NEW YORK (CNA/EWTN News) — Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn said Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the New York state Legislature have “deconstructed the most important institution in human history.”
The New York Legislature passed the same-sex “marriage” bill on June 24 by a 33-29 vote.
Bishop DiMarzio joined his fellow state bishops in opposing the measure in a joint statement.
In a separate statement the Brooklyn bishop said Cuomo “has opened a new front in the culture wars that are tearing at the fabric of our nation.”
“Republicans and Democrats equally share responsibility for this ruinous legislation, and we as Catholics should hold all accountable for their actions,” he added.
An amendment to the same-sex “marriage” bill granted some religious freedom protections to religious groups, but not to those working in wedding-related industries.
New York Catholic Conference director Dennis Poust told EWTN News June 15 that if the bill passed “there is very little that can be done,” since New York does not have a system of voter initiatives and referenda like California and some other states.
In protest of the decision and the “corrupt political process in New York state,” Bishop DiMarzio said he has asked all Catholic schools to refuse any distinction or honors granted by the governor or any member of the Legislature who voted to support the legislation. He has also asked all pastors and school principals not to invite any state legislator to speak or be present at any parish or school celebration.
The bishop said that the governor and the Legislature have “demonized people of faith” and “identified them as bigots and prejudiced.”
“It is mystifying that this bill would be passed on the last day of an extended session under the cover of darkness,” he said.
The bishop added in an editorial in the New York Daily News, “That there was virtually no public debate on the issue and that the entire matter was concluded in just over thirty-minutes late on a Friday evening is disgraceful.”
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My only question is, will there now be some Church action against those catholic members of the government who voted for this bill, starting of course with the #1 lawmaker in the state Governor Cuomo?
We could use more courageous bishops like Bp. DiMarzio. But, with all due respect, words are cheap. As for “...and we as Catholics should hold all accountable for their actions.” Does this include Canon 915, Your Excellency?
Our Constitution protects our Right to practice our Faith in private as well as in public, thus this new law is unconstitutional not just because there is no inherent right to engage in demeaning sexual acts. How can someone be an anti-catholic Catholic and still be for Christ and His Church?
IS it not time that the Roman Catholic Church along with a few other Protestant denominations be kicked out of the United States for violation the Separation of Church and State clause as well as the Establishment clause of the US Constitition? This is a warning as a time will come when the Church will be removed from this great country for trying to involve itself in politics, starting religious wars because it is too stupid to learn from its past mistakes through the centuries and often acting hypocritically—as it ALWAYS has in the past. Bishops have absolutely no right nor the Church to influence or try to influence the laws which the Government makes. This is not a fascist country but a country founded upon freedom and those freedoms also give us Constitutionally the absolute right to be free of religion, any church et al. Think this is not possible because of the first amendment? Well if you so believe then you are absolutely wrong. The Protestant Episcopal Church has already suffered such a banned during the years this country was first established (and it is a miracle that the Roman Catholics did not suffer the same banishement). IT was not until circa 1840 that the Protestant Episcopal Church was allowed to legally operate again in the US and a Bishop had to be brought from London to help re-establish it because no one was qualified to be a Bishop. If the church wants to be backward as it was in the case of Galleo and wants to cling to the ignorance of a stone and bronze age people that maybe its right for it to tell its flock but not use them to conspire to subvert civil law but it has no right to tell Joe Blow who is not Roman Catholic and an atheist or John Chang who is a Buddhist. Mohammed Alcazar, who is an Islamic, James Shah who is an Zaroastian or Mary Haven who is an Protestant agnostic or Minnie Pearl who is relgiously neutral being neither atheist or believer in any faith at all; what they should believe or what the civil laws will or should be.
Is the Church to stupid to learn from its 2ooo year history and the evils and turpitudes it has perpetuated against Governments resulting in Goverments acting against it? Lets do a review of them here since one early Pope—-who began a religious war of intolerance against Moslems and Jews that has persisted to this very day; The Inquistion in which the Church murdered over 6-million people (including the Cathars) accused of thought crimes such as murder (does not the church obey its own tenants—thou shalt not do no murder?)or is it an establishment which is little more than a hypocrit using religion as a power grabbing device? The Church’s destruction and extinction of cultures in the name of Jesus et al? THE CHURCH MUST ABSOLUTELY OBEY THE CIVIL LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES AND THAT MEANS LEAVING IT POLITICALLY ALONE!!!!!!!. GIVE UNTO CAESAR what is Caesar’s and give to GOD what is HIS. If it does not it will suffer the same fate it has repeatedly over the centuries such as in Revolutionary France, the beginnings of the Soviet Union, China, and elsewhere in the world. It is only with diplomatic mercy that it is allowed to have diplomatic relations in the US and now we see what the church has done—-instead of behaving itself and being content to have diplomatic relations and allowed to operate its churches—-it now after being given an inch is now trying to take a thousand or more miles. This is no longer the dark ages but the age of information. People are not stupid and that is why they are leaving the Roman Catholic Church in droves not to mention the pedophile scandals it has been involved in. The US Constition is not about fascism far from it—it is about exanding individual rights as much as possible. Actually the rights of gay people have always been the equal rights of everyone except that groups like the Roman Catholic Church just like the KKK and the Nazi’s have oppressed these rights—-Shame on it. The Church can believe in any fairy tale it wishes but that does not make it morally right—one can be very morally wrong by being very right—-example the teaching at one time that Jews murdered Christ. The forbidding of teaching that the earth is NOT the center of the solar system et al.
The United States is a great land of a people of great diversity and customs. IT is the duty of the Church to respect this, to stay out of politics and the peoples right to love, marry whomever they wish without regards to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation et al as well as stop pepetuating ignorance of ancient peoples. If the church wantes to grow in these United States it must abstain from extremism and cease to turn people off to it by violating human and civil rights which it seems it regularly does in one form or another by perpetuating fascism instead of democrasy.
Our unalienable Rights are unalienable because they come from God, and thus the purpose of our unalienable Rights is what God intended.
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