Evading Obedience

Jeff Sessions, facing religious criticism to the Zero Tolerance immigration, responded by invoking Romans 13, the relevant portion being:

(This Scripture cannot be applied in a way that puts the state above the Church)

Of course, this rips Scripture out of context. It is true that, as Christians, we must obey just laws. But it does not mean we blindly follow whatever a state decrees. Otherwise, we would have to obey a pagan state and sacrifice to idols. We would have to obey a National Socialist state in the persecution of Jews. We would have to obey unjust laws on slavery, abortion, same sex “marriage,” the contraception mandate, or violating the seal of confession.

(Anti-Catholic headlines concerning Australian attempts to violate the seal of the confessional)

The tragedy is: some Catholics who opposed all of these examples of injustice by the state and denounced other Catholics who supported those evils are now supporting the state and rejecting the bishops who called this policy morally wrong.

However, lest anyone think only one faction is guilty, it should be noted that other Catholics are using this incident to attack the Church focusing on moral issues that they downplay. I have seen some Catholics argue that if only the Church had taught on immigration instead of abortion, we would not have seen this happening. I find this ludicrous. In my younger days, when I struggled with Church teaching on immigrants, I was quite clear that the teaching on immigration was taught as forcefully as other teachings. I might have wished that the Church focused on different issues rather than jar my conscience on this one, but I knew that the teaching existed. What we’re seeing here is no different. It’s an attempt to get rid of the Church speaking out on issue X by saying that they should be speaking out on issue Y instead... as if the Church can only speak on one evil at a time.

What this all boils down to is evading obedience. When the bishops speak out on a moral issue, they are not being “political.” They are telling us of our moral obligations. We, with our political biases, resent the teachings we find telling us we are wrong. So, when we excuse ourselves and treat this teaching as an uninformed opinion, we are evading the obedience we must give:

When we argue that a teaching is not authentic magisterium and therefore something we are free to write off as an opinion, we are quite literally endangering our souls because of our selective obedience on real moral issues.

This doesn’t mean that to be faithful Catholics, we must all support a specific political platform. We can all have different views on how to best carry out Church teaching. But once we fall into the trap of whether we will obey a Church teaching, we are cafeteria Catholics and our profession of obedience is a sham.

Dissent is Dissent, Regardless of Faction

The reasoning goes that Republicans oppose the keeping abortion legal. These bishops oppose keeping abortion legal. Republicans oppose “pro-choice” politicians. These bishops oppose “pro-choice” politicians. Therefore, these bishops are partisan Republicans. (Arnobius of Sicca blog, from the “lost years” [Ω], 5/7/2009)

As I see it, it's not wrong to want security from attackers, but in finding the best way to get it, we can't neglect our obligation to the suffering. I think that is the reason the bishops believe they must oppose this policy. (Comment I made on my blog’s Facebook page, 1/30/17)

Back in the lost Xanga years of this blog, I spent time writing about Catholics who supported the Obama administration and attacked the American bishops for opposing some of his positions. The bishops defended the right to life and opposed policies incompatible with Church teaching. They were attacked as “the Republican Party at prayer.” I spent a good deal of time defending the Church from accusations of partisanship. So, moving forward eight years, I find it tragic that the same attacks on bishops exist—just the actors have changed.

In both cases, the assumption is the bishops must either support the other party or are grossly ignorant about what is really going on. Otherwise, they wouldn’t hold that position. But this assumption overlooks the fact that the bishops are speaking out about our moral obligations as Christians—those obligations that bound us before the Democratic and Republican parties existed—and will continue to bind us after these parties go the way of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines and our descendants need to do research to discover what these parties even were. Whether the conflict is about the right to life, or the treatment of refugees, our faith teaches us that we are bound to do certain things and oppose other things. These obligations override our political preferences because we are rendering to God what is God’s (Mark 12:17).

Perhaps we should reflect when we feel tempted to accuse the bishops of “partisanship.” Are they the ones who are “partisan,” or are we the ones who are guilty? Yes, it is possible that a “Fr. Harry Tik” or a “Sr. Mary Moonbeam” can abuse their position and put political values in place of teaching the Catholic faith. But so can a “Fr. H. Ardliner” or a Sr. Mary Mantilla.” If someone says, “People from this party can’t be truly Catholic,” that’s an abuse. But if a bishop teaches, “Catholics must not go against our obligation to defend the unborn or the suffering refugee,” he is not abusing his position, even if he teaches against a politician that an individual Catholic might like.

Throughout history, the Church has had to oppose governments when those governments went against God’s law. Sometimes these governments were dictatorial. At other times, they were democratic in nature. Either way, these governments often accused the bishops of being unpatriotic, or enemies of the state when they stood up and said, “No.” In such cases, people had to decide whether to follow the state or follow the Church.

But Church history has never praised those Catholics who chose to obey the state over the Church when the Church said, “This cannot be done.” Individual regions can fall into error, and the local churches with it (case in point, England in the Reformation), but the churches remaining obedient to the Church in Rome and refusing to accept the error of the state have not done so.

The fact is, when the bishops took Obama to task over abortion, “Same-sex marriage,” and the contraception mandate, they were acting on their Catholic faith, not partisan politics. When the bishops take Trump to task over his policy on refugees, they are acting on their Catholic faith, not partisan politics. If we reject the bishops because what they say is not what we prefer politically, we are rendering unto Caesar what is God’s.

 

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[Ω] From 2007 to late 2009, this blog, under the name Arnobius of Sicca, was on Xanga. While I have the HTML files from those years, these posts are no longer available online.

Church Authority and Political Agendas

When we profess our belief in the Catholic Church, we are professing that she is the Church Our Lord built on the rock of Peter and that she teaches on account of God’s authority, not the authority of human beings (See Matthew 16:19, Matthew 18:18 and Luke 10:16 for example). So when the Pope intends to teach the Church or the bishop intends to teach his diocese, we recognize that authority by giving assent. This authority goes beyond borders and social status, and guides us on how we must live to have eternal life.

On the other hand, when we look at politics, we are looking at a finite system of government that promotes the common good of the people living in a nation. The laws are good when they support moral goodness, and bad when they do not. A government can give people what they want even though it is evil, and as a result govern badly even if it is popular. Ideally, a good government should have laws that promotes virtue and opposes vice—though we do not believe law should suppress every vice (see HERE). Politics and civil government deal with temporary things. Their policies only last as long as the government does, and it is easy for nations to become corrupted over time with the shared values they profess.

When you stack the two side by side, it is clear that wise Catholics ought to put the teachings of the Church above the laws of government when the two are in conflict. That doesn’t mean disloyalty to our country. We’re called to be good citizens and promote the common good. But we’re not to put the political platforms of a government (a finite good) above the state of our souls. So when Catholic citizens vote, or when Catholic members of government create or enforce laws, they need to approach these things with our eternal end in mind. When they don’t—when they insist on supporting politicians or laws which go against God’s commands—they fail in their calling as Christians and they fail in their tasks as citizens or government officials.

We need to make a distinction here. I'm not talking about circumstances which leads a Catholic vote to limit evil in order to prevent some of harm a corrupted government causes until a time when we can reverse the evil done. I’m talking about Catholic voters and politicians who support what the Church condemns as evil, even if they claim to personally oppose it. They are not only doing harm to their souls and those of others, but they damage society as well. That’s why we must oppose things like legalizing abortion or redefining marriage so it becomes a sexual relationship instead of building the family as the basic unit of society cause this damage.

Catholic voters need to identify the politicians who support the evils that do the greatest harm to souls and to society itself and oppose them. It’s not a matter of preference like ice cream flavors. Some of these politicians may also support things we do like. It’s a matter of looking at things like a Catholic, seeing the good and the evil and using prudential judgment on how to promote the good and limit the evil.

There can be legitimate differences of opinion. When there are only good candidates, people can have different thoughts on the better one. When there are only bad candidates, people can disagree on who is the greater evil. But we have to use the moral teaching of the Church, not our political agendas, to make that judgment. That means we look to the Church under the leadership of the Pope and bishops in communion with him to guide us. We don’t pick and choose from these teachings to excuse what we were going to do anyway.

When we make decisions on how to vote, we need to ask ourselves if we are voting this way to follow Our Lord through the teaching of His Church, or whether we are voting this way to support a political agenda which is incompatible with our calling as Christians. How certain are we that Our Lord will not condemn us at the Final Judgment?

If we don’t like the answer, perhaps we should pray and study and see if we can find an answer before going ahead.

Determining Moral Acts in Politics

These are ugly times. Most Catholics know that the stakes are high in this election, but disagree on what to do about it. The problem is not that they disagree on what to do about it, but that many are savaging others for not reaching the same decision. For example, in my personal Facebook feed, I see some Catholics vehemently stating that voting for one candidate is the only way we can escape from more of the evil and harassment we received over the last eight years. Others are just as vocal in insisting this person is the worst choice. While some of my fellow Catholics are charitable in their disagreement over how to vote. Others hurl anathemas against each other, accusing each other of supporting the evils associated with the choice.

Part of the problem is the fact that all the candidates (Democrat, Green, Libertarian, Republican) who might get elected support an intrinsic evil that would disqualify them from consideration. As the USCCB teaches in their voting guide:

42. As Catholics we are not single-issue voters. A candidate's position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter's support. Yet if a candidate's position on a single issue promotes an intrinsically evil act, such as legal abortion, redefining marriage in a way that denies its essential meaning, or racist behavior, a voter may legitimately disqualify a candidate from receiving support.

 

 USCCB, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, 2015

People can point to this list to say the other candidates don’t qualify and we can’t vote for them. The problem is, one of them is going to get elected, and we will be facing intrinsic evil. So we need to seek out what we must do when there are no good choices.

The first thing we need to do is distinguish between choosing to do evil and seeking to limit evil—a distinction some Catholics are losing sight of. Choosing to do evil means we choose to do something condemned as wrong by our Church. Limiting evil means trying to lessen the impact of an unavoidable evil. St. John Paul II gave us an example of the latter in his encyclical, Evangelium Vitae:

[#73] A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on. Such cases are not infrequent. It is a fact that while in some parts of the world there continue to be campaigns to introduce laws favouring abortion, often supported by powerful international organizations, in other nations—particularly those which have already experienced the bitter fruits of such permissive legislation—there are growing signs of a rethinking in this matter. In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.

In his example, the Pope describes a lawmaker who cannot stop the evil of a law that supports abortion and points out that such a person can vote to limit the harm done by the law. This is not cooperating with evil. Unfortunately, some Catholics have lost sight of that in 2016. Determining the goodness of an act depends on three things:

1. The action chosen
2. The intended reason the person has for doing the action
3. The circumstances that affect the action

Unless all three are good, we cannot call the action good. For example, if we choose a bad action, our intention cannot make the act good because the ends do not justify the means. Or if we do a good action like giving a snack to a child with a good intention, but the child has a peanut allergy and dies as a result, the end result is bad. Nine times out of ten, there might be nothing wrong with that act. But in this one case, it does matter and a serious evil resulted. The person may or may not be to blame for the circumstances depending on what they did know and what they reasonably could find out (“is it OK if I give your child peanuts?”).

In terms of voting, we have to assess the action we choose, the reason we choose to do it and whether the circumstances increases or decreases the harm done. The standard is not our relative preferences but the Church teaching on good and evil. Does our freely chosen act allow good or evil? Do we choose to do it for a good or evil end? Do the circumstances around our choice make things better or worse compared to our other choices?

This means we have to be clear on what the Church teaches about moral acts and apply them to candidates and party platforms. We have to be clear that we’re voting to defend the Catholic faith, trying to oppose evil or at least limit it if blocking it is impossible. We need to consider the consequences of our vote and stand ready to oppose the evils our candidate does support if he or she should get elected.

But we have to beware of the advice we receive. I have seen Catholics deny that we must oppose intrinsic evils passed into law or enshrined in a Supreme Court ruling. They take the words of Catholic saints out of context and argue that we can’t outlaw all sins (misusing St. Thomas Aquinas), so we don’t have to worry about politicians supporting things like the legality of abortion. But St. John Paul II called that out as garbage:

[38] The inviolability of the person which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, fínds its primary and fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life. Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights—for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture—is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.

 

 John Paul II, Christifideles Laici (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1988).

We need to remember it is the Church who interprets right and wrong. Not someone on Facebook or Twitter. The Pope and the bishops have this authority to tell us how to apply Church teaching. When someone argues a sin is not a sin, we know we cannot trust them. But when we follow the Church and do not evade what she says, we can reach different decisions in good faith. When this happens, judging these things as heresy or supporting evil is false.

If we’re not sure if a person has properly understood Church teaching, we can ask how they understand it. But if they do understand it properly, then we should remember what Archbishop Chaput offered as his opinion (which I happen to share):

One of the pillars of Catholic thought is this: Don’t deliberately kill the innocent, and don’t collude in allowing it. We sin if we support candidates because they support a false “right” to abortion. We sin if we support “pro-choice” candidates without a truly proportionate reason for doing so— that is, a reason grave enough to outweigh our obligation to end the killing of the unborn. And what would such a “proportionate” reason look like? It would be a reason we could, with an honest heart, expect the unborn victims of abortion to accept when we meet them and need to explain our actions— as we someday will.

Finally, here’s the third question. What if Catholics face an election where both major candidates are “pro-choice”? What should they do then? Here’s the answer: They should remember that the “perfect” can easily become the enemy of the “good.”

The fact that no ideal or even normally acceptable candidate exists in an election does not absolve us from taking part in it. As Catholic citizens, we need to work for the greatest good. The purpose of cultivating a life of prayer, a relationship with Jesus Christ, and a love for the church is to grow as a Christian disciple— to become the kind of Catholic adult who can properly exercise conscience and good sense in exactly such circumstances. There isn’t one “right” answer here. Committed Catholics can make very different but equally valid choices: to vote for the major candidate who most closely fits the moral ideal, to vote for an acceptable third-party candidate who is unlikely to win, or to not vote at all. All of these choices can be legitimate. This is a matter for personal decision, not church policy.

The point we must never forget is this: We need to keep fighting for the sanctity of the human person, starting with the unborn child and extending throughout life. We abandon our vocation as Catholics if we give up; if we either drop out of political issues altogether or knuckle under to America’s growing callousness toward human dignity.

Chaput, Charles J. (2008-08-12). Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life (pp. 229-231). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Our choice for president must reflect Church teaching, and not seek to explain it away. If others draw a different conclusion, but their choice also reflects Church teaching, we cannot condemn it. It is true some might distort what the Church says to justify voting wrongly. But in that case, we should remember that God will not let wrongdoing go unpunished. St. Paul’s warned the Galatians:

⁷ Make no mistake: God is not mocked, for a person will reap only what he sows, ⁸ because the one who sows for his flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows for the spirit will reap eternal life from the spirit. ⁹ Let us not grow tired of doing good, for in due time we shall reap our harvest, if we do not give up. (Galatians 6:7–9).

When Partisanship Replaces Justice

In the 1888 encyclical Officio Sanctissimo, Pope Leo XIII encouraged Catholic participation in the legal system to change unjust laws. Part of this document asserts:

[12] Effectively the laws give Catholics an easy way of seeking to amend the condition and order of the State and to desire and will a constitution which, if not favourable and well-intentioned towards the Church, shall at least, as justice requires, be not harshly hostile. It would be unjust to accuse or blame any one amongst us who has recourse to such means, for those means, used by the enemies of Catholicity to obtain and to extort, as it were, from rulers laws inimical to civil and religious freedom, may surely be used by Catholics in an honourable manner for the interests of religion and in defence of the property, privileges, and right divinely granted to the Catholic Church, and that ought to be respected with all honour by rulers and subjects alike.

 

 Claudia Carlen, ed., The Papal Encyclicals: 1878–1903 (Ypsilanti, MI: Pierian Press, 1990), 154.

I’m struck by differing assumptions compared to the American experience of the last few years. Courts strike down laws passed to defending moral rights, The government vetoes or ignores laws they swore to uphold (without suffering repercussions for dereliction of duty). In fact, executive orders and judicial diktats deny believers the right to promote laws benefiting the common good, and target them for refusing to accept the moral changes the political and cultural elites impose on society.

Leo XIII wrote this to the Catholics in Bavaria during the Kulturkampf encouraging them to use the same system to lift oppression that their opponents used to impose it. That says something ironic about America today. That irony is America today is less just in some legal structures than Imperial Germany was 120 years ago! When legal structures are unjust we can no longer rely on our checks and balances to defend the rights of citizens who hold views unpopular with political and cultural elites.

This shouldn’t surprise us. Americans have an ugly habit of setting aside their system of justice when they deem a targeted group unworthy under the law. The obvious example is that of slavery and segregation. But we could also include the violations of treaties with Native Americans, the Internment of Japanese Americans, the denial of the rights of the unborn, and the targeting of refugees. When Americans want to stop treating a disliked group as an equal, we enforced our laws arbitrarily and passed new laws pushing the disliked group further away. 

To defend injustice, America invokes hypothetical extreme cases and treats that extreme case as the norm. For example, abortion for the rape victim, or security from possible fifth columnists, terrorists or felons in the case of Japanese internees, Islamic refugees and illegal aliens. America justified segregation on the grounds that African Americans could not adapt to “White Society” and slavery on the grounds that slaves could not adapt to freedom. Nobody asks whether extreme cases are real and whether they justify these actions.

Today, America uses the irrelevant analogy fallacy, drawing attention to a few similarities between scenarios and ignoring the greater differences. Promoting “same sex marriage,” elites claim denying people with same sex attraction the right to marry is the same as denying interracial marriage. Elites invoke the similarity of “denying two people the right to marry” and name themselves foes of bigotry. The forgotten difference is interracial marriage still involves one male and one female. Opposing interracial marriage denied something essential (complementarity of male and female) in favor of something accidental (the ethnicity of the male and female).

The same happens in other cases. Elites justify abortion by arguing the fetus is a "clump of cells,” so we can excise like any other group of cells. The essential difference is the fetus is a separate person, not a mere clump of cells, and we cannot treat a person like any other “clump.” Elites justify the “contraception mandate” by saying women have a “right” to contraceptives. Even barring the fact that Catholics reject that premise, a “right” to something does not mean people must subsidize it.

These examples show how elites set aside justice and law when it benefits their ideology, invoking them only when favorable. This results in a system where the preference of the elite is law, despite what actual law and moral belief of citizens hold. They succeed because they use simple slogans in supporting their own positions and attacking their opponents. Refuting inaccurate slogans takes longer than reciting them. People remember the inaccurate slogan longer. “War on women.” “Freedom to love.” “Reproductive Freedom.” Few know refutations exist for each of them.

This reality frustrates many Christians. People ignore truth and favor slogans.  So we offer simplistic solutions in exchange. “We need better Popes and bishops.” “We need stronger teaching.” “We need simpler explanations.” These aren’t solutions. They’re just opposing slogans.

What we need—if you’ll pardon me for using a slogan myself—are “boots on the ground.” We need Christians in every walk of life explaining what we believe and why it is good. This isn’t going to change people like flicking a switch. Many will ignore us. Many will treat us hostilely. Yet, some will hear. What we say might turn out to be a planted seed. We don’t know if the seed will bear fruit, only God knows the answer to that question. Either each one of us sows the seeds in the face of opposition, or we abandon the Great Commission and surrender the nation to those who oppose truth and righteousness.

Christianos ad leones! Once More, Here We Go Again

From the first century AD to the present, harassment and persecution of the Church by government or cultural elites have followed a pattern:

1. Accuse the Church of obstinately clinging to an unpopular teaching out of hostility and bad will.
2. Attack the Church, using a false accusation as justification for unjust treatment. 
3. Offer to relent if the Church will cede a part of the obedience owed to God to the state.
4. When the Church refuses, increase the attacks and use that refusal as “proof” of unreasonableness of the Church and justification for continued mistreatment.

Sometimes these attacks have been overt, cruel and barbaric. Sometimes they masquerade as enforcement of an ordinarily good law but is misapplied. But regardless of how it is done [*], the State using these tactics is abusing its authority and often betraying the principles it was established under. In most circumstances, the Church in a region has two choices: To endure the persecution while trying to convert the persecutor or to capitulate to the State and consent to doing evil or having evil done in her name. The goal of the state is to force the second option. The call of the Christian is to choose the first option.

In the 21st century, the political and cultural elites of America seems determined to continue this cycle. No, it’s not brutal like the overt attacks on the Church in past centuries. Instead of arenas and wild beasts, it is courts and lawyers and instead of executioners and gulags, it is fines and lawsuits. But the end result is the same: The state usurps the power to compel the Christian to give support for what his religion calls evil. In doing so, America betrays the values she was founded upon. The explicit forbidding of the government to pass laws which interfere with the free practice of religion without a compelling interest (meaning vital for the safety of the country and with the least interference when proven compelling interest exists) has been perverted to the point that the state claims the right to coerce religion into abandoning whatever moral teaching is unpopular with the political and cultural elites.

We see this most recently with the vetoing of (and refusing to enforce) laws that seek to protect the freedom of religion from harassment by the state. The term Religious Freedom is put in Scare Quotes and portrayed as discrimination. The goal is to portray Christians who invoke their constitutional rights of freedom from state coercion as if they were calling for the right to mistreat people they dislike—a charge which is entirely false and one that makes use of the antics of a tiny minority to stereotype their behavior as the behavior of the whole group. In any other case, that tactic would be considered gross bigotry (for example, stereotypes like: all Muslims are terrorists, all blacks are felons, all Hispanics are illegal aliens).

The fact is, the Christian must do what is right before God—which is vastly different from the antics of the Westboro Baptists or suicide bombers—and what is right before God also means seeking the true good of our fellow human beings [†] even if we are harassed or persecuted for doing so. That is why we reject the charges against us. Our teachings and moral obligations are not based on the hatred of the sinner. If that were the case, we would have to hate ourselves as we believe we are all sinners in need of a Savior. People ma call us bigots, but that is nothing more than slander aimed at vilifying us for speaking against the popular vices of a society. Our Church absolutely forbids us from interpreting God’s commands as justifying mistreatment of the sinner [§].

So society has a choice to make. It can choose to try understanding the what and why of Church teaching and thus discover that the reason for our teaching is sound. Or it can choose to ignore the obligation to search for the truth and speak falsely against us. But if America should choose the latter option, she should consider this. The harassment of the Church and denial of religious freedom is ignoring the principles of the Bill of Rights. If society should decide that they are justified in ignoring one part as not being important, then they will have nothing to say if another group should use the same reasoning to suppress a different part of the Bill of Rights on the grounds that they don’t think it important.

I’ll leave you here with a section of dialogue by Dr. Peter Kreeft to consider:

‘Isa: But the main argument, the simplest argument, is just this: if no moral values are absolute, neither is tolerance. The absolutist can take tolerance much more seriously than the relativist. It’s absolutism, not relativism, that fosters tolerance. In fact, it’s relativism that fosters intolerance.

Libby: That’s ridiculous.

‘Isa: No it isn’t. Because … why not be intolerant? Only because it feels better to you? What happens tomorrow when it feels different? Why be tolerant? Only because it’s our society’s consensus? What happens tomorrow, when the consensus changes? You see? The relativist can’t appeal to a moral law as a wall, a dam against intolerance. But we need a dam because societies are fickle, like individuals. What else can deter a Germany—a humane and humanistic Germany in the twenties—from turning to an inhumane and inhuman Nazi philosophy in the thirties? What else can stop a now-tolerant America from some future intolerance?—against any group it decides to oppress? It was Blacks in the Southeast over slavery last century; it may be Hispanics in the Southwest over immigration next century. We’re intolerant to unwanted unborn babies today; we’ll start killing born ones tomorrow. Maybe eventually teenagers. They’re sometimes “wanted” even less than babies!

Libby: You’re getting more and more ridiculous.

‘Isa: Then answer the question: Why not? That’s the question. We persecuted homosexuals yesterday; today we persecute homophobes; maybe tomorrow we’ll go back to persecuting homosexuals again. Why not, if morals are only relative?

 

 Peter Kreeft, A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999), 98.

 

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Christianos ad leones = latin for “The Christians to the Lions!"

[*] A common logical fallacy used here is the fallacy of relative privation, which claims that because your injustice is not as bad as another injustice, it is not injustice at all.

[†] The true good and the popular vices of a society being incompatible.

[§] At this point, someone will point out the punishments in past centuries as a “proof” against my claims. But that is to miss the point. In societies which had less developed forms of government, such practices were not distinct to one religion or culture. I don’t deny that some Churchmen in authority focussed too much on the civil punishments for sins that happened to be crimes as well, but you will never see the formal Church teaching state  that being merciless is good.

They Will Hate Us

(The Stoning of Zechariah)

 

The Supreme Court has ruled today legalizing “same sex marriage” in a very poorly reasoned decision. This is something a Christian cannot support in good faith. Of course we believe that we are called to treat each individual with all the love and respect that is due a human person. But that love we are called to does not mean that we are required to recognize a morally bad act as if it were good. Therefore we deny that our actions are motivated by hatred when we say that homosexual acts are wrong. However, people will accuse us of hatred anyway. 

Because those political and cultural elites have decided that the only moral wrong is “hatred,” and because they decide that any action or belief they dislike is “hatred,” it stands to reason that we will become social pariahs in society. I fully expect that families will be divided as Our Lord warned in Matthew:

³⁴ “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. ³⁵ For I have come to set 

a man ‘against his father, 

a daughter against her mother, 

and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 

³⁶ and one’s enemies will be those of his household.’  (Matthew 10:34-36)

So, when those of us who believe that marriage can only exist between one man and one woman encounter those who believe that any sexual relationship can become a “marriage,” they will accuse us of bigotry, hatred, homophobia and so on. They will falsely compare themselves with the Civil Rights movement and equate us with being Klansmen. To bolster their claim, they will trot out every extremist who comes along and equate them with being the “typical” example of Christian opposition.

This is false of course. The Catechism of the Catholic Church makes quite clear that, despite moral opposition to same sex sexual acts, we are not to treat people with such an inclination with hatred or do harm to them:

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. (2333)

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection. (2347) [Emphasis added]

Of course this hostility in the face of rejecting society’s values in favor of Our Lord’s values. Is nothing new. The pagan Romans viewed the early Christians as “enemies of humanity” and a danger to society because we rejected the vicious (in the sense of “vice filled”) practices they accepted as normal. Any government which finds our moral stance to be a barrier to what they want to do will find a way to label us as an enemy of the state, being cheered along by the crowds.

Of course, we must make sure our behavior as Christians is worthy of Our Lord. We have to love and bless those who hate us, and rebuke those extremists who confuse the teaching of what is right with the hatred of those who do wrong. And there will be extremists out there. When something offensive is done, there will always be a small percentage among the offended who think an unjust response is acceptable—and the greater the offense, the larger the amount offended and a corresponding larger number of extremists. We must urge them to remember that we may not do evil to those who wrong us.

So, we will no do evil, but, we will not surrender doing what is right before God either, because we must obey God, rather than men. We cannot "burn the pinch of incense” that society demands to get along. So, just as we did after Roe v. Wade, we will refuse to accept the validity of the Supreme Court decision. We will work to bring a fallen society back to Christ. In doing so, we will reject the charge of “hatred” towards those who hate us. We may be fired, fined, sued or imprisoned. We may find the Supreme Court will invent a “workaround” to evade the First Amendment and justify direct attacks on denominations they despise. But despite that, we will continue to love those we are called to teach the truth about how God calls us to live.

Thoughts on Church Teaching Encountering Politics and Business

One common objection to the Catholic moral teaching is the accusation that the Church is involving herself in politics and attempting to control the state. What is assumed in this accusation is that the Church, in her teaching, is seeking to dictate laws to the governing body of a nation and impose her teachings on those who do not believe she teaches the truth. The other side of the coin is this: When the Church teaches on moral obligation which is in opposition to the individual's preferred political view, she is accused of siding with the opposing political view.

In both cases, the Church is speaking on a topic on which the listener does not want to be told he or she is wrong. Therefore the Church is accused of interfering in business that does not concern her. While it is an understandable error, it is an error nonetheless. What gets overlooked is the fact that governments and businesses are not merely impersonal autonomous beings. They are made up of men and women who have to make moral choices when setting policies which will affect other men and women. Such choices can be morally wrong.

(King Herod’s Massacre in Bethlehem)

The purpose of the Catholic Church is to carry out the mission that Our Lord tasked His apostles with, to go out and bring the message of salvation to the whole world. In doing so, she calls each person individually and each nation as a whole to turn away from the behaviors which separate them from God. The Greatest Commandments, which Our Lord gave us...

³⁷ He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. ³⁸ This is the greatest and the first commandment. ³⁹ The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ⁴⁰ The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

…apply to our civil laws and business policies as well. A human law or business policy cannot go against what God has commanded us to do or avoid, and it cannot be harmful to the well being of the individual. Thus, when the Church speaks out against abortion or same sex “marriage” or the contraception mandate, she is speaking out against laws which violate what God has commanded and violate the dignity of the human person. This is why she also speaks out on ecological responsibility, treating illegal aliens justly and other policies.

These are not “merely political” issues where the Church is interfering. These are moral decisions with moral responsibility. When the nation or a business chooses a policy which violates what God commands, the Church has an obligation to speak to the individuals who are part of the government or business who make these decisions. She must tell them, “If you do this thing, you will place yourself in opposition to God."

However, in doing this, the Church does not say “You must vote for this party, candidate, program.” She speaks out against wrongdoing, but does not endorse a party or an economic system. If a specific political position or a business has staked out an odious position, it logically follows that we must oppose the position, and as long as the business or party holds that position, the relationship with the Church will be strained.

Ultimately, this is a case where people only want the Church to speak in a way which they agree with. If they disagree with the Church teaching, they want the Church to be silent. When they agree with what the Church teaches, she is praised. When they disagree, she is being “political.” But that’s being partisan, using ad hominem labels to negate arguments they dislike.

It’s important to remember that the moral obligations that come along with being a Christian are not relegated to the private sphere. People act publicly and so they can sin publicly in enacting unjust laws or corrupt business practices. When they do so, the Church must oppose their actions, denouncing the laws which go against what God commands.

Some people might object, saying this is an imposition of values on people who don’t share them. But that is a double standard—for they are doing the same thing by trying to push through laws which are in opposition to Christian moral teaching. If it is wrong for us to do this, it is wrong for them to do it. But if they insist that they are seeking to promote what is right, we claim the same motive.

Ultimately, the attack against the Church—that she is “interfering” in politics or trying to “control” the state—are merely an attempt to negate a moral challenge to their actions. Rejecting the challenge on the ground that it is “religious,” is an example of the genetic fallacy…by attacking the source of the challenge, it attempts to ignore the truth of the challenge.

But the fact remains—the Church is speaking against a legal or business action because it goes against what God calls us to be, and in choosing such a law or policy, one is rejecting God. Since the Church is concerned for both the individuals and for each group, she must speak out against wrongdoing…even when done by government or business.

Thoughts On the Growing Injustice Against Christianity In America

We’re told that judges have no right to refuse to impose laws they feel to be unjust, civil servants have no right to refuse to participate in a state sanctioned activity they feel is unjust, pharmacists and doctors are denied conscience protection and businesses have no right to refuse to do something which goes against the moral convictions of the owners. But, they do not apply this to themselves. Thus, we’ve seen governors and attorney generals who refused to defend/enforce the laws defending the traditional concept of marriage.

Americans seem to be so blind to the fact that the these arguments are only applied in one direction, denying religious freedom to Christians with a moral conviction that a law is wrong, while giving license to any other group (ethnic, gender, religion, sexual preference). What we have is the replacing the rule of law with diktats aimed at favoring the allies of politically approved ideas and harming those opposed to these ideas. The sad thing is, in the past we have lionized people who stood up to the state and said, “I will not comply with an unjust law.” These heroes in American history recognized when a judicial ruling or a law was unjust because it forbade them doing what they felt morally obligated to do.

The common tactic to justify this injustice is to try to link their cause to the Civil Rights Movement. For example, proponents of “same sex marriage” try to point to segregation laws in the 19th and 20th centuries and claim that the belief that marriage can only exist between one man and one woman is the same thing as oppressing African Americans. But that is a false analogy. The two sides are not equivalent. One can affirm that a person has rights as a human being without indulging a moral behavior believed wrong. But the Civil Rights movement existed because the laws of the time denied the fact that African Americans had certain rights as human beings.

In fact, the banning of interracial marriage (so often equated with the defense of traditional marriage) was a legal invention that invented an artificial barrier between male and female on the basis of determining that one ethnicity was inferior to another. That intention to discriminate is not present in the defense of traditional marriage. The defense of marriage recognizes that male and female runs across all national, ethnic and religious lines and those categories do not change what marriage is. 

But “same sex marriage” does change what marriage is, by denying the complementarity of the genders as what marriage is intended to accomplish. The concept of “same sex marriage” reduces marriage to a legally recognized sexual relationship—something we do not accept as a valid definition of marriage, and something we will not cooperate with.

However, rather than actually try to discuss our concerns, the tactics today are very much similar to the attacks on Christianity in the times of Pagan Rome…making false accusations about what Christians believe in our opposition to what is morally wrong. Then, like now, Christians were charged with “hatred.” In that case, the charge was “hatred of the human race.” Here, it is “hatred” of the people who benefit from something we call morally wrong. The fact that we deny the charge is ignored—just as it was ignored in Roman times. If we will not do what those in authority want, we can expect to suffer whatever people can get away with inflicting on us (even when the Imperial government of Rome did not persecute Christians, many times governors and mob rule did).

Christians were accused of false crimes like cannibalism and incest in the times of Pagan Rome. We are accused of hating women and people with same sex attraction. Then and now, we deny these charges are a part of our belief. If anyone who professes Christianity committed such crimes, they would be acting against what the Church teaches. The fact is, while loving a person means treating them with all the dignity which belongs to being a person, this love does not require us to do for them what we believe is morally wrong.

Note this distinction. Contrary to accusations, we reject the claim that we support the mistreatment of people because of their actions and reject the claim that our refusing to support what we believe is morally wrong is rooted in hatred. We also reject the antics of extremists who invoke the name of Christian while actively doing things our religion forbids against those we believe do moral wrong.

America has a choice to make. Either our nation can act like the Roman Empire (except using lawsuits, fines and prison instead of lions) unjustly persecuting us because we refuse to do what we think is morally wrong, or it can act like what our Founding Fathers intended in limiting the government—forbidding it to interfere with our moral obligations to do good and avoid evil.

"Do Not Be Afraid!" Reflections on God and His Church

5. Brothers and sisters, do not be afraid to welcome Christ and accept his power. Help the Pope and all those who wish to serve Christ and with Christ’s power to serve the human person and the whole of mankind. Do not be afraid. Open wide the doors for Christ. To his saving power open the boundaries of States, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization and development. Do not be afraid. Christ knows “what is in man”. He alone knows it.

So often today man does not know what is within him, in the depths of his mind and heart. So often he is uncertain about the meaning of his life on this earth. He is assailed by doubt, a doubt which turns into despair. We ask you therefore, we beg you with humility and trust, let Christ speak to man. He alone has words of life, yes, of eternal life.

[John Paul II, Homilies of Pope John Paul II (English) (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2014). October 22, 1978]

The powers of darkness are doubtlessly smiling over the vote in Ireland recognizing “same-sex marriage.” I have seen Irish news sites crowing about how the power of the Church was “finally broken.” Media sources and politicians are full of advice telling us that we need to change our teachings if we are to “remain relevant” and survive. 

(The ultimate result of breaking the bonds with the Church, the Barque of Peter, is being stranded when the floods come)

Meanwhile, many Catholics are stunned, and thinking that if only the Church had done things differently, we would not be seeing the revolt carried out once more in a nation which was once solidly Catholic.

I am inclined to think that both groups are missing the point of what God’s intention is and what the task of His Church is.

God is our Creator. He loves us and designed us for good. However, He did not want mindless slaves who have no choice but to live the way He wants. He wanted our response to be love freely chosen. This means: If we are free to make the right choice, we are also free to make the wrong choice. God gives us the grace to respond to Him in love and obedience. However, we are free to refuse that gift of grace, placing ourselves first and seeking things that are pleasurable in the short term, but ultimately destructive.

Because of the choice of our first parents (see HERE for a reflection on the Fall and the need for Baptism), we have an inclination to sin and we need salvation—something we are unable to give ourselves or earn. The acts of Jesus, suffering and dying for us opened Heaven to all who would accept His gift. But that acceptance is a free choice. We need His grace to accept it, but we can refuse it by choosing to live in a way against what God calls us to be. If we do refuse that gift, we do have nobody to blame but ourselves if we die in opposition to His commandments.

As Catholics, we believe that the Catholic Church was established by Our Lord as the means of bringing His salvation to the world. The Church does not act as a self-appointed association of do-gooders or meddlers who are putting their noses in the affairs of others, or are a charitable NGO. As the Catechism begins:

1 God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.

2 So that this call should resound throughout the world, Christ sent forth the apostles he had chosen, commissioning them to proclaim the gospel: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” Strengthened by this mission, the apostles “went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it.”⁵

The Church exists to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, and teaching them to live as Our Lord has commanded. It follows from this, that the Church is not free to change her teaching from saying “X is evil” to saying “X is good.” If the Church sanctions behavior which goes against the commandments of God, she is failing in her mission.

But at the same time, she does not have the ability counteract free-will. No matter how firmly or clearly she teaches the truth about God and how we must behave if we truly love Him, people can misuse free will in defiance of that teaching (cf. Revelation 22:11). History is full of instances where faithful nations turned to error and rejected the Church—not because the Church failed to teach, but because those who ruled found the Church to be an obstacle. Consider England’s shift to Protestantism at the whim of the King, the French Revolution and others.

Unfortunately, some people fail to make that connection. Instead, they assume that the existence of rebellion against the Church must be the fault of the Church. The logic runs like this:

• If the Church (Bishop/Priest) fails to teach, people will embrace error. (If A happens, B will happen)
• People embrace error (B happens)
• Therefore the Church failed to teach (Therefore A must have happened)

In logic, we call that affirming the consequent. The flaw is this—just because A can cause B is not proof that A did cause B. There may be other causes and these causes must be eliminated before we can affirm that A did cause B. In this case, the assumption is that the rejection of Church teaching must be ignorance because somebody failed to teach properly. Sometimes that is true. But it is not always true. Hostility and a willful decision to reject the Church teaching is also possible. So can the corruption of society into embracing something the Church speaks out against. So can the corruption of a government to take an antagonistic view of the Church. These are all possibilities where the assumption can be false.

So it important to remember what the Church is for—to proclaim the Gospel, baptizing and teaching what God has commanded. This task does not permit the Church to change God’s teaching. It only permits her to discern what is the best way to do this. This task does not mean that a person listen to the Church or will persevere in the faith either. A person might make a shipwreck of their faith. 

Also, we need to remember that God is in charge. We trust Him to look after the Church under the headship of the Pope and the bishops in communion with him, trusting when the Church does require us to give assent, God will not allow the Church to teach something that obligates us to commit sin. Even if some are unfaithful, The headship of the Pope is still where we must look for the true practice of the faith, because we trust God’s promise to protect His Church.

Finally, we need to remember that the behaviors of a nation which repudiate the teaching of the Church is not the death knell of the Church. The Church had survived the breaking away of whole nations through heresy and schism, and she will continue to do so with the Irish apostasy. It will be hard on those nations and the Church in those nations. We certainly need to pray for the Church and the shepherds in this countries. We need to re-evangelize those nations. But panicking is not acceptable.

We must not be afraid to bring Christ to the world, even when we are hated and ridiculed for speaking out. We must not allow ourselves to give into panic and assume the battle is lost whenever the politician promotes evil. Certainly, let us pray for the clergy, religious and laity that all may carry out their task in serving the Church faithfully. But let us always remember the role God intends the Church to play and not blame her for not being something she never was to begin with.

Dark Times: Reflections on Anti-Religious Propaganda

¹² The wicked plot against the righteous 

and gnash their teeth at them; 

¹³ But my Lord laughs at them, 

because he sees that their day is coming. 

¹⁴ The wicked unsheath their swords; 

they string their bows 

To fell the poor and oppressed, 

to slaughter those whose way is upright. 

¹⁵ Their swords will pierce their own hearts; 

their bows will be broken. [Psalm 37:12-15]

Reading the news, it seems that the foes of the Church have largely abandoned the pretense of trying to separate Pope Francis from the teaching of the Church. Because they believe that victory is imminent, they now write as if the Church is defeated and needs to change and get with the program if she would survive. However, we refuse to roll over and submit, and this angers those who hate us. The thing is, people who oppose the teaching of the Church are not satisfied with having usurped the legal power to implement what they desire. Rather, they want everyone to accept their desires as morally good. But as long as we’re here to remind them that God exists and their behavior separates them from Him, we are a stumbling block to their plans. So, they hope that they can drive us into irrelevancy by silencing us and persuading people to come over to their side. 

They do this through both overt attacks to drive us out of the public square and through persuading individuals that it is better to follow them than to follow the Church. But they can’t do this by giving their position and letting each person decide what is true. They have to misrepresent our beliefs to make them seem dangerous and malicious. They have to make it appear as if it is the Church who is trying to force changes, when the Church is simply insisting that the truth remains true, regardless of culture or era.

Dr. Peter Kreeft shows the problem in one of his Socratic Dialogue books:

Libby: It sounds like sour grapes to me. You’re complaining because we’re winning.

‘Isa: No, I’m complaining because you’re lying. For a whole generation now you small minority of relativistic elitists who somehow gained control of the media have been relentlessly imposing your elitist relativism on popular opinion by accusing popular opinion—I mean traditional morality—of elitism, and of imposing their morality! It’s like the Nazi propaganda saying Germany was victimized by Poland.

[Peter Kreeft, A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999), 141.]

The political and cultural elites of our nation have portrayed the situation as if a group of antisocial misfits suddenly appeared in society with the intention to persecute people who think differently than they do. They portray it as if “enlightened” people are finally throwing off the shackles of these misfits and benefitting society in doing so. So they tell the world that Christians “condemn” because we hate—that we hate and fear anyone who will not submit to what we say. They dredge up the behavior of the worst history has to offer and portray it as if this was the norm for what we would do if they let us get away from it. Basically, the lie they use is to say that the world was as enlightened as the 21st century until religion—especially Judaeo-Christian religion—came into being, and sought to control human thought through fear and superstition.

This is, of course, false. But it is quite effective. Look at modern programs on TV. Look at how they portray religion. Practitioners of religion fall into two groups. Either they are cold, hostile people who are bigoted and hostile to anyone who thinks differently, or they are willing to compromise their beliefs to get along with the world. The former are villains and the latter are heroes.

They tried to fit Pope Francis into this mindset. They took his words out of context and tried to make it seem as if he was “heroically struggling” to bring the Church into an “enlightened” view. But he had too much to say in defense of the family and Catholic teaching to spin. Now they either ignore him or lump him in with those who they once contrasted him against. Now the media has to look to individual Catholics who rebel against the authority which Christ gave His Church and portray them as the enlightened ones. The ultimate result of this distortion of the Pope was not the changing of Church teaching, but deceiving many hitherto faithful Catholics into questioning or rejecting his authority as the successor to St. Peter, wrongly thinking that the Pope is in the camp of the compromisers.

At this time, the elites of our nation seem to think they have won. The Church is on the defensive while the courts seem willing to give them everything they ask for, ignoring the fact that these rulings violate the beliefs that our nation was founded on—that the government does not have the right to compel a person to do what their religious belief forbids them to do.

So, it is indeed a dark time. But we need to remember we cannot give up in despair or simply hunkering down in a bunker, deciding to survive while the whole world goes to hell. There have been dark times before, where the state wrongfully sought to usurp authority by making laws it had no authority to make. Yes, things can indeed get worse. We can indeed be personally targeted by unjust laws or even physical persecution. But we have to remember that this is not the first time such dark times have happened. In every other time, the Church continued to stand up and perform the mission Christ gave us.

People may hate us for telling them the truth, showing them that their chosen actions are not compatible with the love of God. But they are not our enemies, but our patients. God doesn’t want them damned, but wants them to turn back to Him. Our task is to cooperate with that great commission, regardless of whether the world wants to hear it or not.

Fundamentally Missing the Point: The Danger of Assuming Everyone Thinks Like You

(See: Israel hawks to Pope Francis: Stay out of politics - Rachael Bade - POLITICO)

One of the more foolish things a person can do, especially in terms of politics, is to assume that everybody sees things the same way and if a person sees things differently that us, it means they are doing so for the same motivations and with bad will. For years, liberals accused Catholics of violating the separation of Church and State, getting involved with politics when she spoke out on moral issues like contraception, abortion, “same sex marriage” and the like. This assumption overlooked the fact that the Church had been teaching on these issues long before the modern concept of “liberal vs. conservative” even existed.

But this is not an error limited to liberalism. Conservatism has its own “sacred cows” as well, and can get just as irrational when the Church says something that strikes too close to home for them as well. For example, the outrage that happens when the Pope says that capitalism sometimes falls short of the mark and needs to be corrected. The conservatives then act just as irrationally as liberals and accuse them of getting involved in “political” affairs.

This time, the issue is over the fact that the Church intends to establish diplomatic relations with Palestine. Some conservatives are upset, believing this is an endorsement of the behavior of Palestinian terrorists and opposition to the right of Israel to exist. That kind of thinking is the “either-or” fallacy—the assumption that there are only two choices and to choose one means the rejection of the other. It overlooks the possibility of rejecting both choices, or there being a third choice, or holding to both views because they are not contradictory.

The fact is, the Church does sometimes need to establish diplomatic relations in a country in order to carry out her mission in that country. This is why the Church had established diplomatic relations with repugnant nations like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. We forget, being Americans, that the free practice of religion is not always present in other nations—even in democracies (let alone autocratic nations)—like it is in America. The whole idea of the concordant (an agreement between the Church and a nation) is intended to get the freedom for the Church to carry out her mission in that nation, and gives the Church standing to approach another nation as a diplomatic entity and not as a subject.

The fact is, there is a Catholic population in the Palestinian territories, and the Church does need to look after them. Also, in her commitment to peace, she does need to be able to speak to the leaders of both Israel (with whom the Church does have diplomatic relations already) and Palestine both without the emissaries being seen as subjects of one of the nations.

The point is, when the Church acts in establishing relations with a nation, that does not mean that the Church endorses the policies of that nation. It is foolish to assume that the Church looks at matters in the same way as an American politician and, when the politician disagrees with the Church teaching, that means the Church is deliberately taking a position in opposition to the political slant which the politician supports.

Bellwether of Persecution

bellwether |ˈbelˌweT͟Hər| nounthe leading sheep of a flock, with a bell on its neck.• an indicator or predictor of something: college campuses are often the bellwether of change

I remember my youth in school and what was taught to us about America. How we were a free country and that the government couldn’t do, or force us to do, bad things. We were told how people came to America to escape places that treated them unjustly. As I grew older, I realized that this was a “rose colored glasses” view of things. That our country could and did wrong over the past 200 years. But throughout my transition from growth to adulthood, it was still recognized that the Declaration of Independence was still meaningful when it said:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

We were told that the Bill of Rights were essential rights to all people and that our Founding Fathers were determined to protect the people from the abuses from a government, acknowledging that there were certain things that the government had no right to do.

Right now, America has a system where laws which were based on this understanding are subject to being reviewed by courts that are free to throw out those laws which the judges happen to disagree with. The term used is “finding the law unconstitutional,” but too often, this is a code word for an arbitrary decision that reflects the political views of the judges without concern with actual concern for justice or law. This is the case when a few judges have ruled that the understanding of marriage as being between one man and one woman is “unconstitutional.” Based on these rulings, people with religious beliefs that forbid them from participating in what they think is morally wrong can be forced to choose between their business and their beliefs—something the government had previously been seen as having no right to do.

Take a recent case of a Washington florist. The judge ruled that the florist’s religious beliefs, which forbade her from providing flowers to a same sex “wedding,” was illegal from the time that Washington legalized it. Think I’m using unreasonable rhetoric? Think again. Look at what the judge (Alexander C. Ekstrom) said:

"Stutzman is not a minister, nor is Arlene’s Flowers a religious organization when they sell flowers to the general public,” Ekstrom wrote. “Stutzman cannot comply with both the law and her faith if she continues to provide flowers for weddings as part of her duly licensed business.”

The judge has baldly stated what we have been warning of for years—that a person with religious convictions can be forced to choose between business and faith (Stultzman has decided to stop doing any weddings).  Basically, what we have is this: if a law is passed defending our religious freedoms, it is ruled as unconstitutional. When a law is passed which infringes on our religious liberties, it is seen as acceptable and those who invoke their first amendment freedoms are told that it doesn’t apply—the courts continually reducing who has religious freedom to the point that a church itself can (thus far) be protected from government interference, but the institutions that church runs or the individual practitioner is not.

Decisions like this make much more chilling a recent event where lawmakers urged Archbishop Cordileone to change his policy insisting that teachers in Catholic institutions actually act—Catholic. With legal precedence like this, we can expect the judges to be more likely to side with the laws infringing on our religious freedoms. 

While such things are more benign than in other countries and other times in how they try to coerce compliance with religious beliefs they oppose, these rulings are in the same spirit as the persecutions of the past. Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints describes for us the case of St. Sadoth:

The second year of the persecution, king Sapor coming to Seleucia, Sadoth was apprehended, with several of his clergy, some ecclesiastics of the neighborhood, and certain monks and nuns belonging to his church, to the amount of one hundred and twenty-eight persons. They were thrown into dungeons, where, during five months’ confinement, they suffered incredible misery and torments. They were thrice called out, and put to the rack or question; their legs were straight bound with cords, which were drawn with so much violence, that their bones breaking, were heard to crack like sticks in a fagot. Amidst these tortures the officers cried out to them: “Adore the sun, and obey the king, if you would save your lives.” Sadoth answered in the name of all, that the sun was but a creature, the work of God, made for the use of mankind; that they would pay supreme adoration to none but the Creator of heaven and earth, and never be unfaithful to him; that it was indeed in their power to take away their lives, but that this would be the greatest favor they could do them; wherefore he conjured them not to spare them, or delay their execution. The officers said: “Obey! or know that your death is certain, and immediate.” The martyrs all cried out with one voice: “We shall not die, but live and reign eternally with God and his Son Jesus Christ. Wherefore inflict death as soon as you please; for we repeat it to you that we will not adore the sun, nor obey the unjust edicts.”

Whether the governments would have us worship the sun, burn incense to the emperor or give our acceptance of “same sex marriage,” we must not obey what is unjust or forces us to go against what God commands. It may only cause us overt persecution or it may cause us hardship, perhaps legal action, but we need to be prepared for being called on to make the choice—for God, or against God. It might not happen to you or personally, but Our Lord did warn us that we must accept this:

The World’s Hatred. ¹⁸ If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. ¹⁹ If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. ²⁰ Remember the word I spoke to you, ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. ²¹ And they will do all these things to you on account of my name,* because they do not know the one who sent me. ²² If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin; but as it is they have no excuse for their sin. ²³ Whoever hates me also hates my Father. ²⁴ If I had not done works among them that no one else ever did, they would not have sin; but as it is, they have seen and hated both me and my Father. ²⁵ But in order that the word written in their law might be fulfilled, ‘They hated me without cause.’ (John 15:18-25)

And so, we must prepare for darker times, which continue to come faster than I expect. We must prepare to continue to carry out our mission. As Cardinal George said, "I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.” None of us want to die in prison, let alone the public square for the faith. But if it does happen by death or by lawsuit or by imprisonment, we must respond in love, blessing and praying for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44) and seeking to convert them. This is true, whether persecution comes from unjust judges interpreting unjust laws or whether it comes at the hands of fanatics like ISIS.

TFTD: How Dare Those Catholics Require Catholic Schools to Act Catholic?

The intolerant often have a way of appearing reasonable. They appeal to some sort of value that they think everyone should agree with, frame the debate in this way, and then treat everyone who disagrees with their premises as being the hate filled ones. That’s the case in the editorial "Catholic Church infringing on personal lives | Guest Columns | San Francisco | San Francisco Examiner.” The allegation is Archbishop Cordlileone of San Francisco is infringing on the rights of individuals by insisting that people who serve in Catholic run institutions actually support (or at least not publicly oppose) the Church teaching to avoid misleading students about what is right and wrong. That’s entirely reasonable. The Catholic Church has always rejected the idea of education being compartmentalized. She believes that education needs an overall approach which teaches moral values—it’s not a case of just saying “learn these values at home."

So, the Church insists that if a person wants to work for a Catholic school, they need to avoid giving the appearance of rejecting the values of the Church. If one can’t accept that, they should look for another place of business. That’s common sense. If a fundamentalist Protestant school insisted that I sign an agreement that said I acknowledged the Bible as the sole rule of faith, I would have to reject that condition. If I lied and then was caught out promoting a view contrary to the group’s views, I would have no right to object to being fired.

However, we tend to have groups of activists seeking to force change on the Church. Where we believe that a behavior is not compatible with God’s commandments, these groups wrongly assume that these teachings are nothing more than unsavory political positions which can and should be changed. They attempt the "grassroots level” attempts to change the thinking of the youth in the hopes of converting them to their way of thinking.

In other words, when it is their own values in question, these activists insist that everyone respect the values of others. But when it comes to values they dislike, they refuse to respect those values, and call them intolerance. That’s a self contradiction. If one demands that everyone respect the values of others, that includes the views they dislike. If it’s wrong for us to judge their way of thinking, it’s wrong of them to judge our way of thinking. So, if their proclaimed value system is based on “tolerance,” they should practice what they preach and stop trying to force change on the Church.

Now sometimes a counter-charge arises here. That’s to accuse us of being hypocritical. They allege that because we’re not being tolerant of behaviors, we are being hypocritical. The problem is, we don’t claim a moral relativism or tolerating all views as equally valid. We believe all people are required to seek the truth and follow it. If a person refuses to seek the truth, or refuses to follow the truth once found, that is not a good thing.

That’s a perfectly rational view. We reject, for example, the idea that one human being is superior to another as false. Because of that, we reject ideas that allow one class of people to have power over another group of people because of their claim to greater importance. We reject racism because we believe all races are equal in the eyes in God. We reject abortion, because we deny that the unborn person is less of a person than the born person. Without this kind of thinking, a person would have nothing to say to the totalitarian except, “I dislike your system.” Here’s a thought exercise… imagine some group like the Nazis use the same arguments as modern activists to claim people have no right judge them. If you say, “tolerate unpopular views,” you have to tolerate them. If you believe some views are wrong and don’t have to be accepted, then you can morally oppose such views, providing the reasons you believe it is wrong.

The Church does provide her reasons for saying that things are wrong. But the response to those reasons is insults and labels (ad hominem attacks). Indeed, many people do not even know these reasons—they just assume that the only possible reason for opposing them is hatred. That’s ironic because refusal to consider any other possibilities is intolerance.

In addition to these attacks, we see such accusers trying to make the Church teaching seem to be in opposition to Pope Francis. In a particularly repugnant example, the San Francisco Chronicle takes Papal soundbites out of context and tries to make it sound like there is opposition. But the Pope has affirmed that when it comes to the Church teaching, he “is a son of the Church.” Indeed, he continues to defend the Christian understanding of marriage. So again, the tactic is to define things in such a way that makes any opposition look hateful—but it is false.

Keep that in mind as you encounter charges of bigotry against Catholics.

Here Comes Hypocrisy (yet again...)

A tale of two cakes: Colorado's far-reaching religious freedom fight :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

Remember the case where a baker was sued for refusing to provide a wedding cake for a ceremony involving a same sex “marriage” and it was considered a violation of civil rights? Well, a counter-case is going on where an individual targeted a bakery requesting a cake with anti-gay messages on it. The baker in this second case was willing to provide a cake, but not the messages on the case. The second baker was giving the same reason that the first baker gave—being forced to do something they believed was morally offensive.

However, while in the first case the baker was considered to be a bigot, in the second case, the baker was seen as defending his rights. I’m sure that in both cases the bakeries were set up for the purposes of creating lawsuits. But the treatment of the two cases are different.

In both cases the business owners want the right to not be forced to do something they find offensive. This leaves three options:

1. They can recognize the fact that nobody can be compelled to do something which they find morally evil by the courts and lawmakers.
2. They can force every belief to be scrutinized by the state for validity.
3. They can behave in a partisan manner and support views they agree with, while ignoring those they dislike.

Option #1 is the just solution. Let businesses act in accordance with their moral values and don’t let the state force its way into becoming the arbiter of right and wrong. Unfortunately, this option would force governments (local, state, federal) to tolerate views they disagree with.  Option #2 would be worthy of a dictatorship, but not the USA. Option #3 would be sheer hypocrisy, injustice done for the sake of helping those one liked while using the law to silence those one disliked.

(If I were to bet however, my money would be that #3 is the ultimate result)

So here’s the thing. If you want to be just, those who make and enforce law have to let the Christian businesses have the right to refuse to do things they find offensive. Otherwise, this is behavior worthy of a dictatorship, not a free nation.

I’ve seen people argue that the two cases are not the same thing. That the Christian bakery is practicing intolerance, while the other bakery is opposing it. But this is an assertion which assumes what needs to be proven—that the Christian belief is based on the intolerance of a person instead of on the moral conviction that some behaviors are wrong. These two things are different, and before we are indicted of hatred, the charge needs to be proven that this is our motive, not that this motive be assumed.

I’ve seen people argue that the case of the Christian bakery was “only” remote cooperation with something deemed wrong and so it could be compelled, whole the secular bakery would be forced into direct cooperation, and so it could not be compelled. But that’s making the state the arbiter of what is and what isn’t legitimate religious and moral teaching. The Christian bakery believes that taking part in providing for a same sex “wedding” is wrong and would cause scandal by giving the impression that they supported this just as much as the secular bakery would believe this was wrong and scandalous.

I’ve also seen people argue that by the very fact of saying same sex acts are wrong, we are judging people, which is itself hateful. But by that token, claiming we are behaving wrongly by opposing same sex relationships is also judging people. By our saying certain actions are wrong, we are not contradicting our belief that we are still called to love the person who commits them. But the person who says “tolerate others you disagree with,” is contradicting their own beliefs when they refuse to tolerate us and our beliefs.

Christians aren’t being hypocritical in professing an act as being morally wrong, because they recognize the difference between the sin and the human being. The Catechism says:

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,¹⁴¹ tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”¹⁴² They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. (2333)

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection. (2347)

We’re not the Westboro Baptist Church. We don’t think that people with a same sex attraction are damned for that fact. But we do believe homosexual acts are morally wrong and must be avoided by people who would live in right relation with Christ. We do believe that marriage is intended to be between one man and one woman as Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself has said (Matthew 19:4-6):

⁴ He said in reply, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ ⁵ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? ⁶ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”

We will do our best to witness to this truth, and show people why they need to heed this, and yes we will seek to pass laws which reflect true morality, as opposed to judicial diktat. But we’re not motivated by hate in doing so, and we’re not violating anyone’s rights in doing so.

The same cannot be said about those who would force a Christian bakery to do what it believed to be morally wrong.

Thoughts on Religious Freedom in America For the New Year

Not the country I grew up in...

 Introduction

I think we’re now at the point where there are enough people out there who believe that whatever harms their enemy is good that we can expect to see popular support for whatever violation of religious freedom is directed at the Catholic Church—especially if this violation can be cast as defending the “rights” of a group portrayed as a victim. Let’s face it. When a Church affiliated institution (like a school or hospital) can establish a policy making clear that all potential employees are called to live publicly and privately in accordance with Church teaching, and the employee willingly signs said agreement and then is fired for violating it, and successfully sues the institution involved, we are seeing the establishment of rule of law being replaced by arbitrary judgment. When a business is established by a Christian who wants to run his or her business in accordance with Christian moral principles can be sued or prosecuted when the business refuses to do something against those principles, we’re seeing the rule of law being replaced by arbitrary judgment.

It’s kind of alarming seeing the comments of people online who have no problem with self-contradiction. Champions of freedom say that they just want the freedom to do what they want without interference, but when we try to claim the same rights for doing what we ought, suddenly freedom is nowhere to be found. No, we can’t say same sex “marriage” is wrong without risk of legal action. No, we can’t refuse to distribute contraceptives against our conscience without risk of legal action. No, we can’t hold people accountable for breaking a signed agreement without risk of legal action—even if they’re directly working for the Church.

It Will Be a Different From The Totalitarian Version

Now America prides itself as being a land of freedom, so I doubt we’ll directly see it move to overt persecution of Christianity of the type seen in Communist nations unless we fall much further into the rule by decree mindset. What I expect that we’ll see is government misusing the rule of law to portray Christian moral teaching as a violation of the rule of law. Then, by changing the meaning of things, the Church is suddenly portrayed as violating the law by standing by her fidelity to Christ. Marriage is redefined, and suddenly we’re accused of violating the civil rights of people with same sex attraction. Abortion and contraception are redefined from a crime to a right and suddenly we’re accused of violating the rights of women.

The Accusations Used To Justify It Are Not Rational

The usual tactic is to make use of the question begging analogy fallacy and point to the real racism of American history, alleging that the opposition to certain things as being sinful is based on intolerance, just as whites were intolerant of blacks in the past (and tragically, some still hold today). This attack tries to link two things with an alleged (but not proven) motive, failing twice as the comparison is not true and the alleged motive used to link the two is not proven. So opponents point to the real evil of racism, allege our motives for Christian moral teaching as being equally intolerant and declare that the government must oppose this “intolerance” just as they opposed the ethnic racism of American history.

But the problem is, there is no material advantage to being a Catholic, as opposed to being an atheist or a Protestant. Nor is one’s membership in a religion the same unchangeable thing as being a member of an ethnic group. People are not (and never were, contrary to popular belief) forcibly converted to Catholicism. One is free to join the Church if they accept what we believe is true. If they reject that what we believe is true, then it makes very little sense to want to join, remain in or work for the Church that says, if you would follow Christ, you are called to avoid sin to live rightly.

Because of this reality, it is unjust to attempt to legally harass us for being true to what we believe is part of following Christ. We do not seek to violate the laws of this nation (but we may be forced to choose between our faith and the state when the state tries to put itself above God), though we use our constitutional rights to try to change laws we believe are unjust. We don’t use the tactics of those who hate us because they strike us as unjust (Matt 7:12). Yes, some individuals among us may do evil, but they do evil against the teachings of the Church, not because of the teachings of the Church.

There are basically two issues in the debate on religious freedom. The first is making laws which reflect what is right and just. The second is insisting on the freedoms which others try to deny us while demanding it for themselves. Because there are two issues, we need to keep track of which one applies where. When we call for laws to be passed which have the proper understanding on the nature of humanity and what is good for it, we are making reference to the first issue. When we oppose attempts to restrict our freedoms to practice what we believe is right, we are making reference to the second issue.

Freedoms Now Applied Only to Favored Views Despite Claims of “Tolerance"

 

The response to these two issues makes me wonder what happened to the country I grew up in. The prevalent attitude by those cultural and media elites is that these freedoms are only applicable to certain types of freedoms—the freedoms they approve of. The beliefs of people they disagree with are not considered protected and what they would consider unjust if it were applied to them is considered perfectly acceptable when applied to those they dislike. That’s why it is considered perfectly acceptable to have a person forced out of his job for supporting a position such as traditional marriage (such as Brendan Eich), but intolerance if a person was forced from his job for supporting same sex “marriage."

See, the first issue is an issue of what is true and how we should behave on account of what is true. Yes, there will be conflicts in these beliefs of what is true. But if one person says “X is morally wrong,” and the other person says “X is not morally wrong,” the proper response is the seeking of truth. On what basis do you make your claim? The response of accusing people of homophobia or a “war on women," is not an exchange of ideas. That’s an attempt to bully, vilifying the person who dares disagree. If a Christian believes that the good of society means one has to protect the building block of society (the traditional family), he can do so peacefully, operating within the law, with the right to peacefully try to convince people willing to listen that this is worthy of a law.

The second issue is the issue of allowing a person to live as they believe their conscience commands them to do—which is quite different from the person who says they “don’t see anything wrong with it.” The person who believes contraception is morally acceptable is not having their rights imposed on if she works for an employer who refuses to pay for it out of moral obligation, but the person who believes contraception is morally wrong is having their rights imposed on if the courts decree he or she must pay for these contraceptives. In other words, the person whose conscience is lax enough to see contraception as morally OK is not being forced to do something evil when the employer says, “Fine, but I’m not paying for it.” But forcing people to pay for what they think is evil is a violation of conscience.

Counter-Accusations Do Not Actually Fit Our Behavior, Except in Extremists That We Disavow

So, this is why religious believers must be more and more active in defending what they believe, while seeking to reach out to others in showing them why Christian beliefs are true. We are being told both that we have no right to seek laws which make the society live in a way that is just and true and that our beliefs are not covered under the freedoms all citizens claim. Objectively, we must say that some things are always wrong, while still treating our opponents with human dignity. On the other hand, we must say that even if our opponents disagree with our claims to truth, that doesn’t mean that they have the right to strip us of our human dignity.

This is the issue that is being ignored. The elites are actually behaving in a corrupt way, where consideration of rights and right don’t figure into things. Self-Contradiction is apparently acceptable so long as it helps them and harms us. But if we insist that they apply the same standards to themselves as they apply to ourself, it’s suddenly unfair.

Now, it some people do accuse us of holding a double standard. Either they point to the infamous Christian groups which are a good bogeyman to unjustly tar all Christians with to make the Christian teaching look bad (most Christians who oppose same sex acts don’t support the unjust treatment for those with that inclination), or they accuse us of being motivated by hatred when we say, “Hey, practice what you preach.” Yes, unfortunately, you will find Christians who don’t practice what they preach. But they are not the majority of Christians, and most of us recognize that those who act in this way are doing wrong even if they agree with us that X is wrong. So, it’s unjust to blame us for the actions of people we repudiate and it is wrong to accuse us of bad will because we disagree the popular views.

Conclusion

But people tend to accept the accusations of “guilt by association” and bald assertions of intolerance that we deny. That’s basically why religious freedom and the ability to do right is looking bleaker for 2015. Is there a remedy? Sure. It requires men and women of good will to stand up against the governments, the courts and even in places of business and point out that what is being alleged of us is unjust. It requires people to distinguish between what is alleged about Christian belief and the motive for it and the truth of Christian belief and why we hold it. In other words, religious freedom is in danger so long as people are willing to tolerate (or approve of) attacks on other people.