CATHOLICS ARE CITIZENS, TOO

By Carl Eifert

Roman emperors decreed citizens worship certain gods, which included the emperors.

Citizens that refused – mostly loyal Christians – were put to death, horribly.

No freedom to exercise one’s choice of religion there.

Later, some heretical Catholics suffered terrible deaths at the hands of Church authorities.

Protestants found themselves hindered because of their beliefs, fled England and later sailed from Holland to find religious freedom in the New World wilderness. Similarly the Huguenots. And others.

In some of the 13 American colonies there was religious freedom, in others it deteriorated into required worship. In Maryland, founded by Catholics, Catholics found themselves persecuted after the colonial government approved religious toleration in the 1600s as had Rhode Island. The first Catholic parish in Virginia had to await the formation of post-Revolutionary government.

After a stumbling start, a Constitution followed that scholars say began the end of divine right of kings and their absolute power. In a preamble, the Framers say outright that the document is needed to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Authors of the Bill of Rights, knowing the new government’s powers needed to be restrained, listed religion as the first right that “We the People” needed in expanding the Constitution.

The first 16 of the 45 words in the First Amendment prohibit a government religion and forbid that government disallowing people from using their self-chosen religions. Those words are: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; . . .”

But how are we to interpret this clause?

To start, it says Congress should refrain from passing such a law; thus agencies should not formulate such rules. Interpret the clause as a wall separating church and state, which prevents moral – read: religious – principles from having any influence on government? Today, this is the way most journalists read it, at any rate.

The wall idea originated in a letter written by President Thomas Jefferson to leaders of the Danbury Baptists Association who had complained by letter that in Connecticut their religious liberties were not considered rights but, rather, privileges.

Jefferson avoided dealing with Connecticut’s rights. He wrote:

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

At that point, Jefferson struck out a sentence which did not appear in his final letter but which gives an insight into what he meant:

Congress thus inhibited from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorized only to execute their acts, I have refrained from prescribing even those occasional performances of devotion, practiced indeed by the Executive of another nation as the legal head of its church, but subject here, as religious exercises only to voluntary regulations and discipline of each respective sect.

In other words, the head of the executive branch was saying he would not suggest prayers of thanksgiving and the like, such as his two predecessors had done from time to time.

His letter continued:

“Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he had no natural rights to his social duties.

“I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association assurances of my high respect & esteem.”

In short, Jefferson backed “We the People” in demanding of government their “natural” or God-given rights; and he closes indicating he, too, believes in God. Of course, we know that Jefferson’s religion was a rather unconventional Christianity, because he had many reservations about the supernatural.

Jefferson’s “wall of separation” was not a legal opinion. Yet, the Supreme Court in the past has obviously given that wall some reality in the law. No need for citations; the current dispute is proof enough.

None of the 43 lawsuits filed by Catholic entities against Health and Human Services regulations mandating that those entities pay for insurance coverage of contraceptives, abortion, sterilization and abortifacients has yet been argued. Whether any of them will be reviewed by the Supreme Court cannot be known. Yet with decisions possible in 12 lower courts, the likelihood of the high court eventually ruling is very possible. Wheaton College, a top Protestant institution situated in Illinois, has joined one of the Catholic cases, because of the requirement to insure the supply of abortion-inducing drugs, although the college does not object to some contraceptives.

Catholic officials insist that the issue concerns religious liberty and freedom of conscience and only incidentally involves “women’s rights,” as supporters of HHS contend. Although many Catholics are known to have taken the pill and aborted babies, that is outside the core of these lawsuits. Similarly irrelevant is the fact that the Catholic Church once preached against Caesarian section and now does not.

Free will, which the Church teaches and holds dear, probably will not be argued in court, but it should be. Moral liberty is free will. Human beings have the power to form thoughts, to decide their motives. This divine gift is subverted when outside agents such as government can coerce actions that are contrary to a citizen’s will, which normally would follow conscience. One’s will is thwarted when the government tries to chain it. Free will allows one to choose to act in a way true to his religion.

A sure bet is that Jefferson’s “wall” will be at the core of the litigation.

Catholic arguments will interpret the First Amendment as holding that the purpose of prohibiting a state religion is to permit individuals to freely practice whatever religion they might choose. Free exercise could not exist if the state established but one religion and how it should be practiced by its citizens.

Because the amended Constitution forbids a state religion, it implicitly recognizes the existence of religion in public life and thus must acknowledge it cannot interfere with religion or how it is practiced. Free practice is part and parcel of non-establishment.

Could the Constitution’s writers have called for free exercise of religion without banning a state religion? Not logically. Had they wished to retain Anglicanism – or some other belief – as the state religion, then permitting citizens to practice the religion of their choices would be contradictory. Conceivably some arrangements could have been made for such co-existence, but difficulties would have arisen.

Such difficulties have arisen in the United States in the past with controversies over courthouse crèches and displays of the Ten Commandments, and crucifixes in classrooms. Yet the current HHS regulations add another dimension to the struggle.

Secularism as the state-mandated creed is that dimension.

There seems to be little difference between state-sponsored Anglicanism in Virginia in 1770 and state-sponsored secularism in 2012. Both use the machinery of the state to promote a certain view of the universe. Governmental embrace of secularism seeks to improve human experience through material means. The spiritual dimension, embraced by so many citizens, is completely brushed aside by the regulators. They, in effect, deny spiritual/material tension. Would they deny the abstract/concrete reality?  Hardly. These opposites encompass philosophy. Abstraction and concreteness are the stuff of making policy. Our remarkable Constitution might not have been conceived without them.

Catholic authorities object to the HHS regulations because spiritual values affect human actions. The Constitution protects the exercise of religion, not just worship. Spiritual values are put into action or suppressed through conscience. How can a religious organization be forced to buy insurance that covers contraceptives when those leading it find contraception conflicts with their consciences formed through their free wills? They are not proselytizing by taking that stand; they are acting out their prerogatives under law and precedent.

Jefferson’s letter speaks of the “supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience . . .” The Connecticut Baptists were objecting to their religious liberties being considered privileges rather than rights. HHS’s rules to carry out the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) show that the department and the administration consider the rights of Catholic hospitals and schools and other church organizations to be privileges. A privilege is forbearance, not a right.

American Catholics through their service units do more than worship. Hospital authorities, for example, do not worship God when their institutions provide health services – often gratis – to patients. But they do exercise their underlying religious rights in how they supply those services. They do not permit abortions in their hospitals, to cite the obvious.

Officials of Catholic service agencies cannot in good conscience supply, even indirectly, contraceptives for Catholic or non-Catholic employees. The HHS regulations, it would seem, don’t affect a Catholic praying that more people respect the Church’s teaching that coitus, meant only for the married, should not involve methods to avoid new life. Yet that agency would keep that same Catholic from legally acting on those teachings when buying insurance.

Catholic bishops urged a “Fortnight for Freedom” for prayer and activities to call attention to the need to protect religious liberty. That move by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops was likened to a “Fortnight to Defeat Barack Obama” by a Washington Post columnist, who suggested that might call into question the Church’s tax exemption. Appearances by Democratic politicians in African-American pulpits have not provoked similar suggestions.

It should be noted – though certainly not part of a logical argument – that Catholics are very much citizens of the United States of America and not of the Vatican. Yes, some Catholics do not attend Sunday Mass. But Catholics may be the most numerous religious group in the country (the second largest or maybe even larger, are “fallen away” Catholics). Catholics traditionally represent more than their population percentage in the military that defends this country and its Constitution. Catholics are highly represented in the Congress and in the courts, and one was elected president. Catholic patriotism cannot be ignored. Catholics are not hyphenated citizens.

Catholics should not be ashamed but proud that they are willing to press for their God-given and constitutionally guaranteed religious liberty. As politicians are wont to say in concluding speeches: God Bless America!