By Miguel Cruz Tejada
NEW YORK._ The city’s mayor, Eric Adams, warned Tuesday during a meeting with religious groups that he will not break the agreement with the churches because the state is the body and the church is the heart.
The municipal executive of Christian militancy explained that if the heart is removed from the body, the body dies.
Adams’ warning drew criticism from representatives of left-wing groups and Democratic leaders who reacted angrily to the mayor’s statements at the event.
A concordat is an agreement between the Holy See as representative of the Catholic Church and a state to regulate relations between them in matters of mutual interest, having the legal category of an International Treaty.
These agreements establish a basic framework of action between the state and church in legal, juridical, cultural, and economic matters.
In addition to the Catholic Church, it applies to other sects as long as they have signed it.
Adams condemned the separation of church and state, praising the continued prayer in schools.
The mayor, who had previously made no secret of his religious values, made the remarks at the “For a More Spiritual Big Apple” event at an annual breakfast of religious leaders at the Public Library’s main building in Manhattan.
“Don’t talk to me about the separation of church and state. The state is the body. The church is the heart. You take the heart out of the body, the body dies,” Adams added.
“I can’t separate my belief because I’m an elected official. When I walk, I walk with God. When I talk, I talk to God. When I put policies in place, I put them in place with a divine approach. That’s who I am,” he said. Mayor.
He told the audience that a lack of faith could be linked to everything from homelessness to domestic violence to guns in schools.
“When we took the prayers out of the schools, the weapons entered the schools,” he said.
The Bill of Rights guaranteeing the separation of church and state and requiring prayer in public schools was banned in 1962.
Some civil liberties activists immediately criticized Adams’s comments.
“In order for our government to truly represent us, it should not favor any belief over another, including non-belief,” the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) said on its Twitter account, which also issued a press release criticizing the mayor.
“In matters of faith, the mayor is entitled to his own beliefs. As for the Constitution, he must uphold his oath,” adds NYCLU.
The president of that organization, attorney Donna Lieberman, added that it is strange that Mayor Adams needs a refresher course on the First Amendment of the United States Constitution that establishes freedom of religion.
“After all, he has sworn to uphold the constitution more than once, first as a police officer, then as a state representative and last year by becoming mayor,” the activist said.
Naomi Paiss, former director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, also said on Twitter, “so much for blue city mayors who uphold a fundamental tenet of American society.”
Adams responded that it is a Shakespearean tragedy when city residents fail to explore and appreciate New York.
“When I enter a Sikh temple, sit in a sukkah, or go to a Diwali celebration, do you know how many people in this city have never left the geographic boundaries of the neighborhood they live in and the geographic boundaries of their mindset?” Adams pointed out his participation in events of different religious sects.
“They only meet people who look like them, talk like them, eat the same food, and do the same things. That’s a Shakespearean tragedy and an anti-Christopher Columbus theory, to believe that if you drop your intellectual thought process, you’re gone.” to fall from some globe or planet.
“No, it expands the beauty of this diversity,” said the mayor.
CAPTION
NEW YORK._ Mayor Eric Adams warned Tuesday that he would not break the agreement with the churches. (Photo NYC Mayor’s Office Press).
