QUINCY, Massachusetts (LifeSiteNews) — A liberal activist judge blocked a Massachusetts town from putting up statues of St. Michael the Archangel and St. Florian outside a new public safety building, following a lawsuit from the ACLU of Massachusetts.
Justice William Sullivan sided with the ACLU and against the town of Quincy and said that putting up the statues “convey a message endorsing one religion over others.” He issued a preliminary injunction, siding with the left-wing ACLU and Freedom From Religion Foundation, an anti-Catholic group.
The statues would go outside a new building that would include administrative offices for the police and fire departments.
St. Michael is the patron saint of police officers, and St. Florian is the patron saint of firefighters.
The ACLU claimed the statues explicitly pushed Catholicism.
“The lawsuit argues that the placement on government property of the proposed religious statues violates Article 3 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights by imposing religious imagery and symbols upon all who work in, visit, or pass by the public safety building,” a news release on the ruling stated. The statues do so “by conveying the message that Quincy is a Catholic community and that non-Catholics do not belong and are less valued; and by excessively entangling the City with matters of religion.”
The left-wing legal group did not respond to an email Monday morning that asked if it wanted other statues removed that represented religious figures, such as Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister. St. Michael the Archangel is also in the Old Testament – the ACLU also did not answer a question on how the statue is specifically Catholic, since Jewish people could find a statue of him to be a positive representation of their faith.
However, the leader of a Catholic advocacy group in Massachusetts criticized the judge’s decision in emailed comments to LifeSiteNews.
“Mayor [Thomas] Koch is correct in asserting that the images of Saint Michael and Saint Florian honor the culture and reflect the iconography of police officers and firefighters,” C.J. Doyle told LifeSiteNews. He is the executive director of the Catholic Action League.
There is a deep history of first responders embracing these two saints, Doyle said:
Florian Hall in Dorchester is the home of Boston Firefighters Local 718, International Association of Firefighters.
The First Responders Foundation sponsors the Ancient Order of Saint Michael and Saint Florian, which awards a two sided medal to police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians who have “demonstrated the highest standards of integrity, bravery, honor and moral character, displaying an outstanding degree of professional competence, and leadership.”
The ruling is also hypocritical, because other Massachusetts towns have buildings named for religious leaders, Doyle said.
“For many years, the West Roxbury District of Boston had a Theodore Parker Public School, named after the notorious Unitarian minister and vicious anti-Catholic bigot, who wrote that ‘after slavery, Catholicism is the most dangerous institution in America,’ and who demanded that ‘Paddys’ be quarantined for 21 years upon arrival in America, claiming that they could never be truly ‘cleaned,’” Doyle told LifeSiteNews.
“One of the oldest public libraries in the Commonwealth, Cary Library in Lexington, has a famous bust of Theodore Parker,” he said.
He said anti-Catholic prejudice is ultimately what motivates the ACLU, pointing out the group has sued to try to force Catholic hospitals to kill preborn babies and to sterilize women. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, which is part of the lawsuit, has a deep history of Catholic hatred, Doyle said. It wanted to force Catholic priests into prisons, for example, for not violating the Seal of Confession. The group also has been critical of the Supreme Court for being majority-Catholic.
“The extreme, anti-Christian secularists opposing the Quincy statues are engaged in a selective application of the concept of the separation of church and state, a phrase, by the way, which is not found in either the U.S. Constitution or the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Doyle noted.
Other religious groups also venerate these saints, Doyle added.
“Saint Michael and Saint Florian are venerated however, in the Eastern Orthodox Church and in Oriental Orthodoxy, and Saint Michael’s feast day can be found in the liturgical calendars of Anglicanism and Lutheranism,” the Catholic leader said.
The city plans to appeal the ruling, according to the National Catholic Register.
