How Many Rights Will the Obama Administration Abrogate?

I have a friend who spent 20 years as a Catholic chaplain in the U.S. military. We were undergrads together, though he was, in fact, a couple of years ahead of me.  Jack is a real looker, the classic “Father What-a-Waste,” and it got him far—which is good because he isn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier and brains sure weren’t going to do it for him.  He didn’t do well in Philosophy, I remember, because his mind was never very good for abstractions.  Math and Science—no problem and if you needed your car fixed or your VCR programmed—he was your man.  But abstractions—well fortunately we need priests, and as I said in his day he was a looker (and at seventy still looks pretty good for himself), and so he got through seminary with a smile and not much philosophy or theology.

       We went for dinner one evening some years back—I was living in Rome and he was part of the entourage accompanying then-president Bush (“W”) on a foreign trip.  I have no idea how a Catholic chaplain got to come along with a Protestant President, but again good looks and a spotless record go as far in the military as they do in the Church.  Maybe it was to impress some of the Vatican people that the Methodist President brought a priest with him; maybe it was a reward for his hard work.  And maybe it was both.  But we went to dinner, I remember, at a place I like near the Campo dei Fiori and I asked him what advice he would give a soldier who was conflicted because he had been given an immoral order.  Jack didn’t comprehend the question.  It was like I was asking him how much he thought we could get for the green cheese if we ever set up a base on the moon.  “An immoral order?”  he queried.  He paused.  He looked into thin air for about 20 second.  “We don’t do that” he said.  “I mean, it just doesn’t happen.”  Had it been anyone else, I would have thought it was just company loyalty to deny the possibility that evil might exist in the hearts of those wonderful people who had  brought you Abu Ghraib, but I could see he was really puzzled at the concept that someone, somewhere might give an immoral order.  I mean this guy isn’t just ingenuous, he’s actually obtuse.  He’s a true blue believer—Vatican, Pentagon, God, King and Country. If the pope said: next Sunday we’re all going to say mass in the nude, he would marched to the altar bare-assed naked.  And if his commanding officer had told him to drop his drawers when he saluted the President, he would have mooned ol’ “W.”   Fortunately it never came to that.  And fortunately he retired from the military before Secretary of the Army John McHugh put out word through the chief-of chaplain’s office that Catholic Chaplains were not to read at Mass this past Sunday the Pastoral Letter Military Services Archbishop Timothy Broglio had written and ordered to be read at mass condemning the Obama Administration’s forcing Catholic Institutions to provide a type of employee health care that would pay for contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization procedures contrary to Catholic morals.  This is a double whammy—an attack on Free Speech as well as Freedom of Religion.  The government (OK, the Department of the Army, so a government department) prevented a letter from an Archbishop to the faithful under his care from being read?  Like what country is this?   McHugh, by the way, is Catholic—but it wouldn’t matter if he were an Episcopalian or even a Buddhist.  This is a clear interference with religious freedom. 

      Now to be fair, this wasn’t President Obama or even “The Administration,” but this flap over religious institutions being required by law to violate their basic moral principles was initiated by the Administration and can be laid directly at the President’s door.  What is the White House thinking these days?  I am sure that they weren’t happy with Archbishop Broglio’s letter to our letter to our men and women in uniform.  The Archbishop made it clear that there is a time for disobedience and the military doesn’t want to encourage that thinking and the government doesn’t want—for good reason—for our troops to be given the example of not only questioning but defying authority.  But our men and women in uniform are here to defend—among other things—our freedom of speech and our freedom from government interference in our religious practices.   

Here is what the Archbishop wrote:  

“the Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States” in a way that is “denying Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty.”

“And, as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to choose between violating our consciences or dropping health care coverage for our employees (and suffering the penalties for doing so),” he wrote. “We cannot—and will not—comply with this unjust law.”

      And this had to be censored?  Well, fortunately the Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, a Methodist didn’t think so. Secretary of the Air Force, Michael Donley didn’t think so.  No problem with the Marines.  No problem with the Coast Guard.  But I am glad Jack is out of the Army before he did something so wrong as to surrender his rights—and obligations—of free speech and free practice of religion in a system that does not understand that authority has its limits.  

Freedom From Religion and Freedom of Religion

"The Mass of Saint Denis" showing the
King of France at Mass in the Days of
the Alliance of Throne and Altar

We spent a considerable amount of time over the past month looking at the issue of whether or not the United States is “A Christian Nation.”   We demonstrated that there are two distinct traditions in American society.  The Pilgrim/Puritan tradition going back to John Winthrop’s famous “City Set on a Hill” speech to the Massachusetts Bay settlers aboard the Arbella in 1630 recognizes the explicitly Christian foundations and goals set for that colony by its founders. Among the founders of the Republic, most likely Sam Adams, Patrick Henry and Charles Carroll would have agreed.  On the other hand, the American Revolutionary tradition, epitomized by Thomas Jefferson in his Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and copied into James Madison’s Bill of Rights that became part of the United States Constitution would deny the new Republic to be a Christian nation—or an Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist or any other sort of religious nation.  In addition to Jefferson and Madison, this view would be consistent with the statements of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, George Washington, and John Hancock.  Moreover, the Maryland Catholic tradition would argue for the religious neutrality of the State.  But this is the issue: religious neutrality.  The Revolutionary tradition does not ban religion from public life as some today would have it, but rather—in the words of Madison’s Bill of Rights, insists that: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  There are those who want to relegate religion solely to the sphere of private life, confining it to home and church.   That is no more consistent with our republican heritage than would be the recognition in law of the special place of any or all religion in the eyes of the government.  No more must we be a secular nation than should we be a Christian nation.  This requires a careful balance. 

     We must remember that there has been a long tradition of Christianity being the established religion in western societies.   Contrary to popular belief, the Emperor Constantine did not make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.  He gave the Christian religion legal recognition and freedom from the persecution it has sporadically been subjected to under the Roman Empire for over two centuries and he gave it, and its officials, many special privileges in Roman law. While Christianity was not the official religion of the Empire—under Constantine—the empire was not religiously neutral.  It was the official religion in several places.  King Tiridates III of Armenia had converted to Christianity through the preaching of Saint Gregory the Illuminator in 301 and made Christianity the official religion of is nation.  Abyssinia established Christianity as its official religion about a quarter-century later.  It was only in 380 that the Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.  From that time on an alliance between Throne and Altar was normal in European countries whereby the State enforced the religious doctrines of the Church and the Church preached obedience to the State as a moral obligation.  At the time of the Protestant Reformations of the sixteenth-centuries the various national Churches had to choose their alliance—to the Roman Pontiff or to their respective kings.  Almost invariably the Churches stayed tied to the thrones that supported them.  Where the thrones themselves were content with the papal alliance, such as France, Spain, and the Empire this was no problem.   Where the thrones wanted to disentangle themselves from the Roman alliance, the Churches too became disentangled.  In each case, however, the Throne/Altar ties remained intact.  The Enlightenment challenged this alliance and developed an alternate model of the relationship of Church and State suggesting the States should allow a freedom of conscience whereby government would no longer consider itself responsible for maintaining the theological monopoly of any particular religion.  Most of the Enlightenment thinkers had already abandoned orthodox Christian doctrine, whether Protestant or Catholic, and wanted the freedom from religion more than freedom of religion.  The Churches of Protestant England and Scotland and Sweden found their positions undermined as much as the Catholic Churches of France, Spain, and Portugal but the Protestant nations and their national Churches were more likely to accommodate religious dissent than were the Catholic nations—despite the presence of many freethinkers in the royal governments of France, Spain, Portugal and the Hapsburg empire.  In part this was because Britain, Holland, and the Scandinavian kingdoms had learned to turn a somewhat blind eye to persistent Catholic minorities and had learned to live with a pluralism of belief (and disbelief).  The Catholic countries, on the other hand, were more ardent in pursuing and persecuting religious minorities and strove for religious conformity.  Consequently religious freedom came more easily in the Protestant countries than it did in Catholic countries. 

     The fruit of this in the British colonies in North America was a pretty universal conviction that while a particular Church might be established, the citizenry—as long as it remained orderly—might be allowed a freedom of conscience.  This awareness grew faster in some colonies than others.  Virginia was particularly slow in coming to such freedom,  harassing (persecuting) not only Catholics but Baptists and other non-conformists  almost to the eve of the American Revolution though the issue often appeared to be not doctrinal dissent but failure to pay tithes to the established Anglican clergy.  When the Revolution came, however, Virginia was among the first of the new States to disestablish its official Church and write religious liberty into law.  Maryland, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania supported freedom of conscience from the beginning.  When the new Republic was formed it was taken for granted in each State that citizens would be free to follow their own conscience.  That did not mean that the official churches were always disestablished.  Connecticut did not disestablish the Congregationalist Church until 1818; Massachusetts disestablished it only in 1833.  Anglicanism had been the established religion in Hawaii from 1862 but after the 1893 coup that ended the monarchy—and independence—making Hawaii an American colony the American colonial government, comprised of New England Congregationalists, disestablished it.  Several state constitutions still prohibit atheists from holding public office but a 1961 decision of the United States Supreme Court declared such provisions “unenforceable” as they would constitute a religious test probhiited by Article 6 of the United States Constitution which says in part: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. 

Of Courthouse Lawns, Religion, and Christian Nations--Our American Tradition

Thomas Jefferson's gravestone at

Monticello commemorating his

authorship of the Virginia Statute

for Religious Freedom

  For the last two entries we were looking at Founding Fathers and the idea that they established the United States as a "Judeo Christian Nation"--an idea that Barbara Curtis of Mommy Life Blog maintained as indisputable corresponding with a reader of this blog in regard to the Leesburg Courthouse debacle. Ms. Curtis, though a journalist of some reknown, like many who publish does not always do her research so I thought that I might do some research on the topic to clarify it. Two days ago we look at the colonial roots of the United States which could give some arguement in favor of the Christian Nation theory. Yesterday we began looking at the Founding Fathers themselves and what we can learn about their political philosophy. I started with Thomas Jefferson but he needs more than one entry so we will continue today with Jefferson and his approach to religion and public policy.

      Thomas Jefferson counted his three greatest accomplishments as authoring the Declaration of Independence, authoring the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and founding the University of Virginia. It was for these three things alone, and not even for his Presidency, his purchase of the Louisiana Territory, or his significant contributions to the natural sciences and the consequent advances on the agricultural and economic development of Virginia that he chose to be remembered. Let’s look at that Virginia Statute to see if it gives us any clues as to Jefferson’s views on the new Republic being a “Christian Nation.” 

An Act for establishing religious Freedom.

Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free;
That all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and therefore are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do,
That the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time;
That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical;
That even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the Ministry those temporary rewards, which, proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind;
That our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry, 
That therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right,
That it tends only to corrupt the principles of that very Religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments those who will externally profess and conform to it;
That though indeed, these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way;
That to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own;
That it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order;
And finally, that Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them:
Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of Legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare that the rights hereby asserted, are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right   
     I am sorry Ms. Curtis, but that, to me, does not sound like someone who thought his efforts on behalf of good government was establishing a “Judeo-Christian nation.”  In fact, it sounds like he is insisting on a level playing field for people of all and diverse religious opinions.  Not all the founding fathers may have agreed with him, of course, but Jefferson is the single most important actor in the shaping of the new nation and he was not trying to set up a Christian republic.