Mayor Bloomberg’s Naked Public Square

At NRO today, my friend Bill Simon and I have an article titled ” Mayor Bloomberg and the Soul of American Politics ,” about the mayor’s refusal to make clergy a part of tomorrow’s 9/11.  Here’s a sample:

It wasn’t the difficulty of choice and the possibility of offense being taken by the excluded that concerned Mayor Bloomberg. It was the mere presence of religion at the commemoration to which he objected. In the phrase made famous by the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, the mayor prefers the “naked public square” — stripped bare of religion. A solemn public occasion that concerns Americans as fellow citizens should not be tainted by the presence of religion, an aspect of American life that is private and should remain private. “If you want to have a service for your religion, you can have it in your church or in a field, or whatever.”