Dear Editor,
The Dispatch’s endorsement of taxpayer aid to maintain
California’s Catholic missions (
”
Saving Our Missions,
”
Jan. 31) fails to grapple with some important points.
Dear Editor,
The Dispatch’s endorsement of taxpayer aid to maintain California’s Catholic missions (“Saving Our Missions,” Jan. 31) fails to grapple with some important points.
The authors of our Constitution maintained that citizens should not be compelled to support religion. President James Madison, considered the father of the Constitution, vetoed a congressional bill in 1811 that granted a mere parcel of land to a Baptist church.
Americans United has challenged the California Missions Preservation Act because we believe houses of worship should look to private donations, not tax dollars to pay for their construction and repair. If a church is owned by religious authorities, has an active congregation and is used regularly for services, it should be responsible for its own upkeep.
Nineteen of California’s 21 mission churches are owned by the Catholic Church and still used for services. They are indeed historic, but they are dedicated to worship, not tourism. It is wrong for government to try to designate them as museums when they remain sacred spaces.
Americans will generously support the mission churches if asked. Cardinal Roger Mahoney raised more than $189 million to build a new Catholic cathedral in Los Angeles that opened debt-free in 2002.
The First Amendment is under assault today and we must not allow it to be undermined. The Bush administration’s so-called “faith-based” initiative, for example, seeks to funnel millions of public dollars into the coffers of religious organizations.
The administration is attempting to establish a precedent of funding the repair of houses of worship that can claim historic significance. Once such a precedent is established, there will be little to prevent the federal government from subsidizing other houses of worship for an array of “secular” reasons. Where will it end? Our nation will have swapped its system of voluntary support for religion for taxpayer-supported faith.
We can restore the walls of California’s mission churches without knocking down the vital “wall of separation” between church and state.
Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Executive Director, Americans United for Separation of Church and State
