One Mad Mom Blog

James Talarico: "I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity"

Over the past several weeks, Carrie Prejean Boller has complained that she was removed from the Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty because of her Catholic beliefs, and she has called out myself and other Catholic members of the commission for not defending her. This is absurd. Mrs. Prejean Boller was not dismissed for her religious convictions but rather for her behavior at a gathering of the Commission last month: browbeating witnesses, aggressively asserting her point of view, hijacking the meeting for her own political purposes. The Catholic position on matters of “Zionism,” to which I fully subscribe, is as follows: all forms of antisemitism are to be unequivocally condemned; the state of Israel has a right to exist; but the modern nation of Israel does not represent the fulfillment of Biblical prophecies and hence does not stand beyond criticism. If Mrs. Prejean Boller were dismissed for holding these beliefs, it is difficult to understand why I am still a member of the Commission. To paint herself as a victim of anti-Catholic prejudice or to claim that her religious liberty has been denied is simply preposterous.