Monday, March 05, 2007

NIH Found Guilty of Discriminating Against Catholic Priest over Forced Multi-Faith Chaplaincy

We read:

"A Catholic chaplain who has been responsible for ministering to patients at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center has been reinstated after proving that he had been fired for his Catholic beliefs, attorneys from Kator, Parks & Weiser, PLLC, announced today. In a February 23 decision the Merit Systems Protection Board wrote "We concur in and adopt the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's finding that the agency discriminated against the appellant on the basis of religion and retaliation for equal employment opportunity activity."

In discussing the ruling, lead attorney Irving Kator said, "Here a government agency was punishing a Catholic priest for embracing his religion. It's truly an astonishing abuse of his first amendment rights, and raises questions about why a taxpayer-funded government organization would be dictating to a clergyman how he should be practicing his faith."

Source

Interesting footnote about the law-firm mentioned above:

"Currently the firm is also representing a Rabbi who was fired by the same management after he testified in support of Father Heffernan"

That firing seems even more obnoxious to me.