Reflections on an Anti-Catholic Attack

Introduction

Longtime readers should be aware of my favorite definition of truth and falsehood, according to Aristotle: To say of what is, that it is or to say of what it is not is to speak the truth. While that is not all there is to the concept of truth, it is an important point. We have to say what is true about a thing, whether we agree or disagree with a position. Otherwise, if we try to refute a position by speaking falsehood (saying of what is that it is not, or of what is not, that it is) about it, we prove absolutely nothing at all.

That means that in refuting something we should speak the truth about it, whether it is about Nazism, about Communism, about racism, about conservatism or liberalism. It applies to religions as well. If we are going to reject something as being wrong, we should do so by showing why the truth about it is repugnant, and not speak falsehoods about it to deceive people away from it.

Anti-Catholicism Does Not Speak The Truth

That is why I find religiously motivated anti-Catholicism to be so perplexing. Such individuals profess to believe in God and to follow the teachings of Christ—but have no qualms whatsoever about speaking falsely about the Catholic Church. Common tactics are misrepresenting teachings, misrepresenting history, misrepresenting Scripture and distorting the defenses of the Catholic faith. 

Now, it should be clear that if one believes that Catholicism is wrong and, out of a misguided sense of goodwill, wants to lead Catholics out of the Church, they should strive to understand what the Church actually believes on a subject and, with that accurate knowledge, investigate whether the Catholic belief contradicts the Scriptures in context. But that is precisely what is not being done.

Instead, the common tactic is to take a Catholic teaching that has been so frequently misrepresented that people no longer question whether the assertion is true. Then contrast that distorted teaching against a specially selected verse of Scripture. Then argue that the discrepancy shows that Catholicism is evil and must be opposed.

One Must Use Authoritative Sources When Investigating Something

If I were to write a paper on quantum physics, what would you want to know before accepting my conclusions? The first thing would be to determine whether my assertions and research were accurate. If I was uninformed about the topic or, if I was uninformed about the fundamentals, my conclusion wouldn't be worth the paper it was printed on. Any truth in the paper would be strictly coincidental, and not a reliable guide. So, when we want to learn the truth about something, we go to the sources that are authoritative. For example, we go to NASA and not to the National Enquirer when we want to learn accurately about what was discovered on Pluto. Likewise, we don't ask Planned Parenthood or NARAL to explain the reasons why people oppose abortion.

This logically follows in other areas as well. If one wants to refute Islam intelligently, one has to know what the Qur'an says. If one wants to intelligently refute Mormonism, one has to know what the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price say—because the individual Muslim or Mormon is going to write you off as an idiot if it becomes apparent that you don't understand what they believe.

Likewise, when one wants to know what the Catholic Church believes, one doesn't go to an anti-Catholic site or an anti-Catholic theologian. One goes to an source which Catholics acknowledge as having the authority to say: "THIS is what we believe." In doing so, we have to interpret the source according to the intention of the authority—not what someone thinks it means based on their own (often uninformed) readings.

So, if one wants to know what the Church believes on a subject, one goes to a source which the Church has approved. For example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church. When one wants to know what the Pope meant in a soundbite, one goes to the Vatican website and gets the whole interview or address in context. One studies the Catholic faith to see whether the accusations made against her are accurate or not. They should NOT go to Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Spurgeon, Gerstner, Sproul or Barth. 

This is common sense. If a person relies on sources which are based in hostility, the first question to be asked is whether the hostility blinds the judgment or not. Remember, there are a lot of times people have misinterpreted another's intention and held a grudge which was based on a misunderstanding on the grounds that a person refused to believe goodwill on the part of that which he or she opposed.

One Must Consider the Agenda of Those Who Attack the Church

That must be remembered. When it comes to Catholicism, there is a lot of hostility from former members. At various times, groups have broken away from the Church. Such actions are based in opposition. Was the opposition justified? There is a lot of propaganda used to exaggerate the corruption in the Church to make it appear that the entire Church taught heresy and was out for malicious self-benefit. But often the people who made such claims had a vested interest in justifying their schism—they needed to make it look as if the Church was teaching falsely.

The problem is, when someone takes the worst possible elements about a person and exaggerates them, you can make anybody look bad—and some have gone so far as to try to slander Jesus Himself. So, we need to remember that we do not accept what a person says about their enemy simply on their own say-so (that's the ipse dixit logical fallacy). When one makes an accusation, proof is required.

But proof is not the same thing as assertion. Imagine a trial where all the evidence presented was only interpreted by the prosecutor. How likely is the accused to get a fair hearing? If you answered "not likely to be fair," you are correct. (if you answered "likely to be fair," perhaps you might prefer the legal systems of Iran or North Korea). So, when it comes to seeking to refute the Catholic Church and lead people out of her, the right way to do it is to study the Church teaching so that the evidence presented is evidence that the Catholic will say, "Yes, this is true." The wrong way to do it is to make claims which the informed Catholic will say "You are either deceived or lying."

And that's the thing about the Catholic faith. When one actually does the research and presents the truth about the Catholic faith, it cannot be refuted. One can honestly say "I disagree with the Church!" (there's a vulgar but accurate saying about opinions and posteriors which I won't repeat here), but one cannot honestly say "the Church is teaching error!"

Even the Devil Cites Scripture (Matthew 4:1-10)—So Check the Context

And that brings us to the next point. The whole attack on Catholicism from a Christian perspective depends on an individual interpretation of the Bible—generally from the assumption that Protestantism (in whatever form) is true—which requires us to ask "Why should we believe your interpretation of the Bible and not mine?" Remember, there are all sorts of ways to make a Bible verse fit whatever you want—look at the denominations that try to justify "Same sex marriage" for example.

So when an anti-Catholic tries to contrast Scripture with Catholic teaching, we have to ask:

• Have they properly understood the verse of Scripture?
• Have they properly understood the Catholic teaching?

Because the fact is, while the Bible is without error, that does not make the individual interpreter infallible—again, remember the denominations which justify "same sex marriage." If the Plain Sense of Scripture was so easy to find, then Lutherans and Zwinglians should have agreed on the meaning of the Eucharist, while the Presbyterians and Baptists should agree on the meaning of Baptism. The fact is, they don’t.

See, the Catholic accepts the authority of Scripture. That's a plain statement of fact. What the Catholic rejects is blindly accepting every personal interpretation that comes down the pike about what verses mean. If one wants to sling verses against the Church, expect us to take offense when those verses are taken out of context or are misapplied against the Church.

Conclusion

There is a whole raft of objections against the Church, and Catholics have been refuting these claims since the beginning of the Protestant schisms in the 16th century. Basically, it is a case of the same false accusations—that we worship Mary, statues, saints, the Pope—which Catholics emphatically reject as false. The attack is essentially the logical fallacy of begging the question. The opposition to Catholic practices have always depended on a misinformed understanding of what is actually being done and an overly literalistic interpretation of Scripture. 

The person of good will who thinks Catholicism is wrong and wants to “save” us from it has to recognize that God is truth and opposes lies. One who repeats falsehood is either deceiving or deceived, depending on whether the person knows the claim is false or whether the person never bothered to investigate the truth of the accusation. Since every person has the obligation to speak truthfully, the person of good will has to stop repeating false claims about the Church. This applies to false history and misrepresentations of history. 

God forbade false witness, and when one feels the need to speak against something, they have the obligation to seek the truth first, because even when acting out of ignorance, slander/libel does bear that false witness. It stands to reason that if we love God, we will seek to live in a way pleasing to Him, and that means not speaking falsely.

Postscript for Catholics

One of our responsibilities in defending the faith against those who attack it is not to automatically accept what those who attack the Church claim. Many anti-Catholics sound quite confident when they say that what we believe contradicts the Bible, but their confidence relies on believing certain stock phrases are true. We have the obligation to learn our beliefs—not just what we believe, but why we believe it. When we understand these things, we will not be led astray by spurious arguments that depend Catholics being ignorant about what they believe. Remember, to pray and to study

Stop the Bishop Bashing: An Open Letter to my Fellow Catholic Bloggers

Read more »

Ambushers

Read more »

We Cannot Set God the Father and God the Son Against Each Other

Introduction

If I were to describe the behaviors of some Christians who support the changing long held Christian moral beliefs, the term modernist comes to mind—though not in the sense that radical traditionalists abuse as an epithet—thus stripping it of any meaning.

Modernism is defined as “a tendency in theology to accommodate traditional religious teaching to contemporary thought and especially to devalue supernatural elements.” In other words, modernism is an attempt to deny or downplay the inconvenient truths that God has commanded, but modern society finds objectionable. Thus, the Christian who tries to reduce miracles to fortuitous coincidences or tries to turn “thou shalt not” into “It is OK” is guilty of modernism.

Tragically, there has been a surge in the number of Christians who openly seek to twist the meaning of Christian moral obligations since Obergefell, and there seem to be a growing number of Christians who are willing to accept their arguments because they do not like the idea of of themselves or loved ones acting in a way that Christian belief calls sinful. It’s not for me to judge the culpability of the Christians who buy into the argument, but it is not being judgmental to say that these compromises are certainly against what God has commanded and that those Christians who confuse their compromising the truth with being compassionate. We need to remember that even when loving the sinner, we cannot compromise on the truth.

Jesus Is God and We Cannot Separate Him From God in the Old Testament

One common justification for rejecting unpopular moral teachings is done in trying to separate the God of the Old Testament from Jesus Christ in the Gospel. God in the Old Testament is seen as harsh and judgmental, while Jesus in the Gospel is seen as loving and non-judgmental. But that vision of the two are wrong for several reasons—the first of which is the very fact that it divides One God into two beings where one is considered bad, and the other good. That’s basically gnosticism.

In fact, if we profess to be believing Christians, there are some principles we must accept…in fact, to deny them makes us heretical:

• We believe in One Triune God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—who has existed eternally.
• Therefore Jesus has always been God the Son.
• From this it follows that one cannot divide God into separate beings or claim that what God taught, Jesus repudiated.
• Once we recognize this, the Christian cannot use the “Jesus never said anything about X” argument without (knowingly or not) denying the Triune and eternal nature of God.

It is important to recognize these facts, because, after Obergefell, people are trying to bully Christians into abandoning their moral objections to “same sex marriage” by saying “Jesus never condemned homosexuality.” To make that claim, one has to either deny the Trinity or deny the authority of Scripture when it disagrees with one’s personal behavior. So, let’s look at that next.

The Authority of Scripture is God and We Do Not Have the Right to Overthrow It

Protestants and Catholics both recognize the authority of Scripture, though they have different ideas on what that authority means. Generally speaking, we hold that the Bible was divinely inspired, while making use of the talents of the human authors, so that it is free of error. The Catholic Church, in the Vatican II document Dei Verbum, describes it this way:

11. Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented in Sacred Scripture have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles (see John 20:31; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:19–20, 3:15–16), holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself. In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him² they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted.⁴

 

Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation. Therefore “all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind” (2 Tim. 3:16–17, Greek text).

So, we have to realize that since God inspired the authors to put into the Scriptures what He wanted put there, we are not free to simply pick and choose what we think is out of date. We have to understand the context of the words and the culture which the author shared with the original audience. We also have to understand that, despite the fact that the human authors wrote over a period of thousands of years, God inspired all of it, and we cannot simply pick out a section to support what we would like to be taught.

The Jewish Law and Divine Accomodation

What causes so many misunderstandings is the fact that we forget that everything in the Bible ultimately points to Christ. In the Old Testament, this means laying the framework, building the nation where Jesus can be born. This brings us to the concept of Divine Accommodation—that in teaching us, God moves from the simplest concepts to the more complex—as we grow more able to understand (See Galatians 3:23-24). He had to prepare us for receiving Christ by creating a framework. In Christ, the Law is fulfilled. That doesn’t mean the “thou shalt nots” can become “it’s OK if you want to do it.” But it does mean that the elements of the Law which were pointing to the fulfillment of Christ can be set aside—the ceremonial law, dietary law and legal strictures on what to do to transgressors—but the moral obligations of God’s teaching remain. This is what Acts 15:1-29 was affirming in saying that the Gentile Christians were not bound to keep the Law and why St. Paul took so stern a stance against those who tried to implement the circumcision and kosher laws.

What we need to keep in mind is, the legal codes of the Jewish Law were not the sudden imposition of barbarism on a genteel people. They were restrictions on how the Jews could behave in comparison to how their neighbors behaved. Yes, reading the laws of Exodus and Leviticus may sound offensive to our ears. But when one compares them with the neighboring nations, those nations did worse things on a regular basis. In other words, God wasn’t giving the Jews free rein to run wild. He was forbidding them from running wild.

Moreover, once you look at Jesus teaching the crowds “You have heard it said…but I say unto you…” He actually takes the law to a higher level. It’s not enough to avoid doing evil. We have to avoid harboring it in our hearts. So, when critics try to cite the other laws in Leviticus to deny the condemnation of homosexuality, they haven’t refuted the Christian moral teaching…they’ve merely shown they do not understand how God gradually brought His teaching to us, turning us away from evil and towards good as our minds could comprehend it. Christ is the final fulfillment of the Law. There won’t be any further revelation beyond Christ (contra the Muslims and Mormons)—we’ll just apply His teachings to new situations. In doing so, we will never see God’s teaching go from “X is a sin” to “X is not a sin.” If it ever appears to be otherwise, it merely shows we have misunderstood the essence of what was condemned.

To discuss each of the issues would take too long and cover too much ground. For example, I do not have the time to discuss St. Paul discussing Sin, Law, Gentiles and Jews in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians. Suffice to say, if you want to know how Christians view the relationship of the Old Testament legal code in comparison to the teachings of Christ, you need to study what Christianity teaches on the subject and not merely assume that the Church must have gotten it wrong just because you don’t understand it. That’s an argument from ignorance fallacy.

Conclusion

It is vital to remember, that we cannot try to set God the Father against God the Son, the Trinity against each other to justify our own behavior. Nor can we try to set one part of the Bible in opposition to another. There is no conflict between Father and Son because God is Triune. There is no conflict between Old and New Testament because God inspired both. When a conflict appears, it is actually a conflict of our own understanding.

Missing the Point: Church Teaching or non-Teachings?

Today I ran across a claim on the internet that the Church could change Church teachings on moral issues, because she had made changes in the past. When pressed on the question, one individual pointed to the Church changing the rules on eating meat on Friday and the “extermination” of those who refused to convert to Catholicism as proof of changed teachings. The person went so far as to claim Papal bulls sanctioned this extermination—though when pressed was unwilling or unable to name any.

That wasn’t unexpected of course. When one does not understand how the teaching of the Church works or does not know of the doctrines and history of the Church, it’s easy to believe all sorts of claims about the Church without actually looking for evidence for the claim. Thus, there’s a lot of cases going around where there is common knowledge—where the response is “everybody knows THAT,” but when one tries to find evidence for what “everybody knows,” it turns out that nobody actually knows of any...

I find that people tend to make one or more of four errors when it comes to the Catholic Church and what she teaches. These are:

1. Confusing a discipline or other decree with the official teaching of the Church.
2. Missing the Point about the actual Church teaching.
3. Misunderstanding a term used in a Church document, thinking it means something more than it actually does.
4. Wrongly believing that an abuse which is done by a Catholic is the intended teaching of the Catholic Church.

I’ll take a look at these things, and see where they go wrong.

Confusing Discipline/Decree With a Church Teaching

Church teaching is not everything a member of the Church says—even if the person speaking is a bishop or the Pope. The Teaching of the Church is what the Church formally intends to teach as being binding on all the faithful as a matter of the faith or morals of the Church. So when the Church says that same sex marriage, contraception and abortion are intrinsically (that is, always wrong regardless of motives or circumstances) evil, this is a Church teaching. This is not something that is optional, or that the changing circumstances of the times will let the Church decide to do things differently.

However, when the Church decides that members of the Church need to practice a discipline for their spiritual good—for example, Friday abstinence from meat, permitting or withholding the chalice for the laity, whether the Mass be said in Latin or the Vernacular, or even whether or not the clergy must be celibate—these things can be changed if the Church deems it to be for a greater good. So now, we can choose another Friday sacrifice instead of giving up meat. The Church has at different times decreed that the laity may or may not receive the chalice. And, if the Church truly sees a need for it, she can change the discipline of whether the Church ordains married men (as she does in the Eastern Rites) or only ordains celibate men (as she does in the Latin rite). Making a change in these matters is not a case of “the Church was wrong then but right now” (or vice versa for traditionalists). These are situations where the Church makes a decree based on certain conditions.

Missing the Point About the Church Teaching

This brings us to the next issue, which is keeping in mind what Church teaching is actually under consideration. Consider the common canard that the Church changed her teaching on “eating meat on Friday means you will go to Hell.” This is to miss the point. In this case, the Church teaching is not that eating meat on Fridays is evil. The Catholic belief is that the Church has Christ’s authority and that what the Church binds or looses on Earth will be bound or loosed in Heaven. If a person willfully rejects a discipline mandated by the Church for the good of the people that person is rejecting something bound in Heaven.

Another common accusation made about Church teaching being changed is the issue of loans. The argument is that formerly the Church forbade lending at interest, but is now OK with it. Therefore, the Church can change her other teachings. But it wasn’t interest that was the problem. It was the problem of usury (the practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest). In different economic systems during the Roman era, the Dark Ages, the Medieval period and the Enlightenment, what was an unreasonably high rate of interest was different from one period to the next. So the Catechism of the Council of Trent could condemn any interest on a loan while over 200 years later, Pope Pius VII could say some returns on investments were acceptable, but profits that were made based on harmful methods of lending were not. (I imagine the modern practice of Payday loans would meet the criteria for condemnation).

When the only means of exchange were coins and barter, and when every person was paid a fixed amount a day, then charging interest on a loan could mean extreme hardship for the person in debt. But when money could be exchanged with notes, deposited in banks and used to bring in profits, it became possible for people to pay off certain loans. In the first instance any charging of interest would be usury. In the second, some charging of interest would not be usury. So, we can see that the Church did not go from saying “usury is wrong” to “usury is OK.” She merely updated the understanding of what was and was not allowed.

But we have to avoid the fallacy of irrelevant comparisons. One cannot argue that the change in economic conditions changing what met the definition of usury means that the Church can change her teaching on sexual morality. Economic systems can change. The genders and the nature of the sexual act do not change.

Misunderstanding a Term Used In Church Teaching

So, where does the idea come that the Church permitted the extermination of people who would not convert? It comes from applying a limited meaning of a word in modern English which actually has a much broader meaning in different times. The modern meaning of exterminate is "destroy completely; eradicate.” But, when you look at the Latin word, exterminare, we find that it has a different meaning:  lesser banish, expel; dismiss. So, while some people may point to the Lateran IV Council (AD 1215) and quote the following from canon 3:

Secular authorities, whatever office they may hold, shall be admonished and induced and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical censure, that as they wish to be esteemed and numbered among the faithful, so for the defense of the faith they ought publicly to take an oath that they will strive in good faith and to the best of their ability to exterminate in the territories subject to their jurisdiction all heretics pointed out by the Church; so that whenever anyone shall have assumed authority, whether spiritual or temporal, let him be bound to confirm this decree by oath. But if a temporal ruler, after having been requested and admonished by the Church, should neglect to cleanse his territory of this heretical foulness, let him be excommunicated by the metropolitan and the other bishops of the province. If he refuses to make satisfaction within a year, let the matter be made known to the supreme pontiff, that he may declare the ruler’s vassals absolved from their allegiance and may offer the territory to be ruled by Catholics, who on the extermination of the heretics may possess it without hindrance and preserve it in the purity of faith; the right, however, of the chief ruler is to be respected so long as he offers no obstacle in this matter and permits freedom of action. The same law is to be observed in regard to those who have no chief rulers (that is, are independent). Catholics who have girded themselves with the cross for the extermination of the heretics, shall enjoy the indulgences and privileges granted to those who go in defense of the Holy Land.

 

[Schroeder, H. J. (1937). Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text, Translation, and Commentary (pp. 242–243). St. Louis, MO; London: B. Herder Book Co.]

I imagine people might be shocked on reading this. Isn’t it genocide? Well, no. If you look a couple of paragraphs down, you’ll see an admonishment for the people who interact with the exterminated heretics...

If any refuse to avoid such after they have been ostracized by the Church, let them be excommunicated till they have made suitable satisfaction. Clerics shall not give the sacraments of the Church to such pestilential people, nor shall they presume to give them Christian burial, or to receive their alms or offerings; otherwise they shall be deprived of their office, to which they may not be restored without a special indult of the Apostolic See. Similarly, all regulars, on whom also this punishment may be imposed, let their privileges be nullified in that diocese in which they have presumed to perpetrate such excesses.

We can see that the heretics are not exterminated in the sense of “The Final Solution.” They’re exterminated in the sense of being ostracized. We see in other documents the calling for bishops to use the penalty of interdict to exterminate heresy. Interdict was the refusal of Mass, Sacraments and Christian Burial. In modern times, interdict is applied only to a person, but in the past, the Church did apply it to regions. The point was to bring heretics to their senses by denying them the ministry of the Church until they repented (and see 1 Corinthians 5:5 if you think this is an unbiblical behavior), showing them how serious this was.

Wrongly Believing That an Abuse is the Actual Teaching of the Church

There’s no sense in denying that some people in history who professed to be Christian did behave in a way which was wrong. Not just wrong by the 21st century standards and sensitivities. I mean things that even back then, should have been obvious to people. So the mess that was the Spanish Inquisition, the wrongdoing by some in the Crusades—these things were wrong. The problem for the accusers is the fact that the Church condemned the evils done at the time. They didn’t always speak out effectively, and they weren’t always heeded. But they spoke out.

Here’s something to think about. Consider the Catholics who present themselves as being pro-abortion. They act publicly and ignore the teaching of the Church. is their disobedience the fault of the Church? No, because the Church does have a clear teaching that is being ignored. Sure, a person may wish that the Church was more forceful in certain times, but one can’t say that the Church supported these things.

The fact is, many of the events people point to as proof of the wickedness of the Church (the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, the sacking of Constantinople by Crusaders and the cruelties of the Spanish against the Native Americans are popular accusations) were actually denounced by the Church. But, like today, there were many Catholics who chose to ignore the teaching of the Church, and like today, many got away with it. There is only so much the Church can do against the willfully defiant. That doesn’t mean the men who led the Church always did enough or responded perfectly. Sometimes they even used their office to do wrong. However, these failings were not a part of the binding teaching of the Church.

So What is a Teaching of the Church?

So, now that I have said what the teaching of the Church is not, one might ask what a teaching of the Church is. The first step is to look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church #888-892. The teaching of the Church is based in preserving the teachings of Christ as passed on through the Apostles. It is "to preserve God’s people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error” (CCC #890). When the Church intends to teach in a way which "they propose in the exercise of the ordinary Magisterium a teaching that leads to better understanding of Revelation in matters of faith and morals" (CCC #892) or when the Pope “when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful—who confirms his brethren in the faith—he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals” (CCC #891).

So, many things which people point at, in an attempt to deny that the Church is protected from error, were never considered teachings of the Church in the sense she intends to be understood as teaching. Many others were not teaching what her enemies accused her of teaching.

When one wants to critique the Church, the first step is to determine whether the Church was teaching something as doctrine, and if so, what the Church intended to teach when binding the faithful. The Church can certainly make certain disciplines binding that are not teachings of the Church, but disciplines can be changed if the need requires it without contradicting Church teaching. Criticisms which fail to take into account what the Church intended to teach are doing nothing more than creating a Straw Man fallacy, condemning us for something which is either false or taken out of context.

"This is a Rebellious People..."

Read more »

Let's Look at Things Differently...

Read more »

Media and Our Conception of the Catholic Faith

An Example of People Ignoring Media Claims About the Church

It’s become common now for the media to make comments about different people and events in the Church that show how they do not understand what the Church teaches. Take for example the article "Woman claims role as Kansas City’s first female Catholic priest | The Kansas City Star.” According to Catholic teaching, only a male can be ordained to the priesthood. St. John Paul II has made it quite clear:

4. Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church's judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful. (emphasis added)

So, when we read in articles about women claiming to be ordained and the media treating this as fact, a person who has been paying attention to Church teaching knows that the opposite has been taught by the Church. He or she knows that this is not some new sort of teaching. We recognize that the media is to blame for this, and people who try to promote this as an example of change for the Church are either grossly uninformed about the Church or else are pushing an agenda against Church teaching.

That much seems obvious. We don’t see the National Catholic Reporter or Rorate Cæli (to name the extremes) talking about how wonderful/terrible it is that the Church is “changing” her teaching. 

Too Many Instances of People Accepting Media Claims About the Church—When it Suits Them

So, I find it curious that so many Catholics seeking to be faithful are willing to treat media reports as true when they call Pope Francis a liberal and claim he is overturning Church teaching. Anyone who looks at what his predecessors have said on a topic will find no conflicts, but at most a different way of explaining the Church teaching. The theme of the Pope’s preaching is reaching out to sinners, seeking to bring them back to God. He has said absolutely nothing about changing the faith. He has only said that it’s not enough to stop with stating what is forbidden, and we need to think about how to bring those people in a sinful situation back to the Church. He has repeatedly said that when it comes to Church teaching, he is a faithful son of the Church—on precisely the issues he has been accused of favoring a change.

So it seems clear that anyone who is trying to allege the Pope is changing the Church teaching is either grossly uninformed on what he said and what the Church says probably relying on the MSM and the opinion sites (religious and secular) which are treating the MSM as accurate.

Now of course, we want to avoid the genetic fallacy rejecting any news solely because it comes from a certain source. But we do need to consider the accuracy of a source—how knowledgable it is—when it attempts to report "breaking news” on the Church (which usually comes across looking like THIS). We also want to avoid the argument from ignorance fallacy where we think that because we haven’t heard about a response to a misleading story that it wasn’t responded to.

Instead of Looking to the Church, People Look to the Media Caricature to Confirm What They Already Decided

The antidote to such antics is to look for the Church accounts of things. There are some sites which do a good job of reporting what was actually said, even to the point of providing transcripts (such as Vatican Information Service or ZENIT). I have found that whenever the rapid reporting of the MSM pronounces that the Church under Pope Francis is “changing Church teaching,” it is disproven within a few days at the most. That is why we cannot accept the MSM reporting on the Church at face value. They are acting from lack of understanding and perhaps bias (hoping that the Church will change her views as if they were a political platform).

Basically, when we look for an explanation of the Church teaching, we should turn to the Church, not away from the Church for a reliable answer. That’s not what is being done anymore. When a political pundit defines the Church in terms of his or her own bias, that’s not a reliable answer, but people are using these things to confirm their own views and justify what they were going to do anyway. Whether it’s a political liberal who wants to see a Church transforming into what he or she wants it to be, or whether it’s a conservative who is looking for an excuse to legitimize their rejection of Pope Francis, we are experiencing a situation where instead of being faithful Catholics looking to the Church, we are seeing Catholics who are affirming the Church only when it suits them, and denying it when they run afoul of the teachings.

Conclusion

If liberals want to trumpet their support for Pope Francis, then let them heed his teachings as a “Son of the Church.” If conservatives want to portray themselves as faithful to the Church, then let them start giving assent to the teachings of the current successor of St. Peter, trusting that Our Lord will not fail in His promise to protect the Church under the successor of St. Peter.

If people decide to ignore these things and instead pick and choose what it means to be a Catholic, then that’s hypocrisy—and both liberal and conservative are guilty of the same disobedience, even if they dissent on different grounds. Cafeteria Catholicism is not only a behavior of one political faction.

TFTD: They Revile What They Do Not Understand

But these people revile what they do not understand and are destroyed by what they know by nature like irrational animals. (Jude 1:10)

A couple of days before Christmas, I was involved in a combox discussion on the issues over the satanic counter to the Nativity Scene in Florida. My own thesis was that the putting up a “religious” display with the intent of protesting religious displays was a self-contradiction. What struck me was a comment from one of the atheists. It was a tu quoque claim that the Bible was full of contradictions. Today, there seems to be a lot of atheists on Facebook and in the comboxes bashing Christianity over Neil deGrasse Tyson and his tweet in celebration of the December 25th birthday of Sir Isaac Newton (the actual tweet struck me as being more pathetic than offensive, apparently trying to imply Newton was more important than Christ).

Basically, the theme is that Christians are stupid for believing in God while blaming Christianity and religion in general for every crime in the history of humanity (denying the role of the atheistic ideology in the worst atrocities of the 20th century). These things are pretty tiresome, and fairly frustrating. The bashing is basically illogical and factually wrong. They would actually be easy to refute—if people took the time to listen and investigate whether what they say is true.

Ven. Fulton J. Sheen expressed things very well when he wrote:

“There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church—which is, of course, quite a different thing.” (Radio Replies vol. 1)

Ven. Archbishop Sheen makes a good point. The Catholic Church is not really hated for what she teaches, but for what people think she teaches, and when people run afoul of the Church teachings, we are told that these teachings were made out of hatred of women, of people with same sex attraction, of divorced people, the poor, the rich, sexuality etc., simply because we have a teaching on the morality of certain actions.

People don’t even ask what we teach, let alone why we teach it. People assume that the worst possible portrayals of the Church in history are true, never realizing that even in past centuries there were people with ideologies and axes to grind who had no problems denigrating the Church to build up their own agendas. Because they know nothing of Catholic teaching and history, but assume the Church is capable of the worst, they assume that the horror stories they hear must be true and done out of sheer malice—never mind facts and the context of the times.

Sometimes I wish people couldn’t post on a subject online unless they could demonstrate they understood what they were bashing.

But we shouldn’t expect that. Our Lord did warn us that we could expect hatred from the world if we sought to be faithful to Him:

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)

So we endure hatred and try to reach out to the person of good will who wants to learn the truth, praying for all of them.

What If The Media Has It Backwards About Intolerance?

Read more »

They're Not In Limbo, They're In Defiance: Attempts to Divide and Conquer Church Teaching

The article, "Lewistown couple remains in limbo with Catholic Church,” reflects the advocacy journalism common today. We get the appeal to pity in favor of the position supported, and zero mention of why the Church acts as she does. The result of such advocacy journalism is to pit the “poor persecuted couple” against the “cold legalistic church."

But the problem is this: The Church believes that God condemns homosexual acts, and her role is to help people who are struggling in sin to return to God’s grace. The couple in question publicly rejected the Church teaching about homosexual acts by having a same sex “marriage” performed. Given the choice between loving and obeying God or remaining in their relationship, the couple chose the second option. Thus the Church had no choice but to deny them the Eucharist.

John 14:15 records that Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” In Luke 16:10, Jesus teaches, "The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.” Finally, in Luke 10:16, speaking of the authority of the Apostles, Jesus says, "Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”

The point is, rejecting the teaching authority of the Church is rejecting Christ—no matter how people might wish it otherwise.

So, the couple and the author of the article plays the tactic of “divide and conquer.” They try to divide the pastor in question from the bishop ("What’s odd to me is the censure comes from Father Spiering at St. Leo’s, but the bishop hasn’t acted on it, he hasn’t changed it”), and the teaching from the Church (pointing to the statements of a German and French bishop).

The article portrays the couple as waiting it out, expecting the Church to change. But she won’t change from saying “X is a sin” to saying “X is not a sin.” All she might do is change the focus on how to reach out to sinners with the intention of bringing them back to the Church. Truth never changes, but the ways one reaches out to the one denying truth might change, so long as it doesn’t forget the truth. GK Chesterton once wrote:

An imbecile habit has arisen in modern controversy of saying that such and such a creed can be held in one age but cannot be held in another. Some dogma, we are told, was credible in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth. You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say of a view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three, but not suitable to half-past four. What a man can believe depends upon his philosophy, not upon the clock or the century. (Orthodoxy pp. 135-36)

It’s a good point. God, being all powerful, all knowing and perfectly good, as well as being outside of time, does not change His mind about what is good and evil. He has, in the early days of bringing his plan of salvation to the whole world, gradually brought about prohibitions on what could be done in preparation for the fullness of revelation (the term is Divine Accommodation). But He has never gone from saying “X is evil” to saying “X is permissible."

Unfortunately, some people do think that because the believers in God moderated their positions on war, slavery etc, it means that the position on homosexuality must also change. But that is to miss the point. The shocking accounts of the Jews in gaining their homeland was not to say that it was once all right to commit genocide but not longer. The issue was the horrific practices of the people living in the region and God exacting His punishment, and removing such practices from the land:

⁴ After the Lord, your God, has driven them out of your way, do not say in your heart, “It is because of my justice the Lord has brought me in to possess this land, and because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord is dispossessing them before me.”* ⁵ No, it is not because of your justice or the integrity of your heart that you are going in to take possession of their land; but it is because of their wickedness that the Lord, your God, is dispossessing these nations before you and in order to fulfill the promise he made on oath to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. ⁶ Know this, therefore: it is not because of your justice that the Lord, your God, is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people. (Deuteronomy 9:4-6)

Idolatry and child sacrifice were wrong in those days and are wrong now. The difference between then and now is that then God was restricting the behavior of warlike tribes that would otherwise have done worse, and He continued to restrict them in bringing them closer to His plan of salvation.

Jesus did not release moral prohibitions. He made them stricter:

Teaching About the Law. ¹⁷ *“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. ¹⁸ Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place. ¹⁹ Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven.* ²⁰ I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. 

Teaching About Anger.* ²¹ “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.’* ²² *But I say to you, whoever is angry* with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’ will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna. ²³ Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, ²⁴ leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. ²⁵ Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court with him. Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. ²⁶ Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny. 

Teaching About Adultery. ²⁷ *“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ ²⁸ But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. ²⁹ *If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna. ³⁰ And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into Gehenna. 

Teaching About Divorce. ³¹ *“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce.’ ³² But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. 

Teaching About Oaths. ³³ * “Again you have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow.’ ³⁴ But I say to you, do not swear at all;* not by heaven, for it is God’s throne; ³⁵ nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. ³⁶ Do not swear by your head, for you cannot make a single hair white or black. ³⁷ *Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one. 

Teaching About Retaliation. ³⁸ *“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ ³⁹ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on [your] right cheek, turn the other one to him as well. ⁴⁰ If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well. ⁴¹ Should anyone press you into service for one mile,* go with him for two miles. ⁴² Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow. 

Love of Enemies.* 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 5:17-48)

In every single case, Jesus showed that the teaching of the Old Testament was not reversed. It was expanded to be more binding— not just avoiding the acts of murder or adultery, but rejecting the cause of those acts.

The Apostles did not believe they had the right to overturn the teaching of God, and so they never committed the argument from silence fallacy that modern critics do in trying to separate Jesus from St. Paul or the Old Testament when it comes to the condemnation of homosexual acts because they mentioned these acts while Jesus did not—ignoring the fact that Jesus defined what marriage was in a way that excluded their attempts to divide:

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.” (Matthew 19:4-6)

You can’t separate God from Jesus. You can’t separate Jesus from His Apostles. You can’t separate the Apostles from the Church today. You can’t separate the Church teaching from the Pope and the Bishops or the Bishop from the Priest who is carrying out his assignment. While you get some in the Church who want to change what the Church believes God has commanded, those people are not the Pope or the bishops in communion with him, but people who put their opinions above the teaching of Christ.

People who do this may be willfully in defiance or they may be acting out of ignorance—THAT’S where Christ’s words of not judging apply—so we can’t write them off as irredeemable. We have to continue to reach out to them, helping them to understand when actions separate them from God’s love, helping them to come back.

That’s what the Pope is calling for—not changing “X is a sin” to “X is not a sin."

Beckoning Their Foes to the Exit? The Curious Case of the Media and Slanted Reporting on the Church

Article: US cardinal slams Pope Francis over softer approach to homosexuality | Daily Mail Online

I have been writing about the conservative grumbling about the synod and some of the rhetoric about the faithful opposing Pope Francis. Of course I think it is a dangerous thing to make oneself a judge over whether the Pope is faithful or not. But the drumbeat of the media is interesting as well. It seems that they are not content to report on disgruntled Catholics, but want to stir up their discontent as well.

There have been several news reports about “conservative” cardinals “opposing” the Pope because of his “changing" the teaching of the Church. But the headlines don’t match what the cardinals actually say. There are no rebukes of Pope Francis. There are no changes to the teaching of the Church. What is being said is that some members of the laity are confused about the reports about the synod.

So, what we have seems to be a three step attack:

1. Media misreports words of Pope or synod to give impression of changing Church teaching.
2. Media misreports words of bishops to give impression of rebellion.
3. Media encourages thoughts of conservative Catholics wanting to leave the Church.

Basically, it looks as if they’re making the Church to look bad enough (from a conservative perspective) that the faithful won’t trust the magisterium, and perhaps want to leave—encouraging an exodus from the Church (whether physical or mental), leaving it to those with a liberal perspective. It’s a media participation in the devil’s plans to encourage the orthodox Catholics to doubt God’s role in the Church.

It seems to be working. I have seen certain Catholic news sites turn from accurately reporting the facts to assuming that the media reports are true, reacting in horror, doubting the Pope, thinking the Church will change her teaching. I have seen Catholic bloggers turn from defending the faith to assuming that the Pope is changing it. I have seen some apologists go from defending the Church from misrepresentation to complaining that they have to defend the Church from misrepresentation—blaming the Pope for the media irresponsibility.

When that happens, it becomes easy for the average Catholic to become demoralized, thinking the teaching authority of the Church is being overwhelmed with error.

To prevent this, faithful Catholics need to be informed so they can recognize the difference between the actual teachings and interviews with the Magisterium. It’s time to stop taking media reports (whether mainstream media or political commentary from either faction) as if they were accurately reporting the news. None of these have shown themselves to be reliable in assessing what is going on. Once a source has shown itself unreliable in accuracy, we need to investigate what they claim, rather than taking it at face value.

Otherwise, we give the devil the opportunity to try to separate us from our faith.

Beckoning Their Foes to the Exit? The Curious Case of the Media and Slanted Reporting on the Church

Article: US cardinal slams Pope Francis over softer approach to homosexuality | Daily Mail Online

I have been writing about the conservative grumbling about the synod and some of the rhetoric about the faithful opposing Pope Francis. Of course I think it is a dangerous thing to make oneself a judge over whether the Pope is faithful or not. But the drumbeat of the media is interesting as well. It seems that they are not content to report on disgruntled Catholics, but want to stir up their discontent as well.

There have been several news reports about “conservative” cardinals “opposing” the Pope because of his “changing" the teaching of the Church. But the headlines don’t match what the cardinals actually say. There are no rebukes of Pope Francis. There are no changes to the teaching of the Church. What is being said is that some members of the laity are confused about the reports about the synod.

So, what we have seems to be a three step attack:

1. Media misreports words of Pope or synod to give impression of changing Church teaching.
2. Media misreports words of bishops to give impression of rebellion.
3. Media encourages thoughts of conservative Catholics wanting to leave the Church.

Basically, it looks as if they’re making the Church to look bad enough (from a conservative perspective) that the faithful won’t trust the magisterium, and perhaps want to leave—encouraging an exodus from the Church (whether physical or mental), leaving it to those with a liberal perspective. It’s a media participation in the devil’s plans to encourage the orthodox Catholics to doubt God’s role in the Church.

It seems to be working. I have seen certain Catholic news sites turn from accurately reporting the facts to assuming that the media reports are true, reacting in horror, doubting the Pope, thinking the Church will change her teaching. I have seen Catholic bloggers turn from defending the faith to assuming that the Pope is changing it. I have seen some apologists go from defending the Church from misrepresentation to complaining that they have to defend the Church from misrepresentation—blaming the Pope for the media irresponsibility.

When that happens, it becomes easy for the average Catholic to become demoralized, thinking the teaching authority of the Church is being overwhelmed with error.

To prevent this, faithful Catholics need to be informed so they can recognize the difference between the actual teachings and interviews with the Magisterium. It’s time to stop taking media reports (whether mainstream media or political commentary from either faction) as if they were accurately reporting the news. None of these have shown themselves to be reliable in assessing what is going on. Once a source has shown itself unreliable in accuracy, we need to investigate what they claim, rather than taking it at face value.

Otherwise, we give the devil the opportunity to try to separate us from our faith.

The Tactics of Redefinition Leads to the Abuse of Law

A few months ago, people were arguing that a religious  freedom was for individuals, not for businesses. Now, definitions have changed again, and a couple who run a marriage chapel according to their religious beliefs are being told to perform same-sex “weddings” or face penalties of 180 days in jail and $1000 in fines for each day they refuse to perform these services. (For refusing to perform one service for one year, that’s 180 years and being fined $365,000 . . . murderers don’t face those penalties).

The argument is that this chapel is not a church but is "considered a place of [public?] accommodation” and therefore subject to the ordinance.

Now a place of accommodation is considered to include:

A public accommodation is a private entity that owns, operates, leases, or leases to, a place of public accommodation. Places of public accommodation include a wide range of entities, such as restaurants, hotels, theaters, doctors' offices, pharmacies, retail stores, museums, libraries, parks, private schools, and day care centers. Private clubs and religious organizations are exempt from the ADA's title III requirements for public accommodations.

So, basically this is assuming that because a wedding chapel, which approaches marriage from a Christian perspective, serves the public, it cannot refuse performing same-sex ceremonies. This is essentially a use of redefining in order to change the meaning of the law to the benefit of one group and the detriment of another group.

That’s the common practice in America today. When it comes to religious freedom, the government practice is to define the law or court ruling in such a way that they can exclude as many as possible from the exercising of these rights if the exercise of religious freedom goes against the preference of the lawmaker or the judge.

Religious freedom belongs to the Bill of Rights as something the individual possesses independently of what the government bestows—the government simply has no right to infringe on them. The First Amendment essentially enables the freedom to do what one feels morally obligated to do. It’s not a laundry list of separate and unrelated rights. It’s a case of of forbidding the government from coercing people to do that which they believe is immoral to do. The amendment reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So according to this, the State cannot:

1. Restrict one’s right of peacefully living in accord with one’s religious beliefs.
2. Restrict one’s right to peacefully speak or write to promote what one believes is good and oppose what is evil—openly.
3. Restrict one’s right to peacefully assemble with people who share one’s beliefs.
4. Restrict one’s right to peacefully change the government through legal means when we believe it is going in the wrong direction.

But the government and groups allied with it have been restricting these rights by trying to limit the influence of religion in the following ways:

1. Denying the freedom of religion from applying to all aspects of the life of the person who adheres to it.
2. Bullying people from speaking out on what is right.
3. Limiting what kind of groups that assemble can practice religious freedom—for example, denying places of businesses can be run according to religious beliefs of the owners.
4. Negating laws supported by a majority of citizens on the grounds that it has a “religious motivation.”

These tactics pervert the First Amendment by making the government the judge of which religious values are legitimate concerns, when the whole point of the First Amendment was to prevent the government from behaving in this way. The government being able to restrict whether a person or group may be free to hold to a belief others may dislike is a dangerous one. The Nazi and Communist regimes are obvious examples of a government forbidding anything deemed to be against their interests. But other restrictions by less extreme regimes differ only by degree because the government is still demanding authority over the religion one believes to be right.

Thus the government declares that a university or hospital affiliated with a Church may not refuse to supply coverage of contraception and abortifacient drugs even though the Church believes the use of these things is wrong. It decrees that a wedding chapel, run by Christians according to religious values, may not refuse to officiate over a relationship the owners believe cannot even be a marriage. It says laws passed by a majority of citizens affirming that marriage is a relationship that only can exist between one man and one woman, or laws acknowledging that the unborn child is a human being are not valid because the shared beliefs of the voters is deemed “religious.” (Genetic Fallacy).

The defense currently popular with the government and its allies is to equate these things with historical “discrimination.” For example, laws against contraception and abortion are considered “discriminating” against women. Laws defining marriage as existing only between one man and one woman are labelled as discriminating against people with same sex attraction. The assumption is supposed to be proven, but the fact is people assume it is proof. (Begging the Question Fallacy).

Ultimately, what the government does is to constantly redefine things in order to place something they dislike under the categories of “discrimination,” “establishment clause,” or “equal protection clause” in order to prevent them from being enforced.

What was once recognized as freedom under the First Amendment is now called “discrimination.” This is not because we have become more enlightened (begging the question again), but because it is a convenient way to negate a law the government dislikes without using the legal process to change a law.

Another tactic is the slippery slope fallacy. It is alleged that without the government and the courts overseeing religion, we’re opening the doors for the rise of sharia law or human sacrifice. But that’s asinine. The American concept of the freedom of religion has never recognized the right of a religion to actively harm another person. Nor have the advocates of religious freedom ever advocated such a thing. Catholic bishops condemn abortion—but they also condemn the murder of the abortionist.

Scare tactics like that make no sense. It’s wrong for Person A from Religion B to murder another person, so it’s wrong for person A to oppose contraception and abortion?

If anything, it’s government that is behaving in a coercive way. Imposing support for anti-Christian values against the will of the Christian citizen is merely a bloodless version of something like ISIS is doing in the Middle East. Go along or be targeted—by law or by bullying in our case. I don’t use this image insensitive of the suffering of the Middle East. Rather I am pointing out that, regardless of whether one uses law or terror to impose a position, one is actively forcing believers to do what they believe is wrong (which is quite different from forcing everybody to do what a religion wants). It is a violation of religious freedom

So ultimately, we have to beware the government because the government changes the meaning of words (fallacy of redefining). When it changes the definitions of words and legal terms, such as “religious freedom” and “marriage,” it does so to vilify the opponent or to promote its own agenda. The danger is, when we allow the government to do such things, it can easily change anything it wants. The only defense is to hold it to the true definition every time.