Dear Parishioners,
 
I forgot to mention in last week’s bulletin that our school email addresses were not working for the months of July and August. Fortunately, the emails are up and running once again (and just in time). We took the opportunity to make the emails slightly easier to remember and type into an email client. The new ending for the emails is now @stspawtucket.com. If you sent an email to any school email address over the summer I apologize that you did not get a response, but that was the reason.
While our parish school begins another school, I too resume studies for Canon Law. This semester I have two classes that I am taking remotely: Latin (again [as a requirement, fortunately not because I failed the first time]), and Supra-Diocesan Structures. The structures course deals with all the organizing bodies of the church: archdioceses, dicasteries, councils, and so on. Typically, as Catholics we deal directly with parishes and dioceses, but above them we find the bureaucratic apparatus of the Catholic Church throughout the world.
Meanwhile, you might have seen in the news the recent fundraiser hosted by Salve Regina University. Bishop Henning gave an excellent response that I encourage everyone to read. You can find that here: https://dioceseofprovidence.org/ri-catholic-conference-faithful-citizenship. I want to take this opportunity to reflect on the relationship between religion and politics (briefly of course).
Washington once said, “Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.” Washington, the other founding fathers, and the states themselves saw the value of religion in the public domain, but today the metaphor “Separation of Church and State” has come to mean the prohibition of public displays of faith (the removal of crucifixes and Biblical quotations) and the prohibition of religion in political discourse. Interestingly it is a phrase not found in the Constitution but is shorthand to refer to the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” How do we interpret this amendment? Since 1947 there have been three contemporary interpretations of “Separation of Church and State:” strict separationism, non-preferentialism, and the jurisdictional/federalism enhancing view.
Strict separationism prohibits the government from any religious influence or exercise (the government is to be irreligious), and vice versa. Non-preferentialism believes that the national government will not establish an official church of the U.S. and it will not favor one religion over another. This does not exclude government support for or influence from a particular religion. Nor does it prohibit the government from supporting piety, religiosity, and religiously grounded morality. The jurisdictional-enhancing view argues for no official church and offers protection to each state to maintain religious establishments and policies within its borders. Only one interpretation prohibits the influence of religion in politics and that is the first, which, not surprisingly, has been invoked to silence religious influence in politics. By and large the founding fathers saw the value of the influence of religion in politics (as Washington declared above).
If anyone says to you: “your opinion is invalid because you are a Catholic and religion cannot be involved in public policies,” then they are following only one interpretation of the Constitution. We can appeal to the founding fathers and to the Constitution to support us in our efforts as Catholic Citizens.
 
In Christ,
Fr. Barrow