This past week, Pope Benedict XVI named Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput to succeed Cardinal Justin Rigali as head of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. While this is an in-house decision of the Roman Catholic church, it will have major implications far beyond Philly, and reaches deeply into the broader political discussions in the US and beyond. Chaput is a leading conservative voice on church and state, and a strong defender of the church in general, and he’s stepping into the biggest church vs. state battle going on right now outside of Ireland.

Naming Chaput to head up the Philadelphia Archdiocese put one of Benedict’s most articulate and powerful voices front and center in those battles, and also changes the secular political calculus for 2012 in Pennsylvania and beyond.

Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony, the soon-to-be-retired Archbishop of Los Angeles, is of the opinion that Judge Vaughn Walker was wrong in his ruling on Prop 8, because he failed to make his decision based upon religious beliefs that bless only male-female relationships.

Mahony ends up proving Walker’s point, that the only basis for the kind of discrimination that Prop 8 sought to enshrine in law grows out of certain religious and moral positions.

Cardinal, you may be free to discriminate against gays and lesbians within the Catholic church as a matter of faith, but the state of California is not free to do the same as a matter of law.

Evangelicals like Chuck Colson, Roman Catholics like Archbishop Donald Wuerl, and the other religious leaders who signed the “Manhattan Declaration” don’t seem to understand that justifying discrimination in the name of religious freedom is not a good idea.