Rev Gregory Vaughan. 2018 photo via Trenton Monitor
Rev. Msgr. Gregory D. Vaughan, the pastor of St. Catherine Parish in Holmdel since 2013, has been removed from ministry by Bishop David M. O’Connell, according to a statement by the Diocese of Trenton that was first reported by TapIntoHolmdel&ColtsNeck.
Vaughan, 72, a priest since 1972, was “credibly accused” on March 17, 2019 of sexually abusing a minor while he was an assistant pastor at St Ann Parish in Keansburg in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Vaughan has denied the allegation which has been referred to the Monmouth County Prosecutor. The Prosecutor has not announced any charges against the cleric.
Vaughan has served exclusively in the Diocese of Trenton, with assignments at St. Ann, Keansburg; St. Charles Borromeo, Cinnaminson; St. Mary, Middletown; St. Raphael, Hamilton, and Church of St. Catharine, Holmdel. Additionally, Msgr. Vaughan formerly served the Diocese as vicar for Catholic education; chancellor; vicar general; moderator of the curia, and director of vocations.
The religious exemptions clause of New York’s same sex marriage law was supposed to be the great compromise that broke down the barriers to gay couples marrying. Without the protections the clause provided to institutions that objected to same sex marriage on religious grounds, the law would not have passed New York’s legislature or been signed into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo last year.
New Jersey’s Gay Rights community, which has a history of litigating against religious institutions that refused to allow their properties to be used for civil union ceremonies, embraced the religious exemptions clause and convinced the Democratic leadership of the New Jersey legislature to make same sex marriage the number one priority of the current legislative session. New Jersey’s legislature passed the Marriage Equality and Religious Exemptions Act in February. Governor Chris Christie vetoed the bill and called for the issue to be decided by Constitutional Amendment via referendum. Despite polls indicating that New Jersey voters favor same sex marriage and that the favor Christie’s proposal to decide the issue via referendum, Garden State Equality and their allies in the legislature opposed a referendum, declaring that same sex marriage is a civil right that should not be decided by the majority at the ballot box. Privately, same sex marriage advocates have acknowledged that they expect to lose a referendum, despite the polls that indicate they would win.
New York is leading the way again.
The New York Post reports that a lesbian couple from Westchester is seeking to overturn the religious exemptions provision of New York’s same sex marriage law in federal court. “Jane Roe” and “Jane Doe,” a couple married on October 15, 2011, filed a class action suit in Manhattan because “Roe’s” employer, St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Yonkers, refused to add “Doe” to the Catholic hospital’s medical benefits.
The class-action suit seeks an order declaring that both women are entitled to insurance coverage under federal law. It also says “thousands of legally married, same-sex couples” have been, or will be, denied benefits under similar policies administered by Empire, which is also named as a defendant.
The women are seeking an injunction ordering Blue Cross Blue Shield not to acquiesce to a company that wants to deny same-sex benefits because of religious beliefs, said Jeffrey Norton, their lawyer.
“Contraception is working just fine. Leave it alone.” ~Mitt Romney answering George Stephanopoulos’s questions regarding States having the right to ban contraception during the New Hampshire GOP presidential debate
President Obama and his allies in the mainstream media completely fabricated the recent contraception controversy in order to distract America from its real problems which are likely to get worse between now and November 6.
Rather than talk about almost 25 million working age Americans without jobs, Obama wants America to be afraid that his Republican challenger would ban birth control if elected.
George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, formerly President Bill Clinton’s Communications Director, went to great lengths during the New Hampshire GOP presidential debate to get a sound bite of Mitt Romney saying that States have the right to ban birth control in early January.
In November of last year, Obama told then Archbishop, now Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, the leader of the Catholic Church in the United States, that he “get most of what he wanted” regarding contraception as the White House was hashing out the implentation of ObamaCare.
By early February, Obama changed his mind,betrayed Dolan and shifted the national debate away from the economy and on to issues that were “working just fine” — birth control and religious freedom — when he announced the ObamaCare regulations that requires all employers, including those affiliated with religious institutions, to provide health care that includes the cost of contraceptives.
Romney avoided the trap in January, but Rick Santorum jumped into it with both feet in February, as did Republicans in the House and Senate.
Rush Limbaugh did the congressional Republicans a favor by drawing attention to himself, and away from the Blunt Amendment which was never going to pass, with his crass remarks about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown Law School student who is as much a part of this Obama change the subject gambit as Stephanopoulos is.
But Limbaugh did Obama a bigger favor. The President called Fluke yesterday to thank her for speaking out for women’s rights. Now he’s framing the contraception debate as a women’s right’s issue.
Fluke is not a 23 year old coed who can’t afford birth control as originally reported in the media. She’s a 30 year old women’s rights activist. It was no fluke that the Democrats wanted her to testify before congress. She’s likely to be the President’s 2012 Obama girl.
A couple of weeks back, in between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, presidential contender Rick Santorum was subject to claims that he wanted to outlaw birth control.
During an interview with FoxNews’s Brett Baier, Santorum explained that as a Catholic he believed that birth control is wrong, but that he would not support his religious belief regarding birth control becoming law. With regard to birth control, Santorum is able to be both a political conservative and a religious conservative. The position is politically conservative, consistent with the U.S. Constitution, religious freedom and personal liberty. His choice to strictly follow the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church regarding sex and procreation is religiously conservative.
Political conservatism and religious conservatism are not the same thing.
Actually, neither of them are “things.” They are abstractions. Philosophical constructs. Values. They are not things.
Political conservatism and religious conservatism are not the same distinction. Santorum demonstrated in his interview with Baier that, in the matter of birth control, he is both politically conservative and religiously conservative.
In a follow up Baier asked about marriage. Regarding marriage, Santorum’s religious conservatism trumps his political conservatism, it seems to me. The former Pennsylvania senator is able to think, to distinguish, between his political conservatism and religious conservatism, with regard to birth control, but homosexuality is too much of a sin for Santorum to distinguish between his religious convictions and the law of the land.
Why that is doesn’t really make sense to me.
The Catholic Church teaches that practicing birth control is a mortal sin. If a faithful heterosexual married couple bumps uglies with a barrier, physical or surgical, or with the use of a chemical, that prevents conception, they are going to hell if they die before they get to confession. If they bump the uglies in the wrong holes, like homosexuals do, and die before confessing, off to Lucifer they go for eternity. That’s OK with the politically conservative Santorum and many, many others.
If a faithful same sex couple bumps uglies in the wrong holes and die before going to confession, they are also going to hell, according to Catholic teaching. But while their queer souls are here on earth, in the United States of America, Santorum and many other religious conservatives want them to have different political rights and responsibilities than the heterosexual couple.
I don’t get how that is politically conservative. Why is same sex marriage different than birth control in the minds of Santorum and so many “conservatives?”
