If We Want Justice, We Must Not Be Unjust Ourselves

As I watch the aftermath of the mob that stormed the Capitol building, I am struck by some things being proposed in response that seem to be rather dubious. Let me be clear: That act was rightly condemned, and justice does need to be done in response. However, some of the angry proposals made in response seem to be unjust in themselves. Some seem to disproportionate demands made against people who did not take part in the mob attack itself. Others seemed to be taking advantage of the outrage to simply target political opponents for short term (and shortsighted) gain.

This article is not going to dissect those actions or identify the people I think might be guilty of them. That would turn the article into a political argument and would distract from the point I want to make. It could even be rash judgment if I am mistaken in my assessment of their motives. What I want to do is look at the demands of justice in a way that would be true regardless in the past or present, regardless of whatever events or information might come up later, with no need for me to offer retractions.

Justice can be described as giving to others their due. That can be positive in the sense of making things right to those who were wronged and negative in the sense of exacting proportionate consequences for wrongdoing. A failure to do make things right for the wronged or failing to exact no more or less than proportionate consequences to the wrongdoers is injustice. However, punishing people for something where involvement in wrongdoing is remote or non-existent is also injustice. For example, a person who sells gas at a gas station is not considered guilty of aiding and abetting if he sells gas to the driver of a getaway car used to commit a crime unless it can be established that he knows and condones the action it enables.

That means we cannot target a person whose ideas we dislike, punishing him or her for the actions of others, unless we can show a direct cause-effect link between Person A’s ideas and Person B’s actions. Nor can we charge person A for anything greater than what he or she intended to do or could have reasonably foreseen as arising from those actions. Vincible ignorance is a sin, while reckless behavior and criminal negligence are actionable.

Therefore, we must be careful not to mete out injustice in response to injustice. When passions run high—especially when we have been personally hurt by injustice—it is easy to respond in anger and act unjustly ourselves even while being convinced of our own righteousness. If we assume that our foes are reprehensible and a crisis is one good way to remove them from power for the greater good, we are also acting unjustly by doing evil so good might come of it.

As Catholics, must show the way by making certain that we do not support injustice against our foes because we dislike them or think it is the only way to stop them. As Socrates pointed out, being just is not doing good to our friends and evil to our enemies. We must do good—which is not necessarily the same as being nice—to everybody. We need to make sure actual cause and effect is established before we seek to punish a person for something. We need to make sure that only the wrongdoers are held accountable, and only for what they have done.

That is hard to do of course. People on both sides of our dualistic system can point out unjust responses from “the other side” while ignoring the injustice on their own side. They are both right when they point out the double standards of others. The problem is, they are both wrong when they explain away or ignore the double standards on their own. People are good at pointing out the hypocrisy of others.

History should be our guide: It is not only immoral, but dangerous to have a double standard of justice depending on the leaning of the wrongdoers. For example, Weimar Germany, during the period of 1918-1933, did have cases where police and judges were sympathetic to the Nazis and handed out exceptionally light sentences compared to those whom they were antagonistic towards. That was an injustice and helped the growth of Nazism from being a fringe movement to becoming a major power in German politics prior to 1933 when Hitler came to power. However, a past failure of justice must not be used to justify allowing a similar miscarriage in the present. We cannot remain silent on past injustice but we cannot use “Whataboutism” to justify ignoring the present injustice either.

My adaptation of an old political adage might help here^†. “He who says we must do something in situation A, must be prepared to support doing the same in situation B unless it can be shown that the different conditions in situations A and B merit a different response.” That means we must be careful in how we form our demands and in the parallels we draw. If we are unwilling to have a standard being held against us, we should be extremely cautious about applying it to our foes. The balance of power will always shift and those who were targeted while out of power will invariably use the same tool once they are back in power.

We can either apply real justice to our foes or we can continue the cycle of injustice. The Catholic belief requires the first. Modern politics always chooses the second. With this in mind, regardless of what happens in the world, we who profess to be faithful Catholics must start by acting justly in what we do and what we say.

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(†) The original, “He who says A, must say B,” was formulated by one James Burnham. I know nothing of his politics or beliefs. So, please do not associate me with anything he said that might be offensive.

Applying the Golden Rule After the Mob Attack

 I wanted to write about the attack on the Capitol building from the moment I heard about it but trying to write without either seeming to make excuses or judging rashly was difficult. Now that a couple of days have passed, I have a sense of what has been said and what needs to be said.

Before I begin, I need to make something clear about what this article is not. This is not an article about the mob attack itself. It has been accurately covered already. Nor is it an attempt to fact check the claims and counterclaims about it. There are fact checking sites that have the resources to do that better than I could hope to do. I also want to make clear that nothing I write is intended to be partisan. I might slip up and let some passion slip by my proofreading before I hit “post,” but I hope to avoid that as much as possible.

What I hope to do is to look at some of the troubling attitudes that have come out in the aftermath… attitudes I think are incompatible with our Catholic Faith^†. While we cannot help what others do, we have an obligation to act rightly in our approach to things. Part of this approach recognizes that the US Bishops universally—and rightly—condemned this attack. Because of that witness, as well as the Catholic teaching on civil authority, we cannot pretend support or attempt to justify what happened is compatible with our moral beliefs. Yes, we might fear what the next administration will do when it takes power. But we cannot choose an evil means to achieve an end we think good.

One serious problem is the fallacy of composition. This fallacy holds that whatever is true of an individual member of the group is true of the whole. So, if member X of a group is racist, the whole group is also considered to be racist. This fallacy is so widely held, that people fail to see it is a fallacy. 

The problem is this is also known as stereotyping. The fact that one member of a group has a certain trait does not automatically mean that every member of that group has that trait. Think of all the racist assumptions out there, like thinking all Muslims are terrorists, all Hispanics are illegal aliens, or all African Americans are felons. Most people today realize these are offensive assumptions. But it is the same error of reasoning.

We need to ask whether the group itself possesses the trait by nature or requires the trait for membership and, if so, whether the individual who holds to it is a stalwart or whether he or she was shortsighted or naïve about the trait or their membership in the group holding it^‡. If the group itself, or the person within it, does not hold that trait, then we commit rash judgment if we assume guilt.

A sister fallacy is guilt by association, where a group or position is condemned because some unsavory people also held it or, more commonly, a facsimile of that position. No matter what political platform you hold to, there will always be extremists that also favor a position that you do. Do we resent being lumped into those groups ourselves? If so, we must avoid assuming the approval by an extremist automatically invalidates the position of others.

In other words, we have an obligation to learn if our assumptions are true before acting on them. If we do not, we are guilty of rash judgment at best and guilty of evil if our false assumptions harm another unjustly. If the reader immediately thinks, “Why should we show any sympathy to those racists?” then that reader is guilty of stereotyping. Why? Because it is assuming guilt without verifying it.

Remember this: Some groups do not require the trait they are stereotyped as holding, so it is unjust to assume they hold it by default. Other times, people might not hold the offensive trait of a group but are ignorant of it, or assume it is not serious and therefore inconsequential. Of course, those assumptions are false and can have dire consequences (for example, those people who did not recognize the danger of the Nazi party pre-1933 and supported Hitler as a lesser evil), and we need to disabuse them of their notions. But we need to remember that, in these polarized times, others are as distrustful of our views as we are of theirs. Instead of realizing we disagree over what is morally right, they think we knowingly support evil instead^§.

Bringing them around to the truth in these circumstances is going to be difficult. But we need to avoid adding to the problem. Consider how the views you disagree with bother you… especially when your opponent tries to justify them to you. How do you feel when they start falsely accusing you of something you do not support? If you know they are wrong when they do so, then you know you must not treat them that way.

Finally, we must avoid hypocrisy. We must be consistent in applying our moral beliefs. In the period immediately following the attacks, both the political Left and Right pointed out the double standards of the other side in a way that could be summed up as: Why did you condemn these riots, but not those riots? Unfortunately, they committed the tu quoque fallacy in doing so, trying to deny the other’s outrage by pointing out their indifference to other examples. There was no self-examination of conscience as to whether our reaction to our own side’s wrongdoing was unjust or our condemnation of the other side was unjust. But unless we look at our own reactions and ask if we are playing the hypocrite, we will convince nobody to change. Everybody is skilled at pointing out the other side’s hypocrisy but terrible in spotting their own.

What this boils down to is The Golden Rule. No, we cannot let people in error remain in error. But in trying to correct others, we must do unto others as we would have them do unto us (which should be to act with justice and compassion). Would we get angry if our opponents used a certain tactic or an unjust accusation against us? If so, then we know we must not do this to others. We must make certain that the person we are debating is guilty of something before accusing him or her of holding it. And, if they are guilty, we must respond in a Christian manner regardless of how they treat us.

If we will not do this, we are behaving unjustly… regardless of which side we might think is worse.

 

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(†) I do not say this to exclude or deny the morality of non-Catholic Christians and non-Christians. Rather, I am a Catholic writing mainly to fellow Catholics. While I hope this article will be useful to them as well, I do use certain assumptions of Catholic belief by default.

(‡) In such cases, we would have to consider invincible vs vincible ignorance, but that is beyond the scope of this article.

(§) As an example. In 2016, I voted for the American Solidarity Party, because I thought both major party candidates were unfit for office. Members of both major parties attacked me for “supporting” the evils of the other side.

Do We Need to Prepare for a Gethsemane Moment?

Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to feel sorrow and distress. Then he said to them, “My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch with me.” He advanced a little and fell prostrate in prayer, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:36–39)

 

There’s an old saying (it’s been attributed to St. Ignatius of Loyola, among others) that goes, “We must pray as if everything depended on God, and work as if everything depended on us.” While it can be misinterpreted in a Pelagian sense, it means that we must rely on God to grant us what we need and work for it, trusting Him to strengthen us in cooperating with His will. Sometimes the good which God wills can be spectacular like the Walls of Jericho. At other times, it can be difficult to see, like Christians living during the Roman persecution must have struggled with why things were going that way.

 

In difficult times like this past year, there is a lot to be fearful about. Some of these are international (like coronavirus). Others are local, like the Presidential Elections and the open seat on the Supreme Court. We worry about them because the consequences can be serious. However, I think in modern times, we tend to forget that the Christian life can involve suffering. We (especially in the West) are tempted to think that we shouldn’t be experiencing injustice or suffering at all. If we do, somebody—other than us—is to blame for it, and it wouldn’t have happened if they had acted as we thought best.

 

We shouldn’t be surprised that injustice and suffering happen. The recent and ongoing persecution of Christians in the Middle East shows that we never know if one of us will be called on to make the ultimate sacrifice for our faith. We don’t know if our own nation might take a turn for the worse in terms of government harassment or mob violence over our values. 

 

We especially shouldn’t be surprised because one article of our Christian Faith involves the bloody execution of our Lord, Jesus Christ. As He warned us, “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20). It is unreasonable to expect our life as Christians to be free of troubles. This is not a call to be passive in the face of injustice. Rather, we are called to carry out the Great Commission despite the troubles that come our way. Nor is this an argument that because our treatment is not as bad as it is in other countries, we are not treated unjustly.

 

What it does mean is we ought to approach whatever hardships that come by following the example of Jesus in Gethsemane. Yes, it is natural to avoid suffering. We legitimately pray to be delivered from evil in the Lord’s Prayer after all. But, if it turns out that we cannot avoid suffering, then we should pray for the grace to accept God’s will and endure as we carry out His work here on Earth. 

“Are We Forgetting George Floyd?” Thoughts on Moral Obligation During These Times

As I watch the protests unfold, I find myself noticing a few things. First, the death of George Floyd seems to be increasingly forgotten in the protests… or at least the media coverage of the protests. Second, as they move forward, they seem to be focusing less about the treatment of African-Americans in this country and more about whatever the demagogues leading the movement want to cancel next in our “cancel culture.”

I don’t say this out of any political bias. Regardless of whether the people who called the Police had a valid reason to do so, Mr. Floyd’s killing was entirely in opposition to the Catholic teaching on the reasonable use of force. We should demand a just reform of those things that made it possible.

The problem is, the current protests don’t seem to have anything to do with these things†. Now they appear to be largely about “canceling” statues and the people they represent. As I wrote in a previous article, some of those objections are valid… but some are not.

Unfortunately, we are an easily distracted people. So I suspect—and I pray that I am wrong—that if anybody remembers the protests at all five years from now, they will remember it for the stupid things some extremists among the protestors are doing, while remaining utterly convinced that whatever the full (non-extremist) movement does in the future can be written off as more of the same extremism.

This can’t be the Catholic attitude. No, we can’t condone it when certain demagogues try to attack our saints and their statues. We can’t condone it when some turn to rioting and risk the lives of others. But we can and must stand up for true justice. The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes justice as:

1807 Justice is the moral virtue that consists in the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbor. Justice toward God is called the “virtue of religion.” Justice toward men disposes one to respect the rights of each and to establish in human relationships the harmony that promotes equity with regard to persons and to the common good. The just man, often mentioned in the Sacred Scriptures, is distinguished by habitual right thinking and the uprightness of his conduct toward his neighbor. “You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.”

It means that, since each human being is created in the image and likeness of God, we must treat them as such, not in a way that we would be unwilling experience (cf. Matthew 7:12). Justice cannot have benefits for one group in a way that harms others. Unfortunately, people sometimes confuse which is which, and deny one’s person’s rights in the name of an injustice they call “rights.” For example, the “right” to abortion absolutely negates the right to life for some‡, and in recent Court rulings, “Gay rights” are infringing on the freedom of religion recognized in the US Constitution.

So, White Supremacy is unjust because it benefits one ethnic group at the expense of other ethnic groups. Any semblance of it must be stamped out. But Abortion is not a right, but unjust because it benefits one group at the expense of those who are not yet born. “Gay marriage” is unjust because it dictates to a religious group what moral beliefs they can and cannot practice§ to the benefit of those who want to make the religious group accept different morals.

Recognizing that distinction, we would work for justice for ethnic minorities. Racial discrimination is against our Catholic beliefs. But, while we cannot support abortion or same sex “marriage,” we can work to make sure women have support and real health care when they are in a crisis pregnancy—this is justice to the woman and the unborn child. We cannot support attempts to redefine marriage, but we can work to protect people with same sex attraction from being attacked or otherwise maltreated on the grounds of their sexual inclination. The promotion of wrongdoing as a “right” by others never excuses us from doing what is actually right and just.

Bringing this back to my introduction to this article, what we have is certain set of demagogues and extremists who are hijacking a legitimate and urgent need for social justice in favor of their own antipathies. But their own injustice does not excuse us from working for real social justice. The George Floyd case reminds us that real injustice does exist and must be addressed. We cannot lose sight of that just because certain individuals in that call for justice are behaving unjustly towards us.

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(†) This may be the fault of media coverage. For example (to pick two extremes), CNN seems to focus on what Trump does, while Fox seems primarily focused on the CHAZ/CHOP zone. If any of this has anything to do with reforming the very real problems going on right now, the media isn’t showing it.

(‡) As St. John Paul II pointed out: 

The inviolability of the person which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, finds 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. (St. John Paul II, Christifideles Laici #38)

(§) To expand without bogging down or diverting the article: If a religion believes that Same Sex “marriage” is a sin and those members of the religion who openly practice that sin are causing scandal, the state is violating the rights of freedom of religion in favor of the benefit of a small group by forcing the religion and individual practitioners to do what they think is morally wrong.

Injustice, Protests and the Mobs: What’s a Catholic To Do?

Watching the United States today, we’re seeing an alarming transition from a Republic† that is—in theory anyway—based on the rule of law to an ochlocracy (A political system in which a mob is the source of control) where anger at a real or perceived injustice is used to extrajudicially target people that demagogues dislike. 

Yes, it’s indisputable that we’re here in the first place because the rule of law was unevenly applied to certain groups of people… many of whom have lost faith in the system we have. The question is what are we to do when legitimate grievances with illegitimate tactics. After all, as Catholics we cannot accept an evil means to achieve a good end.

We need to be clear on this before acting against injustice. Yes, if an institution is corrupt, it must be reformed. But not all methods used to demand reform are morally acceptable. Unfortunately, a certain subset of those seeking redress are choosing an evil means—demagogues using mob rule—to intimidate or even attack those they dislike. 

Let’s not just blame the other side here. The tactic of mobs is not limited to specific ethnic, political, or other groups. Nor is it limited to the United States alone. The tactics of the Nazi Brown Shirts in the 1920s and 30s might serve as an example of how bad a mob directed by an ideology and demagogues might become. So, we cannot say, “it’s their fault” while ignoring the wrongs we might tolerate on our own side. Conservatives‡ need to be aware of the groups (like nationalist and white separatist/supremacist mobs) claiming to associate with their causes. Liberals need to be aware of the groups (like the antifa and others) claiming to associate with their causes. No faction is free of extremists.

Unfortunately, too many demagogues find the extremists on the other side to be a useful tool to discredit legitimate concerns. If one faction raises a concern and that faction has extremists who march with them, it becomes too easy for an opposing faction to treat anyone sharing a concern as agreeing with the extremists. (This is a guilt by association fallacy, by the way). It is quite possible to have something in common with an extremist group without accepting their extremist positions. For example, Antifa might have things in common with the Democratic Party, while white separatists might have some similarities with the Republican party, but that doesn’t mean that the Democrats and the Republicans openly support their worst barbarisms. So, even if we wish that one party would be more forceful in rejecting the extremists, we can’t automatically assume that the failure to do so is a blanket endorsement of evil.

Unfortunately, the mobs are making these associations. If a Catholic says “black lives matter,” other Catholics assume that he or she has capitalized each word and supports the extremist movement that has appropriated the slogan for themselves. If a Catholic says that they think that he or she has to support Trump because the other choices seem worse, other Catholics assume that he or she has openly championed the worst parts of his policies§. 

But we can’t do this. The Church expressly calls Rash Judgment a sin. We are not to accuse a person of a moral fault that we simply assume he or she must believe. We need to be certain that there are facts to base such an accusation on. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church points out (#2478):

Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another’s statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. And if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.

Unfortunately, when we fall into mob rule, we don’t give a favorable interpretation to another (often falling into a fallacy of equivocation or accent), we don’t ask how the other intends it (often falling into a straw man or hasty generalization fallacy), and in our rush to correct, we don’t correct in love.

Once a mob falls into rash judgment, we often find that people who were not to blame for an injustice gets harmed in the violence and the demagogues claim that, while regrettable, it’s perfectly “understandable” that they act this way. But this is where we need to consider the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12). If we do not want to suffer injustice, we must not personally cause or take part in injustice to others. If we want others to consider the harm that they indirectly they cause us, we must consider the harm we indirectly cause others.

So, the past injustices a group suffers does not justify members of this group from inflicting injustice on others, regardless of what unjust members of the “others” have done. However, this cuts both ways. If it’s wrong for the mob to unjustly target groups based on the acts of some, we must not target entire groups with accusations based on the wrongdoing of some. So, if we see protestors carrying signs saying “black lives matter,” we cannot automatically assume they mean to support the radical group Black Lives Matter.

Another thing to remember is that laws that are just in themselves cannot be disobeyed just because the government is behaving unjustly. As St. Thomas Aquinas put it:

Laws framed by man are either just or unjust. If they be just, they have the power of binding in conscience, from the eternal law whence they are derived, according to Prov. 8:15: By Me kings reign, and lawgivers decree just things. Now laws are said to be just, both from the end, when, to wit, they are ordained to the common good,—and from their author, that is to say, when the law that is made does not exceed the power of the lawgiver,—and from their form, when, to wit, burdens are laid on the subjects, according to an equality of proportion and with a view to the common good. For, since one man is a part of the community, each man in all that he is and has, belongs to the community; just as a part, in all that it is, belongs to the whole; wherefore nature inflicts a loss on the part, in order to save the whole: so that on this account, such laws as these, which impose proportionate burdens, are just and binding in conscience, and are legal laws. (STh., I-II q.96 a.4 resp.)

To use an extreme example, we’re not free to rape and murder just because the regime that passed laws against them is morally evil#. One who argued that laws against such things in Nazi Germany weren’t binding because the Nazis did not have legitimacy would still be culpable« if they refused to obey those laws. It’s when a law is intrinsically unjust in itself (for example, a law in Nazi Germany that required you to turn in Jews you knew were hiding) that we are obligated to oppose it.

Applying it to our present crisis, laws against rioting and vandalism remain just and binding, even when protestors are rightfully angry about a flagrant injustice in the legal system and frustrated by the fact that nothing seems to change. An unjust law might be giving permission to group X to do something that is illegal for group Y. If the permitted act is unjust, Group X must not do it. If it is just, it is wrong to deny it to Group Y.

If we think the legal system is unjust in some way, we may legitimately work to legally overturn it. If we find a monument honoring somebody offensive cannot be borne, we may legitimately work to have it legally removed. But rioting, behaving like vigilantes, putting other people at risk or destroying cannot be done… whether the government turns a blind eye to it or not.

What is a Catholic to do in these times? Behave justly, show compassion, and love our foes. That means we don’t turn a blind eye to the evils done by groups we favor while condemning the evils done in groups we oppose. If we would be angry if something was done against us, that is a huge clue we ought not to be doing it ourselves, whether by commission or omission.

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(†) While the United States votes on who is elected to represent us, it is not a democracy in the literal sense of the term. 

(‡) As always, I try to alphabetize my dichotomies to avoid the appearance of siding with one.

(§) Before anybody falls into Whataboutism, and accuse me of overlooking something, we can usually reverse these examples. For example, the Catholic who morally believes they can’t vote for Trump is often accused of supporting all of the evils of the Democratic Party.

(#) This is where those extremists go wrong when they think that saving unborn children justifies murdering abortionists. The laws against murder and the laws against vigilantism are just in themselves.

[«] No doubt in such a regime, those laws would be enforced unjustly, never enforced against the regime, but evil by them does not justify behaving unjustly ourselves.

Double Standards: Not All Injustices Are Viewed as Equal, But They Remain Unjust

“When you see a nation, an entire nation simultaneously grappling with an extraordinary crisis seeded in 400 years of American racism, I’m sorry, that is not the same question as the understandably aggrieved store owner or the devout religious person who wants to go back to services.”

—Bill De Blasio, Mayor of New York City

“However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States. We can show that support by facilitating safest protesting practices without detracting from demonstrators' ability to gather and demand change. This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders.”

—Open Letter of 1200‡ health care professionals

One thing that shows up during the protests#—just as they have any other time there is injustice—is the attitude of “But, what about X? Why are you focusing on Y instead of X?” Alternately, we see “Why are you focusing on this now when you were silent all these other times?” These comments usually spark internet brawls, where the people who think Y is more important than X respond with anger, thinking that these objections show that the people who say them “don’t care” about injustice.

It’s true that some people do say these things because they don’t care†. But others have legitimate concerns about injustices that others either don’t care about or don’t understand. I think the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12a) is important here: Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. If we want others to care about the injustice we suffer, that shows caring about the injustice others suffer is a moral imperative. Saying Y is more immediately urgent than X is one thing. But holding a double standard based on one’s own biases of what is important and what is to be guilty of injustice as well. 

In other words, before you say, “That’s different,” remember that some people think the same way about your cause. If you don’t want others to dismiss your cause, don’t dismiss theirs, even if you think one cause is in more urgent need of correction than another.

I began reflecting on this when New York City mayor De Blasio announced that he was going to tolerate protesters violating quarantine rules but keep them in place for religious services, because these cases were an exception to the rule. Since the (presumably) peaceful right of assembly is included in the same amendment as the freedom of religion, we have a clear-cut case of the double standard. If the laws of health are so important that religious groups cannot hold services because of the risk of increasing the spread of COVID-19 then, logically, the risk of thousands of people gathered in close spaces to protest must be held to the same standard. And health experts are expressing grave concern over the rioters spreading contagion. Some “health professionals” have apparently signed a letter saying that the need to protest outweighs the need to quarantine, but it’s the same double standard. What determines a “need” is based on what the person considers important and what others consider a need is not.

But that’s precisely the attitude behind the injustice that is currently being protested—the recognition that the treatment of certain people and issues are being handled unjustly based on what those in charge think is important and what they don’t care about. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the protestors’ perception§, they resent that what they have seen as injustice for decades was dismissed as not important or not as bad as they thought. 

This is why the Golden Rule is important in all times and all circumstances. If we want to have people treat our cause justly, we must make sure we treat the causes of others justly. That doesn’t mean “give in to everything.” Justice is giving to others what is their due by right. A human being must be treated like a human being in all circumstances. But when a demand unjustly harms others, giving into it is not just. For example, we cannot give into the demands of a manifestly unjust group like Planned Parenthood in the name of “justice,” because their promotion of abortion harms other human beings, treating them as less than human.

Having one standard of treatment for one group, and a different standard for a second group is unjust, regardless of whether the second group is treated better or worse than the first. If seeking the public good is a requirement of good government, it cannot be selective in making or enforcing laws out of sympathy for one group or antipathy for another.

In dealing with the quarantine laws, regarding the protests and the freedom of religion, we must not have different standards for different people. If the conditions of contagion bar large groups from meeting, we must apply that to all large groups. But if the conditions do not bar all large groups, then we need to make clear what differences make one group safer than another.

Otherwise, especially if it becomes clear that the different standard is based on indifference or antipathy to one group, we’re guilty of injustice.    

 

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(‡) At the time of my writing this article.

(#) When I speak of protests, I am of course speaking of peaceful and lawful protests, not rioting.

(†) For example, I find it sad to see some people are angrier over the symbolic actions taken to protest the death of George Floyd then they are over the actual death of George Floyd.

(§) I’m more inclined to think now that they have a valid objection than I was ten years ago. That’s because I have ten more years of experience in what goes on in the world and ten more years of studying Church teaching than I had before.

Justice? Or Vengeance? The Two Are Not the Same

Some comments about the summit are closer to this than to the obligations of the Church

Sadly, many of our people, not just those abused or parents of the abused, but the faithful at large are wondering if we the leaders of the Church fully understand this reality, particularly when they see little care given to abused children, or even worse, when it is covered up to protect the abuser or the institution. They are asking themselves, “If church leaders could act with so little care in giving pastoral attention in such obvious cases of a child being sexually molested, does that not reveal how detached they are from us as parents who treasure our children as the light of our lives? Can we really expect our leaders to care about us and our children in the ordinary circumstances of life, if they responded so callously in cases that would alarm any reasonable person?” This is the source of the growing mistrust in our leadership, not to mention the outrage of our people.

—Cardinal Cupich. Feb 22 2019.

Cardinal Cupich raised a good point at the Summit in Rome. If bishops didn’t give justice to the victims of abuse and their families, how are they to trust the bishops to guide them in the faith. It’s a question that cannot be dismissed. The fact is some bishops were given the task of providing justice in the face of a vile evil and, for whatever reason, failed to provide that justice and allowed the predators get away with a horrific crime. The faithful need justice and they need to be able to know this will never happen again. This is a legitimate demand.

Unfortunately, intermingled with the demand for justice, is the demand for vengeance and scapegoats. These people are not saying “Bishop X was informed of this case of abuse and did nothing to protect children from future abuse.” They’re saying “All the bishops must have known. Therefore they’re all guilty and need to be laicized.” This is not a legitimate demand. In some cases it seems to reach the point of accusing Popes and bishops, without evidence, based on their ideological views... as if only people on the “other side” can be guilty.

Justice can be defined as acting or being in conformity with what is morally upright or good, giving what is due. Vengeance, on the other hand, can be defined as retaliation for an injury or offense. The problem is, vengeance often focuses on retaliation without concern for whether the punishment is just. But even when the Church failed to be just in the past, that doesn’t allow the faithful to demand retaliation that is unjust.

I think of this as we see the response by some to the 21 points issued on the first day of the Summit. Two of them received a lot of hostility:

14. The right to defence: the principle of natural and canon law of presumption of innocence must also be safeguarded until the guilt of the accused is proven. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent the lists of the accused being published, even by the dioceses, before the preliminary investigation and the definitive condemnation.

15.  Observe the traditional principle of proportionality of punishment with respect to the crime committed. To decide that priests and bishops guilty of sexual abuse of minors leave the public ministry.

These are principles recognized in most free nations: You’re presumed innocent until proven guilty and if you’re guilty, the punishment must be proportional to the crime. Now Cardinal Cupich, as cited above, rightly pointed out that the victims and families have a right to be concerned about whether the bishops will fail to provide justice based on past results. People who don’t trust the bishops after discovering all the cases that were not disclosed will no doubt fear that this is more of the same.

But even so, we cannot respond to an injustice to the victims with injustice to the accused. So any reforms to the system cannot violate these principles to make it easier to punish. Even though there are a number of credible cases out there, we cannot assume all cases are true without proof. Some accusations may be false, and if it is, allowing that priest to be treated like a criminal would be unjust.

Moreover, we need to recognize there’s a difference between a bishop who knowingly concealed a case of abuse and a bishop who sincerely followed the advice of the recognized experts of the time, believing that the abuser priest was cured and able to return to ministry. Justice requires they be handed differently. We have to be careful that our horror and disgust do not lead us to forget our obligations as Christians. As painful as it feels when dealing with this evil, we do have Our Lord’s command: 

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? 48 So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect. 

[Matthew 5:43–48 (NABRE)]

That doesn’t mean “be a doormat,” giving the evildoers a free pass. But it means we cannot be unjust or hateful to those who wronged us. We’re called to administer justice in a way that seeks their salvation, even when we’re tempted to consign them to hell. I’m not saying that this will be easy. We should not have to suffer injustice at the hands of the shepherds of the Church. But, since the Church is a Church of sinful humans, not angels, injustice will happen. So, responding in a Christian manner is necessary.

So what do we do? I think we need to pray for the Pope and bishops involved. If we’re troubled by a proposal, perhaps we should be praying, “Lord, if this is unjust, give them the wisdom to see it. And if I am mistaken, please give me the wisdom to see it.” If we are angry, perhaps we should pray, Lord, if my anger is wrathful, give me the strength to let go.” Ultimately, we are praying both for the Summit to do God’s will and for us to do God’s will if we are mistaken.

If we don’t do that, we risk acting from vengeance, not justice. And that will be acting against God’s will.

Love and Truth Will Meet—and Apparently Say "See Ya"

¹¹ Love and truth will meet; 

justice and peace will kiss. 

¹² Truth will spring from the earth; 

justice will look down from heaven. (Psalm 85:11–12).

Introduction

There’s an ugly battle flaming up between Catholics when it comes to the Orlando mass shooting. it’s a battle over how to address the people who have a same sex attraction when it comes to condolences. Are they a community? Or are they not? The dispute is over whether one should send condolences to the “LGBT community” or whether that would look like an endorsement of sinful acts. This seems like something which they can resolve charitably. Unfortunately, it’s gotten to the point where the two sides are practically throwing anathemas at each other, assuming the other side is guilty of bad will or even malice.

Setting Up the Situation

To sum up the two positions briefly (and hopefully, fairly):

1. Those who think we should use term “LGBT community” say this is no different than referring to “the black community” or the “Jewish community,” and nobody should take offense or think this is an endorsement of sinful behavior.
2. Those who oppose the use say that grouping people by their inclination or behavior is not the same as real ethnic or religious communities, but instead equates people with their behavior. Also, given the tendency of the media to present such things as “CHURCH TO CHANGE TEACHING” headlines, it does matter whether or not Catholics use this term.

So the question is over whether calling people with a disordered attraction a community is in keeping with the command to love the sinner and speaking against the sin.

There’s no official teaching on the proper form here. The official statement from the Holy See said:

The terrible massacre that has taken place in Orlando, with its dreadfully high number of innocent victims, has caused in Pope Francis, and in all of us, the deepest feelings of horror and condemnation, of pain and turmoil before this new manifestation of homicidal folly and senseless hatred. Pope Francis joins the families of the victims and all of the injured in prayer and in compassion. Sharing in their indescribable suffering he entrusts them to the Lord so they may find comfort. We all hope that ways may be found, as soon as possible, to effectively identify and contrast the causes of such terrible and absurd violence which so deeply upsets the desire for peace of the American people and of the whole of humanity.

The Pope did not use the term, but there’s no doubt he was clear in condemning an evil act and showing love and compassion for victims and their families. So, unless wants to condemn the Pope, there is nothing wrong with avoiding the term. On the other hand, some bishops did use the term in sending condolences and Catholics dispute whether this was right.

Here’s the Problem

The problem with this debate is many debaters are openly insulting of the other side, accusing them of being bad Catholics. Hotheads among Catholics who support using the term “LGBT community” accuse those who don’t like it of bigotry and a lack of compassion for the victims and their families. Hotheads among Catholics opposed to the term accuse those who do use it of heresy and sending a false message to the world. Neither side is free of inflammatory rhetoric (So don’t go pointing fingers at the other side).

But people are assuming that a dispute proves a lack of love or a neglect of truth. Yes, we want to show compassion to the victims and their families. Yes, we want to condemn the mass shooting as something evil regardless of how the victims lived. But we also must make clear (where fitting) that our moral beliefs are not going to change because of the evil some do.

So, we have an obligation. Before we condemn a Catholic for being heretical or hateful, we have to know the intentions the speaker or writer had. Does the person who uses the term “LGBT community” mean to endorse something against Church teaching? Or is this a case of simply not thinking about the potential meanings people might draw from it? Does the person who does not use the term mean to show hatred to the victims? Or is it a case of wanting to be clear about where the Church stands?

What gets overlooked is the fact that a person may not intend what the listener/reader believes it the point. We should strive to speak clearly. But not all will have the same talent in doing so. We have to realize that condolences phrased differently than we like may not mean support of evil. It is possible the speaker is unclear or we have simply misunderstood because we give words meaning that the speaker does not intend. If the speaker uses the term, but does not mean to support sin, we must not condemn him for heresy. if the speaker does not use the term, but does not act out of hatred in doing so, we must not condemn him of bigotry. It is only when we know the person acts from a bad motive, that we can offer a rebuke.

Conclusion

It’s hypocrisy to love the person far away and hate our brother. God, who told us to love our enemies, also told us to love our neighbor as ourself. So if we call for love and compassion for the victims, but will not show it for the fellow Christian who we argue with, we are doing wrong. It’s time to stop accusing each other of bad will and time to start understanding what the other person meant, accepting different views as valid when they are compatible with Catholic belief and gently guiding them back when they are not.

Savaging each other over disagreements because we assume the other is deliberately choosing to do evil is rash judgment and we become hypocrites if we refuse to love our fellow Christian.

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.

The Other Side of Bad Catholic Blogging

(There’s more than two sides to Problems with Catholic Blogging...)

 

Introduction

I've had a lot to say about the bloggers gone bad in the Radical Traditionalist sense. But I have become more aware of another bad trend in Catholic blogging—the abuse of one's reputation as a Catholic blogger to promote a particular opinion on how to best obey Church teaching, treating other opinions on how to best obey Church teaching as if it was the sign of a cafeteria Catholic. I say that such Catholics abuse their reputation because people do look to them to explain the faith and defend it. So when they use their blog as a platform to attack people who disagree with them and treat this difference of opinion on ways and means as if the person who disagrees are actively choosing to disobey the Church, they alienate the faithful into thinking the Church has no place for them.

Making A Distinction

Now we have to make a distinction of course. When the Church teaches “We must do X,” or “We must not do Y,” then the Catholic who tries to undermine these teachings or tries to say that one may disobey the teaching of the Church are being faithless Catholics. The refusal to do this is rejection of the authority that our Lord gave to the Church:

can. 751† Heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith; schism is the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.

can. 752† Although not an assent of faith, a religious submission of the intellect and will must be given to a doctrine which the Supreme Pontiff or the college of bishops declares concerning faith or morals when they exercise the authentic magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim it by definitive act; therefore, the Christian faithful are to take care to avoid those things which do not agree with it.

can. 753† Although the bishops who are in communion with the head and members of the college, whether individually or joined together in conferences of bishops or in particular councils, do not possess infallibility in teaching, they are authentic teachers and instructors of the faith for the Christian faithful entrusted to their care; the Christian faithful are bound to adhere with religious submission of mind to the authentic magisterium of their bishops.

 

 Code of Canon Law: New English Translation (Washington, DC: Canon Law Society of America, 1998), 247.

So the person who tries to justify their disobedience to the Church teaching on sexual morality, abortion, social justice or any other area cannot be said to be having a disagreement on ways and means obeying the Church. This applies to the liberal politician who says they are more “pro-life” than the person who opposes abortion, and it applies to the radical traditionalist who says they can disobey the Church because they are being faithful to an “earlier” tradition.

But if two people agree that the Church teaching must be obeyed, but have two different ideas on how to best follow that teaching, the person who prefers method A has no right to denounce the person who prefers method B. He has even less right to accuse the person who supports method B of all the abuses that he thinks comes from not supporting method A.

This happens in many different ways. For example, the person who accuses a supporter of gun ownership rights as “not really being pro-life” (that’s a No true Scotsman fallacy by the way) or the person who favors a strong stand against abortion treating bishops who try a gentler approach as if they were secretly supportive—these things are twisting the Church teaching in such a way to make the it seem that disagreement with them is disagreement with the Church. But the person isn’t disagreeing with the Church. They are disagreeing with the claim that there is only one way to obey the Church teaching.

The Fruit of This Abuse Is to Alienate the Faithful

So this is an abuse of the credibility one has as a Catholic blogger when it is used to promote a certain preference tends to be harmful to the Church. In essence, it leads people to think that the Church is limited to one ideological view and has no place for them when the actual alienation is with the rash judgment of the blogger. I think we need to keep this in mind. Most of us recognize that it is scandal to try to tell people that it is all right to reject the Church teaching. But some overlook the fact that it is also scandal to tell people that they are sinning when they actually agree with the Church but disagree with us on the ways and means of obedience.

We who want to be Catholic bloggers (as opposed to bloggers who are Catholic—there is a difference), whose purpose of writing is to exhort people to be faithful to the teachings of the Church, need to distinguish between what the Church teaches and how we would prefer for that teaching to be lived out. The former is to spread our Lord’s teachings. The latter is to usurp the authority of the Church for our own purposes and can lead people into rejecting the Church without cause.

Let us as bloggers always keep in mind the words of Our Lord:

⁶ “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. ⁷ Woe to the world because of things that cause sin! Such things must come, but woe to the one through whom they come! (Matthew 18:6-7)

If we drive people away from the faith because we cannot distinguish between our preferences and the teaching of the Church, we will answer for it. So let us always consider our words—especially when we are angry over something. Let us always pray that what we publish is in keeping with what Our Lord wants us to publish—defending the faith but showing love and compassion in doing so.

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.

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.