More Than 5,800 Catholics Sign Petition to Remove Saint Patrick’s Name from South Boston Parade

As of this morning, more than 5,800 concerned Catholics have now signed the online petition—sponsored by the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts and MassResistance—to remove the venerable name of Saint Patrick from the South Boston parade, which will be held tomorrow, on Palm Sunday.   

The petition is a response to the decision by the parade organizers, the Allied War Veterans Council, to permit, for the second year in a row, two homosexual groups, OUTVETS and Boston Pride, to join the line of march.

Last year, under intense political pressure from Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and Congressman Stephen Lynch, a minority on the veterans council, led by Brian Mahoney and Edward Flynn, engineered a reversal of the longstanding position of Council Commander John J. “Wacko” Hurley, who refused to allow any group hostile to traditional Catholic values to impose a discordant message on the parade.

Hurley, a Catholic daily communicant who died last November, won a 9 to 0 victory before the U. S. Supreme Court in June, 1995, in the landmark case of Hurley v. GLIB, which affirmed the right of parade organizers to control the content of their own parade.

The Catholic Action League is calling the presence of OUTVETS and Boston Pride “an affront to everything Saint Patrick believed in and struggled for throughout his life.”

Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “The holy day of Saint Patrick is not celebrated to promote public acceptance of the mortal sin of sodomy or to legitimize other forms of behavior described by the Catechism as ‘grave depravity.'”

“OUTVETS and Boston Pride are not there to honor Saint Patrick for bringing the Catholic Faith to Ireland. They have nothing but contempt for the Catholic religion, express pride in rejecting its moral teachings and castigate those who uphold Catholic morality as bigots and haters. They are shamelessly exploiting the name of a Catholic saint to advance their anti-Catholic ideology.”

“Saint Patrick, in a single lifetime, converted an entire nation from Celtic paganism to Roman Catholicism. Homosexual activists, like those marching in the South Boston parade, want to reverse the achievement of Saint Patrick, de-Christianize our culture, and return society to a pre-Christian, neo-pagan morality.”

“Since the members of the veterans council have, obviously, no remorse over their betrayal of their Faith, their heritage, and their late Council Commander, we hope they might, at least, have the simple human decency to heed the call of thousands of faithful Catholics, and disassociate the name of our patron saint from the pro-homosexual carnival which will take place in South Boston on Palm Sunday.”