Archbishop Dolan’s “Timmy One-Note” Afterthoughts on Marriage

I have to say it: New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan is no John the Baptist. If he were, he’d be telling his superiors in the Vatican hierarchy the truth about marriage, and he’d likely lose his job, but not his head.

Instead, he continues to play it safe in his quest for his cardinal’s red hat.

In his July 7, 2011 blog essay, entitled Some Afterthoughts, he refers to the historic passage of the Marriage Equality Act as New York State having “sadly attempted a re-definition of marriage.” But the Act was no attempt to “redefine” marriage, but rather involved an extension of connubium, which is “the right to marry” so that it is applied on a gender-neutral basis, in addition to the enactment of certain “religious protections” to insure that it is clear on the face of the legislation that those religions with faiths based in misogyny, patriarchy, and heterosexist supremacy, may continue to limit the marriages they sacramentalize and celebrate to those that they do allow.

It is interesting that he says, “the Church neither has nor wants political ‘clout.’” That is actually refreshing, since it is likely to be an indication that Archbishop Dolan does not plan to order priests in the archdiocese to refuse communion to Governor Cuomo and Catholic legislators who voted for the bill as retribution for their not following the Church’s party line.

The archbishop expressed concern about the religious protections, referring to, but not citing any, “editorials already call(ing) for the removal of guarantees of religious liberty.” I’d really like some credible evidence of this.

Dolan goes on to accuse pro-marriage equality forces of religious intolerance – the case where the bully accuses his victim!

He refers to his side as “those protecting traditional marriage” as if the proponents of the gender-neutral connubium are in some way against traditional marriage. We are not.

There are many LGBT people who have suffered persecution at the hands of the Church and other so-called “Christian” Christianist organizations. I do not blame them for their issues with the opponents of marriage equality, or their form of expression of their reaction to having been bullied by people like Dolan.

I myself will point out that Archbishop Dolan is a heresiarch, and that he really is not a Christian but is rather a Christianist, as is the rest of the Roman Catholic Magisterium. In a credal sense, the RCC hierarchy is nearly as true Christian as the Orthodox Christians who did not add a filioque to the original Nicene Creed. But in a doctrinal sense, as it pertains to moral theology, the Roman Catholic Magisterium is deeply in error because of its teachings in opposition to true natural law (as opposed to the Aristotelian conception of nature brought in by Aquinas), and because of the many Church Fathers whose writings were misogynistic and heterosexist. The Church’s interpretations of biblical passages related to LGBT people is rooted in misogynistic heterosexism, and are among the things that are the cause of error. (I won’t get into matters of faith, since I have evolved theologically since the Catholic Church threw me out in 1999, to the extent that I am now Unitarian/Universalist – so I am not Christian myself, in a credal sense, any more).

Archbishop Dolan apologizes, and I will share that apology here:

“. . . if we did hurt anybody in our defense of marriage, I apologize. We tried our best to insist from the start that our goal was pro-marriage, never anti-gay. But, I’m afraid some within the gay community were offended. As I replied recently to a reporter who asked if I had any message to the gay community, ‘Yes: I love you. Each morning I pray with and for you and your true happiness and well-being. I am honored that so many of you are at home within our Catholic family, where, like the rest of us, we try, with the help of God’s grace and mercy, to conform our lives to Jesus and His message. If I have offended any of you in my strenuous defense of marriage, I apologize, and assure you it was unintentional.”

I will accept that the apology is sincerely intended, but if only Dolan understood what it is that he, and the Church, are doing, I think he would want to rethink his position. (Certainly, casting his position as a “defense of marriage” is still an error.)

I could start with the schizophrenic passages in the Official Catechism of the Catholic Church, in which homosexual “activity” can never be “condoned” while homosexual people are to be “respected” and that there should be no discrimination against them. While Dolan is not responsible for the schizophrenia, he should interpret it in a more humane manner.

The tension between respect and condonation is thick – and the Church hierarchy often steers a course that can only be understood within the context of this tension – it is what allows Catholic organization leaders to refuse to allow a student group that has the word “gay” in it, but to permit the group without the name. I often find myself explaining (but not justifying) such actions on the basis of this.

From what I can tell, the Church Magisterium’s vehement opposition to even civil marriage rights is rooted in the “condonation” thing, even though I think that is a very wrong interpretation. The Church should be outside the civil marriage loop – it should be concerned solely with the sacrament of matrimony for Catholics. The opposition to civil marriage smacks of discrimination, and should be seen as against the Catechism. The problem is that the insane ravings from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the topic ties Dolan’s hands, so that in order to come across with the official party line of the Vatican, he has to make himself seem to be a fool (But, I am sure he might rejoin with, “but only a Fool for Christ!” or at least “only a fool in a quest for the red hat!” were he to read this essay)

Archbishop Dolan does not understand that we who support civil marriage rights being legally extended on a gender-neutral basis know that this does not have a single negative effect on the traditional marriage. There is a difference between connubium and matrimonium; while conjugal aspects of human reproduction through heterosexual sex acts are integral to many traditional marriages, they are not integral to all of them, and there are children integral to many same-sex couples’ lives.

Archbishop Dolan was in New York when New York adopted a no-fault divorce law just last year. He refers to the Church opposing no-fault divorce “sixty years ago.” Where was he last year, when the National Organization for Women was fighting valiantly in a losing effort to prevent New York from being the last state to adopt no fault divorce? I see nothing in his blog essays from 2010 that indicate that he was railing to stop the no-fault divorce law at that time.

There are many areas of the marriage “fight” where I could join with Archbishop Dolan. There are aspects of my 45 years as a practicing Catholic that still remain important to me, and aspects of Catholic morality that are not evil. The principles of monogamy and fidelity within marriage are sound. The idea that divorce should be limited to adultery and spousal abuse is one that I could support – I never understood the idea of “until death do us part” as meaning “or until we get tired of each other.”

I wonder what Archbishop Dolan would do about the thing that damaged marriage the most in the past century – the abolition of the common law regarding “bastardy and filiation.” This single legal change meant that women who would refuse a man carnal knowledge until “the ring is on the finger” because of the consequences to he and to any child, are now allowed to scheme on how to get celebrities and sports figures to get them pregnant out of wedlock so they can bring on the paternity suit. (One change I would make to the common law, though, is that it should not be the child who should be labeled as a “bastard,” but the man who was the “carnal sperm donor.”)

To my knowledge, while Republican Catholic and other Christianist legislators in New York State fought hard to include “religious protections” against gender-neutral connubium, there has never been any attempt by the Catholic Church or other Christianists to exempt Catholic marriages, or marriages performed in Christianist churches, from “no fault” divorce laws. While it is true that the Church maintains rigorous control over the granting of Church annulments, the canon law has been changed in such a way as to make it possible for just about any Catholic marriage to be annulled on the grounds that the parties were not really ready to be married at the time they were wed.

In addition to the above, there is much else to give the lie to how “the Church has always stood up for (its understanding of) marriage.” Yes, within the confines of spiritually guiding Catholics, but not to interfere with the civil laws – except for this time.

Where are the religious protections in the civil law against civil divorce involving Catholic marriages? I am sure that the LDS would join in to protect one of their forms of marriage, and the fundamentalist Christianists would support a civil “covenant marriage” concept that would be more difficult to end than the usual, run of the mill, marriage.

Here’s a quote that has me in partial agreement:

“And now we ring the steeple bell again at this latest dilution of the authentic understanding of marriage, worried that the next step will be another redefinition to justify multiple partners and infidelity. If you think I’m exaggerating, within days of the passage of this bill, one major newspaper ran a flattering profile of a proponent of what was called ‘nonmonogamy.’ Apparently, ‘nonmonogamy’ is the idea that society is unrealistic to think that one man and one woman should remain faithful in marriage, and that openness to some infidelity should be the norm!”

I think the Archbishop is referring to the New York Times Magazine article on infidelity that prominently featured Dan Savage, which caused some interesting conversation over at the Joe.My.God. blog, entitled "Homoquotable - Dan Savage" (Is this the "editorial" he was writing about earlier? - if so, it's not an editorial, but is rather a magazine article, and Dan Savage was perhaps tryig to be practical rather than theological.)

Marital infidelity  is something that should not be legally condoned, or condoned by the Church. However, I would not push my moral position beyond that. The law against adultery and the adultery ground for divorce already contains defenses for both condonation and procurement. So, in the situation where both parties to the marriage enter into the marriage with the agreed intention of condonation or even procurement, I’d hesitate to be a moral judge. (With the "no fault divorce" law, they could get divorced anyway, but what if that were to change and divorce became more difficult to get without a legitimate reason?)

To speak against the practice, to advise against it, yes. To forbid it, no. People should be allowed make their own personal moral choices, though there should be guidance available for those who want it.  I would not change the law with regard to marriage to eliminate adultery as a ground for divorce, or to remove the defenses.

On the issue of multiparty marriages, that, too, is one that requires more examination. The state should provide a legal structure for various kinds of multiparty marriages (much as it allows various different kinds of business entities), all of which would require the up-front consent of all parties in advance, and all parties would have to be competent adults who freely and willingly enter into the arrangement with full knowledge and understanding and without any coercion. Ideally, each party should be required to be represented by an independent attorney as well, since it is not likely that most people would fully understand the various ramifications of such a marriage.

As I have pointed out in the past, the Catholic Church itself has examples of forms of multiparty marriage, albeit marriage-like family structures that do not require sexual congress among the parties – these are the various religious orders of priests, nuns, monks, lay brothers and sisters, particularly evident in those who live in religious communities, such as monasteries or convents.  In some ways, these are marriage-like structures modeled on the natural law relating to certain insect colonies and other creatures.

If Archbishop Dolan were pro-marriage, he’d be for both gender-neutral connubium and a framework for multiparty civil marriage that would protect all parties.  But he isn't - he is just pro one kind of marriage, and against other kinds.

Dolan’s blog post shills a bit for Robbie George. I have demolished some of Robbie’s writings in earlier blog essays –it would be a pleasure to do it again.

Dolan frustratingly holds “fast to the God-given definition of marriage, and acknowledge that no unfortunate legislative attempt can alter reality and morality.”

It’s interesting that in this, Dolan himself, like his mentor Robbie George, is retreating from reality in his inability to understand gender-neutral connubium as not affecting traditional marriage at all. He is retreating from morality by what I would call an institutionalized heterosexist blindness. It’s sad, really, that he does not understand that the misogynistic, heterosexist supremacist position of the Church is one which has no basis in Truth.  Heterosexist supremacism can be understood by an analogy to white racist supremacism - which I would assume is a concept the archbishop can readily grasp.  The idea that opposite-sex couples are superior to same sex couples, and that their legally sanctioned relationships should be better than those of same sex couples, that opposite sex couples have a relief valve for their natural sexual urges by way of a sanctioned moral marriage right, but that no same sex couple can have such a legal or moral outlet, is rooted in the same sort of thinking that led white supremacists to believe in the moral superiorityof the white race, that it is the pinnacle of evolution, and that the black race is destined by the Bible to be the chattel slaves of the white race, because they are the descendants of Canaan, and all the other arrant nonsense that goes witth the racial  bigotry of white supremacists.

Archbishop Dolan would have to be blind to be unable to make the connection.  He could try to rationalize the different kinds of -isms as having some sort of moral difference - but it would be just like turning to the Bible and retelling the story of the children of Ham to justify slavery.

Even so - he really likes his job, and he really wants that cardinal's hat.  Even if we could provoke a crisis of personal conscience in him, he would likely push it deep below his conscious thought, lest he run off the rails on his trajectory to a princedom in the Catholic hierarchy.

He started his essay with John the Baptist, and ended his article with Thomas More, both of whom quite literally lost their heads, while Dolan himself only loses his rationality and moral compass on the subject of marriage (to be fair, he does it on women's reproductive rights as well - but that's the misogyny again).

Thomas More was a brilliant man, but he was also a creature of his times. Neither the admittedly erudite but misguided Robbie George nor Archbishop Dolan can hide behind that fig leaf.  They live in a world where they have access to sufficient rational knowledge to change their views - unfortunately, the availability of Rational Truth may well not be efficacious in their cases.

An Open Letter: The "Unchanging" Church and Marriage

April 16, 2009

The Most Reverend Timothy Dolan
Archbishop of New York
1011 First Avenue
New York, New York 10022

Re: The “Unchanging” Church and Gender-Neutral Civil Marriage: An OPEN Letter

Your Excellency:

At the outset, I wish to welcome you to your new post as the apostate* spiritual leader of the millions of Roman Catholics in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York (NOTE: *apostate? This is a technical apostasy only applicable to the members of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, since the Mystical Body of Christ remained with me when Father David Clifford, the associate pastor of my former parish in Valhalla, New York, asked me to not come back in August 1999 because my transition was “causing a scandal in the church.” Prior to that I spent 15 years at that parish as the cantor for the 8:00 AM Sunday Mass, and I sang with the choir. I was involved with the parish Home School Association. I also spent three years studying for the priesthood at a Roman Catholic seminary. But all this is merely a footnote.)

Unfortunately you chose, at a press conference held just before your installation as Archbishop, to make at least two erroneous statements about Church history in a single phrase, namely, that the Faith “remains changeless and has for 2,000 years.”

Let’s take the second error first – the length of time the “Faith” has been around: Christianity was not founded until after Jesus Christ was crucified (and in accordance with the Faith, rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven). One might consider that the “foundation” at the earliest could be considered to have taken place at the original Pentecost – which means you’re over twenty years shy of two millennia. One might date the founding of the Roman Catholic Church to as late as the Great Schism of 1054 C.E., which split a then-somewhat-unified Christianity into two great groups – the rites of the Orthodox Churches and their various Patriarchates, and the rites (now pretty much a single Latin rite) associated with the Patriarch of Rome, who at that point was asserting the doctrine of papal supremacy; that the Pope was no longer primum inter pares among the patriarchal successors to the Apostles. If we take this later date, the Roman Catholic Church, while one of the successors or “daughter Churches” to the Christianity established at Pentecost and first doctrinally formalized at the first Council of Nicaea in 325 C.E., may be conceived, based on the time of this schism, to be something on the order of 45 years shy of one millennium.

That leads us to the second error, that the faith is “changeless.” Of course, this idea of changelessness can be dated, again, to either the formalization of the Faith in 325 C.E. at the time of the adoption of the Nicene Creed, or to 1054 C.E. when the Roman Church used the casus belli of its addition of the filioque to the Creed, changing it from the original. But that idea of changelessness in the faith, regardless of the date to which we can trace it, can only go to the so-called “core beliefs” that are shared by all who accept the tenets contained within the Nicene Creed (for our purposes, while I believe the Eastern Patriarchs were more correct on the filioque controversy, we’ll also leave that controversy to the side).

In your press conference you transferred that concept of “changelessness” from those central tenets of the Faith that are truly (well, except for the Great Schism) unchangeable for Catholic and Orthodox Christians, to those various bits and pieces of Church tradition that have only got only a rather relative and sometimes dubious longevity in practice, and to some of those doctrines adopted at Church Councils (sadly, none since a time prior to 1054 C.E. have been truly “universal” and thus can’t be seen as binding on Christianity – so the universally accepted councils, for those not steeped in Church History are Nicaea I - 325 C.E., Constantinople I – 381 C.E., Ephesus – 431 C.E., Chalcedon – 451 C.E., Constantinople II – 553 C.E., Constantinople III – 680-81 C.E., Nicaea II – 787 C.E.).

For example, the doctrine of papal infallibility dates only to 1870 C.E. – The Immaculate Conception dates only to a papal dogmatic declaration of 1854 C.E..

So let’s take a look at the current “controversial” things to which you seem to want to append the idea of “changelessness.”

Abortion: The Church’s initial teachings on “ensoulment” and abortion are based on writings of Aristotle, St. Jerome, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas – all of whom believed that “ensoulment” occurred several weeks after conception. Pope Innocent III, to whom one might ascribe “infallibility” (though there is the story of one Pope trying and condemning a deceased predecessor – try sorting *that* out), made it Church doctrine around the 13th century that abortion was permitted until fetal animation (called “quickening” Aquinas posited that girl souls were implanted at 90 days after conception, while boys got souls after only 40.

Of course, this medieval and Aristotelian-based philosophical stuff ignored the majestic message of Sacred Scripture, in which the infusion of the soul (and the soul’s taking leave of the body) is inextricably intertwined with breathing – the soul itself involves the “breath of God” or “the breath of life.”

It was not until the 19th century that the Church started to change its position on abortion – and, of course, we have Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae that is largely responsible for the Church losing its moral compass on the ideas and concepts of ensoulment and what constitutes a human being. Human life is a continuum, but a human being does not exist until birth and breath. Humanae Vitae prohibited Catholics from the use of any sort of artificial birth control.

It’s clear what the current Church hierarchy teachings are on abortion and birth control – I submit that while these may be binding on those Roman Catholics who accept the apostasy of the Church hierarchy in its misguidance of the flock, it is in no way appropriate for the hierarchy, and that means you, your Excellency, to take action as the agent of a foreign power to interfere with the constitution and laws of the State of New York and the United States as they apply to those citizens and inhabitants of the United States and the State of New York who do not subscribe to your hierarchical apostasy.

Let’s move on to priestly celibacy and the ordination of women. While these are certainly matters reserved to the hierarchy, it is exasperating when you take advantage of innocent Roman Catholics who are supposed to be members of your flock, who have not had the opportunity to take a seminary course in Church History, to misinform them that these things are “changeless” doctrines of the Church. Shame on you, your Excellency!

As you well know, the doctrine of priestly celibacy in the Western Church has its roots in canon XXXIII of the Spanish Council of Elvira (295-302 C.E.) – and this Western doctrine was expressly not adopted at Nicaea I in 325 C.E. – at which the Church Fathers merely confirmed the prohibition of mulieres subintroductas (no women in a bishop’s priest’s or deacon’s household except a female relative. Church tradition discouraging or forbidding priests marrying after ordination does predate the Council of Nicaea I. At various times in the West, similar prohibitions were adopted at various synods. The final thrust in the Roman Chuch came at Lateran Council II, at which the Church pronounced any marriage contracted by subdeacons or any members of higher orders to be invalid – leaving any conjugal relationships by clergy in the Western Church to be seen as mere concubinage. The celibacy doctrine was further reinforced at Lateran IV and Trent.

Still, the Church in the Modern World may well be prepared for changes in the doctrine – the large numbers of priests who are unable to keep to vows of celibacy and chastity, and who in attempting to suppress their sexual natures turn to alcohol abuse, child sexual abuse, seduction of widows and divorcees, and other matters one might deem to be “scandals in the Church.” While the apostate* Church response to the child abuse scandal has been a witch hunt to remove priests who were naturally endowed with a same-sex sexual orientation, you must know that does not address the root of the scandal.

As to the ordination of women? The early church ordained women. There is evidence in the writings of St. Paul that women were deaconesses, and as late as the 8th century C.E. there were bishopesses, priestesses and deaconesses (in these latter cases, these women were wives, respectively, of bishops, priests and deacons, with whom there were no longer supposed to be conjugal relations, but both husband and wide were to devote themselves to ministering to the flock).

Neither priestly celibacy nor the ban or ordination of women is “changeless” doctrine. However, the apostate hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has the power to change these things, at a Council, or upon a pronouncement by the Pope (neither of which seems to be likely). You, your Excellency, are certainly correct in asserting that you do not have the power to change these things. You do, however, have the power to privately (publicly would be scandalous, of course) express opinions to the Pope and your fellow bishops that a loosening of doctrine in these areas might be beneficial to the Church. (You also may truly believe that current doctrine rooted in long tradition should not be touched.)

Let’s move now to marriage, a matter which I take very seriously. I am most deeply disappointed in your opposition to the state recognizing civil marriage on a gender-neutral basis. I am aware of your history of anti-marriage activism in secular civil matters from when you were stationed in Wisconsin, where you strongly supported that state’s 2006 constitutional amendment prohibiting gender-neutral marriage and abused your episcopal power and authority to silence the vocal moral opposition of nearly 150 of your priests to this immoral, vile and heterosexual supremacist measure.

Based on this, I must come to the conclusion that your Excellency is really not such an Excellent personage, after all. I am well aware that you are constrained to obedience to the immoral and unethical pronouncements of Joseph Ratzinger (the apostate* anti-Pope Benedict XVI, and the chief architect of the retreat from Vatican II’s encounter between the Church and the Modern World) and the apostate* Roman Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the subjects of heterosexist supremacy and the institution of marriage.

You and your apostate* Church hierarchy are certainly entitled to limit sacramental Holy Matrimony to those who are approved and qualified to receive the sacrament by the apostate* Church rules. That is, at least one of the parties must be a Roman Catholic, and the other party, if not Roman Catholic, must solemnly agree that any children of the marriage are to be raised within the Roman Catholic Church in order to receive a dispensation and participate in the Sacrament. Longstanding but not “changeless” Church doctrine also requires the participants in a sacramental marriage to be members of the opposite sex relative to each other. (The early Church blessed same-sex unions, such as that between Saints Sergius and Bacchus, based on Sacred Scripture, which in 1 Samuel 18, we see a sacred marriage covenant entered into between God’s anointed, David, and King Saul’s son Jonathan, while later in the same chapter, when Saul gives to David Saul’s daughter Michal in marriage, accurate translations (such as Darby and ASV) make it clear that Saul proclaims that this marriage to Michal makes David Saul’s “son-in-law a second time” (the first time being in the marriage with Jonathan). This bit of Scripture is not taken out of context – and while it is clear that there are many references in Sacred Scripture to heterosexual marriage, this one reference makes it clear that same-sex marriage covenants, as well as polygamy, are sanctioned by Scripture, though not by current understandings of Church tradition. I grant that Jerome fudged the translation of the Vulgate in this chapter, leading King James, Douay-Rheims and other Vulgate-based translations into confusion, so you might dispute the reference to “son-in-law a second time – after all, it is Church doctrine that the Vulgate is the “official” Bible of the Catholic Church.

So we have long-standing but not “changeless” Church doctrine that deals with the Sacrament of Holy matrimony.

Where you and the apostate* Church hierarchy fall into deep immorality and error, is in the insistence that Church doctrine in the area of marriage must be applied in the secular law, despite the strong American secular traditions of the free exercise of religious belief, and the guarantees of individual rights and equal treatment under the law.

Your proclamation that you “don’t shy away from these things” and will work to oppose the gender-neutral marriage bill that Governor David Patterson is about to introduce, makes you an enemy of the American people and the social contract that is the basis and foundation of the United States of America and the State of New York.

There is an uneasy balance between the “majority rule” of democratic institutions, and the “tyranny of the majority” when democratic rule is misused and abused to create special rights for the majority in oppression of the minority. In this case, your erroneous position on civil marriage puts you on the wrong side of the principles of justice, fairness and equal protection under the law.

Your position pits you against the children being raised by same-sex partners in stable relationships. Your position pits you against same-sex partners with long-standing relationships who are forcibly separated under the immigration laws of the United States. Your position pits you against transsexual people – as you well know, the Church held in a sub secretum document published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2000 C.E. (leaked to Catholic News Service in 2002 C.E.) – it’s the Vatican’s position that transsexual people cannot be allowed to marry anyone (male, female, or other), must live lives of celibacy, and may not be admitted to holy orders or even be members of a religious order, congregation or convent (even third-order Franciscans!).

In this area of interference in the civil law, you, your “Excellency,” represent the worst in the abuse of Church doctrine to suborn the processes of secular affairs that have nothing to do with the Church.

While you may have to accept the pernicious and immoral pronouncements of the apostate* Church hierarchy, in particular the vile Considerations regarding proposals to give legal recognition to unions between homosexual persons of July 31, 2003, you are not obliged to blindly follow this. You have a right, as a person who may well have an ounce of moral fortitude in your soul, to take this particular declaration of Church policy in such a way as to permit you to take the high road on this issue and not actually interfere in the process of recognition of the civil rights of the minority. It is not a sin of omission to refrain from taking action to oppose civil laws that would permit government to cease oppressing the minority that your superiors in the apostate* Church have immorally and in an ultra vires manner ordered you to oppress. You may have the moral compass to refuse immoral orders of your superiors – indeed, you have the duty to refuse these orders.

I warn you, however, your “Excellency,” that your interference in secular and civil law in this area will be met with vigorous opposition. If you succeed in your quest to stifle this legislation, you will find me as a strong advocate in opposition to your apostate* Church.

Among the things I might consider:

- laws that would require all of the clergy and members of the hierarchy of your apostate* Church in the United States register as agents of a foreign power. (This thinking is not original on my part – Cardinal Law had to be dissuaded from claiming diplomatic immunity on this sort of basis when his diocesan priestly sex scandal caused him much grief.)

The fact is, the only religion in the world with which the United States maintains a diplomatic ambassadorial relationship is the apostate* Roman Catholic Church, by virtue of its temporal administration of the Vatican City-State. It makes perfect sense to see Catholic prelates who seek to apply principles of the 2003 abomination of a doctrinal message in interfering with American legislative and judicial processes as “agents of a hostile foreign power.” This would not be an unwarranted breach by the State of the separation of government and religion, but an appropriate and necessary reaction to a religious cancer that has already interfered enough in secular affairs.

- laws denying the hostile foreign power apostate* Roman Catholic Church the right to own tax-exempt real estate in the United States, with the exception of embassies and consulates (cathedrals, Episcopal residences and diocesan administrative offices would qualify, assuming we are continuing to maintain diplomatic relations with the Holy See, but not the ownership of parish churches and schools – these would also have no break from local taxation, since they are used by the hostile foreign power to interfere with the internal affairs of the civil law of the United States and the several States; they may even be subject to seizure).

In addition to legislation along one or more of these lines, and the denial of tax exemptions, there are other things I might consider advocating. Since you, and other bishops, on behalf of the apostate* Roman Catholic Church hierarchy officially act in a hostile manner toward the rights and freedoms of the People, as the agent of a hostile foreign power, with the purpose of subverting the American system of government and establishing a sort of Christianist theocracy, I would urge the federal government to break off diplomatic relations and expel all of the hierarchy (or at least those acting in such a hostile manner) from the territory of the United States until such time that the Vatican agrees to not interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States or the several States and at least as to the United States, rescinds the July 2003 document which is the basis for malicious interference in secular affairs.

I admit that these may seem to be somewhat “fringe” positions to take – but they would represent an appropriate response to your proposed active interference on behalf of the apostate* Church in secular matters, if it should be successful (I would not bother to advocate that the apostate* Church be treated as a “hostile foreign power” if you fail, hostile though the hierarchy may be by its actions to people like me). You cannot expect to be able to abuse your position of power as Archbishop of New York without risking the potential adverse consequences of violating the boundaries between Church and State, particularly when the Church you represent is also a Sovereign State in its own right.

Now that I have gotten the unpleasant matters out of the way, I do welcome you to New York. I understand that in areas other than these controversial areas of apostate* Church immorality and hostility to the interests of the people of the State of New York and the United States, you are reputed to be a fine preacher and a prelate who gets along well with your priests, at least with those who are quiet about matters which they might otherwise express disagreement.

While I have shaken the dust of your apostate* Church that has rejected me, from the sandals on my feet, I do retain a certain interest in Catholic matters. While my faith has unraveled to the extent that I am more theologically comfortable with Unitarian Universalism than I am with the sort of things I had to suspend my disbelief to accept that are among the minutiae of Roman Catholic teachings, including some things that are articles of faith under both versions of the Nicene Creed (oh, I *could* believe in some of these things, but the Church’s failures in moral theological maters has made me suspect of its authority in other areas in which it claims to be the possessor of the sole and complete Truth – so it makes me question things like the Church’s understanding of the “Virgin Birth,” the “Immaculate Conception,” the “Assumption” and even a truly central tenet such as the Resurrection. These days I think Thomas Jefferson had a better grasp of the Nature of Jesus than any Catholic theologian – but then again, that’s my personal faith development after having been rejected by the apostate* Church).

In any event, I do hope that despite our doctrinal, political, and other differences, that you serve the Catholic population of the Archdiocese of New York in an appropriate way as a good and faithful Shepherd of this large and diverse flock. I may be among the Other Sheep, exiled and outcast from that flock for being different, but that does not prevent me from wishing you well in those aspects of your work that involve ministering to the legitimate spiritual needs of the Catholics under your jurisdiction.

With warmest regards,

s/
Joann Marie Prinzivalli, Serva Servarum Deae
State Director, New York Transgender Rights Organization (NYTRO)