Catholic San Francisco August 24, 2007

Kurt Thialfad’s diatribe against poor illegal immigrants (Letters, Aug. 10) could be

dismissed as just another exercise in “blaming the victim” were it not for additional

shortcomings:  his crude and fallacious assertion that poor illegal immigrants “drag down”

American society and his morally objectionable, thinly-veiled endorsement of eugenics.

Even more troublesome, however, is the reiteration of an old myth about the First

Amendment and the meaning of separation of church and state. Congress cannot make

Catholicism or any other religion the official faith of our country, nor can the government

interfere with our individual decisions about what faith to practice (or not). That said,

Catholics (and the practitioners of all faiths) enjoy the freedom to bring their religious

values into the public sphere where government policy is debated. It goes without saying

that “secular humanists” and atheists have the same freedom. It would be a hollow democracy

indeed if antireligious and non-religious people were allowed to shape our laws according to their

beliefs, but religious people were prohibited from doing so.