In light of the recent religious liberty victory at the Supreme Court, Archbishop Lori has called for an end of all state ‘Blaine Amendments’ which discriminate against religious schools from receiving state aid.
“I think we should want them to fall,” Lori said. “They were really born out of an anti-Catholic prejudice, and they don’t treat our children as equals.”
Richard Blaine was a Republican Congressman from Maine and Speaker of the House, who in 1875 proposed amending the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to bar all forms of public aid to religious schools – which, in practice at the time, meant Catholic schools. (Blaine at one point edited a newspaper sponsored by the Know-Nothing party, notorious for its antagonism toward Catholics, and had a pattern of opposing Irish-American and therefore Catholic political candidates.)
Photo credit: Amy Davis.