On Apr 29, 2020, at 4:49 PM, Mike wrote:
Dear Mr. (name withheld),
We’ve received a ton of email regarding the recent chaplain/Facebook issue and we’re trying to respond to all of it. Much of it is, like yours, full of judgment, rife with insult and what seems to me to be rather imperious lecturing. Unfortunately, some are quite vile, which is only surprising because their attacks arise from a tale told them by the leader of what claims to be a Catholic organization.
Fortunately, when these new correspondents hear the truth of the matter, many of them have been kind enough to apologize and send thanks for the clarification. So please bear with me as I try to make things a bit more clear, this time for you.
Apparently you read a tract from a Mr. Bill Donohue that has made the rounds and given a number of people a lot of bad information. I’m sorry about that as it has, as I indicated, caused a storm of angry and ill-informed condemnation to come our way.
Mr. Donohue is wrong. He said, for example, that Mikey Weinstein is an “anti-Christian activist.” This is not true and Mr. Donohue should know it. He added a bunch of other things that are not true. So let me explain the facts to you.
We agree that military personnel have every right to pray. We have no objection to prayer. We object to inappropriate proselytizing. You see, chaplains have a face book page whereon they can do all the praying and lecturing and teaching and enlightening they’d like. But that’s a separate page from that of the unit leader or commanding officer. The commander’s page, according to military regulations, may not be used to promote one belief system over others because doing so implies government endorsement of a particular faith and violates the separation of church and state.
You see, we do not oppose prayer. We do not oppose chaplains, nor do we suppress their right to speak. Their speeches were simply in the wrong place. Some complaints came to us, so we contacted the authorities at the base. They in turn looked at it, saw what was wrong and removed the speeches. I don’t know if the speeches were placed on the chaplain’s page where they belonged. I hope they were, but that’s not a decision for us to make.
I hope truly this helps you better understand the situation and helps temper your rather hasty judgment about us.
Mike Farrell
(MRFF Board of Advisors)
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