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
|
|
by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
More Salt, Please
There
are many evils that flow from the identification of religion with the state. In
Muslim controlled countries the basic religious rights of non-Muslims are
systematically violated. The Church teaches “the rightful autonomy of the
political or civil sphere from that of religion and the Church—but not from
that of morality—is a value that has been attained and recognized by the
Catholic Church….” (Gaudium et spes,
#76) So there is a legitimate sphere in which the secular authority is supreme
so long as it respects morality.
In
our day there is a secularism that is not willing to be guided by moral
principles other than the consensus judgments of “reasonable people.” Indeed
it holds that it is wrong to vote one’s religious beliefs. They hold this
especially with respect to abortion and recognition of homosexual marriages
because outlawing these practices would be an imposition of a particular
religion on non-believers. For secularists the supreme values of democracy are
tolerance and pluralism. Tolerance, they say, is not possible in a group with
the conviction that it possesses absolute truth. Laws in a democracy are valid
only if based on the consensus of the majority and there is no external measure
outside consensus to judge the morality of any position.
The
positions of the secularists are self-defeating. If each person must decide for
himself the contents of his morality it is then inconsistent to take that back
and preach that others must be treated with justice and fairness because what is
just and fair is the content of someone else’s morality. Tolerance and
pluralism are good only if the word “good” has an unambiguous meaning. If
good and evil are only relative then they are meaningless. How does one condemn
the Nazis who had a consensus in the desirability of exterminating Jews?
Liberal
tolerance in practice becomes intolerance particularly of religion. For example,
liberals seek to deny the right of judges to belong to the Boy Scouts of America
because of its policy of excluding open homosexuals from leadership. The
liberals say that membership in the Scouts should disqualify persons from being
judges because it is a sign of anti-homosexual bias. Here liberals are trying to
impose their values on society. Would they disqualify judges who belong to
gay-rights organizations because that might be a sign of their anti-Christian
bias? Pro-life judges are being denied a vote in the U.S. Senate. Apparently
intolerance and bias are acceptable if they protect the liberal sacrament of
abortion.
Unlimited
tolerance is impossible. Secularists would not extend tolerance to torturers,
child molesters, and rapists. If someone’s conscience tells him that he must
fly an airplane into a skyscraper we must do everything possible to stop him
from following his conscience. But for the relativist who allows no objective
standard of good and evil there is really no difference between a sound
conscience and a warped one.
Following
the dictates of a majority without reference to objective moral law means
following the dictates of the strongest. The inevitable result is either tyranny
or anarchy. If the will of the majority should prevail in society the present
situation with abortion laws does not represent the majority. A
Many
Catholic politicians have embraced the notion that there should be a separation
between religious belief and politics. When John Kennedy was running for
president he faced opposition from Protestants who feared that electing a
Catholic would make the pope the real governor of the country. Kennedy countered
these concerns by stating that religion is a private matter that has no bearing
on politics. Although this helped him get elected he enunciated a false
relationship between politics and religion. It is wrong for at least three
reasons.
First,
it cannot be justified in American constitutional doctrine. Washington, Lincoln,
and Theodore Roosevelt would have been puzzled by such a statement. Did Martin
Luther King err because his crusade against racial segregation had a religious
inspiration and was promoted through churches? Many Protestant and Jewish
politicians see no need to privatize their religion and insulate it from public
policy. Examples are Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, and Joseph Lieberman.
Second,
severing religious conviction from public policy is unjust. If laws are passed
to deny the right to life to the unborn then this group is not given equal
protection under the law. The claim that the humanity of the fetus is a
religious position is incorrect because it is a plain fact of human embryology
and developmental biology. One does not disqualify laws against homicide on the
basis that it is also against a religious commandment.
Third,
Catholics who refuse to be guided by morality are being stupid. Secularists do
not hesitate imposing their morality on the rest of society. Why should Catholic
legislators disarm unilaterally and not support their view of morality?
One
can only guess at the motivation of Catholic politicians who support abortion.
If they feel that supporting abortion is necessary for them to get elected, they
demonstrate willingness to sacrifice thousands of young human beings for
personal advancement. If they say they are obliged to represent the views of
their constituency, then they are disingenuous because they would not bow to a
constituency that wanted to reimpose racial segregation or some other immoral
position. If they really want to represent their constituencies they might do
well to look at the latest polls which show increasing dissatisfaction with
abortion. When they say they are “personally opposed” to abortion but do not
want to impose that view on others they are being useful idiots for secularists.
If they really believe that abortion is morally correct then they might consider
ceasing to disgrace the Church by violating its basic values and joining another
church.
It
is possible that Catholic voters have similar motives in voting for candidates
who support abortion. Catholic voters are morally obliged to withhold support
from politicians who fail to give equal protection to all human beings including
the unborn. Catholics are to be the salt of the earth. They must preserve it
from corruption and give it savor by contributing to a more just society. When
Catholics cease being the salt of the earth their Master said they deserve to be
thrown out and trampled underfoot.
