Letters

Disobedience at Issue

Posted

Mr. Pascarella’s comment that “…the Church’s liberal faction that seeks to empathize and placate the secular culture…is a grave mistake” (CNY, Letters, Oct. 15), regarding the Kim Davis meeting with Pope Francis, is a mischaracterization of many complaints about that event. The meeting was not revealed by the Vatican, but rather by Ms. Davis and her lawyers. She gave it the spin that it got in U.S. newspapers. There are some of us who cared little about her alleged act of civil disobedience for religious liberty rather than the way she did it. Kentucky law does not make her but rather the County Clerk Office the determinant of licensing for marriage. She prohibited heterosexual couples from licensing as well as gay couples. In addition, she imposed her religious viewpoint on the employees in her office, who obviously did not share her religious sentiments because, when ordered by the court, they fulfilled the responsibilities of the County Clerk’s Office under the law.

 I prefer the civil disobedience of a Dorothy Day whose attitudes and behaviors contrary to American law and policies won her the disapprobation of many, even her co-religionists, as well as jail. That’s asserting religious liberty in my mind.

Vincent Gaglione

Scarsdale