Atheists excited that the Ten
Commandments display will no longer be seen may have only temporary cause to
celebrate, because it looks like they’ll be seeing the display in thousands of
other places around the community instead.
Three Pennsylvania churches have responded to the removal of a Ten
Commandments display on public high school property by distributing 1,500 signs
that feature God’s famed rules for humanity.
Debate raged earlier this year when
the New Kensington-Arnold School District removed the Ten Commandments display
from Valley High School; but three churches — Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Church
of North Huntingdon, St. Agnes Church of North Huntingdon and Immaculate
Conception Church of Irwin — decided to take action, reports The Christian Post. These churches handed out signs featuring the
Ten Commandments all over town to residents who were interested in taking a
stand on the dispute by placing placards in their yards.
Father John Moineau of Immaculate
Conception and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton told The
Christian Post that he felt it was a good opportunity for people to defend religious
freedom; but he offered up two additional explanations:
“The
second reason was to awaken the natural law that has been written on every
human heart and resonating in each soul,” he said. “In the face of relativism society needs to
know that these truths are loving truths that lead to harmony, happiness and
the fullness of life.
The
third reason, Moineau said, was to offer a reminder to every person who saw the
signs that God commands people to love others, to show mercy and to remember a
“merciful God that forgives.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF),
an atheist activist group, claimed victory earlier this year after the New
Kensington-Arnold School District announced plans to remove the 6-foot Ten Commandments
display. “The federal lawsuit was
victoriously settled on February 15, 2017, when the school district agreed to
remove the Ten Commandments marker, and pay attorneys’ fees of $163,500, of
which more than $40,000 will go to FFRF for its attorney time and reimbursement
of costs,” read a statement on the FFRF website.
The legal battle touched off in September
2012 when the FFRF wrote a letter telling the district that the monument was
illegal. Officials responded by
defending its presence, which led to a legal back and forth that didn’t
conclude until the atheist group finally won a settlement earlier this year.
TribLIVE.com has more on the
history:
“In
a highly-publicized case, a monument with the Ten Commandments was moved in
October 2015 from outside Connellsville Area Junior High to the Connellsville
Church of God, which is adjacent to the entrance of Connellsville Area Senior
High School. The monument was boarded up
in 2012 after the Freedom From Religion Foundation filed a lawsuit on behalf of
a student in the district. That battle
over the monument’s location spawned a Thou Shall Not Move organization that
opposed moving the monument from where it had been since 1957.”
For now, the battle is over, but the
presence of the Ten Commandments on private property is more pronounced than
ever.
To the FFRF – Be careful what you ask
for … for you’ve now multiplied a single Ten Commandments monument by the
thousands!
Rev.
Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor,
Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
No comments:
Post a Comment