How Dare You Believe Differently!

Making up things is one of my strong points. I will begin this Blog Posting by making up a quote that was not spoken in our Senate...Or was it not?

 

On February 3^rd I published a Blog Posting about the very strong possibility that a Cure for Cancer will be coming out of the State of Israel within the coming year. Will we hear this said in the Senate?...

“Don’t get me wrong. I have all the sympathy in the world for those suffering from the ravages of Cancer. As strong as my sentiments and empathy for these suffering people may be, we cannot allow a drug with such Strong Religious Overtones to be released on an unsuspecting world.”

That’s Nuts! A quote of this Magnitude of Foolishness would never be uttered anywhere. Certainly it would not be spoken in our Senate...Or would it not?

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The fodder for this Blog Posting comes from an article written by Eugene F. Rivers who is a Pentecostal Minister and is a director of the Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies.

 

The is the last paragraph of his article is:

We non-Catholics must also stand up, if not for courage then for survival. When first they come for the Catholics, we can be certain that all of us are next, and that the respect for faith and diversity of belief that made this country a beacon of freedom is now under severe threat—even from those we entrust with its defense.

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Brian Buescher was nominated On October 10, 2018 to serve as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska. Two Senators attacked him in the Senate for belonging to the Knights of Columbus an organization that has been “guilty” of doing good things for the past 140 years.

 

Here come the bullets...

Ø It has a long and continuing record of doing Charitable Work.

Ø In the past decade alone it has performed $1 billion of assistance and hundreds of millions of hours of service to Charitable Causes.

Ø For more than a century it bravely defended minorities.

Ø It ran integrated hospitality and recreation centers for troops in World War I (the only charitable organization that did so).

Ø To confront prejudice in the teaching of history in the 1920s, this organization commissioned books on Black and Jewish History in America.

Ø It stood against the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, the height of its power, helping fund the Supreme Court case that defeated the Klan-backed ban on Catholic Education in Oregon.

Ø It spoke out against the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany as early as the 1930s.

Ø Today they assist victims of the Islamic State.

 

A Fella Question: Which one of the above bullets disqualifies a member of the Knights of Columbus from becoming a Judge?

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President Kennedy was a member of the Knights of Columbus.

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More from Eugene F. Rivers’ article...

If Catholics like the Knights can be targeted, what should members of my Pentecostal Church expect? We share traditional views on abortion and marriage. What about Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Mormons and evangelical Christians? Even the Rev. Martin Luther King’s biblical beliefs would be anathema to some currently serving in the Senate.

 

If certain senators refuse to see the good that people of faith contribute to their communities, perhaps they can at least recall the First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise of religion or Article VI of the Constitution, which prohibits religious tests for public office.

 

At a 2014 Vatican conference where I (Mr. Rivers) spoke, Pope Francis preached about the Catholic definition of marriage. The Holy Father said he hoped the conference would “be an inspiration to all who seek to support and strengthen the union of man and woman in marriage as a unique, natural, fundamental and beautiful good for persons, communities, and whole societies.”

 

Should anyone loyal to the church’s teachings be barred from public office? There is no reason to accept such political bigotry but this isn’t about anyone’s membership in a particular group. It is about silencing believers of any kind whose views differ from the views of certain Senators on social issues.

 

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Lagniappe:  Even though the two Senators who attacked Brescher have been rebuked by the Senate on January 16, 2019 (affirmed without objection)..."the sense of the Senate that disqualifying a nominee to federal office on the basis of membership in the Knights of Columbus violates the Constitution of the United States", I could not find where his nomination has yet been approved.