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Some constitutional law experts suggested Reilly's attempt to have such a significant role in the archdiocese's affairs would violate the separation of church and state.

I've seen postings from FReepers stating time and time again that the words "separation of church and state" do not appear in the Constitution. They state this so as to justify the appearance of Ten Commandment monuments on public grounds or justify some other action in which government shows a bias toward Christianity, their favored religion.

Well, there is a down side to this line of thinking. If there is truly no "separation of church and state" in the Constitution, then there is nothing wrong with the hostile takeover of the Archdiocese of Boston by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

This sword cuts both ways. Be careful how you wield it.

The words "separation of church and state" may not appear in the First Amendment, but the words "free exercise thereof," (i.e., "of religion,") certainly do. This sort of program would pretty clearly violate that free exercise.

And the First Amendment, being part of the U.S. Constitution, trumps anything any current or proposed Massachusetts law may say. And that's an issue the federal courts get to judge.

This sword cuts both ways. Be careful how you wield it.

No, it cuts only one way: in favor of the State and against all others.

Or are you seriously suggesting that the AG's position would lead to the posting of the Ten Commandments on "government" property? (More likely, it would result in the banning of the Ten Commandments from church property.)

''The second track, which is every bit as important, we're looking at as an area of our responsibility. It involves the protection of children. What policies, what procedures, what programs are going to be in place within the archdiocese that will prevent this from ever happening again. If it happens again, obviously the legislation will involve reporting and these cases will be prosecuted or at least evaluated for prosecution. But how do you build in a comprehensive program that prevents this from ever happening again? That's what we're looking for. We intend to stay very involved in that until it's accomplished.''

Massachusetts has very specific laws to protect children who are victims of abuse, which were passed in response to some really horrific situations. When I was teaching in a public school, the whole staff was given information about the law and what situations need to be reported..."failure to report" is a violation of the law.

This is what's tricky here. The church was taking care of its problems (it thought) without regard to necessity to report abuse cases. It's complicated. I hate to see the state interfere with church matters, but the church really failed on this one. The church had a special obligation to stop this abuse, because parents would be less likely to believe accusations of abuse by the clergy, and young children would be less likely to think of a priest as a bad person. Maybe "you reap what you sow" applies to the Boston archdiocese in this case.