Mandate and Religious Freedom Compendium

The day has arrived when your humble servant will do my duty. Namely, I will begin a four-part series of homilies aimed at preparing us to pray and fast through the “Fortnight for Freedom” from June 21 to July 4.

First, though, if I may:

Dr. David Schindler has published an essay about human nature, freedom, and rights.

He distinguishes the ideal of a modern ‘liberal’ regime from the regime envisioned in the Church’s articulation of Her doctrine of religious freedom.

Dr. Schindler exposes the paradox at the heart of the liberal ideal of a religion-neutral state. If the law/the courts/the goverment say that freedom means anything other than openness to God and truth, then the content of what freedom is will always be supplied by the strong–at the expense of the weak.

The independent man who determines for himself what life means will inevitably do so at the expense of a weaker person. The only man who never infringes on the genuine “rights” of others is the one who acknowledges that he depends on God for his freedom, and he must use his freedom to seek goodness and truth.

In other words, if man is not for God, then he is for himself–at the expense of someone else, sooner or later.

I bring this up because: Obviously, Dr. Shindler has been reading my posts on the HHS-Mandate controversy and decided to supply the philosophical argumentation for why I make so much daggone sense.

Seriously, though…

We present a collection of the ramblings on this subject from the past few months, years:

Warming up for action: Answering the atheist…

1. What is Life?

2. Who’s the Mysterymonger?

To set the stage: Theology ≠ Esoterica

Kathleen Sibelius, Bishops Dolan and Lori, and me:

1. B.S. Alarms on Both Sides

2. I Will Give You Bacon, but Not a Contraceptive (2b. Let us Reason)

3. Define ‘Health’ for Me [See ‘What is Life?’ above for an answer.]

4. Abstinence More Healthy than Sex

5. Chastity, Conscience, and the Real Problem is that Too Many Doctors Suck

6. Should we have Faith in the First Amendment?

7. The real problem: When Goverment Oversteps Gamaliel’s Limit

8. Aha! The Church is a moral agent!

9. No Slogans (Pope St. Gregory VII)

10. Which is our Best Hand?

11. The Businessman’s Co-operation with Evil

12. Cathleen Kaveny’s Good Distinctions (January 2013)

13. Kaveny Again; Running Like Ray Rice

Four Sermons on “We cannot co-operate with evil, even if the civil law stipulates that we must.”

1. We, the Catholic Church of Christ

2. Co-operating and co-operating

3. Divine Law of Unconditional Love

4. Where Civil Laws Come From

Fortnight for Freedom Homilies

1. Hamlet and the Martyrs of Mexico

2. Fasting

3. Elijah’s God

4. St. Thomas More’s First Choice

5. Inconvenient and Uneasy in the Canticle of Zechariah

6. King Josiah and Prophetess Huldah (II Kings 22)

7. The Apostolic See

8. Believing Like the Martyrs

9. Backyard-barbecue, Catholic American

Theme Song: A Catholic Boy Can Survive

Fortnight for Freedom Homilies, 2013

Basic Marriage

The Looming Flashpoints

The Marriage-Law Titanic

Welcome Here

Hard Penance

2014:

Which of the two will land me in jail?

Cant’ be Happy about Hobby Lobby

Another Banner Day

Beautiful pro-life billboard–right here in my humble ‘hood! Thank you Prolife Across America! (On display at 9th and G Streets, N.E.)

…How fired-up are we for the Caps?

…Call me obtuse, but I have always found this parable difficult to understand:

No one pours new wine into old wineskins.

Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled, and the skins will be ruined. Rather, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins.

And no one who has been drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’ (Luke 5:37-39)

The parable seems clear enough:

Christ has inaugurated the New Covenant. The New Covenant requires a complete renovation of religion. The ancient observances of the Old Covenant had to be changed. Those who were accustomed to the old way had a hard time accepting the Christian way of life, even though it is sweeter and better than Judaism.

Fair enough.

BUT:

The fact is that the taste of wine improves with time, up to the point when it reaches its peak. The ancient Palestinians used inside-out animal skins as wine bottles (until the Prohibition of Mohammed deprived them of the joy of the vine).

Skins were used for transporting wine on camel-back. The wine would ferment a second time in the skins, under the hot sun.

So, while it is true that pouring wine into old, dried-out skins would never be wise, neither would it be wise to drink wine that you had just poured into a wineskin. Better to take your journey, then drink it later.

So the “newness” interpretation doesn’t do full justice to the parable.

Today I finally found the perfect explanation. In order fully to grasp the parable, we have to understand it as applying to the Holy Mass:

The wine of Christ’s blood, drawn from the many grapes of the vineyard that He had planted, is extracted in the winepress of the cross. When men receive it with believing hearts, like capacious wineskins, it ferments within them by its own power. (St. Gaudentius of Brescia)

March 25, 1995

Fifteen years ago, Pope John Paul II gave us his encyclical letter on the Gospel of Life. In this letter, the Pope coined the phrase, ‘the culture of death.’

Here is a short summary of the encyclical:

God gives us life. The innocent are always threatened by violence. In our day and age, the greatest threats are abortion and euthanasia. All Christians are bound to fight for the right to life. The Gospel demands that we be militantly pro-life.

In other words: We are a LAME Catholics if we do not adopt the point-of-view of the innocent unborn in all our political positions. We owe it to the innocent and defenseless unborn to stand up for them and to fight for them.

The fact that legislation in many countries, perhaps even departing from basic principles of their Constitutions, has determined not to punish abortion and euthanasia, and even to make them altogether legal, is both a disturbing symptom and a significant cause of grave moral decline.

Choices once unanimously considered criminal and rejected by the common moral sense are gradually becoming socially acceptable.

Even certain sectors of the medical profession, which by its calling is directed to the defense and care of human life, are increasingly willing to carry out these acts against the person. In this way the very nature of the medical profession is distorted and contradicted, and the dignity of those who practice it is degraded. (paragraph 4.2)

Inspiration from Rome

I think we can say that the Obama administration will not recognize the right of unborn babies to be protected from violence.

I think we can say that the Obama-Holder Justice Department will try to limit—if not eliminate–the right of medical personnel (and medical institutions) to refuse to participate in acts of violence against unborn babies.

On Sunday, the Holy Father went to the minor Basilica of St. Lawrence Outside the Walls, the burial place of St. Lawrence the Deacon Martyr. The church also houses the relics of St. Stephen and Blessed Pope Pius IX.

The occasion was the 1,750th anniversary of St. Lawrence’s martyrdom and 50th anniversary of the death of Pope Pius XII.

Pope Benedict said:

This monumental basilica…speaks above all of the glorious martyrdom of St. Lawrence, archdeacon of Pope Sixtus II and his right hand in the administration of the goods of the community. I came today to celebrate the Holy Eucharist to be united to you in honoring him in an altogether singular circumstance, on the occasion of the Jubilee Year of St. Lawrence, convoked to commemorate the 1,750 years since the birth to heaven of the holy deacon. History confirms how glorious is the name of this saint, around whose sepulcher we have gathered. His solicitude for the poor, his generous service to the Church in the area of social welfare and charity, his fidelity to the Pope, which led him to want to follow him to the supreme test of martyrdom and the heroic testimony of his blood, spilt a few days later [i.e., a few days after Pope Sixtus was himself martyred], are universally known events.

In a beautiful homily, St. Leo the Great thus comments on the atrocious martyrdom of this “illustrious hero.” “The flames could not conquer the charity of Christ; and the fire that was burning him on the outside was weaker than that burning within.” [St. Lawrence was burned alive.] And he adds: “The Lord willed to exalt his glorious name to such a point throughout the world that from East to West, in the very vivid brilliance of the radiant light of the greatest deacons, the same glory that came to Jerusalem by Stephen also touched Rome by Lawrence’s merit.” [St. Stephen, one of the Church’s first deacons, was the first Christian martyr.]

Statue of Pope Piux XII outside the Basilica of St. Lawrence, commemorating the WWII Pope's visit to the bombed-out neighborhood

Coinciding this year is the 50th anniversary of the death of the servant of God, Pope Pius XII, and this brings to mind a particularly dramatic event in the centuries-old history of your basilica, which took place during World War II, when, precisely on July 19, 1943, a violent bombardment inflicted very serious damages to the building and the whole neighborhood, spreading death and destruction. Never will the memory be erased from history of the generous gesture carried out on that occasion by my venerated predecessor, who ran to help and console the harshly affected people, among the still smoking ruins.

Black Clothes

I am wearing black clothes this week.

Of course, I wear black clothes every week. But this week I am in mourning for three particular reasons.

First and foremost, I am in morning because the pro-life cause would seem to have suffered a serious set-back. The right to life of the innocent unborn, who are killed by the thousands every day, is the most pressing issue of our time. Yet the overwhelming majority of the American electorate seems to have ignored this matter of fundamental justice. May it please God to bring good out of this somehow. (I am NOT in black because the President-Elect IS black. That has nothing to do with it.)

Secondly, on a lighter note: I am in black because the Redskins were “bruised burgundy” on Monday.

And thirdly because the Wizards managed to blow a big lead over the Bucks last night. Now the Character-Commitment-Connection team is 0-3.

Seriously, though: We priests wear black as a sign that our life is “hidden in Christ with God.” Our business is not here. We deal with the invisible realities of the world to come, God’s will and the salvation of souls. We are dead to this world.

This does not mean, however, that we hate the world. Quite the contrary. Loving God first allows us to love the world precisely as it ought to be loved–no more, no less.

St. Therese of Liseux expressed it beautifully in her autobiography. She was traveling through Italy on pilgrimage to Rome, not long before she was to enter the convent. She loved seeing everything she saw on her tour. “What an interesting study the world is when one is ready to leave it!”

Is There a Choice?

I think that everybody knows that I vote pro-life. No issue could be more grave than the protection by law of the innocent, defenseless unborn. I will vote pro-life until Roe v. Wade is overturned, until the day when, as the director of Vitae Caring Foundation Carl Landwehr put it in a speech I heard him give the other night, “abortion becomes unthinkable.”

As someone who shares in the shepherding ministry which the Lord entrusted to the Bishops of the Church, I hold myself responsible for clearly teaching not only that abortion is an evil of enormous gravity, but also that the right to life of the innocent unborn must be a part of the fundamental plan of any truly just society.

Bishop Kevin Farrell of Dallas, formerly of Washington

Considering all this, you would think that I would applaud the recent letter of our former Auxiliary Bishop Kevin Farrell, now Bishop of Dallas, and his brother Bishop Kevin Vann of Ft. Worth. These bishops spell out the morality of voting with admirable clarity.

They assert something, however, that I am afraid to say I do not think is true.

The Bishops carefully explain that the right to life of the innocent unborn is not a matter of prudential judgement, not something that can be weighed against other considerations. It MUST be decisive. Yes. I applaud the making of this crucial point. Thank God. This takes courage.

Then the Bishops go on to write that: “To vote for a candidate who supports the intrinsic evil of abortion or ‘abortion rights’ when there is a morally acceptable alternative would be to cooperate in the evil—and, therefore, morally impermissible.”

Bishop Kevin Vann of Ft. Worth

Now, morally impermissible means what it says it means. We cannot do morally impermissible things. If we do morally impermissible things knowingly and freely, our souls are in danger of damnation.

One can cooperate in evil in one of two ways, either materially or formally. Someone who vacuums the carpets in a medical office building where a doctor performs abortions participates materially in those abortions. But unless he intends to support the work of doing abortions by vacuuming the carpet, he does not formally cooperate. He might just be trying to earn a living, and this is the only job he could find. It is not a good situation, but at the same time it is not ipso facto a sin on his part.

If someone’s material cooperation in evil is “remote,” that is, not closely connected to the evil, then they do not bear moral responsibility for the evil.

Remote participation is permissible provided the person does not intend to be a part of the evil business. I could sin by intending to cooperate with something evil even if had practically nothing to do with it. An absurd example: If I planned to take a trip to a particular city BECAUSE they allowed same-sex “marriage” in that city, that would be a sin. But it is not a sin to go to San Francisco to see the Golden Gate Bridge.

Anyone who votes for a pro-“abortion rights” candidate participates materially in the evil. But if the voter does not vote for the candidate for this reason, but rather votes for the candidate for another reason, he or she does not formally co-operate with abortion. I would think that the material cooperation of a voter in an election for the President of the United States is certainly far enough removed from actual abortions themselves to qualify as “remote.”

Therefore, it is morally impermissible to vote for a pro-abortion candidate BECAUSE he is pro-abortion. Likewise, it is negligent to vote without considering the gravity of the right to life of the innocent, defenseless unborn. But I think that it is incorrect to say that anyone who votes for Obama commits a sin.

It is clearly a sin to vote for him because he supports legal abortion. But there are other reasons why people might choose to vote for him. I do not claim to sympathize with those reasons; I would be delighted to argue them calmly.

I think people ought to vote for the more pro-life candidate.

But I am NOT telling anyone how to vote. My point is exactly the opposite. We HAVE to avoid committing serious sins. But we do not HAVE TO vote for one candidate or the other. What we have to do is to stand before God and do what we believe is right.

Logic and Voting Pro-life

When it comes to abortion, some people have the idea that the Church tries to tell Catholics how to vote.  The truth is, though, that voting pro-life is not a matter of submitting to Church authority.  It is not a matter of “balancing theological and scientific perspectives.”  It is a matter of simple logic.  The moral logic involved is basic and clear, with no sophistries and no unsupported claims.  Each step of the argument is absolutely airtight.

 

All reasonable people agree that killing innocent human beings must be illegal.  Only a very confused person (or a wicked person) could question this.

 

Some people think that abortion does not always involve killing, because perhaps the resident of the womb is not yet human when an abortion takes place.  Again, everyone can agree that pregnancy is shrouded in great mystery, even though science has learned a lot about it in the past few decades.  With all these advances, no one has found a moment in the process when the unborn child “becomes human”—other than at the very beginning, at conception itself.  Obviously, scientists should continue to investigate the process of pregnancy, so long as nothing immoral is done in the course of research.

 

So, while there are many unanswered questions about human development in the womb, there is no question whatsoever about this:  Lacking a definitive proof one way or the other about when human life begins, a just society must prohibit abortion.  Why?  Because we must always come down on the side of caution when it comes to innocent human life.  If a gunner in a military training exercise is not sure whether the plane in his gunsights is a drone sent up for the exercise or a manned aircraft that has inadvertently entered his airspace, he will not shoot.  He has to be certain that he is shooting what he is supposed to shoot.  Even if there is only a 1% chance that he might accidentally kill an innocent bystander, he will not shoot.

 

When it comes to unborn life, there would seem to be more than a 1% chance that the casualty of abortion is an innocent human being.  Birth always produces a baby—never a blender or a Volkswagen or even a cat.  Therefore, the benefit of the doubt must go to the baby.  Under the law, the pre-born must be considered fully human.  If they are not, our society runs the risk of allowing innocent people to be killed.  No self-respecting citizen could accept such a risk.  The first duty of the rule of law is to protect the innocent from being killed.

 

In the rare instances when a pregnancy endangers a mother’s life, it cannot be right to sacrifice one life for another arbitrarily.  Rather, everything medically possible must be done to save one, if not both, lives.  If it is not possible to save both, we know at least that it would be wrong to kill one intentionally.  If saving the mother means that the baby dies, so be it.  But intentionally killing the baby is wrong.  This might sound like sophistry, but in the nitty-gritty of medical decision-making, it is a crucial distinction.

 

We see, then, that simple logic confronts us with this fact:  We live in a country in which something that certainly must be illegal actually is allowed, and it happens all the time, thousands of times every day.  A reasonable person can have only one response:  “I love my country, and I want it to be a land of justice.  When it comes to abortion, I am living under an unjust regime.  I cannot just stand by, as if there were nothing wrong.”

 

Let’s note that we reach this conclusion without referring even once to religion, God, or the Church.  It is the conclusion that any reasonable person comes to when thinking the matter through.  In other words, it is NOT a “religious issue”; it is a matter of logic and justice.  One more conclusion of course follows:  “As a decent human being, I must do something about this.  I must do something to change the abortion regime of the United States.  As an upstanding citizen committed to human rights, I cannot in good conscience consider this to be merely one political issue among many.  This is a matter of life or death for thousands of innocent unborn children every day.”

 

This is where airtight logic takes us.  All people of truth and good will reach the same conclusion if they take the trouble to think the whole thing through.  There is no logic on the other side; the ‘pro-choice’ position is simply a matter of might makes right, without any reference to truth.  “Minimizing the number of abortions” is not a satisfactory goal for anyone who cares about justice.

 

Now, the next step of the argument is the point at which good people can and do disagree with each other.  What is the best political strategy for bringing the Roe v. Wade abortion regime to an end?  What should we do as good, law-abiding American citizens to protect the innocent and defenseless unborn?  There is no one clear, logical answer to these questions.  We need to discuss them calmly and carefully.

 

Perhaps someone detects a flaw in the logic outlined here.  If you do, please respond.  It would be good to have a clear-headed debate about the logic of the pro-life position.  On the other hand, if you don’t see a flaw in the reasoning, then why aren’t you taking a clear and public stand against legal abortion?  What excuse could there possibly be?