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I've been hearing this question a lot lately. What does the separation of Church and State mean? Now some will say it means the protection of the State from the Church and others will say it's the protection of the Church from the State, and then some will say it means that the Church has no place in the government at all. I think that the first two could be the most correct. Our country was founded on freedom of religion. When the colonies were first founded there were nine official religions of the 13 colonies. Almost each state had it's own religion. Also what surprises me is that the actual statement separation of Church and State is not actually in the constitution or declaration. This phrase is traced to letter written by Thomas Jefferson as a reference to the First Amendment. The separation of Church and State to me means that the Federal Government can not come in and tell us that we can't worship or go to church in a certain place. It also means that the Church can't tell the Federal Government what to do. Today it's seen that God has to be taken out of all Government. We've all heard the arguments about God being taken off the dollar bill, and out of the Pledge of Allegiance. That is not what the founding fathers intended. What this phrase means is that the federal government cannot stop us from practicing our own religion and the church cannot make the laws of the federal government. God is part of what our nation was founded on.

I hear a lot of people talk about separation of Church and state as a way to protect the government, but it's really not. A government can get along just fine with religion sticking its nose into its business.

Separation of Church and state is a way to protect citizens and that's it. It's a way to allow us free exercise of our religion. Part of that does mean that government can't stick its nose into religion (to a certain extent. I mean, if I started a religion that kidnapped and sacrificed babies, I'm pretty sure the government would get involved there). But the other part of that is keeping any specific religion from dominating the government's policies in a way that might infringe on other people's right to practice another religion or no religion at all.

As Catholics, freedom of religion is a huge priority, which is why separation of Church and State should be a big deal for us.

Of course, where to draw the line between social justice and legislating personal morals does get a bit tricky. Take gay marriage for example. Allowing gay people to get married does not harm any outside parties, so in my mind, this should be a matter religion does not try to mandate in public policies. However, things like murder and theft obviously do hurt outside parties, so it falls more in line with social justice to encourage policies that will discourage those actions. Then you get into the subject of abortion, where whether it hurts an outside party falls entirely on whether you view the embryo/fetus to be a living person or not, which is a whole other mess of complicated. It's just tricky . . . . . And now I'm rambling . . . . .