Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
"Of course we can break that agreement - we're the church."
Ah, yes, gotta love them churches what thinks they's above the law:
Burlington May Stop Archdiocese Radio's Use Of Tower
The town of Burlington is trying to prevent the Archdiocese of Hartford from using its radio tower on Johnnycake Mountain because of its recent decision to pull ecumenical programming from the airwaves.
The town believes the transformation of WJMJ-FM from an ecumenical station to an all-Catholic station violates a 1987 agreement between the town and the archdiocese over the use of the tower, First Selectwoman Kathleen Zabel said.
"It's a black and white matter," Zabel said. "[The archdiocese] is in violation of the stipulated agreement."
They're the church - the Most Holy Roman Catholic Church - so of course they can do what they want.
See, here's the thing: the Archdiocese got permission to locate this tower earlier, since the station it owned broadcast a variety of different flavors of religious craziness. While I think that still smells a bit, I'm not too bothered - a variety of different religious programs makes the whole thing more secular, and there may well have been a community interest in allowing the variance.
Except, of course, that the Catholic church is getting a bit paranoid about how many sheep they get to shear, and so is becoming more aggressively evangelical. Here's another bit from the newspaper article:
(Rev. John) Gatzak is a spokesman for the archdiocese and director of its office of radio and television.
Gatzak said he did not consider the shows broadcast during "Festival of Faith" to be either "truly ecumenical" or of high enough quality for radio. Many of those shows had been broadcast on WJMJ for 30 years.
He said the archdiocese had a responsibility to use its radio station for Catholic evangelization, rather than giving away 14 hours of prime airtime to other faiths.
Make them tear the damned thing down.
Jim Downey
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Churches Don't Get It
It all comes under the "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission banner". People doing so are held up as bold innovators in popular culture even though they appear to be jerks to those they impact - I'm thinking of street preachers, rock concerts that go on too late and too loud, door to door evangelists, cable companies that drop you into higher priced packages without permission, and politicians that do 180s on election promises that day after being elected.
In the case of religious organizations tho' it is much more ingrained. Their whole teaching is of an invisible friend or magic horseshoe who will be your buddy forever - until you need the juju to come through, agents of the invisible friend who will help and comfort you - until you need help or comfort that falls outside of the rules, and an organization that rejects state interference with its activities while being allowed to sway politicians with threats of eternal hell fire.
Churches don't get it.
We just had a mosque open near where I work and they, too, decided they could skip over some of those pesky rules.
They blocked off the road to traffic for their grand opening, battery charging, or whatever it is you do to a new mosque to change it from a pile of carpentry into a palace of worship.
The thing is, the city stipulation for closing a road is that you have to contact every resident or business your road closure will affect and ask their permission first. The Mosque decided that they'd do it a bit differently: they'd close the road without asking, wait for complaints and then use the fact that it was a religious celebration to guilt the complaining parties into conceding to the road closure. I am sorry to report that their technique worked like a charm. The local businesses all knuckled under and gave their "permission" after the deed was done, even though many of those businesses will lose measurable amounts of business from the closure and the mosque has not offered compensation.
Then the mosque administration took this newly generated paperwork and had the audacity to use it to ask for police personnel to man their originally illegal, now retro-actively legal road-blocks for them. They got that too.
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