FFRFMCC Once Again Protests Catholic Prayer Shrine in Chicago

During the Christian “holy week” each year, a Catholic prayer shrine appears in Chicago’s Daley Center Plaza, where an organization called the Divine Mercy Project injects its Catholic religious beliefs on to government property, turning the Plaza into a church sanctuary and calling for all good citizens of Chicago to convert to Catholicism.

At the same time, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and its Chicago chapter put up a display of our own, asking this particular Catholic organization to keep its religion on its own private property.  Here is a quote from one of the signs from our display, designed to encourage those passing by Daley Center Plaza to tell the Divine Mercy Project to keep state and religion separate:

“Not looking to convert?  Neither are we.  But the Divine Mercy Project wants to take its mission of “Conversion of the World” through Catholic evangelism to the public square.  Should government property, which is owned by ALL taxpayers, be used to endorse the beliefs of a specific religious group?  Our constitution says no.”

What follows is a quote from founding father John Adams during his signing of the Treaty with Tripoli on June 7th, 1797, when he said, “As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

The sign concludes with, “There are over 300,000 churches in the United States, which our government allows Christian organizations to have tax-free.  Please tell them they do not need to use secular taxpayer property to evangelize.”

This is just one of three separate messages from our display, asking people to open their eyes to the divisiveness and danger of entangling religion with government.  And, that just because one particular religion claims a certain time of year to be so “holy” that they have the right to force their beliefs on others, they should not be able to lay claim to government property for this purpose.

The FFRF State/Religion Separation display will be up from Saturday March 31st, 2018 until Sunday, April 8th, 2018.