Constitution Director James Phillips writes for National Review
Can federal courts probe how Catholic priests speak during Mass to the faithful about the pope’s use of an ancient religious offering given in his name?
That’s the question in O’Connell v. U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a pending petition for rehearing en banc before the D.C. Circuit. The case concerns a Catholic parishioner (O’Connell) who filed a class action lawsuit against the Conference of Catholic Bishops, alleging that a Sunday Mass defrauded him as to the use of donations to the pope’s thousand-year-old annual charitable fundraising effort called Peter’s Pence, which solicits money for the pope’s charitable priorities. O’Connell seeks to have a civil court and jury parse religious sermons and internal church communications and documents to prove his case, because O’Connell knows better than the pope what counts as charitable and how that money should be spent.
Read the full article by James Phillips in the National Review