Looks like SUNY is still in stage 3.

Yes, though the rules are tighter in K-12, where “student-initiated” is the key phrase in for religious activities.

In higher education, though, we have to admit that at a public institution, student activities money is to some extent public money. The border might be a little fuzzier.

Only if means of distribution excludes some religions. The colleges I’ve seen, every student group gets a fair shot at activities money. This includes all the religious groups, and all the secular groups. Usually the Christian groups don’t need the money.

And when my swim team from the Bronx went there for championships, people seemed genuinely afraid of us.
–Peter

——-
To the Most Reverend Howard J. Hubbard, Bishop of the Diocese of Albany

Your Excellency:

According to an article published today, September 29, in the New York Sun, persons self-identifying as Catholics have libeled members of Pagan faiths by claiming an event celebrating our lives, our religions, and our Goddesses and Gods is actually an event that “ridicules Christianity and Jesus Christ.”

Your Excellency, most Pagans do not pay any regard to your Deity; since Paganism, as that word is used in the United States of America, generally covers all non-Abrahamic religions, there may be a few groups that regard the Hebraic ’shaitan’ as a challenge to people of other beliefs, and respond in kind to how they take that challenge. However, in general, Pagans in the United States of America really don’t have the time to waste on ridiculing Jesus of Nazareth, or the Deity(ies) of any other peoples; we have our own lives and our own Deities to concentrate our attention.

In light of the unfortunate misunderstanding recently when His Holiness Benedict XVI quoted someone, only to have his words taken out of context as being his own opinion – while in fact they were neither his opinion nor, either currently or historically, the position of the Roman Catholic Church – it would be kind of you to reiterate the position taken by the Second Vatican Council and promulgated on December 7, 1965 by His Holiness Paul VI in the Declaration on Religious Freedom:

“This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.

“The council further declares that the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person as this dignity is known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself.(John XXIII, “Pacem in Terris”) This right of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed and thus it is to become a civil right.”

Your Excellency, allowing the information in the Sun’s article to go unchallenged will only lead to hate, not love; and will likely further diminish the view of your religion by many people. I ask of you that you issue a press release or equivalent statement repudiating the calumnous remarks made by persons purporting to be Catholics regarding the Pagan Pride Day scheduled to be held in the County of Warren this weekend.

The article to which I refer may be found on the World Wide Web at

http://www.nysun.com/article/40598

in case you do not have access to a printed edition of the article.

Thank you for your kind attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

John J. Deltuvia, Jr.
——

If anyone else wants to ask the Bishop to take a stand, his address is chancery@rcda.org . It’s sad how many Roman Catholics forget how quickly the tide of persecution can be turned against them. I’m a survivor of 12 years of Catholic schooling; and in that time, one of my fourth-grade teachers showed us the numbered tattoo on her arm she received in the 1940’s in Europe, and one of my ninth-grade teachers told our class how – as recently as 1960 in central New Jersey, hardly a southern state – Roman Catholic nuns could not go shopping dressed in their liturgical habit because the KKK’s influence in the area was so great that no one would wait on them.