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60 Years Is Just Too Much
A Catholic service organization has sued the Biden administration for religious discrimination after it was stopped from holding its longstanding Memorial Day mass at a national park.
Attorneys for the Knights of Columbus filed a motion for a temporary restraining order against the National Park Service in Petersburg, Virginia, on Tuesday, after officials refused to grant a permit for the religious service at the Poplar Grove National Cemetery.
This is the second year in a row the religious group has been denied a permit at the Virginia national park where they had been holding the Memorial Day mass for the past 60 years.
“The policy and the decision blocking the Knights of Columbus from continuing their long-standing religious tradition is a blatant violation of the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” McGuireWoods attorney John Moran, who is suing the NPS on behalf of the Knights, said in a press release. “We urge the court to grant our restraining order and allow the Knights to hold their service this Memorial Day.”
I’m not surprised by this news. We are living in an age where you will only be allowed to worship once a week. You will not be allowed anything more than that. The 1st Amendment is becoming freedom from religion in the public square.
I do take comfort in the fact that after the Civil War, the five chaplains that earned the Medal of Honor were Catholic priests. One of the priests who taught at my Catholic university was on a Normandy beach on D-Day. Another priest who taught students after I left school was in Afghanistan. His tour ended, and after a few months passed he asked to go back to Afghanistan.
I’m sure that the Knights of Columbus and Catholic families have their share of veterans and family members who have served in the past and are serving now. Memorial Day can be both a time for remembrance as well as the simple celebration of family picnics. A celebration that was bought with sacrifice.
The video tells the story of one of five Catholic chaplains.
Published in Military
Santo Subito, Fr. Kapaun!
We are really in dark times. As a side note, calling the Knights of Columbus a “Catholic service organization” misses the mark as well.
this is not really unexpected. Understand our country has never been a Catholic nation, just a Christian one that has never liked Catholics.
Thank you Doug.
Thank you – that was very moving.
Thanks, Doug. A wonderful tribute, too.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68553385/knights-of-columbus-council-694-v-national-park-service/
The return home.
Requesting permission to lose all composure, sir!
Father Kapaun grew up and served as a priest at Pilsen, Kans., which is less than twenty miles from where I live. Pilsen has a stunningly beautiful Catholic church and a museum for Father Kapaun in the rectory. I believe he is the only Medal of Honor winner from our county. He has an amazing life story.
Instead of mandatory DEI training, federal employees need intensive First Amendment 101 education. This kind of nonsense seems to happen all the time. It is not even a misapplication of the Establishment Clause but some fuzzy notion that some anti-Christian individual might be deeply offended because traditional morality is a de facto hate crime.
State and local public school officials invariably think the Establishment Clause negates all the other express freedoms in the amendment. A clergyman of any Christian faith on campus is considered legally dangerous unlike an imam, a drag queen, a shaman, or an abortionist.
Wow!
Update: The National Park Service will allow the Mass to be said, the Knights of Columbus have withdrawn their lawsuit.
Another case of an underling being stupid, until someone higher up found out?
Excellent!
A leader in both spiritual matters and in damage control.
He along with other crew members did not give up the ship
https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/joseph-t-ocallahan