Free Exercise of Religion and Catholic Responsibility

The Catholic Thing

By Thomas Farr Until recently, most Americans and their institutions assumed the principles of Christian and natural law anthropology, reflected in the Bible and our founding documents. Each of us humans, because we are created and loved by God, possess equal dignity and worth. We are endowed by God with inalienable rights, intellect and will, and the freedom to use them in pursuit of happiness. But we are also fallen creatures. Our instincts deceive us into believing that accumulating wealth and power, and satisfying our desires, leads to happiness. In the real world, we live best by employing faith and reason in seeking virtue. We are most likely to achieve happiness with self-discipline and hard work, respecting our neighbor, obeying the laws, and curbing our desires. Long human experience suggests that pursuing sexual love only within marriage benefits the spouses, their children, and the common good. This understanding of the human person has now been rejected in large swaths of America. It's being replaced by a "progressive" ideology that is reshaping our national understanding of what it means to be a human being, unconstrained by the shackles of tradition, with a "modern" view of love and happiness. Stunningly, this project is spreading - everywhere. Almost overnight, the LGBTQI+ ideology has captured major American cultural and political institutions, including public education, universities, medicine, major corporations, and the Democratic party. Many Christians have also welcomed it, on the grounds that "love" trumps outdated Biblical injunctions about sex, marriage, and happiness. The successes of this dangerous ideology have riven our always contentious people into two warring nations. Unfortunately, too many of us don't realize the stakes in this battle, or think politics can win it. Though politics is important, it's doubtful that anyone can avert this cultural disaster through political means alone. Nor can the courts reverse it. And yet, despite its sudden dominance, the anti-faith, anti-reality ideology is so irrational, so arrogant in its disdain for common sense, that it depends heavily on political coercion. It requires blue-state laws, federal and state administrative decrees, attorneys general, "non-discrimination" rules, and laws that punish anyone standing in the way of the new moral dispensation of abortion on demand, same-sex marriage, and gender fluidity. Because morally orthodox religious institutions stand in the way, they and their teachings are targeted, especially those of the Catholic Church. While this deracinating American ideology couldn't have been predicted by our Founders, they established a system of religious freedom to address a moment like this, in which the morally orthodox could act as a stabilizing force in a struggle over public morality, given its importance to the Republic. When it came to religion, the Founders were true revolutionaries. Convinced that a religious and moral citizenry was necessary to the success of their radical political experiment, they sought a way to preserve religion and morality while avoiding the political coercion and moral corruptions they associated with a government-run Church. Their solution was unprecedented in the history of mankind, and not replicated by any other nation since (which is why all other Western democracies are far ahead of ours on the path to moral dissipation). Our First Amendment guarantees the right of religious "free exercise" to every citizen and American religious community, in private and public life. Free exercise is protected by forbidding the national government to establish any religion. It's a natural, pre-political right, not a coercive government mandate. This was a gamble, an experiment in ordered liberty that worked reasonably well for two centuries. While far from perfect, its grounding in Judeo-Christian principles helped frame a moral consensus on what human beings are, why we are here, and how we should live ...