Principal Richard Lopez Forces Students to Attend Catholic Mass

For most high school students, graduation is a significant milestone in their lives. Although many will quickly move on to even bigger things, graduation is a time to stop and reflect back on many important years of their personal, intellectual, and emotional development. This is why it's so sad and frustrating when bigoted government bureaucrats abuse their positions of power to promote their personal religious superstitions.

That's what appears to have happened in Las Vegas when a public school principal told students that attendance oat a Baccalaureate Service — which included a Catholic mass — was mandatory.

Students were told in three notices that attendance at the May 19 baccalaureate at Immaculate Conception Church in Las Vegas was mandatory. Robertson principal Richard Lopez said going to baccalaureate was optional despite the notices. He said students could opt out by talking to him.

However, the Las Vegas Optic said Lopez didn't respond to questions about how students would know they could opt out and why attendance was listed as mandatory.

Source: KOAT

Listing a Catholic mass as a mandatory part of graduation service for a public high school isn't the sort of thing which can be easily explained as an innocent mistake. Very little in the way of graduation ceremonies is "required" in the first place, so it's not like there could have been a long list of optional and required events in which this one event was mislabeled. On the other hand, we have many examples where public school officials have found all sorts of ways to inject all sorts of religion and superstition into civil, secular graduation services: prayers, religious speakers, and even holding graduation in churches!

It's fine, of course, if Catholic churches decide to hold a Catholic religious service complete with Catholic mass for the benefit of Catholic students and their families. Many will want to add a religious component to the graduation time and that's their choice. There is, however, absolutely no reason to even suggest that non-Catholic students — Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Buddhists, Jews, atheists, etc. — should join with them and attend the same religious services.