Archdiocesan Hypocrisy
20 February 2008 - 15 אדר א' 5768 by Huw
I love this post from Rocco over at Whispers in the Loggia.
With Western Easter falling so early this year, Holy Week is causing a liturgical shuffle of several Saints’ Days including St Patricks Day which, liturgically, is being observed on 14 March this year (in the Roman communion).
This of course raises the question of when do you serve the Green Beer, let the kids out of school and have a parade? So Rocco asks Whither St Pat’s?.
But after a lot of church state debates we get to this kicker of a paragraph.
In New York and Boston, with legendary St. Patrick’s events planned by the cities’ large Irish communities, bishops are taking a hands-off approach, saying the church has no part in planning civic celebrations.
LIES! LIES! LIES!
Any other year (when I lived in NYC) with the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organisation wanting to march in St Patrick’s day parades, we were told - as was the city - that the parade was a “religious event” and that their Catholic religious rights were being trampled by secular politics and morally-not-Catholic groups wanting to march…
In a feud that has been going on for nearly 20 years, suddenly, this year, it’s a secular parade. Which is what Irish lesbians and gays have been saying since 1991.
To be precise: in Boston, the parade isn’t run by the Archdiocese, but by a group called the Allied War Veterans. The gay & lesbian Irish group did march, one year, in the early 90s, but then the War Veterans went to court and won the right to exclude the gay group on freedom-of-assembly grounds (presumably, that entails freedom to choose who will or won’t be part of an assembly).
Thanks, Dylan, for that correction. I’ll make a change in the post.