As it turns out, the trans activists who recently held a sacrilegious funeral in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City for one of their peers likely committed a hate crime.
Writing in a letter to New York Attorney General Letitia James, Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote, a leading Catholic advocacy group, called for an “investigation into the facts and circumstances surrounding the recent use of St.Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City by transgender activists to deceptively gain access and advance ideas and beliefs hostile to doctrines of the Catholic Church, while openly mocking these beliefs.”
Highlighting the state’s penal code, Burch noted that both acts implicate the trans activists in criminal activity. Penal Law Section 485.3 indicates how “New York’s court’s [sic] have recognized that those who gain access to property by deception are liable for criminal trespass,” while Section 485.05.1(a) specifies that “selecting the victim of a criminal trespass based on a religion or religious practice is a hate crime.”
“The outrageous sacrilege perpetrated at St. Patrick’s Cathedral is indeed a hate crime,” Burch wrote. “Video footage shows that transgender activists intentionally used deception to obtain permission to enter St. Patrick’s and the facts show that access was used to desecrate that sacred space and mock Catholic faith and morals.”
As Thomas Griffin recently wrote in these pages, “Joseph Zwilling, the communications director for the Archdiocese of New York, said Cardinal Dolan and the cathedral only knew that a funeral was asked to be offered for a Catholic. They received no other information. That was the only information given, and they had no reason to believe otherwise. It is now obvious that Cecilia [Gentili],” the deceased male who purported to be a female, “was extremely well-known in New York City for his transgender activism.”
Griffin also highlighted how “the Code of Canon Law (§1184.3) notes that funerals ought to be denied to those who are ‘manifest sinners who cannot be granted ecclesiastical funerals without public scandal of the faithful.’”
The trans activists previously — and explicitly — acknowledged their plans to deceive church administrators in order to violate Catholic doctrine. When planning the funeral, the event’s organizer, a trans-identifying man named Cayenne Doroshow, opted to withhold information that would have otherwise prevented the church from conducting it. According to The New York Times, Doroshow “kind of kept” the deceased’s transgenderism “under wraps.”
Although the latest attack on Catholics in the Empire State, this is hardly the first. Some 45 New York-based Catholic churches have reported “acts of vandalism and violence” since late May 2020, according to CatholicVote’s metrics. By compiling “nearly all reports from news agencies” with a “handful” being reported directly to the advocacy group, CatholicVote reports that since May 28, 2020 — three days after the death of George Floyd — there have been more than 400 attacks on Catholic churches. Of this, at least 236 attacks were carried out following the leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision draft.
Whereas there is damning evidence implicating the trans activists in felonious activity, one ought not to hold his breath while waiting for justice to be served. AG James is clearly more committed to her “Get Trump” crusade and going soft on crime than to protecting the residents of her state. And the federal government is clearly more interested in using the unconstitutional FACE Act to prosecute peaceful Catholics, like Mark Houck.
Nevertheless, Burch implored James to “act quickly and resolutely to address this grave injustice, the very sort of vicious abuse that New York’s Hate Crimes Act was designed to prevent. On behalf of millions of Catholics nationwide, we are asking for your help to vindicate the rights and dignity of Catholic New Yorkers, and indeed, the countless Catholics throughout this nation who regard St. Patrick’s as one of their most revered holy places.”
