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No. In a public school, the prayers are being led by the teachers i.e. government employees in government buildings, so the act is being administered by the state, which falls afoul of the First Amendment.
Exactly. You’re not participating, unless you want to.
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Even if I don’t believe that the water is anything but regular water, I certainly could say that I’m being involved in a religious ritual against my wishes.
If my particular religion prohibits participation in the rituals of other religions (it doesn’t, but let’s just argue that it did like many other religions do), then not having a choice but to participate would seem to be a violation of my freedom to practice my religion freely (i.e. to not participate in the rituals of other religions). The fact that you’re getting hit with the ritual whether or not you’re on your own private property or out in public (govt. property) is the clincher. It’s not like a parochial school or church (or other private institution) where you have a choice of whether to be there or not.
I suspect it would go over a little differently if the Church of Satan was anointing everyone in a given town with “Satan’s blessing water” (pretty sure this doesn’t even exist, but hey…).
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Religious beliefs aside:
Touching anyone else without their prior consent is assault, at least where I live. Even if it’s with something as “harmless” as water (which may or may not be contaminated.)
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Hypothetical: what if the holy-water plane did repeated passes over the car park of a synagogue or mosque while a priest leaned out a window chanting “I baptise you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”?
I mean, the affected congregations wouldn’t believe the water and words had any power, and wouldn’t be participating unless they wanted to, so no need to get cross, right?
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“Sure glad the weather cleared up so I could finish painting the house!”
[15 minutes later, a small plane passes overhead]
“Damn you to hell, spray-plane!”
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It’s still a nuisance. You have a right not to be bothered by the Catholic aerial-baptism guerrilla, especially if you’re Jewish or Muslim.
Of course the question is why the CABG would waste perfectly good holy water and aviation fuel on something that doesn’t mean anything to the forcibly-baptised. It’s not as if they automatically go onto the books as new Catholics, however much Catholics otherwise believe that once you’re baptised, you can never be un-baptised.
OTOH, it might be worth talking about this with the Mormons. After all, they’ve been retroactively baptising dead people as Mormons on the off-chance for ages. They should know how this works.
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That’s what you’d think, but actually it’s not so - as much as the Catholic church loves fancy ceremonies, a simple blessing like this doesn’t really require anything in particular, only a member of the clergy and whatever objects that are to be blessed.
Ceremonies held by high-ranking clergy members, using special prayers invoking saints and whatnot tend to be reserved for fancy, high-profile occasions. Like, for example, consecrating football stadiums built for personal use by fascist dictators. (They did it with the latest monster stadium as well, but apparently our Dear Leader sensed that people were getting a bit fed up so they did it in secret, the fucking cowards.)
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tbh if I was a non-Catholic who lives in the area I’d see an opportunity in this. Like, I know I’m a lost cause, but what about my fields and crops? All that wheat (or whatever it is they’re growing there) can’t fall to Satan’s hand, best douse it with holy water regularly, especially that spot over there that my irrigation system can’t quite reach.
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And they could spray the pesticides, too, while they’re at it! Maybe you could get a priest to bless the glyphosate.
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New band name!
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Through distillation and time, isn’t it likely that we all consume at least a few molecules of holy water every time we have a drink? Or does the holiness get distilled with it? Or does divine power have a lifespan? Why doesn’t someone just bless all the water in the world? Surely that would be a massive labour saving device?
So, shouldn’t we all be blessed already or something? Actually, what does holy water actually do, apart from melt vampires?
I have many questions.
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Given that the sound from the plane’s engine(s) and its altitude would prevent you from hearing the chanting, and the holy water would atomize before it reached the ground, how would you even know you’d been exposed to or involved in the ritual? Also, if someone prays for you, aren’t they involving you in a religious ritual, regardless of your wishes?
If someone flying a plane chants words you cannot hear and sprays water mist you cannot feel, I’m pretty sure that falls well within the protections of the First Amendment.
Unless taxpayer dollars were directly involved in funding this stupid religious stunt, the First Amendment has nothing to do with this.
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Sure it does, when people opine:
there are or should be laws against people just taking a plane and dumping liquids of unknown or unapproved origin on random strangers and their property
How so? The First Amendment doesn’t discuss dumping substances of unknown origin on random strangers and their property and wouldn’t recognise it as speech (even in the degraded circumstances post-Citizens United) or the free exercise of religion (which assumes that members of the public are aware of said exercise and – in the case of rituals – are willing participants). A law against that behaviour wouldn’t come into conflict in any way with the First Amendment if some contrarian idiot tried to challenge it on that basis.
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…which clearly covers someone flying a plane and squirting a water mister out the window while blessing the earthbound souls below, as well as the sidewalk fundamentalist preacher who prays for me, even though I didn’t ask him to.
So by your criteria, if the exercise of religion involves dumping toxic waste out of a plane or if it involves spitting on a person that’s also protected by the First Amendment, just as surely as religious speech is (speech being the key word here). There’s an offshoot of the Mormon church whose religious tenets allow men to marry and have sex with underage girls, so by your criteria prosecuting them for child abuse also goes against the First Amendment. You have a brilliant career ahead of you as a Constitutional lawyer.
In the reality of the law, there are a few issues here: awareness, willing participation in a religious ritual, and material harm.
Let’s compare to the Mormons’ habit of “baptising” the non-Mormons in their geneological database. Awareness of this practise by the general public in generally low, the participants are unwilling, but ultimately there’s no material harm.
Then there’s your case of the street preacher who announces he’s praying for you: there’s awareness, the participant is unwilling (but there’s no ritual involved), and again there’s no material harm (unless he grabs you – that’s assault – or comes into your home uninvited – that’s trespassing).
In the case of this stunt, awareness is a bit heightened (the church announced the stunt), the participants in the ritual are unwilling, and there is a case to be made for material harm (since some devout non-Catholics would object to being doused with Holy Water as surely as they might being doused with pork-infused water or an actual toxic substance).
No-one, including a clergyman, has any First Amendment right to douse one with an unknown substance against one’s will in the name of religious belief. Difficult though it might be for you to grasp, words != physical substances (even highly diffuse ones) or physical actions; if the latter are involved in a religious ritual, the participants (or those operating in loco parentis) must all be consenting for it to be protected by the Establishment Clause.
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So I should be allowed to pour my cat’s urine on you if I believe that it’s part of my religious beliefs?
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Spiritual Warfare seems to be a popular delusion these days.
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