Thomas Farr is a visiting associate professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He directs the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs and the task force on international religious freedom for the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, N.J. A former diplomat, Farr was the State Department’s first director of the Office of International Religious Freedom.
He is widely published in a variety of secular and religious publications, including Foreign Affairs, First Things, The New York Times and The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. His book, World of Faith and Freedom: Why International Religious Liberty Is Vital to American National Security, was published by Oxford University Press.
He spoke this week with Register senior editor Joan Frawley Desmond.
Yesterday, a group of U.S. religious leaders — including Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox Jews and Sikhs — released an “open letter,” “Marriage and Religious Freedom: Fundamental Goods That Stand or Fall Together.” Among other issues, the letter expressed alarm about the threat legal same-sex “marriage” poses to the free exercise of religion in this country.
This is a powerful statement. It is an encouraging and, frankly, very American phenomenon when religious groups with deep theological differences come together in defense of marriage and of religious freedom. The power of the statement comes from the truths it expresses. It sounds the alarm about the sweeping consequences for our society if the definition of marriage is overturned and about the threat to religious liberty implicit in such an act.
The letter itself is an example of religious liberty in action — public advocacy by religious actors on behalf of truths they hold sacred and which they believe central to protecting the common good.
There are those who would contend that this kind of public religious advocacy violates the separation of church and state. That reading of our Constitution is nonsense, but it exists, and it poses a danger both to marriage and religious freedom.
Consider Judge Vaughn Walker’s 2010 ruling on Proposition 8, the California referendum affirming marriage as between one man and one woman. He simply declared that the vote was in part motivated by religious and moral values, that those values did not and cannot meet constitutional standards of rationality, and that, therefore, the outcome of the referendum was unconstitutional.
Should this reasoning be more widely adopted by the courts, it would pose a severe threat to religious liberty by reducing the capacity of religious actors to prevail in democratic deliberation with religion-specific or even religiously derived moral arguments. It would implicate issues from marriage to abortion to the cloning of human beings for medical research.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Catholic bishops and advocates for religious freedom hailed the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in the Hosanna Tabor case.
The ruling reaffirmed the right of religious communities to choose their own clergy without government interference and was a major victory. The fact that all the liberal justices went along with the decision is almost miraculous.
While the ruling was limited to the right to choose clergy, it did affirm the distinctive place of religion in the American system. In effect, the justices said that the First Amendment provides religious communities a degree of protection from government interference that almost no other community in our society has.
But the ruling did not directly address the issue I discussed earlier, i.e., the right of religious individuals and communities to make religious arguments and to prevail in democratic deliberation.
Where does that leave us?
When it comes to marriage, abortion or other issues of concern to Catholics, it leaves us in a precarious position. The remedy must be to engage with energy and optimism in public-policy debates, and to win.
Let me give you one example — among many — of the problem we face. The new health-care law may require Catholic associations like colleges and hospitals to provide contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs in their health-care plans. Catholics are, quite reasonably, fighting to broaden the conscience exemptions from that requirement (exemptions which now appear to apply only to churches themselves).
Conscience protections are important because they acknowledge, in principle, that protecting the conscience of the religious dissenter is more important than the law itself. But the conscience approach is, in my view, insufficient. Catholics need to marshal their resources more effectively to defeat these laws in the legislatures. We have not done this well, and we should ask ourselves why.
There are doubtless many reasons, including poor catechesis. But a key reason is that too many Catholics have bought into the false notion that it is illegitimate to make public religious arguments — i.e., that religion is a private matter.
Remember Mario Cuomo’s infamous “I am personally opposed to abortion” but refuse to “impose my views” on others? That view represents deep moral and legal confusion. Catholics have every right — indeed, I would argue they have the supreme responsibility — to enter the democratic public square, contend with the secularists and others, and prevail.
During the New Hampshire primary debate, Newt Gingrich noted that media questions focused on “gay rights” but ignored religious-liberty concerns. What is the state of play for religious freedom as an election-year issue?
This was during the ABC televised debate, and I was grateful to Newt for bringing it up. But his comment did not lead to a discussion of religious liberty.
On balance, there has been very little attention paid to the problem. I co-authored, with Open Doors, a religious-freedom pledge for presidential candidates , but only Rick Santorum has signed it.
Yes, people are justifiably concerned about the economy, but they should also be concerned about the growing threat to their religious liberty. It’s something that should have greater emphasis as the campaign moves on.
President Obama announced last month that U.S. foreign policy will make the promotion of “gay rights” a priority. Afterwards, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that “gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights.” What’s the likely impact of this new policy on our commitment to the defense of religious freedom abroad?
The president’s announcement primarily addresses the issue of violence against homosexuals — the kind of statement Catholics should be able to support. The Church teaches that homosexual persons “must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity” (Catechism, 2348).
Secretary Clinton’s speech, however, suggests a much broader agenda. Although she did not say it explicitly, it seems clear that the LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered] initiative will ultimately push for same-sex “marriage.” It may even encourage the criminalization of preaching against homosexual acts. Homilies by Catholic priests that reflect long-standing Catholic teaching — i.e., that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” and “under no circumstances can they be approved” (Catechism, 2357) — could be construed as “hate speech.”
In fact, this administration has invested a great deal of energy and resources in preparing the ground work for their LGBT foreign-policy initiative. Not long after the inauguration, the State Department established a LGBT working group. Among other things, this group explored the possibility of including LGBT rights in the department’s “Annual Report on International Religious Freedom.”
How would they argue it as a religious-freedom issue?
I think they wanted to condemn — as an abuse of religious liberty — sermons that declared homosexual acts as sinful. But, of course, religious freedom protects the right to preach such sermons.
The administration appears to have concluded that an attempt to co-opt religious freedom in such a way would backfire. Not only would it turn the First Amendment on its head; it would also severely complicate the effort to advance religious freedom in Muslim-majority nations.
But the danger remains that the administration’s LGBT initiative will lead to pressure on countries to accept same-sex “marriage,” to legalize sodomy, to criminalize religious criticism of homosexual acts and to penalize those who resist.
In her LGBT speech, Secretary Clinton made a sweeping assertion that gay rights are human rights. If that means protecting the dignity of all persons, I’m all for it. But if it means asserting as fundamental the “right” of sexual liberation, and sweeping aside the moral compunctions of religious communities as bigoted and illegal, then this initiative is something about which all Catholics should be deeply concerned.
It is perhaps revealing that during the years the Obama administration was developing its LGBT initiative, it was permitting U.S. international religious-freedom policy to languish. It took two and one-half years to get its religious-freedom ambassador in place (a position required by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act). When our new ambassador [Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook] finally stepped into the job, she was buried deep in the bureaucracy, with little status and few resources.
Meanwhile, the administration was investing its time and money in what by its lights appears to be a far more important objective: advancing the cause of “gay liberation.”
Ultimately, Americans are going to have to choose what is more important to them, both domestically and in their foreign policy. As this debate takes place, Catholics should let their voices be heard. That is the meaning of religious freedom.
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D. Guidotti,
I have no interest in changing the Catholic or religious definition of marriage. Currently, there is a a type of marriage that is legally recognized (which has little or nothing to do with the Church). It is the legal rights and government recognition that must be open to any two consenting adults in my view. I really don’t care whether we call it “marriage” or something else, but recognizing marriage under the law and government (both secular) between two consenting adults in some situations and not between two consenting adults in others violates due process and the right to equal treatment. To answer your question - calling it a civil union would be fine, if that’s how the government and legal system refers to a union between a man and a woman as well. Churches and religions and individuals are free to recognize marriages or not recognize marriages or call a marriage or union whatever they like for whatever reasons they like. The government does not have this freedom, however, and should instead refrain from treating consenting adults differently based on sexual orientation.
PS: And with regard to history, the Civil Rights movement taught us that because “its always been a certain way” does not make it right.
Could the same sex proponents please explain why you are all so hung up on re-defining the meaning of marriage? Is it because you are against its definition - that marriage is the union between a man and a woman, and that the Catholic Church has always held that the primary purpose of marriage was for pro-creation (family unit)? It has always been defined this way so why do you want to now change it? Do you realize that by doing so you would effectively be forcing your different value system on the vast majority of us who hold to the traditional marriage definition? If you are for freedom of expression and tolerance then how can you in good conscience justify doing this? If your purpose is honorable and what you are actually seeking is parity, then what is the matter with using civil union to newly define a same sex union, as long as it is legally recognized and treated as such?
Another interesting point. Look at the definitions of “marriage” as used by sleepyhead in his or her first post above, versus the definition of “marriage” used by Bill Hallinan above. Sleepyhead talks about marriage as a covenant with God. Bill talks about marriage as a legally recognized contract with rights, responsibilities and remedies. We are all using the same word (“marriage”) but we are not all talking about the same thing. If we legally recognize civil unions (to include marriages, but not exclusively) then we leave the religious significance of marriage out of the law (as it should be). Instead we can deal with law and government separate from religion, which is the idea behind separation of church and state.
It must be this way for the culture and Church to evolve simultaneously. This is the only way to get the population closer to agreement on these issues. Otherwise, we are trying to convince the entire populace (most of which is not Catholic) to agree that “the Catholic Church is right.” Not going to happen.
@ sleepyhead. I agree to an extent. If your religion wants to define marriage as solely between one man and one woman, I don’t think anyone has a right to tell your religion otherwise. That said, because we give marital couples different legal rights, I don’t think your church has any right to tell two consenting adults (through the secular government) whether they can enter into such a union. I would actually favor according a “marriage” no legal rights whatsoever and according a civil union full rights between two consenting adults. This would remove the originally religious term “marriage” form the secular government vernacular, and I think we would all be able to get along on this one.
@ thomas acquinas, I do not define marriage based on sex. For me the primary hallmarks of a marriage are a family unit (with or without children), a loving partnership, loyalty, support and fidelity. For my definition, the gender doesn’t matter. For yours it does. So to answer you questions, I do not believe sex seals a marriage and if a couple wanted, they could use a handshake or a tennis match. In fact, sexless marriages are somewhat common, even between a man and woman. You also take the curious position that sodomy isn’t sex. What is that based upon? Is oral also not sex (and yes, I realize its a subset of sodomy in the biblical sense)? Does it only count if its in the missionary position? Must the lights be off? Perhaps we, as a society, should worry less about what goes on in the bedrooms of consenting adults and should concentrate more on what I see as core Christian values: love, respect, peace, tolerance of diversity, fidelity, compassion, etc.
“is a very important quote, the take-away from this article: “There are doubtless many reasons, including poor catechesis [that Catholics don’t use their political clout to end gay marraige]. But a key reason is that too many Catholics have bought into the false notion that it is illegitimate to make public religious arguments — i.e., that religion is a private matter.”
Yes, we are confused on whether we have a right to impress our moral teachings on our nation, and we have been confused for some time, and Vatican II confused us further. One of the resisters to Vatican II whom we associate with his battle against the new, fabricated mass, Cardinal Ottaviani, wrote against ‘locking the Church inside the four walls of the temple’ and taking away from us the social aspect of Catholicism in favor of a political passivity that Christ never meant and the popes, up to modern Paul VI,never taught. Ottaviani quotes Pius XII most often, as here:
“Every Catholic will readily understand that the question which, before every other, ought at present to attract his attention and to spur him to action, is that of securing for this and future generations the benefit of a fundamental law of the State which is not opposed to sound religious and moral principles, but which rather draws vigorous inspiration from them and proclaims and pursues their lofty aims.”
We should not permit, not without a fight, any law to stand which violates Catholic teaching. Because they are right and healthy teachings. (And surely if you are not Catholic but are appalled by the already-apparent economic consequences of trashing marriage and the family, of abandoning respect for truth and contractual obligation, of authorizing killing the innocent at will, you would rather have Catholicism’s laws on the books than having no moral code whatsoever, which is what we are glaringly careening toward at full speed.
Please go read all of Ottaviani on the duties of the state at the link I will give below, and then get on fire! Build us a Catholic brotherhood! It is almost too late! Please also support SSPX’s struggle to get the Church to re-visit their decision to get out of (Catholic) politics at Vatican II. This is one of the four issues on the table, and if they don’t win and the Church continues its feigned helplessness, we won’t have a future, secular or religious or otherwise.
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/modernproblems/americanism/duty.htm
I have commented on this further on my own blog, the most recent post, The Savior App, http://thewhitelilyblog.wordpress.com if th,e editors here don’t mind the reference, which is intended to offer additional church teaching on the matter.
Bill Clinton said best. It all depends on “what the meaning of ‘is’ is”.
what gives anyone the right to decide any ole marriage IS a marriage??
And divorce and remarriage is permanent adultery, according to Christ and the Catholic Church. So your neighbor, who’s been divorced and has remarried, is not in a real marriage; she’s in a fake, “any ole marriage.” What gives her the right to decide it’s a real one?
BTW, I hope you’re informing her of this every day - otherwise, how is she to know that her most recent marriage isn’t actually marriage at all, but merely illicit sex? (Or did the state - and the rest of society - decide that it is a marriage? If so - what gave them the right to do that?)
marriage was established between a man (adam) and a woman (eve) ... they become one body…
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it was established by GOD, practiced for millenium years before any kind of society was born, let alone “republican/democrat”...
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what gives anyone the right to decide any ole marriage IS a marriage???
“Not all marriages are “procreative” so any arguments that involve the biological argument that “same-sex marriages cannot produce children” don’t actually prove that same sex couples shouldn’t be allowed to get married.”
You’re wrong. All male-female marriages are procreative by nature. If either or both spouses are sterile, their sex is still a procreative act. On the other hand, two perfectly fertile gay men cannot produce a child, since their acts are by nature not procreative. Just as we say that a blind person by nature can see, even if he lacks the present power to see because of illness or accident, a male-female union is marital precisely because it is the sort of union that by nature is procreative, even if it lacks the present power to produce children because of illness, accident, or age.
If this is irrelevant to the nature of marriage, what precisely is it that seals the marriage? If it’s sex—the procreative act—then gays literally cannot marry each other (unless one is male and one is female). If it’s not sex—but merely the replication of sex, as one has when engaging in sodomy, masturbation, or with a blow-up doll—then why not seal marriages with a handshake, tennis game, or a shot of Scotch?
This is why SSM undermines marriage, since once one divorces marriage from its intrinsic nature, marriage can be anything and thus nothing.
Come now. Has anybody ever been prosecuted for preaching that drinking alcohol is sinful? Has anybody ever been prosecuted for preaching that card-playing, or dancing, or rock and roll music were sinful? Has anybody ever been prosecuted for preaching that adultery or divorce remarriage are sinful?
Churches have believed, and preached, all of those things - all of which were or are legal, BTW - and no preacher has ever been arrested for it.
Interesting, BTW, that Catholics aren’t being encouraged to “enter the public square” and work to get adultery made illegal, or divorce….
The Catholic Church is right about everything. The teachings of Christ the Lord are unchanging and these facts bear out in every single human instance. Same-sex sexual actions are catastrophic. It bears careful thought as to the moral convictions of those who promote these behaviors. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may very well be tainted toward the promotion of these behaviors by their very own involvement in them. Are their consciences not seared? Homosexual behavior (homoerotic sex) is at first a habit, then an addiction and finally a compulsion. Those who practice and/or promote homosexual practices are in a state of iniquity (a deep lawlessness of the heart and mind). God has seared their consciences because they have worshipped the self and the same sex, repeatedly and unrepentantly, instead of God. Read Romans 1:18-32. Those who practice same sex activities have a mind which is depraved with and by sin and they cannot see. The men prance around like drama queens, mistresses of their own domains, without any heed of their sin. The women march about defiantly spouting outrage and taking umbrage at God’s plan for sexuality. Because God has punished them for their guile by turning their minds over to the perversity that they practice, He is the only one who can remove the depravity, but only with the cooperation of the sinner. Not even good psychiatric care will heal them. When and if they hit rock bottom, God will grant them the humility they need to be saved. Until then, they will have minds infected with God’s justice. For now, we must individually be very careful whom we subject to the deviant practices of those who are depraved because they will pervert the masses. Our children are most at risk. As a Catholic, I find it difficult to tell the truth in love to this group because they will not see. They cannot see. Remember the word “iniquity.” Do Hillary and Barack not abide in that deep state of lawlessness (as did Hitler)? And because God asks it of us, we must pray for their salvation.
“Two men mating, or two women mating, has never ever resulted in the birth of a child and never will. Such a union is biologically IMPOSSIBLE. The union of a man, woman, and child is the fundamental unit of society.” ## Islam allows a man up to four wives. The Pope has not yet made this arrangement a reason to shun Muslims. Many societies have practiced polygamy or polyandry. Many Biblical heroes are not exactly examples of fidelity to a single spouse. Fundamental unit ? No. As for the “biological impossibility” - people can always try surrogacy, or sperm donation. This isn’t Catholic ethics, but over 80% of the world is not Catholic. And plenty of Catholics don’t bother with what Rome says about making babies anyway. Problem solved.
“Two men mating, or two women mating, has never ever resulted in the birth of a child and never will. Such a union is biologically IMPOSSIBLE. The union of a man, woman, and child is the fundamental unit of society.”
## Islam allows a man up to four wives. The Pope has not yet made this arrangement a reason to shun Muslims. Many societies have practiced polygamy or polyandry. Many Biblical heroes are not exactly examples of fidelity to a single spouse. Fundamental unit ? No. As for the “biological impossibility” - people can always try surrogacy, or sperm donation. This isn’t Catholic ethics, but over 80% of the world is not Catholic. And plenty of Catholics don’t bother with what Rome says about making babies anyway. Problem solved.
@Jake - certainly a union of a man and woman is required to produce a child. But that’s not the topic of this column. Its currently quite legal for me as a man to marry a woman and then for the two of us to choose not to have children. Similarly, its legal for impotent men or barren women to get married. So whether or not the union can produce children is not the issue.
@David - I understand the desire to preserve an individual’s ability to base their votes on their beliefs. But again, if we call government-recognized marriage by a different name (say, meretricious relationship, for instance) do we avoid all the hot emotion over expanding access to marriage? It just seems to be that conservatives want to preserve the religious definition of “marriage” while liberals want equality of governmental rights and responsibilities. The two groups are not talking about the same thing and need not be opposed - to some degree, its an issue of syntax. Even if gay marriage is universally legal, no one says the Church can’t speak out against it and judge gay people if it wants to. That’s up to the Church and its members. There are numerous other examples of legal things the church opposes (birth control, porn, etc.) Freedom of religion is hard - requires diversity of views and you have to be okay with the person next to you having completely different viewpoints. Catholics don’t have to recognize gay marriage. But the government (which is secular) should.
Who is talking about clergy marrying gay couples. This a civil/State matter. If you so called Christians really love America, and who have never believed in the Sermon on the Mount—you hypocrites, go live at the Vatican, a Monastery or go to Utah. You are going to destroy America with your vitriolic religiosity. Go somewhere else and form you own colonies of the like-minded and live out the rest of your life in peace. Leave the rest of us alone. The Bible was written by fallible humans.
I am so tired of people who think they know God’s truth. Look to your own lives and stay out of other people’s lives. Who the hell do you think you are. Do you people really think your are better than anyone who does not follow you precepts. The people in our Armed forces are not dying for you but for our Constitution.
If you do not stop your hated you will destroy the greatest experiment in human history!
Good article. The reader sees a comparison and contrast between Conservatives and Obama/Clinton Marxists. The Marxist Democrat Party has made an all out assault on the Catholic Church going back to the 1972 Democrat Party Convention where they called for Legalized Abortion and Homosexual Rights. This latest Supreme Court Decision was in opposition to Obama and Eric Holder. I for likes of me can not understand why anyone who practices Catholicism can be a Democrat.
Biology: fertility is not a lawful requirement for marriage. IE baseless argument. Also recessive phenotype, not dominant. The fact left handed people exist does not mean right handed people are dying out.
Also the structure of the U.S. government “on paper” is a secular democratic republic that allows freedom of and from religion meaning that various views ability to influence and control law is only as strong as the interaction of public will and checks and balances, Bill of Rights, allows. The system is built on compromise being the rule not the exception.
The current social zeitgeist is going towards recognition of gay marriage and other rights extended to gay people. That some people don’t like this is fairly irrelevant.
We don’t live in a theocracy sleepyhead.
Thank you for this article. I’d also like to talk about the fact that it can always be hard while you are in school and just starting out to initiate a long credit rating. There are many learners who are simply trying to endure and have a protracted or positive credit history is often a difficult thing to have.
As far as I know, marriage is a civil contract that provides certain rights, responsibilities, and remedies. What other civil contracts do we subject to a sex-test? I cannot think of any and find it perfectly reasonable to grant a civil license to enter a civil marriage contract for any pairing of consenting and equal adults. Civil marriage is not a religious issue. The Catholic Church can perform religious marriages according to their dogma on their own property, but it has no role in proscribing civil marriage. Besides, extending a civil marriage contracts to another couples does not modify or nullify my own civil marriage contract. Do my rights, responsibilities, and remedies become any less? No. In effect, the Catholic position is civil marriage contracts can never be extended to equal adults of the same sex, yet the Church has no standing in this matter of civil law, it has no cause, and it can show no harm that exceeds that of the general marriage population. In effect, the Church’s arguments against civil marriage are groundless.
One ironic consequence of the Church’s current position is the observation that civil government grants a license for a religious ceremony. Is that the reality? Government licenses religion? No, of course not; so why the does the Church persist in lobbying the government in how the government shall license Catholic Church behavior? It seems the reality of a Church marriage and the contractual nature of a civil marriage are two separate things and necessarily so.
Assume a minister in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) marries a same sex couple. Can the government constitutional deny the couple a marriage license? In other words, can the government regulate religious behavior and subsequently discriminate against them by prohibiting the recording of their religious marriage that is blessed by His Noodly Appendages and marked by the sign of Mariana sauce?
Either a marriage amendment regulates religious behavior or it doesn’t. If it does, that’s a problem. If it doesn’t then churches have no standing in deciding the civil question of whether marriages in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster can be registered. The government discriminates against religion when it selectively registers marriages.
While we are on the subject of religious persecution, I’d like to note that the Roman Catholic Church in Nigeria is in full and public support of legislation designed to throw any congregant of a liberal religion in jail for 10 years, simply for attending a same sex marriage in accordance with their religous beliefs. This bill, currently pending in the Nigerian Legislature, will make churches that support same sex marriage illegal. Churches that support same sex marriage exist in Nigeria. Until the Archbishop of Ibadan, without correction or comment from the Vatican, makes them illegal and throws all of their parishioners in prison for up to 10 years for simply practicing their faith in private.
Not all marriages are “procreative” so any arguments that involve the biological argument that “same-sex marriages cannot produce children” don’t actually prove that same sex couples shouldn’t be allowed to get married. I know many heterosexual couples that do not want children, or cannot have children. By your definition, Jake, those couples shouldn’t be allowed to get married either. If that’s how you feel, then your religion is one of pure hatred for anyone whose world view is different. Way to remind me why I hate the church and what it does to human beings!
marriage, as such, was instituted by and set up by GOD
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it is a COVENANT
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it is the oldest, longest covenant known to man…JESUS is the CHRIST who first paid the price for all the times man violated this and other covenants…and then HE offered us a NEW COVENANT…the SAME covenants but with HIM as sacrifice and we swore an oath to HIM
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we swore to love each other - not with sex, but with the things every person needs…food, shelter, clothes
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and if we de-oath ourselves, if we decide NOT to be with GOD
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we are hepless, hopeless, and lost
As far as I know, marriage is a civil contract that provides certain rights, responsibilities, and remedies. What other civil contracts do we subject to a sex-test? I cannot think of any and find it perfectly reasonable to grant a civil license to enter a civil marriage contract for any pairing of consenting and equal adults. Civil marriage is not a religious issue. The Catholic Church can perform religious marriages according to their dogma, but it has no role in proscribing civil marriage.
This is indeed a powerful and encouraging statement and a good beginning. Both Bill and Hillary have made no real secret about their support for Abortion & LGBT issues for decades now. The real problem is the internal “disinformation” promoted by “Apparatchiks” inside the Church at key times every election cycle who place their progressive politics above the Church. One could get fat betting dollars to after Mass donuts that anyone who checked their old Diocesan Papers from the Clinton years would find dozens of favorable news bites with pictures of Bill & Hillary high lighting how the Clintons et alia were always on the “right” side the “Catholic” side of this or that “Social Justice” issue.
Just like Charley Brown’s annual, futile effort to kick the football while Lucy aka Hillary aka Bill aka Obama holds it ... trusting that these Progressives could not REALLY support such wretched puerile positions. Election after election more than half of all Catholics have been lulled into complacency by the same formulaic undefined tripe. Who could argue against Bill, Hillary,Barney Frank, Obama insisting on Fannie Mae’s insane home loan policies etc. etc. ... you must be the
Grinch .... Shazam! Party first Housing bubble and Market Crash next etc. etc.
Abortion, gay “marriage” was swept under an unread and unreadable 35 page USCCB voter advisory “rug”. This year it seems it will be “Critical Immigration Social Justice issues” that will trump the destruction of marriage and 50 millions of dead aborted babies and counting.
After the election when the next batch of Democrat & Repub “Progressive” “Lucy’s” yank the football away from the hypnotized Catholic “Charley Browns” these same old Diocesan Papers will pretend surprise and maybe even issue a call to “round up the usual suspects” and say “I am shocked! shocked! that gambling is going on in this establishment.” But mind you this only happens AFTER the election.
For a near perfect example Go to http://fratres.wordpress.com/ and scroll down to The Archdiocese of Occupy Portland? to see how troubling and out of kilter the “loose leash” on “Peace and Justice issues” has become inside the Church.
Enough is enough! WOULD A ONE PAGE USCCB VOTER ADVISORY GUIDE ENUMERATING THE “NON-NEGOTIABLES” BE TOO MUCH TO ASK ??? There is
never a wrong time to do the right thing.
“I think they wanted to condemn — as an abuse of religious liberty — sermons that declared homosexual acts as sinful. But, of course, religious freedom protects the right to preach such sermons.” Yes, a church can preach this. Or birth control damns you to Hell. Or black people are inferior IF they choose to, but the congregations will not agree and the church will self censor to keep congregants. Same Sex Marriage, when legal (in every state except Mississippi), will force the church to either be welcoming or have the hardened heart of Pharoh. Those that KNEW that prohibition was a good thing but they also, in the end, knew it was worse with the crime and police on the take than the drinking itself.
Women Priests will probably never happen but why would a woman want to be subserviant anyway. (Thats why my wife left the RCC).
SSM is inevitable. Theological evolution, evolve or perish.
Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/inperson-thomas-farr/#ixzz1jOLSG5AS
@Jason. Ok, let’s forget religion for a moment. How do you feel about biology? Two men mating, or two women mating, has never ever resulted in the birth of a child and never will. Such a union is biologically IMPOSSIBLE. The union of a man, woman, and child is the fundamental unit of society. Looking at it purely scientifically, the union of two men and the union of a man and a woman are NOT the same. To think otherwise is a delusion.
Jason, You basically say that any and every religion ought to be able to impose its view on society. After all, ultimately, marriage is society’s endorsement of a relationship. Nothing prohibits people from calling their relationship a “marriage”, but it’s another thing to mandate that others deem it a marriage. The author here says, and I agree, that Catholics have just as much a right to have a voice (not impose) about what relationships our society will endorse. Catholics can, and must, side with others who would not extend our government’s - our society’s - endorsement to unnatural unions, just as we side with those who oppose extending the endorsement to polygamous, incestuous or other offensive ones.
This article is a joke and can be summed up rather simply as, ‘You’re being intolerant of my intolerance!” Contrary to the notions of some, the purpose of law is not morality. It is, at it’s most cynical level, to keep people from killing each other in a mad max frenzy. At it’s more realistic and ideal levels it’s protections and compromises so that people of various ideologies and worldviews can live together in relative peace under the auspice of a single country.
Theocratcs cannot stand it but replace gays and gay rights in this article with a race of your choosing that has traditionally suffered civil rights violations on an institutionalized level. The idea that religious people will lose rights by giving gay people equal rights is absurd.
Why does forcing everyone to adhere to one religion’s definition of marriage promote religious freedom? Isn’t religious freedom advanced by allowing different individuals and groups the right to define religious “marriage” differently but with the same governmental rights? Further, should not the government-recognized marriage, therefore, be subject to a secular standard, rather than a religious one? It seems to me that this would protect religious freedom in a much more logically consistent and long-lasting way. Freedom of all kinds protects the minority, not the majority, for it is the minority that needs the protection. Its why even if the liberals take over and the Catholic Church’s D-day hits, the liberals can’t legislate (for instance) that only same-sex marriages will be recognized. That would be a violation of religious freedom. Much like outlawing homosexual marriage between two consenting adults is a violation of religious freedom. My .02 cents.
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