother, I have serious problems with my church on this matter.
I admit it relates in large part to the pedophilia scandals that have ripped the church in recent years. Many priests (roughly 5,000 were accused) have been found to have abused young males and young girls, some of them altar boys.
Is Mashek suggesting that the church should be denied its constitutional rights because some within it committed sins and crimes? It certainly seems that way.
And now, two days away from the first presidential debate, comes perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Mashek mess: his bio.
John W. Mashek covered politics in Washington for four decades with U.S. News & World Report, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Boston Globe. His primary beats were Congress, the White House, and national politics. He covered every presidential election from 1960 to 1996. He was a panelist in three televised presidential debates in 1984, 1988, and 1992.
That's right. People with Mashek's muddled understanding of the principles upon which our country was founded not only cover politics and write columns in the MSM, they often serve as the moderators in our presidential debates.
