One of the refreshing things about the Catholic Church no longer part of the Bay State’s oligarchy is that it is now free to speak up for its flock.
It is strange now how it all turned out that the Church is the last advocate for true romantic love and the last bastion
of hope.
There are many signs that our ruling elites in Massachusetts have lost hope. The biggest one is the obsession to kill unborn children and push couples into dead end unions. If our masters on Beacon Hill believed in a prosperous future and the expanding pie, they would not be so devoted to killing off newcomers.
The latest example of this crisis of hope is the push for casinos.
Casinos are a con game. Everyone knows this. Everyone also knows that of all the addictions, the most destructive to the most people is gambling.
Drug and alcohol abuse are surely detrimental, especially when combined with driving, crime to support the habit or the lowering of one’s resistance to the temptations of immoral sexuality. But, with drugs and alcohol there comes a place where the pain stops either with jail or death for the abuser and the suffering is somewhat contained within the abuser’s circle.
Gambling, though, involves money, serious money in ever bigger amounts. At the end of the night, the vast majority of gamblers leave the casino poorer—and every night there are gamblers leaving the casino ruined.
At what other venue, save for other gambling sites, can a customer lose his car, his house and his savings in one moment: the roll of the dice, the flip of a card or the bouncing of the small hard ball on the counter-revolving dial of black and red strips?
Let me say that again: People are ruined and there is no process for retrieving the money once it is gone because everyone walking in the door to a casino knew it was a con designed to impoverish them.
Q: Why then is the Bay State’s leadership backing more casinos?
A: They have no faith that anything else will come around to fund their carnival of spending and good times.
People who have hope believe that hard work and innovation create prosperity for themselves and for others. It is not the get-rich-quick of winning at the casino—but, winning at the casino is a lie.
The state’s leadership needs to lift the burden from the shoulders of its enterprising citizens and clear the path for them to start and build businesses. Cut taxes, wipe out regulations and end the picking of winners and losers based on political neo-tribalism.
The Massachusetts Catholic Conference, the political wing of the Church, release a Sept. 15 dated letter signed by the commonwealth’s four leading bishops: Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston; Bishop Robert J. McManus, Worcester; Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski, Springfield and Bishop George W. Coleman, Fall River.
Some of the letter’s argument is, frankly, has the bishops driving in someone else’s lane. I do not rely on prelates to determine what is a good or bad investment and right and wrong have nothing to do with the national or state’s current unemployment rate.
On the issue of morality, in fact, the bishops acknowledge that the Church does not teach that gambling in and of itself is a sin. Gambling as entertainment, conducted in moderation, is a legitimate pastime. But, it is when gambling threatens the stability of the home it becomes a problem.
But, on the issue of social justice the Church is right to protect the weak and vulnerable from a business whose only purpose to rob from them what little they have.
In the end, the casino referendum will pass and the casinos will be built. There is too much money sloshing around for our politicians to ignore and voters do not like being told them cannot do something—even when it is something they do not want to do.
The good news is that the Catholic bishops found the resolve to opposed the ruling elite and the expansion of predatory gambling.
It gives me hope.