News
937
2005-04-26
2005-04-11
Religion,
politics, and privacy
By Michael Seneco
Seneco is an archbishop and president of the National
Conference of Independent Catholic Bisho
In a recent
episode of the NBC drama series The West Wing,
characters portrayed by Martin Sheen and Alan Alda are
sitting in the White House kitchen eating ice cream
together. “What ever happened to the separation
of church and state?” Alda asks Sheen.
“It’s still there,” Sheen responds.
“It’s the separation of church and
politics that is the problem.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Consider the marriage rights of Terri and
Michael Schiavo. Fifteen years ago Terri slipped into
a persistent vegetative state after a heart attack cut
off the oxygen to her brain. In what is probably the most
difficult decision a spouse could ever have to make,
Michael spent 15 years attempting to exercise his
legal right to remove his wife from life support.
It’s what she asked him to do in this situation, he says.
The right to make medical decisions for a spouse
is one of the many rights gay and lesbian couples have
been fighting for in their long pursuit of marriage
equality. It’s among the many rights of
marriage that conservative religious groups claim need to be
protected—rights, they argue, that are inviolable yet
fragile and easily damaged by the influence of society.
So why is it that these same conservative groups
and lawmakers feel that in the case of Terri Schiavo
they can redefine the very marriage rights they are
protecting? They seem happy to “protect” the
rights of only those people whose definition of those
rights matches their own. It’s religion
meddling not just in politics but in our private lives.
It also brings to mind the case of John McCusker
Jr., a gay businessman and community activist in San
Diego who recently died of a heart attack while
skiing. McCusker, 31, had made it clear that when he died he
wanted a Catholic funeral on the campus of his alma
mater, the University of San Diego. But John Brom, the
Roman Catholic bishop in San Diego, denied
McCusker’s family the right to a funeral in any of
the 98 Catholic churches or chapels in the diocese.
Bishop Brom labeled McCusker a “manifest
sinner” because he owned two bars that catered
to gay clientele. The bishop also had heard that a gay
porn video had been filmed in one of the clubs. Under
Catholic doctrine, the concept of “manifest
sinner” is meant to be applied to someone whose
sinful life is blatant, visible, and public
knowledge—a serial killer, a mob boss, a pedophile
priest. In cases where a late parishioner’s sin
is publicly manifest, a funeral rite, which honors the
dead and consoles the family, would be considered
scandalous to the faithful and should be avoided.
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Seneco is an archbishop and president of the National
Conference of Independent Catholic Bishops and is
associate rector of the Cathedral of Saint John
the Beloved in Washington, D.C.