JAMES PAPILLO AND THE ATTACK ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
March 10th, 2006 by Peter
Reactions in defense of James Papillo have been coming in fast and furious over the last 24 hours or so. FIC sent an action alert yesterday inviting our members to e-mail their thanks to Dr. Papillo. Hundreds have already done so and you can too by clicking here.
Annie Banno, Connecticut state leader of Silent No More and a blogger on the remarkable After Abortion web site, provides data which raises questions about the morning-after pill itself while noting the anti-Catholicism behind the effort to push the pill on Catholic hospitals and the attack on Dr. Papillo.
Today’s Courant cartoon by Bob Englehart raises further concerns about anti-religious bigotry. Mr. Englehart thinks the financial benefits of church/state relations only run one way. If all our Catholic hospitals closed tomorrow and the taxpayers were suddenly forced to pay the bill for all the uninsured folks that those hospitals provide for, he would discover how wrong-headed his cartoon is.
Lt. Gov. Kevin Sullivan has been telling Brad Davis’ radio audience, and some of our members who have e-mailed him, that he is no longer calling for Dr. Papillo’s resignation because Dr. Papillo has supposedly acknowledged that he was wrong. But there is nothing on Sullivan’s website retracting his demand for resignation–and the original demand, which is even more obnoxious the most unflattering media reports of the Lieutenant Governor’s press conference, is still featured prominently. Lt. Gov. Sullivan is telling his anti-religious constituency one thing while saying something different to religious voters who have expressed their unhappiness to him.
Noting that the abortion-inducing “contraception” pill bill would require religious hospitals “to act in direct contravention of their faith’s tenets,” it is the Waterbury Republican-American that, as usual, hits the mark regarding this week’s events:
For any who believe in choice, that should be a telling point. Requiring Catholic physicians and pharmacists to dispense the morning-after pill would be akin to requiring a kosher delicatessen to serve ham salad, or adding a public school requirement that all students pass a physical-education course in modern dance with no exemption for Protestant pupils who believe dancing is a sin.
However, on Tuesday, instead of respecting Mr. Papillo’s choices, Lt. Gov. Kevin B. Sullivan called for Mr. Papillo to resign. Lt. Gov. Sullivan “accused Papillo of advocating for his personal beliefs and failing to fulfill the mission of his office,” The Associated Press reported. Lt. Gov. Sullivan didn’t cite specific rape victims who had wanted the pill in question but had been thwarted by a Catholic hospital. Might that not be because there aren’t any?
On the morning-after-pill issue, Mr. Papillo made and explained a choice. But it wasn’t Lt. Gov. Sullivan’s choice. And, all too typical of all too many “pro-choice” partisans like Lt. Gov. Sullivan, daring to make a choice other than theirs simply could not be tolerated.
