Churches are exempt from paying taxes; political organizations are not. All too often, though, the former morph into the latter, and it’s for that reason that many of us feel that churches should not enjoy tax-exempt status. Usually, priests and pastors couch these statements in less obviously political language. It fools no one, and of course, the congregants generally support that language and their perceived right to say it in an organization that pays no taxes — it’s seen as first amendment rights.
So to be present when blatantly political speech takes place in the context of prayer makes someone who holds the above views quite irate.
Today, we went to mass at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, a church that we’ve attended a few times, and probably would attend more often given the difficulty of signing up for one of the available slots at our parish’s reduced-capacity masses. But I for one will not set foot in that building again after the blood-boiling nonsense I heard today. During the general intercessions, when it came time for the priest to add his intentions, he prayed for Trump and his pick for the Supreme Court position. I really wanted to walk out at that point, but I remained. It wasn’t as if he were thanking his god — which I put in lower-case, for it seems to be the god of political power — for the death of Ginsberg; he was merely supporting the hypocrisy of the right. Given the historical hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, it shouldn’t come as much surprise that a priest would promote and praise political hypocrisy in the name of maintaining power.
As the mass was ending, though, during the time just before the benediction when the priest usually makes announcements, he launched into another political speech about the importance of the Supreme Court nomination. I’d had enough. I walked out.
Meanwhile, last Sunday, in Wisconsin (from our state news source):
“Members of the Catholic community are speaking out about the divide and pain they’re feeling after a video of a La Crosse priest denouncing Democrats in the church went viral.
The video, produced and published by a far-right media outlet, features Father James Altman of the St. James the Less church in La Crosse, condemning Democratic Party-supporting Catholics as imposters who are going to hell, and repeated common right-wing conspiracy theories about things like climate change and Planned Parenthood. … An online petition has garnered nearly 66,000 signatures in support of the priest so far.”