Seattle, Wash., Jul 21, 2004 / 22:00 pm
Separation of church and state does not mean that Catholics should not bring universal principles and values to the public arena, said Archbishop Alexander J. Brunett in an editorial in the Seattle Times yesterday.
The archbishop wrote the editorial after some pro-abortion Catholic politicians responded negatively to his recent pastoral letter. In the editorial, he reiterated some of the major points of his pastoral letter, stating that it is not up to ministers of the Eucharist to withhold Communion without dialogue or due process, but that pro-abortion politicians should refrain from receiving Communion.
In the editorial, the archbishop defended his pastoral letter as an attempt “to dispel the notion, proposed by some, that the constitutional separation of church and state implies that religious leaders should not involve themselves in politics when moral principles are at stake” and to remind Catholics that “if they profess to be in communion with the Church, their faith values must inform their political actions and not the other way around.
“Some have suggested that the constitutional separation between church and state amounts to a prohibition against church leaders involving themselves in politics. This misunderstanding turns the constitutional protection on its head,” read the archbishop’s editorial.