"The Corporate War on Free Speech"

G. K. Chesterton once said "The problem with capitalism is too few capitalists," thereby pointing out that not only socialism but capitalism could be oppressive if unconstrained by the moral respect for the individual, the family, and what Pius IX called the Principle of Subsidiarity. In his book, The Church and the Libertarian, Christopher A. Ferrara also points out that it is not only big government, but a triumvirate of big government, big business, and big finance that serves to create a "market-driven" political economy where the the Church has no business intruding with its moral imperatives. The other side of that equation is that the "free marketplace" of business and finance isn't a value-free "naked public square," to borrow the phrase of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, but a place now straightjacketed with the "politically correct" values of the left. Ryszard Legutko argues this in his masterful book, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies (2016). And now Jim Goad argues, in "The Corporate War on Free Speech" (Taki's Magazine, March 5, 2018), that it is not only government-sponsored PC censorship that threatens the free marketplace of ideas, but, even more, the private sector's corporations that have taken up the left's ideological war on the traditional ideals of freedom of thought and free speech in the public forum. And when "Political Correctness Goes to the Vatican" (The Philosophical Salon and the Los Angeles Review of Books, December 25, 2017), one wonders what traditional institutions remain to oppose the totalitarian grip of leftist ideology and its dream of jackboot repression of all opposition.

Dueling Catholic Videos that leave some Protestants perplexed

D.G. Hart, "Dueling Videos" (Old Life, May 9, 2016). One is a USCCB video on religious liberty that cause Michael Sean Winters and Anthony Annett to cringe. The other is Pope Francis' most recent prayer video, which provokes an acrid response from Michael Matt. Thought-provoking.

[Hat tip to JM]

For the record: Alan W. Down on US foreign policy and religious liberty

Alan W. Dowd, "Not to be trusted" (The american Legion, January 19, 2016). Interesting.

Dignitatis Humanae - the Pink vs Rhonheimer debate

Longtime readers may remember that we addressed Fr. Martin Rhonheimer's views on religious freedom several years in our post, "Who's Betraying Tradition: The Grand Dispute" (Musings, June 2, 1011). We also discussed Rhonheimer's views substantially in "George Weigel vs. pre-V2 teaching on Social Kingship of Christ" (Musings, June 16, 2011). See also "Dr. Thomas Pink responds to Fr. Rhonheimer" (Musings, August 5, 2011). Dr. Pink's written response to Rhonheimer is reproduced in full in "On the coercive authority of the Church: a response to Fr. Martin Rhonheimer by Thomas Pink" (Rorate Caeli, August 5, 2015).

Here, once again, we have Rorate Caeli to thank for calling our attention to the most recent exchange between Pink and Rhonheimer in Sacerdos Romanus, "Pink-Rhonheimer Debate" (Rorate Caeli, November 23, 2015), in which Romanus writes:

Prof. Thomas Pink, who has contributed to Rorate Caeli in the past, recently held a public debate on the important problem of the interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae with Fr. Martin Rhonheimer of the Opus Dei. The full debate is embedded above. Pink argues for the continuity of Dignitatis Humanae with the teachings of the 19th century popes, while Fr. Rhonheimer argues for discontinuity.

The debate in the VIDEO above doesn't actually begin until roughly 12 minutes and 30 seconds [12:30] into the recording.

[Hat tip to Sir A.S.]

Why indifference to "gay marriage" will hurt you

A pro-gay friend on Facebook challenged his opponents, in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision, to "Name one vulnerable person who has been harmed by the fact that a handful of people now have tax breaks and visitation rights." The next day, another friend responded by posting the following article, which is well worth the read: Matt Walsh, "Yes, Gay Marriage Hurts Me Personally" (The Blaze, June 30, 2015):

I received a lot of feedback this past weekend about my piece responding to the Supreme Court’s gay marriage ruling. Many people seemed to take exception to my radical position that men and woman can conceive children. They didn’t explicitly disagree with that theory, but they did deny the one single conclusion that inevitably stems from it, which is that the union between a man and a woman is special and different.

Most of the comments, emails and messages I read this weekend eschewed the process of even attempting to debate that point and skipped right to the insults. Here’s a quick sampling:

Angel: You’re an idiot.

Jonathan: Hi, kill yourself. Thanks

Jim: You’re a f**king clown. That drivel you wrote on the Blaze is the biggest piece of sh*t since Atlas Shrugged. You call yourself a journalist? You’re a f**king mope living in a vacuum of fear and hate. SMFH.

Nikki: I kind of really hope Matt Walsh burns in hell. And that’s really mean to say. But good lord he’s an awful human..

Annie: I’d like to let you know that you are a privileged piece of trash and everything that comes out of your mouth is complete and utter bullsh*t.

Bella: the Supreme Court matters more than some bigot with a sh*tty blog and ugly kids. Try again

Anthony: Oh Matt, you are a perfect assh*le… Take your worthless version of the bible, and set yourself on fire. That would make my Sunday:)

Marc: Matt Walsh is a F**king MORON!

Steven: F**k you, you f**king worthless douche.

Maria: Matt you really are a piece of sh*t.

Brian: The world would be so much better off with you.

Matthew: Go f**k yourself, Walsh. You not only are a bigot, but you ignore facts and twist and distort truths to make your false point. It’s a common tactic I see from people like you. Equality wins out, bigot.

Remember, #LoveWins.

There’s nothing like being called a bigoted pile of garbage in the first sentence and being told in the next that love has won. Indeed, you know love has emerged victorious when a bunch of liberals are screaming in your face, calling your children ugly, and urging you to kill yourself.

Progressivism, as we’ve seen, is a bubbling cauldron of vile, hideous hatred. They dress it up in vacuous, absurd little symbols and hashtags and bright colors, yet the elites who drive the gay agenda are not out to spread love and happiness, but hostility and suspicion. And the obedient lemmings who blindly conform, with rainbows in their Facebook photos and chanting whatever motto they’ve been assigned, don’t really understand what they’re doing or why they’re doing it. The fact that this is the same ideology to come up with vapid slogans like #LoveWins is an irony too bewildering to comprehend.

When our culture was grounded in Christian principles, we used to think of love in the way that St. Paul described it: Love is patient, love is kind, love does not boast, love is not self-seeking. Now in this progressive dystopia, love has suddenly become something that tells you to drink battery acid and die. The difference is slight, but noticeable.

But I wasn’t especially troubled by the progressive lynch mob and their vulgar, wretched, hateful “love.” I’m used to it. I’ve been more concerned by the large number of self-proclaimed Christians and conservatives who’ve repeatedly informed me that the whole gay marriage issue isn’t important. “It won’t affect us,” they tell me over and over again. It’s not relevant to our lives. We aren’t hurt by it. Who cares? It’s all good. Whatevs, man. There are matters more urgent than truth and morality and the future of the human race. Like, what about the economy and stuff?

I’m not proud to say it, but I feel an immense disgust for these Apathetic, Weak, Oblivious, Scared, Distracted, Impotent, Frivolous, Christians And Conservatives (AWOSDIFCACs for short). I’m not saying disgust is the correct emotional response, but I admit I experience it. I can deal with liberals. They’re just wrong about everything. Fine. That’s simple. But AWOSDIFCACs know and understand the truth, yet yawn or shrink away in fear.

The “it doesn’t affect us” mantra has become one of the more common, and absolutely the most damaging, idea circulating through the ranks of the defeatists. It’s a gross and ridiculous lie, one which accomplishes the impressive feat of being wrong in two different ways. It’s wrong when it says we should only care about things that have an impact on our lives, and it’s wrong when it says gay marriage will have no impact on our lives.

Rod Dreher: "No Bishop Will Die for Religious Liberty"

No Bishop Will Die for Religious Liberty

By Rod Dreher

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, as a political prisoner (Thierry Ehrmann/Flickr)

A few years ago, Cardinal Francis George, the Catholic archbishop of Chicago, issued a dire prophecy about religious liberty in America:

“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”

Well, we all must hope and pray it doesn’t come to that, but if it should, we Christians must hope and pray that Catholic bishops, and all Christians, will accept persecution and martyrdom before betraying the faith in the face of pressure from the State.
There is a bad omen on this front from Catholic colleges (though not yet from the bishops). Rusty Reno writes that more of them — including Notre Dame — are slowly but surely making their peace with same-sex marriage. What sparked his column was the announcement by the president of Creighton, Reno’s former employer, that it was going to offer benefits to same-sex couples, but that this should not be seen as endorsement of same-sex marriage. Reno points out that no bishop is compelling Catholic colleges to do this; the Archbishop of Omaha strongly criticized the Jesuit-run college for its move. Nor is the State forcing it; Creighton is in Nebraska, which does not have gay marriage.
So why are Catholic institutions embracing same-sex marriage? Jesuit (of course) Father Timothy Lannon, the president of Creighton, told the local newspaper that his decision was inspired in part by Pope Francis, and also: “I asked myself, what would Jesus do in this case? And I can only imagine Jesus being so welcoming of all people.”
How nice of Jesus to have reversed 2,000 years of clear Christian moral understanding of sexuality, at just the time when public opinion shifted.
Among the non-Jesuit-friendly answers Reno gives:

1.   Creighton, like nearly all American Catholic institutions, is run by upper-middle-class Americans. They are more loyal to their class and its values than the Catholic Church, which over the last fifty years has for the most part renounced its own intellectual and moral culture. This doesn’t mean Catholic leaders lack faith. What it means is that it’s existentially painful for them to be out of sync with dominant opinion. Like all normal people, they want to avoid pain, and so they find ways to conform while pretending to be dissenters, a trick Americans perform very well. Expect more announcements that conformity to the gay liberation project doesn’t constitute “approval.”

And:

4.   Pope Francis routinely denounces Catholic conservatives as small-minded and warns us not to “obsess” about things like homosexuality. However one reads the Pope’s intent in these and other statements, there can be no doubt they’re very handy instruments for justifying capitulation on gay marriage (and other issues that prevent Catholic organizations from being “mainstream.”) Expect many references to Pope Francis as Catholics in America adjust themselves to the new marriage regime.

Read the whole thing. Reno goes on to say that he doesn’t despair, because this is far from the first time that the Church has given itself over to the priorities of the State and the wider culture, even if those priorities run contrary to the faith. Still, it’s depressing to see that the battle lines don’t run between the Church and Society, but right through the heart of the Church (and not just the Catholic Church).
Alan Jacobs has a disturbing question  for Christian institutions like Creighton, Notre Dame, and others that are “evolving” on same-sex relations, to suit the changing times. He goes through several possible rationalizations explanations the institutions could offer for their shift, but is not persuaded by the consistency or integrity of any of them. Excerpt:

Note that there is no way to read this story as one of consistent faithfulness to a Gospel message that works against the grain of a dominant culture.
And that’s the key issue, it seems to me — that’s what churches and other Christian organizations need to be thinking about. Either throughout your history or at some significant point in your history you let your views on a massively important issue be shaped largely by what was acceptable in the cultural circles within which you hoped to be welcome. How do you plan to keep that from happening again?

Meanwhile, someone over at The Mitrailleuse has some sharp words about Christians who take their convictions not from the Holy Spirit, but from the Zeitgeist. Quoting Solzhenitsyn, in a letter to Sakharov about the dissent in the USSR:

Our present system is unique in world history, because over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and active participation in the general, conscious lie. To this putrefaction of the soul, this spiritual enslavement, human being who wish to be human cannot consent. When Caesar, having exacted what is Caesar’s, demands still more insistently that we render unto him what is God’s — that is a sacrifice we dare not make!
The most important part of our freedom, inner freedom, is always subject to our will. If we surrender it to corruption, we do not deserve to be called human.
But let us note that if the absolutely essential task is not political liberation, but the liberation of our souls from participation in the lie forced on us, then it requires no physical, revolutionary, social, organizational measures, no meetings, strikes, trade unions — things fearful for us even to contemplate and from which we quite naturally allow circumstances to dissuade us.
No! It requires from each individual a moral step within his power — no more than that. And no one who voluntarily runs with the hounds of falsehood, or props it up, will ever be able to justify himself to the living, or to posterity, or to his friends, or to his children.

Look, I don’t believe we are close to a dire situation, at least not yet, but the principle Solzhenitsyn identifies still applies. And though liberals are going to invoke Godwin about the part of Reno’s column in which he refers to the Concordat, again, the principle he cites applies to our much less critical situation. Once bright lines start being crossed and rationalized, it’s harder to stop them from being crossed.
Again, so far the Catholic bishops are not yielding. I don’t expect that to last, unless the next pope comes in and stiffens their spines before this trend goes too far. It’s interesting to observe that none of these Catholic institutions independent of the dioceses seem all that concerned about getting on the wrong side of their bishops. Power has shifted decisively, has it not?
UPDATE: Reader Aaron Gross finds that Alan Jacobs wrote specifically on this issue — and criticized Rusty Reno. I post it because he makes a reasonable point, and I don’t want you to think my citing him earlier means he agrees with Reno on this issue. Excerpt:

This comparison doesn’t help anyone or anything. It is ratcheting up the culture-war rhetoric to the highest possible pitch, and I think inappropriately, since the issue at hand is Creighton University’s decision to provide benefits to legally married same-sex spouses.
Isn’t that an eminently defensible action on specifically Christian grounds, namely the grounds of charity? After all, Jesus didn’t subject people to tests of their morals before healing them. In this case, isn’t the university just saying, “We may not approve of your sexual behavior, but we don’t want people you love to get sick and die?” In a country without universal health care, an employer who seeks to deny benefits to spouses comes off simply as punitive. Wouldn’t it be both wiser and more Christ-like to err on the side of compassion in these matters?

 [Hat tip to JM]

 

 

I am glad the Hobby Lobby got a pass, but ...

R. R. Reno, "Legal wins matter—but culture matters more" (First Things, June 30, 2014).

This Court doesn’t take seriously worries that Social Security numbers harm spirits or that the Bible endorses racism. By contrast, it (or at least the majority) does take seriously the notion that a religious person—or for that matter any morally serious person—might be pro-life, the essential moral issue at stake in the Hobby Lobby case.

So, when I look into my crystal ball to see the future of our legal culture, at least when it comes to the clash between gay rights and religious liberty, I see the finer points of the law turning on similar assumptions about legitimate grievance.

Will the Justices allow that censure of homosexual acts and opposition to gay marriage are reasonable? Will they see that allowing photographers and wedding cake makers to opt out of a compulsory regime of gay affirmation is neither disruptive nor burdensome to those who think otherwise?

Put simply, will the Justices regard opposition to gay marriage and other aspects of gay rights as nothing more than bigotry dressed up in religious disguise?

Reading this, our underground correspondent, Guy Noir - Private Eye, comments:

Why are these even 'questions' now? In no case has a judge yet so decided. Meanwhile, the Church lacks either courage or the conviction, or both, to speak to these issues with any volume or force, but is likewise apologizing as it stutters its truth, stepping backward to avoid a jab like the faltering playground coward. Tis not going to be much fun!

And, as he declared at the beginning of his telegram: "AS GLAD AS I AM THE HOBBY LOBBY GOT A PASS, THAT T-H-I-S IS CONSIDERED A VICTORY SHOWS HOW FAR BACK BEHIND OUR OWN LINES WE HAVE BEEN FORCED TO RETREAT."

Why the Jews Are Not the Enemies of the Church

John Lamont, "Why the Jews Are Not the Enemies of the Church" (Homiletic & Pastoral Review, March 6, 2014):

It is not true, in any sense, that the Jews are the enemies of the Church, and the characterization of them as enemies ... (is) unjust. It is worthwhile explaining why this is so, because (it was) once widely held, and is still found in some circles....


In a recent talk in Canada, Bishop Bernard Fellay, a member of The Society of Saint Pius X (FSSPX), stirred controversy by remarking that the Second Vatican Council was looked on favorably by the Jews, Freemasons, and Modernists, who are all enemies of the Church, and that this was a reason for objecting to the council itself. One should not read too much into Bishop Fellay’s remark itself, since it was a brief aside, and since he has never in the past expressed anything more than the basic Christian claims about Jews. The remark should, nonetheless, not have been made, and should now be corrected. It is not true, in any sense, that the Jews are the enemies of the Church, and the characterization of them as enemies is thus unjust. It is worthwhile explaining why this is so, because the belief that the Jews are enemies of Catholics was once widely held, and is still found in some circles. Priests will thus find it helpful to have a fairly comprehensive account of why the belief is wrong.

To show that the Jews are not the enemies of the Church requires an examination that addresses all the principal attacks on Jews that arise in discussion of this question.

One such attack maintains that the Jews are enemies of the Church in virtue of their religious beliefs. The religious beliefs in question are those of Rabbinic Judaism, which has been the dominant form of Jewish religious belief for the past two millennia. Rabbinic Judaism developed as a result of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70, which removed the center of Jewish religious life. Some replacement for the Temple was required if Jewish religious existence was to continue. In the century or so after the destruction of the Temple, the study and observance of the Jewish Law was developed as this replacement.

The fundamental idea of the new structure of Jewish religion was that, in addition to the written law in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament or the Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), Moses received an unwritten law from God on Mt. Sinai, which was passed down by word of mouth through a succession of rabbis. This unwritten law was then supposed to have been committed to writing in the Mishnah—the collection of rabbinic traditions which supplements and systematizes the commandments of the Torah—which was completed around 200 A.D. The Mishnah contains laws on agriculture, festivals, marriage, civil and criminal law, ritual laws, and purifications. It is essentially an attempt to record and perpetuate the religious and legal views held by the scribes and Pharisees prior to the destruction of the Temple, together with inevitable covert extensions of these views. The difficulties of the Mishnah led to the composition of an authoritative commentary on it, the Gemara, completed in the 5th century, which exists in both Palestinian and Babylonian versions. The Mishnah and Gemara together make up the Talmud; the Babylonian version is the one generally used.

The reason why Rabbinic Jews are not enemies of the Church can be put briefly. Such Jews do not seek to convert Christians to Judaism, or to prevent non-Jewish Christians from exercising their faith. They only refuse to become Christians themselves, which does not suffice to make them “enemies” of the Church.

This can be seen by contrasting Rabbinic Jews with Muslims. It is a tenet of Islam that Christianity has been replaced by the message of Mohammed, and that Christians should convert to Islam. It is a duty for Muslims to impose sharia law on the whole of humanity, by force if necessary. (Sharia law, according to Muslims, is a moral code and religious law.) This law systematically discriminates against Christians in a way that is designed to induce them to convert to Islam. This Muslim position does constitute Muslims as “enemies” of the Church, because it commits them to actively working for the destruction of Christianity. This purpose of destruction is what constitutes being an enemy, and it is not present among Rabbinic Jews.

Although this brief explanation suffices to prove its conclusion, it is helpful to expand on it by addressing in detail the various arguments that have been offered for the Jews being the enemies of the Church. The principal arguments are the following.

Lamont takes up the following arguments:

1. The Scriptures state that the Jews are enemies of the Church.
2. “The denial of the divinity, and the Messianic status, of Christ is the central idea of Rabbinic Judaism. Since Rabbinic Jews work to deny the divinity of Christ, they work to destroy the Catholic Church, which manifests his divinity.”
3. “Rabbinic Judaism is not the religion of the Jews of the Old Testament, but is, instead, a new religion that is based on hostility to Christ.”
4. “The Talmud permits Jews to behave immorally towards Gentiles.”
5. “Because Rabbinic Jews deny the doctrine of the Trinity, they do not believe in the same God as the Christians.”
6. “The Talmud is an evil, anti-Christian work.”

Lamont also consideres the different contemporary Jewish groups that are significant for the Church, including:

1. Believing and practising Rabbinic Jews.
2. Secular Jews.
3. Conservative Jews.
4. The state of Israel.
5. Jewish organizations involved in relations with the Holy See.

After a detailed discussion of these, Lamont concludes:

Accurate knowledge of the main contemporary Jewish groups ... reveals that it is wrong to describe the Jews as enemies of the Church. That does not mean that there are no Jewish enemies of the Church; to deny that this is the case would be absurd—it would mean that Trotsky or Freud, for example, were not hostile to the Catholic faith. But it does mean that it is false and unjust to describe the Jewish people, or Jewish religious believers, as enemies of the Catholic Church.

Read more >>

John Courtney Murray: Broker of the Post-Conciliar Apostolic Cease Fire

How rude of Louie Verrecchio to say such things, never mind the fact that they're true and cry out to be said. It's just so impolite!

Looming threat to home schoolers in Germany and the U.S.

"Yesterday, surrounded by friends and supporters, the Romeike family sat silent in the courtroom before the three-judge panel that will decide whether or not the family can remain in the United States to homeschool their children. The six wooden benches in the small courtroom quickly filled up with homeschooling families—some with children finishing their schoolwork for the day—and several more stood in the back during the 38-minute hearing.

"... Farris quoted published decisions from German courts, which explained that the ban on homeschooling exists to prevent the development and spread of religious or philosophically-motivated “parallel societies,” and which concluded that it was dangerous for a child to be taught by their mother." (Emphasis added by Rorate Caeli; cf. source.)

Read more >>

Abp. Schneider: Dignitatis Humanae is a fall-back position

The position on religious liberty of the Vatican II document is "understandable," though ultimately not viable:


[Hat tip to Rorate Caeli]

Catholics have a double standard too

But the problem is that most so-called Catholics already are!.
There are two problems here: (1) The Obama administration's HHS Mandate runs rough shod over the freedom of Catholics to practice their religion, which includes -- for those Catholics who give a fig about Church teaching -- abstaining from complicity in the sins of abortion and sterilization ... all of which flies in the face of Democratic principles of individual liberty and freedom of conscience; and (2) most nominal Catholics, and even many that go to Mass more often than Easter and Christmas, don't find anything wrong with Obama's HHS Mandate, because they already support a "woman's right to choose" and covertly (or sometimes not-so-covertly) practice contraception themselves.

Is there a message here the Church leadership can take to heart about the consequences of neglecting to offer a clear catechesis and stalwart defense of Church teaching?

Abp Chaput's sermon for closing of Fortnight for Freedom

Archbishop Charles Chaput -- Fortnight for Freedom Closing Homily from Rocco Palmo on Vimeo.

[Hat tip to Fr. Z.]

"End of America?" Who saw it coming?

[Hat tip to Fr. Z.]

Stand Up For Freedom Rally

As most of you know, the USCCB has called for "Stand Up For Religions Freedom" rallies across the country. There are hundreds of cities in which such events have been occurring. Today there was a major rally scheduled in Downtown Detroit at which Archbishop Vigneron was scheduled to speak at noon, but in light of his father's passing, I am not sure he was able to make it.

We were hoping to attend the event ourselves, but I was among others invited to address a similar but smaller rally at St. Mary Mercy Hospital in Livonia, MI.

I said few words about how President Obama has done more to unite the Catholic Bishops and unite Catholics with non-Catholic Christians in a unified ecumenical voice of protest against the HHS/Obamacare mandate. It was also my privilege to read a letter from Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette addressed to Dr. Monica Miller, President of Citizens for a Prolife Society, expressing his support for the efforts of those citizens united in protest against the HHS mandate.

A few excerpts:

This is a defining moment for our country. There is an increasing effort to force Americans with religious convictions out of the public square, so that they may only act on their beliefs in private. That is not the nature of faith, and that is not what our Constitution requires.

Such lucid brevity from a public official is stunning these days. Exceptional.

Schuette continues a paragraph later in his letter:

I have joined with six other Attorneys General and filed suit to challenge the HHS mandate in federal court in defense of religious liberty, and have pledged to support the Michigan Catholic Conference as well as a Catholic college, Belmont Abbey, and in their suits against the Department of Health and Human services.

This is the time to stand and be counted. Religious freedom is the cornerstone of our democracy. It is precious. And it must be defended. Is stand with you. May God bless you.

Thank you, Attorney General Bill Schuette.

Freedom of religion a threat to homosexualism

Theologian George Weigel wrote on Secretary Hillary Clinton's speech at Georgetown University, "For those with ears to hear in Gaston Hall that day, the promotion of the so-called LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/ transgendered) agenda had just been declared a human rights priority of the United States, in the same sentence in which the secretary of state had offered an anorexic description of religious freedom that even the Saudis could accept."

Watch Chuck Colson as he reminds the world that religious freedom is God-given, and not a gift from government.

Also, I add: please note (1) the critical distinction drawn by Colson between "freedom of worship" (which the world may construe as private and non-threatening) and "freedom of religion" (which has public dimensions that cannot avoid threatening the world's partisans of public vice) -- as well as (2) Secretary Clinton's subtle and nefarious conflation of "freedom of to love in the way you choose" with "freedom of worship," as though they were equivalent human rights and liberties ... a symptom of jurisprudential positivism gone to seed!

SCOTUS unanimous decision upholding religious liberty, “ministerial exception”

In what may be its most significant religious liberty decision in decades, the Supreme Court of the United States today, by a unanimous decision, recognized a “ministerial exception” to employment discrimination law, saying that churches and other religious groups must be free to choose and dismiss their leaders without government interference. (See NYT, and WDTPRS)

The Political Problem of Religious Pluralism

Christopher Oleson reviews Thaddeus Kozinski, The Political Problem of Religious Pluralism: And Why Philosophers Can't Solve It.

To the typical inhabitant of a modern liberal democracy, the title of Thaddeus Kozinski's intriguing new book will probably sound a little puzzling, inasmuch as, within contemporary democractic culture, religious pluralism is not generally understood to be a "political problem." On the contrary, for the democratic soul, religious pluralism seems to be more a positive good, something to be protected and celebrated, rather than "solved" or overcome. One's religious commitments would have to be "extreme" and thus "anti-democratic" to take issue with liberalism's positive affirmation of religious diversity, for it is one of democratic modernity's greatest achievements to have crafted institutional arrangements that allow for the easy co-existence of various religious groups both with one another and with the overarching liberal political order.

* * * * * * *
Secular democratic modernity can only claim not to have a religious pluralism problem because it has already implicitly solved this problem by subtly emasculating traditional religious identity

* * * * * * *
One of the many insights of Thaddeus Kozinski's valuable contribution to the on-going conversation about the relationship between Faith and politics is to articulate with precision how secular democratic modernity can only claim not to have a religious pluralism problem because it has already implicitly solved this problem by subtly emasculating traditional religious identity and establishing, under the false veil of political neutrality, institutional arrangements charged with theological and metaphysical significance.

Thus, only by becoming enculturated to re-interpret religious belief in such a way that it can have no substantive implications for the social and political order, and correspondingly, by becoming miseducated to not notice the tacit establishment of a quite partisan sense of the good, freedom, and selfhood, do the citizens of secular democracies think that they have a neutral social order that need not view religious pluralism as politically problematic. For those whose religious creed is not merely an emotional accoutrement, this situation is obviously deeply troublesome, for the logic of secular liberalism, as Kozinski makes clear, would force the believer to treat his Faith commitments as merely therapeutic preferences of an autonomous self.

Clarifying this situation and working towards articulating a solution to it which is at once both honest about its principles, coherent in working them out, and politically expressive of the truth and ultimate happiness of man is the task that Kozinski sets himself in his book. He does this by successively engaging the thought of three influential and progressively illuminating political philosophers. John Rawls, Jacques Maritain, and Alasdair MacIntyre. Rawls serves as the quintessential philosophical voice of secular democratic liberalism, Maritain as the exponent of a Catholic hybridization of Thomistic political philosophy and modern democratic ideals, and MacIntyre as the most penetrating philosophical critic of liberal modernity and advocate of a local Thomistic politics of the common good against the bureaucratic nation-state.

Of the three, Kozinski is by far the most sympathetic to MacIntyre. Nevertheless, even his proposal falls short in Kozinski's eyes, for MacIntyre's vision of small communities of virtue does not quite attain to the level of truly political existence, remaining as it does, Kozinski claims, too local in its aspirations. More importantly for Kozinski, MacIntyre's thought problematically remains at the level of mere philosophy. Studiously avoiding the role of theologian, MacIntyre deprives himself of the resources of political theology, and thereby fails to affirm the necessity of a public recognition of divine revelation and Magisterial teaching as the most propitious conditions for a stable and morally healthy political state. As Kozinski's subtitle indicates, philosophy as such can offer little or no light on how to move a community of seriously diverse worldviews to a unified political order of virtue and human happiness. Only the eventual achievement of a confessionally Catholic state, Kozinski concludes, can overcome the limitations of political philosophy in general, and liberal modernity in particular.

Who's Betraying Tradition: The Grand Dispute

Christopher Blosser recently sent me an essay by Fr. Martin Rhonheimer, which I should have liked to use in my Political Philosophy class last semester in connection with Catholic social teaching from Pio Nono through Vatican II.

The essay is entitled, "The 'Hermeneutic of Reform' and Religious Freedom," and was featured in an April, 2011, post by Sandro Magister in the ongoing debate being hosted on his site between partisans of rival interpretations of Vatican II. So far Magister has featured the Bologna School on the left, and traditionalists on the right. Fr. Rhonheimer regards himself as a defender of the Pope somewhere in the middle.

Fr. Rhonheimer, a Swiss priest of Opus Dei, is a professor of ethics and political philosophy at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, in Rome. In this essay, he takes up a trope employed by Pope Benedict XVI in a memorable address to the Roman curia on December 22, 2005, on how to interpret Vatican II. In opposition to the "hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture," the Holy Father posited, not a "hermeneutic of continuity," but, as Rhonheimer stresses, a "hermeneutic of reform" (emphasis added):

In the Pope’s address, there is no such opposition between a “hermeneutic of discontinuity” and a “hermeneutic of continuity”. Rather, as he explained: “In contrast with the hermeneutic of discontinuity is a hermeneutic of reform...” And in what lies the “nature of true reform”? According to the Holy Father, “in the interplay, on different levels, between continuity and discontinuity”.

Now, these are hot-button terms that precipitously invite knee-jerk responses, which would hardly be profitable. What is called for is a careful and judicious analysis of both what the Holy Father and what Rhonheimer intend in their respective statements.

Unfortunately it's late tonight, and I don't have time to continue this post at the moment. I will say that I have read Rhomheimer's piece twice and found it provocative and insightful as well as a trifle incautious in different respects. In any case, I think his discussion comes close to the heart of the ongoing debate between the representatives of the CDF and SSPX at the Vatican over the last year. All-in-all, this is a healthy debate for the Church to be having right now, even if it is a bit beneath the radar of the Catholic media and largely unreported. It is not hard to see, even from reading Rhonheimer's essay, how the parties involved could easily be talking past one another and failing to 'engage' in certain respects. Some aspects of the debate seem impenetrably confused and nearly intractable. Yet the issues are critically important and touch the heart of our Catholic commitments.

I plan to contribute my two cents worth on Rhonheimer's essay in the days to come; and I hope some of you will do so as well. As Sandro Magister suggests, this is not a debate that is going to be concluding any time soon; and, from his vantage point as a Internet host of debates on the issue, he writes: "It is to be expected that the best minds, among the traditionalists, will take up the challenge and continue the discussion."

Obama vs. Sacred Heart?

I've been out of the news loop for a while, so I was surprised to see that Mr. Obama seems to be trying to displace June, 2009, as Month of the Sacred Heart with June, 2009, as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Pride Month (White House, Office of Press Secretary, June 1, 2009). Go figure -- you just turn your head for a few moments, and look what happens. The Obamanation of Desolation strikes again.

And I see that PBS is phasing out religious programming, including any more Masses (Politics, June 16, 2009), and the Vatican internet users are being blocked from social networking cites like Facebook and Myspace (CNS, June 16, 2009). And this after ABC turned its programming over to Obama with news to be anchored from the White House (Drudge, June 16) and report of Obama's plan for supervision of global financial firms (Reuters, June 16) [see "The audacity of neo-socialist megalomania," Musings, June 16, see below).