The Catholic Populist

At Cairo, President Obama first unleashed anti-religious liberty rhetoric

The Health and Human Services mandate that contraceptives be covered by health insurance plan with no copay or deductible is anti-Populist, violating the Natural Law-Natural Rights principles of the Declaration of Independence.  It also is particularly anti-Catholic since the Catholic Church has a deep and beautiful understanding of the beauty of the sexual act that is violated by contraception and the Church also stands as the preeminent defender of the Natural Law principles upon which this nation was founded.

The mandate had a shockingly narrow conscience exemption that only excluded Churches theologically committed to opposing contraception.  This is a direct attack on the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as it relates to the free practice of religion.  It says, in essence, “You can have your belief in Natural Law but you better keep it shut up inside the Church building where it is out of everyone’s way.”

The free practice of religion has never meant in the United States that you need to shut up your faith within the boundaries of the Church.  When you walk out of the Church, the ability to freely practice your religion is still protected by the First Amendment.

What does the free exercise of religion consist of?

Religion (of any kind) is a profound conviction about the truths of reality that calls its followers to a pursuit of the Natural Law and the moral life and acts of charity and evangelization.  People craft their entire lives around their deepest convictions.

In Populism, freedom of religion has a particularly preeminent pride of place.  Unlike in Christendom, where the state was considered competent to make theological judgments (like heresy convictions), the Populist State is demoted from making such judgments.  The Populist state operates within the Natural Law as it relates to how people treat each other.  But it declares its own ignorance and lack of expertise on deeper matters of Natural Law such as man’s relationship with God.  This demotion necessitates a rich Church operating autonomously from the State in American political and cultural life.

It would be easy to assume that President Obama has not thought through these issues.

Not true.

In President Obama’s speech at Cairo, he first began to replace the term freedom of religion with freedom of worship.  He has been using this term ever since.  Apparently, he literally believes that the free exercise of religion really should be shut up within the walls of the worship building.  Evangelization, moral conviction, and the other aspects of freedom of religion are shut down by this phraseology out of the public square.

Now, the New York Times Editorial Board (that flagship of the Left) has condemned the possibility that the Obama Administration may broaden the exemption to include specifically Catholic nonprofits — Catholic Hospitals, Catholic Charities, Catholic Universities, etc.  The Administration is likely to make such a declaration to defend the mandate from being declared unconstitutional and removing standing from Belmont Abbey College, which has brought a precedent-setting First Amendment a lawsuit in court.

This (if it even transpires) is not a move to protect Catholics from persecution for being true to the tenets of their faith.  It will exclusively protect religious nonprofits, not individuals.  It says that one can only take a moral stand for one’s faith if working for a faith-based nonprofit.  This conviction cannot apply to everyday life in the marketplace.

It is a cynical move to protect the mandate as an ongoing tool that will, whatever the Administration says, lead to the persecution of Catholics.

If I am a Catholic business owner and I believe that abortifacient drugs (like Ella), contraception, and sterilization are inherently evil and I refuse to cover them, then I will be subjected to business-crippling fines.

That is persecution.

But it is not only Catholics that are threatened.  Every single person who believes in the Natural Law; every single person who truly believes in the Declaration of Independence; every single person who believes that human beings should never treat each other as a means to another end such as pleasure; every person that adheres to the Christian faith as it has been taught from time immemorial until the Lambeth Conference in 1930; every single person who is devoted to the Truth is threatened.

How prophetic this paragraph from Humanae Vitae sounds:

“Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.”

Do not be deceived.  Even if the exemptions are broadened, the mandate remains anti-Natural Law, anti-Declaration of Independence, anti-religious liberty, and anti-Catholic.

Clarence Thomas Has an Originalist Populist Philosophy

3-1.

Three were wrong.  One was right.

Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas either view themselves or have been interpreted as Originalists.

That means that they view the Constitution to varying degrees through the lens of the original intent of the framers.

But how to interpret the intent of the framers?

Clarence Thomas has most consistently supported the view of the founders that the Constitution was viewed by the founders as a compromised document whereby they made a compromise with the founding sin of the US — slavery — in order to form a union.

This was made, according to Clarence Thomas (and Abraham Lincoln) by creating an America armed with the tools of putting slavery and other violations of Natural Rights on the path to extinction.  In other words, the framers viewed the Constitution as a binding document that served as a bridge on the path towards creating a Union that implemented the principles of the Declaration.  This has many implications, the most important of which is that the Constitution should be viewed through the lens of the Declaration.

Unlike Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia has often drifted into strict constructionism, a constitutional philosophy that ignores founding intent and the original meaning of the words of the Constitution itself.  Justice Scalia calls this “soft originalism.”

In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, a California Law that banned the sale of violent video games to minors without parental consent was struck down as unconstitutional.  The majority decision was written by Antonin Scalia and joined by Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.  A more cautious concurrence was written by Samuel Alito and joined by John Roberts.

Stephen Breyer wrote an uninteresting dissent that was not at all Originalist.  Clarence Thomas wrote a truly Originalist dissent well worth reading.

In it, Justice Thomas defends the idea of parental sovereignty — an idea that has its roots in “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” cited in the Declaration of Independence.

Natural Law philosophy, the dominant philosophy of the Puritans so frequently cited by Thomas in his dissent, believed that parents were responsible for the moral upbringing of their children.  Anything that hinges on morality — such as violent video games — would fall first and foremost into the domain of the parents who had brought the children into the world and thereby inherited the moral responsibility for raising them.

The fact that the federal government is striking down laws designed to empower parents with the authority they need to raise their children would be shocking to the founders.

The First Amendment’s protection of free speech hinged on the way that the Founders understand the word free which they frequently contrasted with licentious.  Freedom or Liberty is the ability to good not the license to do moral evil.  Whether a particular video game had moral issues or not is certainly not for the government to decide.  However, the fact is that California was seeking to put more tools into the hands of parents.  If parents do not have the authority to raise their own children, the free exercise of religion is not real.  Any free exercise of religion entails the ability to evangelize.  And while evangelization can occur in the public sphere or in the church, it occurs first and foremost in the home with the evangelization and moral upbringing of one’s own children.

And the federal government struck it down, saying that the state and parents in this collaboration are violating the free speech of children.  Such speech is not necessarily free.  It may, in certain instances, be licentious.  In such instances, it is not protected by the First Amendment.  Thomas is absolutely right and Scalia is utterly misguided.

Parents should have the leeway to manage the moral upbringing of their children.  Period.

Parental sovereignty is fundamental to the free exercise of religion.

President Lincoln created the National Holiday of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was celebrated in New England ever since the Pilgrims.

The Pilgrims viewed Thanksgiving as a day when they offered charity to God.

God does not need charitable actions in the way that mankind needs charitable actions.  Charity when directed towards man steers them towards the will of God — oftentimes reversing their concupiscent current course.  The will of the Lord is perfect.

However, mankind is called upon to offer charity to God in the form of Thanksgiving for his own creation and redemption.  Americans did not celebrate Thanksgiving nationally until Abraham Lincoln made it a national holiday with his Thanksgiving proclamation in 1863:

“The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union. In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord onene thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.”

The powerful words of Abraham Lincoln resonate across the centuries.

Sufferings abound but mankind is ever given countless blessings by the hand of God.

Praised be His Name!