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Published: October 10, 2008
“You can't be doing that in here!”
College students threatened with expulsion for praying on campus
Two students at the publicly funded College of Alameda filed a federal lawsuit on Oct. 6 after school officials threatened to expel them for praying, the Pacific Justice Institute reports.
 According to a press release from Pacific Justice Institute, student Kandy Kyriacou visited an instructor in December 2007 to give her a Christmas gift. “Kandy found the instructor alone in her shared office,” said the press release. “When the instructor indicated she was ill, Kandy offered to pray for her. The instructor bowed her head, and Kandy began to pray -- until she was interrupted by another faculty member, Derek Piazza, who walked in and said, ‘You can't be doing that in here!’ Kandy quickly left and rejoined her friend and fellow student, Ojoma Omaga. Piazza followed Kandy outside and repeated his rebuke.”
The release gives the following account of what led to the filing of the lawsuit:
The students were surprised by Piazza's intimidating behavior, but they were stunned when, three days before Christmas, both received letters notifying them of the college's retroactive "intent to suspend" them. In violation of the school's own policies, the letters stated no factual bases for the charges, vaguely alleging that the students had engaged in “disruptive or insulting behavior, willful disobedience… persistent abuse of, college employees." Then, in guilty-until-proven-innocent administrative hearings, it became clear that the college considered Kandy's get-well prayer -- which her instructor seemed to welcome -- worthy of discipline. The college even threatened suspension or expulsion for further infractions -- apparently other public prayers.
 The students turned to Pacific Justice Institute. PJI staff attorneys, baffled by the school's stance, attempted to resolve the situation through demand letters. The college did not respond. PJI local affiliate attorneys Steven N. H. Wood and Christopher Schweickert, of the Walnut Creek firm Bergquist, Wood & Anderson, LLP, made a final demand that college officials rescind the disciplinary letters and acknowledge the students' right to pray. The college refused. On Monday, Wood, Schweickert, and PJI staff attorneys filed a federal lawsuit to remove the cloud of intimidation hanging over the students.
"It's outrageous," PJI President Brad Dacus stated. "Since when does praying for a sick teacher to get well -- with her consent -- earn a suspension? This is not just a constitutional violation; it is a complete lack of common sense. These students were not looking for a fight, but since the school to this day insists that it can expel them if they pray again, we will have to resolve it in federal court."
(The Pacific Justice Institute is a non-profit 501(c)(3) legal defense organization specializing in the defense of religious freedom, parental rights, and other civil liberties.)
Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 2:56 AM By Maryanne Leonard
Hats off to the Pacific Justice Institute and attorney Steven Wood for taking on this outrageous case of abuse and prejudice. May sanity prevail, and may he and his client win the case handily.
Let us pray! Gosh, that phrase is starting to sound as if it belongs on a picketer's sign. Wouldn't it be great if enough people picketed the school in protest of this outrageous situation that "Let us pray!" actually became a phrase with new meaning and helped these folks win the lawsuit?
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Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 5:37 AM By Margie
Thank God for the Pacific Justice Institute which provides attorneys to take on the tough cases where Christians are not subject to the same treatment as others in our society!
"It's outrageous," PJI President Brad Dacus stated. "Since when does praying for a sick teacher to get well -- with her consent -- earn a suspension?"
When I think of all the real problems on college campuses and then hear about the exceptional treatment given to a Christian on this campus, my blood boils!
It is one of the corporal works of mercy in my religion to pray for the sick. Shall we be denied this religious freedom? I say keep on extending mercy as we are in a time of mercy but the time of justice will come upon us all. Lord have mercy on those who persecute others for righteousness's sake.
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Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 5:45 AM By Fr. M.P.
At Fatima we heard "Russia will spread its errors throughout the world." Here we have the concrete example of that atheism, in its usual tyrannical form, being practiced. As Job said, life is a warfare. Pray and fight for truth and real freedom.
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Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 5:54 AM By St. Christopher
If the College of Alameda is a publicly funded school, then it is clearly in the wrong, on several legal grounds. In any event, why would these kind students, or the ill professor for that matter, want to stay in such a Satan-filled environment? Let them remain evil, as even a favorable ruling by the court will be misconstrued by the school. These students should go elsewhere, and "shake the dust off their sandals" as they do so. God will remember.
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Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 6:04 AM By Luke
This probably would have surprised me less if it came from a Jesuit run school
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Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 6:26 AM By mea culpa
The colleges have been taken over by leftists and homosexuals. They stamp out any dissenting voice or any sign of Christianity. They want to do the same to society at large - and in California, they have already started to do so. They have activist judges on their side. They are poised for a real attack on the Church with the Benitez decision and the homosexual marriage decision. Catholic hospitals could have to perform abortions or close. Churches could have to perform homosexual marriages or close. We need to wake up to the fact that the Catholic Church is under attack.
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Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 8:58 AM By Jason 1975
I think it is time for someone to organize a "Pray-In" on campus at the College of Alameda.
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Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 9:30 AM By john Zakharia
this happened in Canada also. The mentally deranged administration use psychological tactics to intimadate christians. They strengthen their lies and evil by adding more lies and evil. For example after the rebuke they also send a letter and have a hearing. this way one act of evil is supported by another act of evil.
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Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 9:36 AM By Melody
EVERY Christian should boycott this school. Anyone of any faith should boycott this school. When its enrollment drops to 6, then maybe it will re-think its stance.
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Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 10:16 AM By Dan
As a community college instructor, I can tell you political correctness is alive and well, but not to the absurd lengths it is at Alameda. Are we seeing shades of things to come?
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Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 10:34 AM By Linda
I've never heard of Alameda college but it is really A-lame-da or A-lame-duh for restricting the basic American constitutional right of free speech! Yikes.
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Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 10:53 AM By John M
This is another example of the intolerence of the so called tolerent. I think that this could've happened at one of our Catholic Colleges of lower learning.We thought that we were intolerent toward those who just thought a little different than ourselves and we let" you know who" into the hen house.Lord forgive us for the sin of tolerence.Thank you Lord for Your servent Benedict......
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Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 11:16 AM By Augustine
Assuming Obama is elected and the Dems achieve hegemony over our political system it will be the beginning of the end for our freedoms. Religious folk, will come under much pressure due to their politically incorrect views. So, prepare for persecution, subtle at first but steadily more brutal. The Pope recently mentioned that the Catholic Church in Europe will come under pressure from the EU to ordain women as priests due to men-only human rights violations of the EU charter. We western Catholics will be made to suffer for our faith during this century, like our Chinese brothers and sisters with the rise of the new paganism, New World Order and its culture of death. Our Lady of the Martyrs, pray for us.
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Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 11:43 AM By J H
Good--PJI and Attorney Stevven Wood. How stupid for the College of Alameda to delilberately throw God out of everyday life.
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Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 12:47 PM By John F. Maguire
Prayer is to the spiritual life what breathing is to the life of the body. On a visit to her instructor in her instructor's office at the College of Alameda, Kandy Kyriacou, finding her instructor noticeably ill, immediately proffered a supplicatory prayer for her instructor's health. For which aspiration of the human spirit, the College of Alameda imposed a retroactive intention to suspend Kyriacou from the college, together with another student. Kyriacou's prayer, however, is constitutionally protected under the free-exercise and free-speech clauses of the First Amendment. Moreover, as the Supreme Court noted in _Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District_, 393 U.S. 503 (1969), "students
do not shed their constitutional rights when they enter the school house gate." Kandy Kyriacou's prayer--a prayer as non-disruptive as it was heartfelt--is well within the compass of those constitutional rights that are retained by students when they enter the school house gate.
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Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 1:02 PM By Pre-Boomer
Isn't it amazing how Satan prowls the hallways of our institutions of higher learning seeking not only to devour those whom he might, but to intimidate the servants of the Lord wherever possible?
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Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 3:45 PM By Bob
Has there been a change in our Constitution which guarantees Freedoms
of Speech & Religion drawn up by our founding fathers? If what one is doing is disruptive to a group/school, I could understand Piazza's & the college's actions. Praying for the instructor's health
in a private setting had no adverse effects
on anyone & wasn't disruptive conduct so
it appears the school, with it's expulsion warning is so far out of line it could be
bordering on the ridiculous. I pray that PJI doesn't have the hearing before one of the many liberal-crazed judges in N. Calif. What next, you can only part your hair on the left side as the right may indicate your conservative views? God save us from this insanity!!!
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Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 5:20 PM By Folasade
I am a former Peralta Colleges student and I am amazed that this even happened. I graduated from Laney College a year ago and lead a Christian campus ministry for two years up until my graduation. I have prayed privately within my group and often offered prayer to others Christian and noon-Christian, several of which were employees of the school or district, most of which have consented. The thing that is so amazing about this "Alameda College student situation" is that one person was PERSONALLY offended by the "religious" or "spiritual" (however a person may coin it) that they witnessed and had not even directly experienced. It is very likely he acted on personal impulse, when it had nothing to do with him at all in the first place! The two people praying were in AGREEMENT; the employee consented. Thus, if that person wanted to get upset at someone, he should have gotten upset at the employee--that is, IF she had even "broken" a school policy, which is not likely; but instead he called himself "defending" her (“disruptive or insulting behavior, willful disobedience… persistent abuse of, college employees."). Because of that man's personal issues with religion, likely Christianity, he didn't even consider the fact that the employee who was ill was needing comfort and received the offer for prayer in faith, or even just hope, that she'd be comforted. It is obvious that the school policy (I wonder what it really says about prayer in public) doesn't consider the right and well-being of their employees. But it would act in defense of a person who was only PERSONALLY offended, and would use the school's policy to somehow defend his own issue, which never considered the emplyee actually involved in the situation. He seemed to be successful in convincing the school administration and district that the school and it's employees had been violated. I pray God has comforted the woman who concented to prayer and blesses her and those students for being compassionate.
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Posted Saturday, October 11, 2008 8:54 AM By Sister Act
In reply to St. Christopher: What an error! Instead of expressing solidarity and support for a student whose First Amendment rights to free exercise and free speech have been violated by a (state-sponsored) college administration, you advise this student (on pseudo-evangelical grounds) to walk away from the problem. In effect, that course of action would concede a legal point to the College of Alameda that is essentially spurious. It would have student Kandy Kyriacou abandon her own rights under the First Amendment. It would contradict the educational purpose of the College of Alameda (since the College's action against Kandy for praying when and how she did, miseducates all students at the College as to their First Amendment rights). It would encourage the College of Alameda to engage in similar malfeasance against other students--and perhaps other colleges, were these other colleges so foolish. ~ In the Red Mass discussion at CCD October 1, I quoted 1 Timothy 1:8: "The law is good, if man use it lawfully." Just as St. Paul invoked his rights as a Roman citizen, so Kandy Kyriacou and Ojomo Omaga have every right to invoke their religious and speech rights under the First Amendment. ~ Extremes, they say, meet. Christopher, the extreme foolishness of the College of Alameda in attacking in its own students for exercising their right to pray on campus on their own motion and nondisruptively is matched by the extreme foolishness of your advice to Kandy in particular and (by implication) Christians in general to abandon rights that are properly theirs. By the way, such abandonment is just what a faction at the College of Alameda wants.
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Posted Saturday, October 11, 2008 3:30 PM By Mark from PA
This is really awful and stupid. Whatever happened to tolerance? Prayer heals. Note to mea culpa. What does your hatred of homosexuals have to do with this matter? Many Christian and Catholic people are gay, including many of our priests and nuns. You need to look at the plank in your eye. God calls on us to love our neighbors as ourselves, not spread hatred and prejudice against those you despise.
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Posted Saturday, October 11, 2008 4:14 PM By Verkola
In reply to St. Christopher: As a follow-up to Sister Act's post, let me ask you this: Do you really believe, as you say you do, that an instructor at a state college should quit her job because that college's administration attacked the free exercise/free speech rights of one of her students--a student who, while visiting that same instructor in her office on campus, spontaneously offered a "quick-recovery" prayer in response to her instructor's evident physical pain? Under this circumstance, why should the instructor quit the college anymore than her prayerful student should? Because the instructor works in an institution full of fallible human beings? Because--as you say hyperbolically--she works in a "Satan-filled environment"? What is problematic in your formula is just that: its hyperbole. True, Satan wanders the world seeking the ruin of souls; but the grace of resistance is never inadequate to the experience of temptation. On the other hand, your formula "Satan-filled environments" seems to me a mythification more expressive of sectarian thought than it is of Catholic realism.
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Posted Saturday, October 11, 2008 4:32 PM By JLS
S.A., you don't seem to comprehend exactly what free speech really is. For example, you evidently suppose free speech is something defined by the U.S. Constitution. This is an incorrect understanding, however. Free speech is identical to preaching, teaching and proclaiming the truth, especially the Gospel. If it is not true what is being said, then it is likewise not free.
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Posted Saturday, October 11, 2008 7:32 PM By Carla Rita
JLS the free speech they are talking about is the right under the first amendment
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Posted Saturday, October 11, 2008 9:24 PM By JLS
Allow me to follow up: If the government permits one to proclaim lies, is such a thing actually free speech? Or is it actually enslaved speech? The devil, as Jesus teaches us, is the "father of liars"; therefore, who is protecting the deceptive speech? Is it God, or is it the realm of enslavement? How would God stop deceptive speech? How would God protect truly free speech? What is the benefit to the Church for government permission of deceptive speech?
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Posted Saturday, October 11, 2008 10:50 PM By Vicky
Sorry if this is slightly off the subject, but I am in need. Does anyone know where I can find a copy of the "Prayer To St. Anthony To Obtain A Good Death". We used to say it, many years ago at Tuesday Night Novena. I've tried searching on line, but it doesn't seem to be there. I know it begins, "Dear St. Anthony of Padua. Sweet hope of all who implore thee, I prostrate myself humbly at thy feet, To obtain by thy powerful intercession, The greatest of all Blessing, The Grace of dying well", etc, etc. I anyone can help me, I would be most grateful. Thank You, A Sister In Christ.
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Posted Sunday, October 12, 2008 12:58 PM By JPeterman
Piazza..sounds pretty Italian to me, his parents were probably faithful Catholics who likely had him baptized. Here he is all these years later, a persecutor of Christians.
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Posted Sunday, October 12, 2008 4:46 PM By Synaxarion
In reply to JLS: You appear to have confused the distinctively evangelical freedom to proclaim the truths of revealed religion, on the one hand, with the legal organization of human discourse under the First Amendment, on the other hand. The case filed by Kandy Kyriacou, should it come it trial, will be adjudicated in accordance with case law derived from (applicable) judicial interpretation of the First Amendment. That Amendment, as is well-known, reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Now beginning in 1897, the Supreme Court began to interpret the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment ("...nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...") to apply against the states, not, as had formerly been the case, only against Congress. Thus, the guarantee of free exercise of religion was incorporated against the states in _Cantwell v. Connecticut_ , 310 U.S. 296 (1940); and the guarantee of freedom of speech was incorporated against the states in _Gitlow v. New York_, 268 U.S. 296 652 (1925) (dicta). In consequence, it is Kandy Kyriacou's constitutional right of free exercise of religion and her constitutional right of freedom of speech that govern the situation in which she finds herself. This legal context affords her the opportunity to redress the injustice--the deprivation of her rights--that she sustained due to the College of Alameda's ill-advised actions against her and Ojomo Omaga. Again, under the Constitution, no person shall be deprived of the rights of free exercise of religion and freedom of speech without due process of law. The College of Alameda engaged in just such a deprivation of rights. Whence Kandy Kyriacou's action.
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Posted Monday, October 13, 2008 6:45 AM By JLS
No, Synaxarion, my attempt was to differentiate it. Read my post again ... it is not a legal statement; it is a religious perspective, possibly even a theological position. There is no ground of truth other than in Christ ... if a government proclaims some other kind of right, then it is not true. If one holds to something that is not true, then they are enslaved to the father of liars, the devil. You tell me how else it could be.
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Posted Monday, October 13, 2008 6:48 AM By JLS
Carla Rita, you have to decide whether your truth is based on a secular government or on Christ. No government can define truth apart from Christ ... but any government can make up anything it wants ... which is called relativism.
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Posted Monday, October 13, 2008 6:51 AM By JLS
In other words, people like Kandy have a right from God to pray anytime, any place, in any manner ... we might one day have not "legal" right to do so. Thus, it is important to come to grips with this looming problem. Do you think this college just came up with this persecution out of the blue? What do you dream is happening in other nations ... persecution unto death ... your U.S. legal "rights" are temporal ... get used to it, and do something other than pretend you are guaranteed rights by the late U. S. Constitution.
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Posted Tuesday, October 14, 2008 9:02 AM By Synaxarion
In reply to JLS: To advise me, let alone Kandy Kyriacou, that we'd best not "pretend" that "[we] are guaranteed rights by the late [sic] U.S. Constitution" is a drastic misreading of the present legal situation--and Catholic theology. Pacific Justice Institute has it right: The case of Kyriacou and Ogama v. The College of Alameda turns on rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. Kyriacou and Ogama's First Amendment rights have been violated--and therefore their case, as the lawyers for the Pacific Justice Institute have determined to a practical certainty, is actionable at law. Yet even before this case has reached the stage of adjudication, JLS, you--preposterously--advise Kyriacou and the Pacific Justice Institute and the readers of CCD not to "pretend" we have the rights that predicate the very action that Kyriacou is bringing. This underestimation of First Amendment rights is wrong-headed, JLS, and bespeaks a grave misunderstanding of what Catholic theology calls the human, positive, law. As human, positive law, the First Amendment is binding on the College of Alameda just as it is binding on Derek Piazza and the rest of us. Only if human, positive law is substantially unjust, apropos a grave matter, would it be a nullity--or as Aquinas puts it, a mere "simulacrum" of law. Such is Holy Church's traditional teaching on the validity of human, positive law.
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Posted Tuesday, October 14, 2008 2:52 PM By JLS
Synaxarion, I can hardly believe you floundered in reading my posts!!! You've imputed to me what I did not say, but what you have been hoping someone would say. I do have a straw hat, but do not see myself as a strawman, as you apparently do. A. The U.S. Constitution is not as binding as you dream. B. Natural Law comes from God, which you assume I denied, but did not. C. How can you convince anyone that you know theology when you make such reading errors?
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Posted Tuesday, October 14, 2008 8:01 PM By Synaxarion
JLS, one needn't be a learned theologian to know that human, positive law--the First Amendment to the US Constitution, for example--is binding law. What is positive, human law in the first place? It is the practical application of the natural law to certain matters--here free-exercise rights and freedom-of-speech rights--by the use of reason. The status of the positive human law as *binding law* depends, then, on its consonance with the natural law as apprehended by right reason. Whence the doctrine of participation: The positive, human law *partakes* of the natural law--and the natural law, in its turn, *partakes* of God's eternal law. So I agree with you--the natural law comes from God. Do you agree with me that the positive, human law, in its turn, comes from the natural law?
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Posted Tuesday, October 14, 2008 9:47 PM By JLS
Syn., your explanation of law sounds right to me. I'm taking issue not on this but on the application of it relative to what binds this law. I'm assuming that by "binding", you mean its enforceability. If no one is willing to enforce the First Amendment, then it has no meaning. The partaking of strata in the hierarchy of law is not just unless it rises to God. That is what you are arguing for in the case of Kandy et al, as I understand it. My challenge in this regard is like playing a "devil's advocate", testing the system to find any vulnerabilities. And I have found critical vulnerabilities ... well, I've had such things explained to me ... in the Constitution as applied in our time. This is why I do not agree that the laws are necessarily binding. Ultimately they would be binding, but not in the temporal sense: Again, referring to Jesus' "Give to Caesar his due; give unto God His due". There is a rift which wants be healed in our temporal world, like the rift between God and man that sees healing in our time. When Jesus says "the poor will always be with us", this implies a gap between justice and the hope of justice. How does this apply to the fate of Kandy? Can the state separate her from her prayer, like it separates a man from his wife in a divorce case? Every important issue starts somewhere, sometimes in insignificant locales ... such as the Scopes Trial did. Can the state monkey with the bond between Kandy and God? Synaxarion, I hope you can appreciate that I've spent over an hour and a half on this one post. And if any skeptics of learning and improving of view are reading this, then let it encourage you to re-examine what you dispute, so that learning takes place, so that we advance towards what is true. If we are united already with truth, who is Jesus, it doesn't mean we see Him clearly yet ... that goal is what is meant by seeking the truth.
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Posted Tuesday, October 14, 2008 11:40 PM By Synaxarion
In reply to JLS : (1) You write: "I'm assuming that by [the First Amendment's] 'binding', you mean its enforceability." Well no, I do not mean its enforceability; I mean its validity. (2) You write: "If no one is willing to enforce the First Amendment, then it has no meaning." No, were the First Amendment unenforceable, it would lack effective meaning but still retain its formal meaning. Kandy Kyriacou and the Pacific Justice Institute--needless to say--would not have brought an action against the College of Alameda had they thought that the judiciary would go on strike against enforcing First Amendment rights. (3) "...I do not agree that the laws are necessarily binding." The cop on the street will tell you, you had better. I will tell you that (positive, human) laws are indeed necessarily binding inasfar as they are consonant with the natural law from which they derive. (4) "Ultimately they would be binding, but not in the temporal sense." On this claim, see my comment below.
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Posted Wednesday, October 15, 2008 12:08 AM By Synaxarion
In reply to JLS: (4) You write: "Ultimately they [positive, human laws] would be binding, but not in the temporal sense." On the contrary, it is precisely in the temporal context ("Shall I do X or not do it") that--ultimately--I must decide on way or the other. Ultimacy in this practical sense is what is at issue in all human decision-making. Another point: Why, JLS, this impulse of yours to discount the temporal? After all, there are three forms of duration: (1) the eternal duration of God; (2) the aeviternal duration of the angels, and (3) the temporal duration of man. The eternal duration of God is uncreated duration of God as Pure Act, but both the aeviternal duration of angels and the temporal duration of man are created by God, in relation to Whom all time is *simul toto*--all time is wholly simultaneous. It is within the ultimacy of this human temporarily that the human law necessarily applies.
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Posted Wednesday, October 15, 2008 5:40 AM By Fr. M.P.
We have to be careful about legal positivism - "A law is a valid law if posited, in the proper manner, by a recognized authority, regardless of its moral implications." So a law may or may not be related to natural law or God's law. Hitler made a positive law that Jews should be exterminated. That does not fit within natural law. The current California law (well, judges ruling) says that homosexuals can get married. That is certainly not natural whatsoever, law or biology. What did St. Peter say? We obey God rather than men.
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Posted Wednesday, October 15, 2008 12:22 PM By JLS
Thankyou Fr. M.P., for explaining this. I phrased my acknowledgement so as to condition positive law as meaningful only when linked with God. Now, I think that what Synaxarion is doing is one of those errant mind trips which disconnects with material reality. There is no doubt a word or phrase which describes such a thing, but I don't know what it is called. Like one of the posters for a while, Syn uses a lot of technical words which really only serve themselves in his constructs ... I can contrast this with a couple other posters who use the erudite lingo in very meaningful ways. But my hour and a half trying to figure out what Syn is up to has provided me with the key to his efforts.
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Posted Wednesday, October 15, 2008 2:34 PM By JLS
There is nature and God. Some thinkers observe and report nature with some good accuracy. Some report God in expert fashion as well. Some report both with the fullness of human intellect. And some create a dream of one or the other or both. The remaining condition is the belief of what God has revealed. It often is in the struggle between these two, Divine revelation and fantasy, where the most difficult communications play out. One is vain imaginings while the other is grace: Both are invisible; yet, each has effects. Grace is immune to the devil, and vane thoughts are his playground. On one of the other threads, I've been tossed in the nut basket ... what is interesting is that faith is so hard to prove to someone who has none, or who has yet to activate it substantially.
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Posted Wednesday, October 15, 2008 2:41 PM By Mark from PA
Hitler's Nazis also threw many homosexuals into concentration camps and killed them. They were considered almost as bad as Jews. People do not realize that the Nazis murdered many homosexual priests. Also the Nazis unleashed a wave of religious persecution against Catholic Poles. Some 20% of Polish Catholic priests died as a result of Nazi terror.
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Posted Wednesday, October 15, 2008 7:40 PM By Synaxarion
In reply to Fr. M.P. and JLS: The word "positive" in the phrase "positive human law" refers to a lawmaker who both posits and promulgates a law. For example, the Mosaic Decalogue is an instance of divine positive law. In the case of the First Amendment, this positing and promulgation took place when the states of the United States of America ratified the the Constitution--and then, in an augmented way, when the free-exercise clause and the freedom-of-speech clause were "incorporatated" as binding on states. It should be obvious, certainly in the context of a discussion of the doctrine of participation (this doctrine is the basis of the Catholic understanding of the natural law and its relation to the eternal law of God, on the one hand, and human positive law, on the other)--it should be obvious in this context that "legal positivism," which REDUCES law to NOTHING BUT sheer positing and in so doing rejects the natural law as "nonsense on stilts", is the flat contrary of the position I am advocating on behalf of the First Amendment and Kandy Kyriacou's use of it in her own defense. ~ The classical discussion of the relationship between eternal law, natural law, and human positive law is: Thomas Aquinas's _Treatise on Law_--for priests and the laity alike an indispensable section of the _Summa Theologica_. Moreover, Aquinas's _Treatise_ is a good antidote for anyone who posits--here is where JLS really is a positivist--an unbridgeable gap between the law and the Gospel, between law and conscience, between law and love.
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Posted Wednesday, October 15, 2008 11:04 PM By JLS
Synaxarion, if the free exercise is binding, then why is it limited? I do not read anything in the Constitution which limits it ... only in subsequent rulings by courts. So, I'm a positivist, am I? Ok, then I'll go ahead and stick my two Northern Pintail tail feathers back in my cowboy hat hatband and commence to wearing it at a slightly cocked angle. Back on track here: The Pope is presently trying to persuade closer promulgation of views between Bible scholars and theologians ... kind of for the same positivist reasons. Theology, like law, needs something to tie it down; otherwise, it is "dualism" (so, then, legal positivism would be a form of dualism). I think St Augustine kicked that philosophy around a bit ... "Life is but a dream" is legal positivism, dualism, because it is detached from a real foundation, such as history informs us of (in this case of bad grammar, I think the colloquial syntax is better than the formal, and so judge it to be the right thing to do). Go Kandy!!!
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Posted Sunday, October 19, 2008 1:51 PM By Darby
We are only hearing one side of the story. The two professors shared an office. One professor was praying with a student when the second professor who works in the office arrived. The first professor should have respected the right of the second professor to his work area. If the first professor continued to pray with the student, then the second professor was having his work disrupted. The whole matter could have been avoided if the first professor and her student either suspended prayer or took their prayers to a location that would not have disrupted others. The matter seems to have escalated beyond reason and has now become a political cause.
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Posted Monday, November 17, 2008 9:41 PM By JJ
Praying allowed and interupting class and judging people does not follow Christian ideals, nor does slandering a college professor.
I wholeheartedly support freedom of religion. Yet COA is a public funded school and there is a place and time for everything including drinking, smoking, etc. Prayer should absolutely be allowed, when it does not interupt education.
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Posted Tuesday, December 16, 2008 8:00 PM By Peter
Just came across this posting. I wish I were the students brother. When I was growing up the parents &/or big brothers took care of this type of thing. It would have been simpler to take the fool who protested the prayer for a trip out behind the wood shed. I think the story would have changed right quick, and all this foolishness would have come to an end without wasting resources that could be used for something really important.
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Posted Tuesday, January 06, 2009 8:38 PM By DP
I teach at the College of Alameda. There are many excellent students, including many Christians. There are many Christian staff members as well. Unfortunately, there are many incompetent, extremist, anti-Christian faculty members. I hope the law suit is successful and that there are serious punitive damages. Let's hope this anti-Christian attitude is crushed once and for all.
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Posted Friday, April 17, 2009 6:16 AM By susan
excuse me.... we allow convicts in our prisons to pray and follow their "religious" conscience when it comes to their diets, but teachers/students dont have the same rights? something wrong with this picture?
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