I plan to write up a summary of where we stand on the recently released rules, or more accurately proposed partial rules, for the contraceptive mandate for the next issue of the magazine. In the meantime, I’ve found myself reflecting on the larger trends. Here is my general view.
We’re up against powerful cultural trends that threaten religious liberty. In the recent election Obama won a “values” campaign that felt it could ignore or even attack religious voters (“war on women”). This reflects fact that the fastest growing and most ideologically engaged demographic among white voters are the “nones,” people who have no religious affiliation. For the most part this group resents the historic prominence and influence of religion in the public square. The Democratic Party is their political vehicle. Thus we’re seeing sustained efforts to redefine and narrow the meaning of religious liberty. This runs from theorists in the law schools (e.g., Brian Leiter, Micah Schwartzman), to legal activists, to government bureaucrats.
In our favor is a parallel trend toward libertarianism and the general view that we ought to let people do pretty much what they want. This is the “don’t tread on me” sentiment that tends to be solicitous toward claims of conscience and against political correctness. This is a dangerous ally, however, since it’s the “different strokes for different folks” sentiment that also supports gay marriage and sexual liberation in general. This libertarian sensibility may support tolerance, but it won’t encourage support for religion. On the contrary, the moralism one finds in all forms of traditional religion will be seen as a threat to our culture of expansive personal freedom
It’s going to be difficult. I think we’re heading into dhimmitude of sorts. Our culture is becoming more and more dominated by post-religious attitudes that dictate the terms of the social contract. We’ve seen that very clearly in the university where religious voices have learned to obey rules set by the secular academy. The rules are sometimes cruel (Stephen Pinker), or sometimes sympathetic as long as certain liberal dogmas are respected (Martha Nussbaum), or even permissive (faith as part of the great pluralist postmodern conversation). The culture of the secular university is now becoming the norm for society as a whole, at least in part, which is why we’re feeling the pressure.
What’s to be done? The First Amendment provides a great deal of protection. We need good lawyering to make it work for us. But dhimmitude is a state of mind as much as a legal subordination, and this we must resist. We need a bit of Karl Barth in our diet. One hundred years ago he saw the Church’s voice being subordinated to the needs of the German state and its bourgeois culture. His response: speak and think in a confident, even aggressive Christian voice.
February 5th, 2013 | 2:33 pm
Might have to get out of the academy, too, if the choice is between playing with a rigged deck or not playing at all.
February 5th, 2013 | 2:43 pm
“This libertarian sensibility may support tolerance, but it won’t encourage support for religion.”
But, surely, in a democracy the state should not recognise salary or subsidise any religion. This in no way restricts the religious beliefs of any individual; it merely excludes their intervention in, or impact on, the relations between private individuals and public authorities.
That is why the Constitution excludes religious tests for public office; personal beliefs are deemed irrelevant to the exercise of public functions
February 5th, 2013 | 2:47 pm
Exacerbating the trends you describe is the increasing dependence upon government funding of individuals and groups. Anybody receiving such funding becomes ipso facto reluctant to criticize any actions of the state. With money comes control. People continue to insist that they are independent (even “conservative”), but the more they depend upon largess from one or another level of government, the more they become submissive. I keep thinking of Dr. Johnson: “He who sups with the Devil had better use a long spoon.” Words to that effect.
February 5th, 2013 | 4:18 pm
It seems to me that one of the issues is that Catholics have become so totally assimilated (VP, Speaker of the House, House Minority Leader, Secretary of State, President Pro Tem of the Senate, Secretary of Health and Human Services, six Supreme Court Justices), claims of being “marginalized” seem rather strange.
There used to be real anti-Catholicism in the United States. Now, if it exists at all, it is a different kind. It’s not that people see Catholics as a group apart any more. It is that they see Catholics opposed to contraception and homosexuality as a group apart. They see a Church that doesn’t really speak for the majority of its members.
I don’t meant this to be at all offensive, but it seems like “conservative” Catholics want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be fully engaged in the culture and in society—they want to control it—and they also want to set themselves apart. As Eduardo Peñalver observed over on Commonweal:
February 5th, 2013 | 4:46 pm
I agree with everything David Nickol points out. Most rural towns in Texas have more churches than fast foot restaurants. Where’s the persecution?
February 5th, 2013 | 5:07 pm
I agree with the post, and I’m a little worried. While David is correct in his point, a side-effect of this was that the diluted form of Christianity that arose from the necessity of compromise lead to a relatively healthy secular state. Any state that would instead follow competing secular ideologies might quickly become an inhospitable place for anyone, Christian or non, to live in.
“Salt of the earth,” is a cliche, but in a way, Christianity acted as one. It preserved. All these reformers may find that a society based on something like evo-psych meritocracy may be far more harmful than what they consigned to the junkyard of ideas.
February 5th, 2013 | 5:28 pm
Excellent quote, David. It seems that the position of this magazine is increasingly hostile toward the lefts/liberals/progressives and aligning itself more and more with the right wing conservatives. Please don’t treat people like fools because we know you pick and choose your arguments. We can see that both ways. There are only 2 Catholic web sites that I visit on a daily basis: First Things and America Magazine. To be honest, most articles on First Thing drive me away from the Catholic Church while the ones on America Magazine draw me closer to God.
February 5th, 2013 | 8:27 pm
The author mentioned the blindness of liberals in an earlier article. It’s a problem all too common within the Church, and the Gramscian march through her institutions has left a lot of destruction in its trail. It’s bad enough that the Church is becoming relegated to Dhimmi status in our country; worse that the problem has been exacerbated for so long by the Quisling (or worse, Renfield) mentality typical of “progressive” Catholics.
February 5th, 2013 | 10:29 pm
During the German Kulturkampf the Church had the support of virtually all of her bishops, priests, religious and laity. Eventually Bismarck backed down and the Church emerged resilient and resolute. Today in the United States matters are wholly different. The Church allowed American culture and American politics to raise her children these last 50 years and thus has lost a majority of her laity on the very issues now at stake: contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage. If the Church cannot find internal unity, then she will surely lose all these political battles — and more.
Thus it should be no surprise that the Obama administration is simultaneously the most anti-Catholic presidency in at least 100 years and, as David Nickol observes, full of Catholics.
February 5th, 2013 | 10:38 pm
David Nickol, that is an excellent quote. It illustrates the incompatible positions you hear so often:
1. We need to defend individuals’ autonomy. We need to respect people’s right to dissent from rules of general applicability if people have contrary world views. Thus, we need to exempt people from the need to comply with Obamacare. But given our opposition to being controlled, we will refrain from seeking to control others — regarding abortion or marriage, for example.
2. Alternatively, we know the truth and should impose it on others when we get the chance – for example, regarding abortion and marriage policies. But given our understanding of right of the central authority to control others, we should not object when the central authority imposes on us – as in enforcing Obamacare, etc.
I can see merit in adopting either posture. But I can’t see the merit in adopting both.
For example, do we long for the day when religious expression in the public square was more common and expected? Do we recall that those were also the days that “Catholics need not apply” signs and restrictive covenants were more also common and expected? If you identify as a person of faith, you may bridle at the idea that you have to be so careful about how you express that faith in the public square. But if you identify as a person of any specific faith, you may recall the challenges of being a minority, and the advantages of having a central authority keeping some other group from dominating public spaces at your expense.
Forget not all its benefits; government-enforced neutrality to thee is kind.
February 5th, 2013 | 10:57 pm
David,
Biden, Pelosi, Kerry, Leahy, and Sebelius, etc. are Catholic? Please — they care not a bit for the teachings of “their Church” when those teachings run counter to the feminist and gay agenda. Remember what Orwell said about the importance of precision in language….
February 5th, 2013 | 11:36 pm
David Nickol: It is that they see Catholics opposed to contraception and homosexuality as a group apart. They see a Church that doesn’t really speak for the majority of its members.
That’s good, because the bishops aren’t supposed to speak for the laity, they are supposed to speak for Christ. The authentic Roman Catholic teaching on contraception and homosexuality is the same as it’s ever been. If you reject the authority of Tradition and the Magesterium, then you are a de facto Protestant, however much you may desire the cultural cache associated with Catholicism. This applies to all of the nominally Catholic Democrat politicians you mentioned.
February 6th, 2013 | 3:36 am
I sometimes wonder whether American Catholics are as aware as they should be of the dangers of a sort of “political Catholicism,” like that which bedevilled France from 1870 to 1959 and that reached its zenith in Action Française and the “Catholic atheism” of Charles Maurras; this was “civic religion” with a vengeance.
Nor is the danger only on the Right; Le Sillon’s attempt to align Catholic Action with the labour movement was equally dangerous and was also roundly condemned by the Holy See in Notre Charge Apostolique, which could be read with profit by some (politically) progressive Anglophone Catholics, as well as more recent condemnations of Liberation Theology.
The danger arises whenever loyalty to a political movement is seen as, not merely compatible with, but demanded, by the Faith itself. It also manifests itself in a denial of the legitimacy of any political authority that refuses to accede to its demands.
The spiritual mission of the Church was gravely hampered, during the first 70 years of that period, by the open hostility of most Catholics to the Republic, which neatly matched the anti-clericalism of the bouffeurs de curé. Leo XIII had exhorted Catholic to “rally to the Republic,” explaining that a distinction must be drawn between the form of government, which ought to be accepted, and its laws which ought to be improved, only to be accused by the Catholic and Monarchist press of “kissing the feet of their executioners.” In 1940, alas, too many Catholics rallied, not to the Republic, but to Vichy. After the Liberation, most of the leaders of the Catholic parties were in jail, a few were shot and the rest fled abroad. It was General De Gaulle and the Fifth Republic that began to heal the divisions.
The state of the Church in France today owes much to this bitter legacy of turning faith into faction.
It is precisely their…
February 6th, 2013 | 6:37 am
Nobody.really
“we know the truth and should impose it on others when we get the chance”
As Jacques Maritain observed, “ If it were true that whoever knows or claims to know truth or justice cannot admit the possibility of a view different from his own, and is bound to impose his true view on other people by violence, the rational animal would be the most dangerous of beasts.” Rather, he insists, “we do not call upon the people to decide because we are aware of our ignorance of what is good, but because we know this truth, and this good, that the people have a right to self-government.”
February 6th, 2013 | 6:58 am
Michael PS refers to a danger that occurs “whenever loyalty to a political movement is seen not as merely compatible with, but demanded by the Faith.”
The comment was not completed. If time allows, I hope that Michael PS will continue to spell out how his thought “It also manifests itself in a denial of the legitimacy of any political authority that refuses to accede to its demands.” applies to the Catholic situation in the United States today as it relates to Obama administration policy.
February 6th, 2013 | 7:38 am
A Reader
My final sentence was, “It is precisely their different histories that make American Catholics less alert to the dangers of the politicising of religion.”
To allow religion to be used as a cloak for evading the general laws applicable to all citizens is to encourage a form of communitarianism, with ethnic and religious solidarities and allegiances threatening to override republican unity. If the rights and duties of citizens are to vary in accordance with their religious affiliations, how is the republic one and indivisible?
February 6th, 2013 | 10:06 am
That’s good, because the bishops aren’t supposed to speak for the laity, they are supposed to speak for Christ.
Patrick,
When the bishops lobby in Washington, if they speak for Christ, that’s their right, but they should be ignored. American democracy is not about implementing the teachings of Catholicism. But generally when the bishops attempt to influence national policy, they do not claim to do so in the name of Christ, but in the name of natural law, which they feel is binding on all persons. It is really, though, the Catholic interpretation of natural law, so unless they can convince others by reason and not by appeals to authority, they are simply promoting Catholic teaching. (This is not to say it is forbidden in our democracy to act on religious principles or even try to promote them. It is just that laws with a religious purpose will be unconstitutional.)
If you reject the authority of Tradition and the Magesterium, then you are a de facto Protestant . . .
The horror! The horror! The only thing worse than a de facto Protestant is someone who actually chooses to be a Protestant.
February 6th, 2013 | 10:09 am
Reply to Michael PS:
Thank you for your response.
If I remember correctly from past posts, you are a member of a university faculty. I am not; rather an ordinary Catholic believer. I will welcome your corrections (subject of course to verification) to my reply.
There are in my opinion levels of “rights and duties of citizens”. There are many and diverse ways of accomplishing government objectives. Some objectives are of such overriding importance or are decided to be so by those in power that refusal to obey imposes penalties. I am of the opinion that the contraceptive/abortive drug coverage does not rise to this level.
Yuval Levin, who writes with the credentials and authority that I lack, states the matter as follows: (This will require two posts because of the word limit)
“There are times, of course, when the government, in pursuit of an essential public interest, cannot make way for conscience, and in those times religious believers must be willing to pay a heavy price for standing witness to what they understand to be the truth. But such moments are rare, and our system of government is designed to make them especially so. (continued…)
February 6th, 2013 | 10:10 am
Michael PS and David Nickol get us to the heart of the matter: are liberalism and Catholicism compatible? From the origins of liberalism as a live political form in the late 18th century down to the 1930s-40s, they were not. A rapprochement occurred in the 1930s-50s lasting into the 1960-80s (decades depending on the country), and this period of reconciliation today is the touchstone of contemporary neoconservative politics. But since the 1970s this marriage has disintegrated badly.
Neocons associated with First Things and elsewhere think, or perhaps simply hope, we can go back to the honeymoon period. Michael PS and David Nickol here (among others) don’t seem to think much of the honeymoon, but are liberal enough to praise the loveless marriage as at least a successful modus vivendi. Patrick Deneen, Christopher Ferrara and others think not only is the divorce final, but that the marriage was invalid to begin with. What we are traveling down today in every Western country is simply the pathway to the natural liberal state — the French Third Republic.
Which side is right? And questions which are like unto it: is the French Third Republic a regime under which Catholics should want to live? Or should Catholics not have political opinions on the highest questions of politics and simply accept whatever broad constitutional form of government in which they find themselves subjects?
February 6th, 2013 | 10:56 am
Biden, Pelosi, Kerry, Leahy, and Sebelius, etc. are Catholic?
Publius,
Absolutely. They would be Catholics even if they were officially excommunicated. You may consider them to be “bad Catholics,” or to be ignoring or undermining the teachings of the Church, but you have no right to deny they are Catholics.
Also, if there were true anti-Catholicism in our society, people wouldn’t say, “I hate Catholics, but Joe Biden and John Kerry are not really Catholics.” To be anti-Catholic is to be against all Catholics, not just pro-life Catholics, or anti-same-sex marriage Catholics. Being anti-Catholic is a prejudice. Opposing Catholics who are militantly anti-abortion or anti-same-sex marriage, while supporting Catholics who are pro-choice and pro-same-sex marriage is not prejudice. It’s rational disagreement.
February 6th, 2013 | 11:02 am
@A Reader – as we’ve stated on the blog, we cannot allow multiple-part comments. In cases like this we suggest that commenters provide a summary of someone’s argument and/or a hyperlink, rather than a lengthy quotation.
February 6th, 2013 | 11:27 am
“The horror! The horror! The only thing worse than a de facto Protestant is someone who actually chooses to be a Protestant.”
No it is better. Someone who actually chooses to be a Protestant is not automatically guilty of either dishonesty, ignorance, or philosophical shallowness. Just as someone who is married to a woman besides the woman you married would be better then you would be if you courted her adulterously.
February 6th, 2013 | 11:55 am
I misunderstood the rule to refer to the length of a single post and apologize for my error.
A google search for “Yuval Levin A New Round of Intolerance” will yield a link to the complete article.
February 6th, 2013 | 2:45 pm
No it is better.
jason taylor,
Which still implies it is bad to be a Protestant, it seems to me.
February 6th, 2013 | 4:36 pm
The shame is that one of the key places to start to take back the culture is in our great Catholic universities. They should be the breeding ground of the academic counter-revolution. They should be a bulwark against the Leftist, secular dogma of the academy. But, alas, most of them have been coopted by the secular culture. The good ones are mostly small and relatively unknown. We need to build up the good ones – send our kids there; support them financially.
February 6th, 2013 | 6:48 pm
“American democracy is not about implementing the teachings of Catholicism.”
Catholics have as much right to influence the American political process as anyone else. Because someone has social and cultural values that are religious in origin does not negate their right to express and implement them, within our constitutional guidelines of course, through the political process.
The fact that one holds religious views, does not, within the American constitutional system of self-government, negate their ability to implement those views into law.
We are a government of the people, and the fact that some people are religious does not necessarily minimize or negate their contribution to our political process.
February 6th, 2013 | 10:07 pm
Don, your point about Catholic universities is an excellent one. I think the problem lies mainly in two places.
The first is that academia in the US is culturally coded “liberal”. That is, it tends to attract people who have a secular liberal worldview. Few orthodox Catholics are attracted to a career as a professor.
The second is that most Catholic universities want to be nationally and even globally competitive. A handful of tiny liberal arts colleges (e.g. Christendom, Wyoming Catholic) are fine bucking the trend, but then again they don’t exist to support academic research. Thus Catholic universities, except perhaps a couple at the very top, don’t have the luxury of cultivating even a nominally Catholic, much less orthodox Catholic, faculty.
February 6th, 2013 | 11:51 pm
David,
Biden, Kerry, Pelosi, Leahy, Sebelius, et al are Catholic in name only. One doesn’t get to pick and choose which teachings of the Church you obey and which you do not obey and be a member of the Church in good standing. Being Catholic isn’t like belonging to a Squash Club and deciding which members-only soirees you will attend. It is a somewhat more serious commitment.
Anti-Catholicism in this country has abated as “Catholic” politicians from JFK to the Cuomos through the crowd mentioned above have abandoned the teachings of the Church in order to win elections. One simply cannot be a good Catholic and win elections in a party that requires fealty to the feminist and gay agenda — unless you adopt the “I’m personally opposed but…” stance. Catholics who obey the teachings of their Church end up sidelined (see the status of ‘Democrats for Life’ — a hopeless and ever-shrinking group) if they any have national ambitions within the Democratic party. Smart politicians know this, and while they aren’t Catholics, Biden, Pelosi, etc. are smart pols.
February 7th, 2013 | 12:56 am
Roman Catholics have an absolute right to try to influence the political process. However, given the overwhelming majority of non-Catholics in the population they should not be surprised when they are ignored.
February 7th, 2013 | 6:33 am
Catholics have as much right to influence the American political process as anyone else.
TomD,
I’m in general agreement with what you are saying. Catholics and the Catholic bishops can lobby for and support any legislation they want, for any reason they want. But laws in the United States may not have a religious purpose, or they will be declared unconstitutional. Citizens are perfectly free to vote based partly or even entirely on their religious convictions. Legislators can vote for laws based on their religious convictions. But the laws themselves must not have a religious purpose.
February 7th, 2013 | 6:39 am
Publius
In deciding who is, or is not, a Catholic, in the external forum, we need to recall the Constitution “Ad evitanda scandal,” promulgated by Pope Martin V at the Council of Constance
“To avoid scandal and numerous dangers and to relieve timorous consciences, we hereby mercifully grant to all the faithful that henceforth no one need refrain from communicating with another in the reception or administration of the sacraments, or in other matters Divine or profane, under pretext of any ecclesiastical sentence or censure, whether promulgated in general form by law or by a judge, nor avoid anyone whomsoever, nor observe an ecclesiastical interdict, except when this sentence or censure shall have been published or made known by the judge in special and express form, against some certain, specified person, college, university, church, community, or place.”
February 7th, 2013 | 7:01 am
Darel
The contradiction at the heart of liberalism is the simultaneous assertion of popular sovereignty and universal human rights.
Rousseau exposed the fallacy of this: ““Each man alienates, I admit, by the social compact, only such part of his powers, goods and liberty as it is important for the community to control; but it must also be granted that the Sovereign [the People] is sole judge of what is important,” for “ if the individuals retained certain rights, as there would be no common superior to decide between them and the public, each, being on one point his own judge, would ask to be so on all; the state of nature would thus continue, and the association would necessarily become inoperative or tyrannical.”
Or, as Scalia J put it in an interview, “”The whole theory of democracy, my dear fellow, is that the majority rules, that is the whole theory of it. You protect minorities only because the majority determines that there are certain minorities or certain minority positions that deserve protection.”
No wonder some liberals are seeking guarantees of human rights through international treaties and organizations, thus creating Rousseau’s “common superior,” but at the cost of denying self-government – the principle that laws are enacted and magistrates chosen by those who are to obey them.
PS I am not, and never have been, an academic.
February 7th, 2013 | 9:40 am
“They want to be fully engaged in the culture and in society—they want to control it—and they also want to set themselves apart.” –David Nickol
This sort of language fundamentally fails to see the subtle yet real distinction between engagement and control. One can be engaged in a dynamic relationship with one’s wife without controlling her, and no good marriage would claim to exist without such engagement.
What becomes clear is that many in our culture are operating from a totalitarian worldview that equates any sort of engagement/involvement with some sort of imposition/control. It is a liberal worldview that sees only winners or losers, all or nothing.
Nobodyreally’s numbered comment, “Alternatively, we know the truth and should impose it on others when we get the chance – for example, regarding abortion and marriage policies,” also reflects this totalitarian worldview. It fails to recognize the enormous distinction between the Church’s act of TEACHING and encouraging moral action and the use of force/compulsion to require it.
Exercising one’s free speech is NOT the same thing as forcing someone to do something. Yet that is precisely the argument the Obama administration has used in cases like Hosanna Tabor, etc. And many have accepted such a view. Thus, once again, a society sows the seeds of its own destruction (the destruction of freedom).
February 7th, 2013 | 10:27 am
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February 7th, 2013 | 10:31 am
Michael PS –
Which, of course, is why the U.S. is a democratic republic. It’s not a ‘contradiction’ between individual rights and popular sovereignty – it’s a balance between them.
February 7th, 2013 | 10:56 am
An excerpt from the previously mentioned Yuval Levin piece:
“… there are alternative means by which the government can (and does) make … drugs and procedures available to people. The purpose of refusing to provide a religious exemption from this rule would therefore appear to be … bend a moral minority to the will of the state. It is not only a failure of statesmanship and prudence, it is a failure of even the most minimal toleration.”
February 7th, 2013 | 11:20 am
Ray Ingles
As Scalia goes on to explain, “Thus in the United States Constitution we have removed from the majoritarian system of democracy the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, and a few other freedoms that are named in the Bill of Rights. The whole purpose of that is that the people themselves, that is to say the majority, agree to the rights of the minority on those subjects — but not on other subjects.”
February 7th, 2013 | 12:25 pm
“Which still implies it is bad to be a Protestant, it seems to me.”
It is bad to be just like a Protestant *if you are Catholic.* That doesn’t necessarily imply that it is bad to be a Protestant if that is what you actually are.
Jason’s previous adulterer/husband analogy was spot on. It’s not bad to court a woman, but it’s bad to court a woman if you’re a married man.
February 7th, 2013 | 12:33 pm
Michael PS – Of course, Scalia’s also known for not putting much stock in the 9th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
February 7th, 2013 | 1:25 pm
By this measure, how many Catholics are there in the US? Six? Seven?
How many Catholics on the Supreme Court – you know, the people who regularly decline to hear death penalty appeals?
And hHow many death penalty opponents have achieved national office within the Republican Party?
Historically, the rap was that one simply cannot be a good Catholic and win elections if Catholicism requires fealty to the Pope. So yes, Kennedy had to deny that he would be the Pope’s puppet before the public would elect a Catholic president.
Conversely, I seem to recall that Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to run for, or accept, public office precisely because it would involve pledging loyalty to the Constitution or whatever, rather than loyalty to God. I admire that kind of dedication to religious purity. If you demand that kind of purity, you probably shouldn’t accept any public office. And if you do accept the office, you should disassociate yourself with organizations that demand that kind of purity.
February 7th, 2013 | 6:41 pm
David;
The First Amendment as it pertains to religion:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”
We will have to agree to disagree that a “religious purpose” violates the text of the Constitution. I do not believe that the Constitution prohibits a “religious purpose,” but protects a “secular purpose.” That is a bias against religion that is simply not in the Constitution.
Establishment was a relatively precise term as defined by the Founders, and did not contain the broad meaning that the Court has assigned to it in the modern era. Also, that the Fourteenth Amendment somehow incorporated the religious clauses against the states is a matter of contention.
But, no matter. If five or more Supreme Court Justices decide an issue, that constitutes the law under our Constitution. Even if they are wrong. Dred Scott, Plessy, Lochner, etc. are certainly proof of that.
February 7th, 2013 | 7:30 pm
In short, the Right is just as responsible for the decline of our republic as the Left. Faithful Catholics should be independents.
God bless.
February 7th, 2013 | 10:57 pm
Nobody,
“How many Catholics on the Supreme Court – you know, the people who regularly decline to hear death penalty appeals?” Sonia Sotomayor would love to hear death penalty appeals, but the rest of the Catholic Justices have decided to obey the American Constitution, which explicitly permits to capital punishment. Supreme Court Justices are suppose to interpret the law, not write law. They interpret the Constitution or in some case interpret statutory law written by elected officials. That’s the difference — “Catholics” like Pelosi, et al, write the laws, and they choose to write laws in obedience to the feminist and gay agenda, contrary to the teachings of their Church. There is nothing especially complex about it — nationally elected officials who wish to hold power as Democrats have to embrace the feminist/gay agenda, their religion be damned. . . .
February 7th, 2013 | 11:09 pm
Ben,
“In short, the Right is just as responsible for the decline of our republic as the Left. Faithful Catholics should be independents.” Neutrality is always appealing since it allows you to stay above the fray. But that is moral cowardice. Faithful Catholics should vote for those who oppose the anti-Catholic agenda of abortion on demand, gay marriage, euthanasia, compelling Catholic schools/hospitals to pay for contraceptives and abortions, etc. Otherwise you are aiding and abetting those who are hostile to what the Church stands for…..
February 8th, 2013 | 1:55 am
Yup. And I’m still waiting for that list of Republican Catholics holding national office that oppose the death penalty.
February 8th, 2013 | 9:26 am
Mr. Nobody,
Republicans — death penalty proponents
Democrats — pro-abortion
pro-gay marriage
pro-Obamacare mandates
Opposed to school choice
A bit lopsided perhaps?
February 8th, 2013 | 2:10 pm
What happened to your claim that “Biden, Kerry, Pelosi, Leahy, Sebelius, et al are Catholic in name only. One doesn’t get to pick and choose which teachings of the Church you obey and which you do not obey and be a member of the Church in good standing”?
Where Democrats are concerned, we’re moral absolutists. But hey — where Republicans are concerned, we’re all moral relativists now….
February 8th, 2013 | 3:26 pm
While I believe the death penalty could rarely be applied with certainty, I recall a conversation with my Bishop following a Red Mass some years ago. His Most Reverend Excellency explained the Holy Father hadn’t issued a blanket condemnation of the death penalty. The Bishop explained there were rare instances where the Church recognized a state may penalize a criminal with forfeiture of life. So, it would appear this isn’t an absolute. Abortion remains an abomination.
February 8th, 2013 | 5:14 pm
And I’m still waiting for that list of Republican Catholics holding national office that oppose the death penalty.
Why? Neither the current pontiff nor his predecessor have concocted and imposed upon the Church a prohibition on the use of execution as a form of punishment. The pope recommended against capital sentencing on the understanding that prisons can be an adequate substitute. That advisory has to be regarded with respect and subject to respectful argument but such is not part of the ordinary magisterium and the laity is not bound to believe it or be obedient to it.
(Please recall that the Papal States made use of capital sentences).
Teaching contra abortion is ancient and binding. The matter is non-negotiable.
February 8th, 2013 | 5:17 pm
Michael PS – Of course, Scalia’s also known for not putting much stock in the 9th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
There is next to nothing in the way of a body of case law elaborating on the 9th Amendment because the amendment is incomprehensible.
February 8th, 2013 | 5:27 pm
But laws in the United States may not have a religious purpose, or they will be declared unconstitutional.
Um, no. You’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid peddled by John Rawls. The text of the Constitution reads as follows:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…
Characteristics of religious establishment are:
1. Fines for recusancy;
2. Restrictions on the proselytizing and social activities of dissenters;
3. Collection of tithes by state employees; mandatory tithes;
4. Religious tests for public office;
5. State investiture of bishops or functional equivalents;
6. Formal declarations of official status; public offices held by bishops ex officio.
—
None of these elements have been promoted by the Catholic Church in this country. (Public prayers are not violations of the Establishment Clause. The Congress which wrote the clause hired a chaplain).
February 8th, 2013 | 5:31 pm
The Catholic claims that it is legitimate for the Catholic to impose his moral commitments on the secular person through the democratic process, since they are not explicitly based on theological premises. But, when the democratic process reaches a conclusion contrary to the Catholic’s, the Catholic then turns around and claims an entitlement (on religious freedom grounds) to be free from the outcome of the democratic process. I’m not saying this is a logical inconsistency, but it unappealing in its radical asymmetry and, moreover, is understandably likely to be a tough position for the secular citizen to swallow.
It is the view of the Church that people should not be coerced to do what is immoral.
February 8th, 2013 | 7:00 pm
Art Deco,
Thank you for your thoughtful response to those who believe capital punishment is on par with abortion in the eyes of the Catholic Church. That argument is the last refuge of Democratic Party activists unwilling to admit that theirs is the party of abortion on demand. To divert attention from that fact, they attempt to switch the debate to the death penalty, which is a state, not a national issue. Many of these states have eliminated the death penalty, while access to abortion is enshrined at the national level, protected by the party of abortion which is led by a number of prominent “Catholics.”
February 9th, 2013 | 5:12 am
Art Deco
Of course the Papal States used capital punishment, with 369 executions between 1814 and 1870.
That a ruler whose moral authority had been discredited by the Revolution and the rise of Italian nationalism, wholly dependent on foreign troops, Austrian or French, to keep his subjects in check and many of whose officials were of dubious loyalty, should have to resort to capital punishment in what was a continuing state of emergency is not to be wondered at.
These are precisely the sort of exceptional circumstances contemplated by the Catechism.
Hence, when a normal constitutional government was established, capital punishment was effectively abolished in united Italy by the general pardon of King Umberto I in 1877 and was formally abolished in the Penal Code of 1889.
February 9th, 2013 | 11:17 am
No, Michael.
Criticism of capital punishment is a novelty promoted just in the last 35 years. Catholic communicants are obliged to regard what their bishops say with respect, but not everything they say is part of the ordinary magisterium. Capital sentences were a fairly standard way of coping with certain categories of crime, and, before the advent of prison systems, used very liberally. Nothing ‘exceptional’ about it.
February 9th, 2013 | 2:51 pm
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/08/catholicism-amp-capital-punishment-21
“The Catholic magisterium does not, and never has, advocated unqualified abolition of the death penalty.”
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