Chaput's Spin - Theocracy

In an article in the Rocky Mountain News this morning, Jean Torkelson tells us that Archbishop Charles Chaput's (for those who asked, it's pronounced Cha--poo) latest column in the Denver Catholic Register chides those of us who voice the belief that there ought to be a separation of church and state and that giving voice to the affirmation that no one should attempt to impose their particular beliefs on society are, in Chaput's words, voicing "...slogans [and] sound bites designed to shut down serious thought."

Chaput goes on to say that (and read these words very carefully), "No one in mainstream American politics wants a theocracy. No on wants to turn meatless Fridays into federal law. So we need to understand these concerns for what they really are: ultimately dangerous arguments that confuse our national memory and identify."

Now remember: Chaput has advised his flock of some 370,000 Catholics that a vote for John Kerry is a sin and they will need to absolve themselves and confess to that sin, before receiving communion after the election.

Okay. Lets look at the definition of the word theocracy: 1. a form of government in which God or a deity is recognized as the supreme civil ruler, the God's or deity's laws being interpreted by the ecclesiastical authorities; 2. a system of government by priests claiming a divine commission.

Admonishing your flock, dear Archbishop, that God's law precludes them from voting for a particular candidate and, if they do so, will not be held in good stead by the Holy Father you purport to represent on earth; doesn't that, dear Archbishop, sound a little theocratic?

Never mind asking Marilyn Musgrave to drum up a Constitutional Amendment instituting meatless Fridays. (Oh, wouldn't McDonalds like that one!) No, let's just go straight for the jugular; let's ban good people from using the magnificent, God-given miracle of the human brain to actually think for themselves. Let's actually write into the Constitution that giving voice to slogans and sound bites that question such paltry concerns as the separation of church and state and not forcefully or otherwise imposing your particular beliefs on other people; let's make those silly subjects the stuff of Constitutional prohibition -- kind of like yelling fire in a crowded theater when there isn't really a fire. Remember that one, dear Archbishop?

That, dear Archbishop, you actually believe that good Catholics will buy your argument that those who happen to think for themselves and are able to reconcile with their conscience those things they truly believe -- like, for instance, that there ought to be a separation of church and state and that, indeed, no one should force their particular beliefs down someone else's throat -- are "...ultimately dangerous arguments that confuse our national memory and identity..." is an absurd distortion on the real promise of this country where religious freedom became one of the essential components of who we are as a country; of this great melting pot of Catholic and Jew, Muslim and Protestant, atheist and agnostic.

Upton Sinclair writes in World's End: "It's nice to have a religion... Saves all the trouble of having to think."