The Supreme Court
Has Become The New Tribunal
In the colonial years of American history religion was very prevalent. Several denominations were represented: Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Anglicans, Quakers and even Catholics. This plurality was only grudgingly accepted, however, as every colony adopted an official religion.
Puritans (Congregational) and Anglicans were the most prominent but States like Pennsylvania and Rhode Island accepted and encouraged a pluralistic approach.
Historically, that level of religious diversity usually ended in a dog fight. Europe’s Thirty Years War (1618-1648), motivated largely by Catholic attempts to reseize political control, was a good reason for Protestants to escape to the New World.
But abuse wasn’t committed only by Catholics. Even when Catholics weren’t scheming for political advantage the Protestants were killing each other in an attempt to gain power. For Europeans it seemed there was no end in site.
It’s as if the religious in Europe were trying to bring Matthew 10 to everyday life.The best option was to cut and run.
Religious freedom (aka the desire to escape religious persecution) was one of the main reasons immigrants gambled on the long and fraught journey to settle on American soil.
But the abusive nature of religion didn’t fade easily. It’s a strange thing but religious aggression immigrated to America too.
The Puritans (aka Congregationalists), the first Protestants to settle in America, dominated the New England colonies. Their first order of business was to combine church law with political law and the entire community was held to that standard. Anyone who didn’t show up at church regularly was in trouble.
Their tendency to persecute anyone who wasn’t them is well known. Even other religions were harassed and persecuted.
- The Salem witch trials happened under their watch.
- They whipped Baptists.
- They hung four Quakers for non-conformity.
In case you didn’t get it, these are the Pilgrims we celebrate every Thanksgiving. The gratitude they expressed for surviving the first winter didn’t make them more gracious or helpful to those outside their religious regimen.
It took intervention by the English Parliament to bring reprieve. The Toleration Act was passed in 1689 which gave other religions the right to start churches in New England without persecution.
That’s a part of history we don’t often hear, especially since we are determined to idolize the Pilgrims. It’s also evidence that the first amendment of the US Constitution wasn’t the first law guaranteeing the freedom to worship as one pleased.
An important lesson can be learned from this observation. It’s a psychological fact that abused individuals are likely to become abusers. Our forefathers escaped persecution and then became the persecutors.
It took legal restraint to stop the bloodshed.
Separation Of Church And State Is Born
Fortunately, even though the early settlers couldn’t stop religions misguided notions entirely (like hanging witches), they eventually learned that keeping religion a private matter and church out of government was essential.
They had witnessed, in some cases firsthand, the backlash of church run states and were armed against the ineffective nature of that arrangement.
Religion still had the tendency to denominate entire communities but it was eventually allowed no seat at the government level.
Catholics The Least Tolerated
But there was one group that was shunned by the earliest settlers more than any other, Catholics.
Although Catholicism was the first religion to settle on American soil (Florida in the 1500’s), it didn’t travel too far and that was a good thing because those settling the Colonies in the 1600’s wanted nothing to do with it.
The historical events that influenced this state of affairs is familiar to us but we no longer feel the pain they endured so many years ago. We’ve become numb to the reality of a religion dominated world.
We know the reformation happened. We know Martin Luther stands out as the primary progenitor. We know many religious groups, often differing in the extreme, sprung up afterward (and migrated eventually to the New World) but there are many questions we don’t ask or answer.
Why does Luther stand out so noticeably? Was he the only one objecting to Catholic doctrine and dominance? How many others broke with Catholicism without the fanfare? How many other individuals were just as disenchanted with the Catholic Church but for reasons other than personal salvation?
The reality is the Reformation would have gone nowhere had Luther been the only person objecting.
More importantly, why did so many of the new religious groups retain the same coercive approach to what people believed and how they lived whether they were part of the church or not. The Catholics, of course, had imposed their ideas on the government and the community for centuries. No one liked it under Catholicism but, strangely enough, decided to keep it going in the Protestant movement.
History indicates that Protestant groups fought each other as much as they fought Catholics. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs provides a long list of examples but the one church they all seem to hate the most was the Catholic Church.
There’s one very interesting takeaway. It’s a sad but historically verifiable truth that religion is generally not known for its live and let live agreeability.
Freedom Of Religion
That disagreeability was a big factor in shaping the thinking of our founding fathers. They thought deeply about the issue and the US Constitution is the result.
Americans weren’t the first to entertain the idea of religious freedom but they were the first to give it legislative weight on a federal level in the newly formed United States. It was a long time coming. The Reformation started with Martin Luther’s 95 Theses (1517) and the Constitution was ratified in 1788.
Separation of church and state and the right to worship as you see fit were ideas guaranteed in the first amendment of the Constitution and stands out from every other nation before or after.
Many countries still maintain a state church, albeit without the power to compel compliance in most cases.
But Freedom of Religion goes both ways. Each individual is free to worship God how they see fit. They can worship in groups or independently but what rankles the most rigidly religious among us is the fact that individuals are also free to not worship at all.
That’s an important point because religion doesn’t sit in the corner quietly watching while the world goes by. To the obsessive, anyone who isn’t religious is the target. Even if you are religious but part of another group, you’re still the target.
The first settlers in the New World were quite religiously obsessive but there were many others sensible enough to understood that no religion could be allowed to take over. The fact that Freedom of Religion was established in the first amendment indicates just how important the issue was to the founding fathers.
There is very strong evidence that Americans were more sensitive to this issue than others, and as a result, the colonies became more comfortably pluralistic than most other communities. I’m not saying there was absolute peace between religious groups. There was plenty of friction but for the first time in history, a country was settling without a recognized State Church.
And whatever tension existed wasn’t near as fatal as it had been according to Foxe’s account.
This gave the founding fathers the opportunity to think, discuss, debate, and deliberate over religious freedom without threat. No one church held the controlling interest.
Church folks had a voice but none dominated the conversation and Catholic opinions were the least considered.
Early America was clearly opposed to any one religion dominating society, and they were particularly wary of Catholics.
In many of the 13 colonies:
- Catholics couldn’t vote.
- Catholics couldn’t hold office.
- Catholic schools were not allowed (except in Pennsylvania where the first Catholic school started in 1834) and Catholic churches were generally not welcome.
- Catholics were tolerated as long as their devotions were more private than public.
- In Virginia, priests were arrested just for entering the colony.
Maryland (where the first Catholic church was organized in 1640) was initially established as a haven for Catholics (Mary’s Land) but the protestants who outnumbered them whittled away at their rights and freedoms until Maryland was less Catholic-friendly than other colonies.
You might think that unfair and even hypocritical. How can we claim to be religiously free and yet be so stifling toward Catholics?
It’s really quite simple to understand. The Catholic Church was the behemoth, the King Kong of the church world and abused the life and even thoughts of every person who lived under it’s influence for centuries.
Religion in the colonies was quite diverse and chaotic. The colonists were still figuring out who they were but they knew exactly what they didn’t want to be, Catholic.
They were determined to punish Catholics because Catholics had for so long punished them.
And the Pope, as you might expect for that time period, responded undiplomatically.
In 1864 Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) instead of adopting an apologetic and conciliatory tone did the following:
- Issued the Syllabus of Errors claiming that individuals don’t have the ability to determine what is right religiously and therefore shouldn’t have the right to freely exercise religion, especially if it differed from Catholicism. This was a direct attack on the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
- Pius also established the doctrine of Papal infallibility, meaning that when the Pope spoke ex cathedra, whatever he said was absolute truth and must be obeyed without question or hesitation.
He was signaling to every colonist in the New World that he was still the king and he was still coming after them. It was exactly what everyone had come to expect.
The timing of these rulings couldn’t be more critical. Religious freedom was on the rise and Catholic rule over the Papal States, which ended in 1870, was in decline. This was a last ditch effort to retain power.
The colonists took it personally. They saw this as nothing more than an attempt to establish Catholic hegemony over the New World and as a result, American Catholics were marginalized for decades.
Religion Has A Belief-Set And A Mindset
When I navigate to a new website, one of the first things I do is find the “About” page. I want to know who the writer is, where they are coming from, and get some sense of what they believe.
If you know where they’re coming from, you get a better picture of where they’re going.
I also look for dates on the articles. It gives historical context which further illuminates the discussion.
Ideas, information, and concepts don’t exist in a vacuum.
For example, if you’re Catholic but you like Richard Rohr, I know the conversation will be easier to engage even if the ideas are less clear and sometimes unacceptable.
If you’re Opus Dei, all bets are off. You’ll need a flack jacket and helmet for that discussion. OD’s smile a lot (sometimes, only as a cover) but when you engage the discussion, you find them more insistent than ISIS.
The religious have a tendency to fall in one of these two mindsets: some are gracious, some are militant.
And the most publicly recorded belief system in history, the Catholics, have a long history of abusive, aggressive, militaristic approaches to evangelism. If you weren’t them, you weren’t right and in their mind, change needed to happen even if it had to be forced. Unfortunately. Protestants in many cases adopted that attitude.
Given that Catholics responded to disagreements like most people do to the Covid virus (kill it on sight), Martin Luther publishing his opposing ideas for public debate was truly a brave gesture.
For 1,000 years before Luther, the Catholic Church controlled the discussion and entertained no debate on the ideas they pushed.
There’s nothing Christian about that but the attitude is evident everywhere you look these days.
But the question is why did they develop this mindset?
The Church Was The Political Enforcer
Again, this isn’t covered so clearly in history classes these days but the church was the enforcement agency keeping society in line and under control throughout the Middle Ages.
The government empowered the church and the church was conveniently located throughout the communities to keep the masses under control. It was like the local sheriff’s office only without oversight.
And it just so happened that the Catholic church was most effective at getting this job done. People tended to submit when the only other option was a barbeque at which they were the main course.
Catholics pushed their concepts of God and salvation and elements of that salvation included allegiance to the government. You had to obey the church because they represented God and you had to obey the King because the church had a part in confirming that he was God’s choice.
The government endorsed the church and the church came up with the divine right of kings. It was convenient and effective way to maintain stability.
But there were problems, not the least of which was the misuse and abuse of the Bible and the freedom of individuals to believe or not as they so chose.
Sense eventually prevailed and the Reformation happened.
Political Power Is Hard To Concede
Christians are told to preach the truth to every creature throughout all the world. It’s a big job and a great privilege but the rewards aren’t always apparent.
Once you’ve preached, those who hear you may or may not engage. You might preach your heart out. You may give it your all. Your messages may be the most thoughtful and best articulated but there’s no guarantee it will be met with acceptance or agreement.
How frustrating is that?
But what if you have the power of the State behind you? What if, once you have that backing, you get to share in the State’s power, you get to help call the shots?
Problem solved.
Having control over the thoughts of the day (education) and the practices (religion), and knowing penalties are executed on those who don’t comply is a power neither God nor the Bible have allowed in a free society.
That kind of power did at one time exist. The Catholic Church had it through the Dark Ages but when Martin Luther came along, the power structure began to crumble.
And what happened following could be described as the five stages of grief only the last stage, acceptance, never materialized.
It was a slow torturous process but the Catholic Church has finally come full circle. Silently sometimes, under-handedly often and occasionally with full-on arrogance, Catholics have taken over segments of society and government.
John Kennedy was the first Catholic elected to the Presidency (1960) and successfully winning the election required him to make some very clear statements about his relationship to the Pope.
Since then, the Supreme Court has been flooded with Catholics (all of the extreme kind) and many other Catholics (also of the extreme kind) have held or are holding high level positions in government. All of them bending to the will of the Pope, the very thing JFK promised he would never do if elected.
And while the terms have changed, the direction of the conversation hasn’t. The new aim of hard right Catholics is called Integralism. Don’t be confused. That’s a new word for the same old stuff if you get my meaning.
The US Catholic defines Integralism this way:
The aim of Catholic integralism is the integration of religious authority and political power.
Obviously, the particular religion imposing its authority is the Catholic church and Integralism is just a new word to describe the same thing Catholics were doing throughout the Dark Ages. The very thing Luther and others opposed in the Reformation.
In case you think I’m overreacting, the same US Catholic article refers to the book Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen, a professor of Political Science at Notre Dame and makes the following comment:
For Deneen, the critique of liberalism is an argument with ‘A political philosophy conceived some 500 years ago, and put into effect at the birth of United States nearly 250 years later.’ In other words, Deneen’s argument with what he calls ‘liberalism’ really is an argument with the separation of church and state.
If a leading professor in a prominent Catholic institution believes the churches authority should be imposed on the government, and therefore the public, how many other leading Catholics align with his thoughts and aim for that outcome?
Unfortunately, you don’t have to be Catholic to adopt the sentiment and that mindset, the bad one, has been largely influential in the election of the most controversial person ever to be President, Trump, who is neither Catholic nor moral in any sense.
I think now is a good time to remember the words of JFK, the first Catholic president, when addressing the Greater Houston Ministerial Association during his campaign.
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.
Where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Prestestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote.
I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none . . . and whose fulfillment of his Presidential oath is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation.
Every American can readily appreciate those eloquently spoken insights unless they are dominated by Catholic dogma and intent. And Rick Santorum, a candidate running for president in 2012, proves the point. When asked about JFK’s remarks, Rick said the speech made him want to throw up.
JFK created good will for the Catholic fringe that arguably was the most significant factor since the Colonial Days to open the door for Catholics in the public arena. Instead of responding in kind, with a strong sense of the broad diversity that weaves the American public together, they once again resort to the kind of strong arming that lead to the Reformation.
The kind of tyranny being displayed in the American government today is exactly what empowered the Catholic Church of the Dark Ages and the Catholic Church is returning the favor.
Next step? Get the stakes ready. Start chopping wood.
THINK!About It
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