What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in
Education?
Toppling
Dominos
Anti-Christians
don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's
Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic
Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of
Secularism
"Don't Impose Your
Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death
Warrant?
Court Ordered
Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War
Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for
Catholics in this Election
Christians
Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic
Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay
Marriage
Whose Side are You
on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake
Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields
Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion
Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way,
Baby
The Incarnational
Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told
You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them. How Else
Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be
Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of
Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or
Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But
One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the
Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with
homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality,
and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of
Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well,
Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong
Side
"These are the
Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few
are Married
"...Prepare him for
additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a
Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in
the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a
Person?
The Point of a Point of
View
Politically Correct,
Morally Depraved
Population
Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress
through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for
Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be
schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality
Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass
Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull
the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to
Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal
if...
Get Rid of that Worthless
Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues
Prior to Voting
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by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
No Room in the Inn
Someone has described the current situation in the United States as a culture war. That is a good description. Never since the Civil War has the US been more divided than today. The factions in this war are religionists and secularists. The division is not so much political as ideological although most secularists are found in the Democratic Party. Even religious affiliation is not necessarily the divisive mechanism. Catholics in both parties may support essentially secularist programs while atheists may support religious ones.
Perhaps the best way to identify the sides is by their opposing positions on various issues. Religionists claim the right to public displays of religion and support judges who uphold the Judaeo-Christian origin of our nation. Secularists think that religion must be isolated like a contagious disease and confined to the privacy of one’s own home. Religionists believe in the free exercise of religion while secularists have invented a separation between religion and state. Secularists have successfully removed depictions of the commandments from public places, banned Christmas mangers from public property, and are trying to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance although no one is obliged to recite it let alone the words “under God.” Secularists think that the feelings of minorities trump majority rights. Thus they would forbid Christmas parties and substitute for them Holiday parties. Schools may not have Christmas holidays but semester holidays.
Religionists prize persons who adhere to Judaeo-Christian principles while secularists want to disqualify such persons from being federal judges. Catholics need not apply. Religionists believe in patriotism and love of country. Secularists think that American nationalism is dangerous.
Religionists promote an objective moral code while secularists say that morals are relative. Motives and feelings trump objective moral norms. Religionists say people must be accountable for their acts and terrorists must be fought. Secularists defend people who are completely unaccountable and believe that we should rather examine why terrorists hate us. Religionists condemn immorality in nations and brand some of them as evil. Secularists maintain it is wrong to label enemies as evil, e.g., evil empire or axis of evil.
Religionists hold that marriage is between a man and a woman. Secularists say that homosexual unions should be counted as marriages and any grouping of committed persons should qualify as a family. Religionists believe that there are two sexes and not a mixture of the two. Secularists believe that employers should be compelled to hire cross dressers. Religionists believe that the primary educators of children are the parents while secularists think that children belong to the state. Thus secularists give amoral sexual instruction, condoms, contraceptive pills, psychotropic drugs, homosexual education, and abortions to students while deliberately keeping the parents in the dark. Religionists think that there should be restrictions on nudity and obscenity on television and the internet for the protection of children. Secularists hold that nudity and obscenity are protected free speech, but prayer at football games and the use of name of Jesus must be forbidden. Secularists even oppose protecting children from internet pornography at public libraries.
Religionists believe that life is sacred from conception to natural death. Secularists think that feelings or convenience are more important than unborn human life. Indeed they think that abortions should be paid with tax funds. Secularists also think that euthanasia is a right and so they resist saving Terri Schiavo from starvation. Religionists think that human needs are primary. For secularists human needs must be subordinated to plants, kangaroo rats, and red-legged frogs.
Religionists may be unaware of the secularist agenda to eliminate religion as an influence in American life. There are hundreds of anecdotal examples of this. A school district worker was censured for forwarding President Bush’s proclamation of a National Day of Prayer. A Target employee was fired for wearing a cross. Religious declarations of the immorality of homosexuality are treated as hate speech. In Texas a US District Judge threatened to jail any student uttering the name of Jesus at a graduation ceremony. In Missouri fourth grader Raymond Raines who bowed his head in prayer was hauled to the principal’s office and given a week’s detention. Kindergartener Kayla Broadus said a blessing over a snack and the school lawyer, Gregg T. Johnson, said that she violated the “separation of church and state.” The same grounds were invoked for depriving a little girl from reading her Bible on her long school bus trip. Joshua Burton got into trouble in a public school because he read his Bible privately during free time. In Montana Jaroy Carpenter was prevented from speaking to students about teen suicide because he is a Christian even though the presentation was given 200 times before in many places and was entirely secular.
The secularists are selective in their banning of religion from public places. In California a textbook Across the Centuries taught Islam with a bias against Christianity. The book makes no mention of the invasions of the Moors, the battle of Tours, or the execution of Jews in Quarayza. Students were compelled to pretend to be Muslims, to pray in the name of Allah. In a dispute over display of holiday symbols, New York City schools are allowing Jewish menorahs and Islamic crescents, but barring Christian nativity scenes, alleging that the depiction of the birth of Christ does not represent a historical event.
Mentioning the name of Jesus in certain places is impermissible speech but tax funds can be used for anti-Christian expression. In 1999 the Brooklyn Museum of Art bought a collage of a black Virgin Mary employing elephant dung. In a tax-funded performance of the New York Performance Alliance the Virgin Mary was illustrated with the Immaculate Heart and an inscription, “’Tis a Pity She’s a Whore.”
The media outlets also join in Christian bashing. Hollywood made a movie that portrayed Jesus as sinful and lustful while Judas became the hero. When Muslims killed eight people during riots in India the media did not blame Muslim extremists but the Rev. Jerry Falwell for making disparaging remarks about Mohammed.
The pattern of aggressive exclusion of public religious expression is not just a case of ideological nuttiness or political correctness run amok. It is a well-orchestrated campaign to drive religion and its influence from the public sector. The secular drive against religion is not based on any legitimate constitutional grounds. Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote, “The metaphor of a ‘wall of separation’ is bad history and worse law. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.” Secularists are not trying to make society religion neutral but want to enshrine their ideology for what was originally a deity-based system. It is hostility disguised as neutrality, coercion dressed as liberty. If the Founding Fathers’ belief system is removed there is danger that the rights based on that belief will also end. Religious persecution cannot be far behind. Religionists should be aware of the culture war and insist on the appointment of Judges who interpret the Constitution as written and not as amended by judicial activists.
Jesus was born in a stable because there was no room in the public places where travelers lodged. Secularists still have no room for Jesus in public places.
(Printed December, 2003)
St. Mary's Church Pastor & Vicar
