Those of us who’ve long fought for religious liberty are familiar with exactly the form of (Christian) religious liberty the Left respects: the freedom to advocate for liberal social-welfare policies and liberal visions of “social justice.” Debate the issue for long, and you’ll get some version of the following (typically delivered with maximum snark): Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the Bible much more concerned about the poor than about [fill in the issue -- from abortion to contraception to proselytizing to worship]? “Concern for the poor” is redefined as support for this or that government program, while “religious liberty” is redefined as hatred for women or gays or perhaps even just simple intolerance.
Of course, the same standards aren’t applied to, say, Muslims, but that’s a post for another time.
Nicholas Kristof’s Saturday column is a classic of the genre. Decrying “pelvic politics,” he begins like this:
I may not be as theologically sophisticated as American bishops, but I had thought that Jesus talked more about helping the poor than about banning contraceptives.
Never mind of course that there are light years between “forcing Catholics and Protestants to provide free contraceptives and abortifacients to their employees” (the actual issue) and “banning contraceptives” (the fake issue) but if some highly flammable straw men have to to built and torched to mock Catholics, then that’s a price worth paying. Straw is cheap, after all.
But Kristof is just warming up. It turns out that you can’t fight poverty without an armload of condoms:
The debates about pelvic politics over the last week sometimes had a patronizing tone, as if birth control amounted to a chivalrous handout to women of dubious morals. On the contrary, few areas have more impact on more people than birth control — and few are more central to efforts to chip away at poverty.
Never mind (again) that the actual controversy involves government-enforced free contraceptives for people who’ve voluntarily chosen to work for religious institutions, but, okay, let’s roll with this. After all, we’re talking about a country confronted by three indisputable truths: (1) contraceptives are more available than they’ve ever been (and cheap too!), (2) the national illegitimacy rate has soared to 41 per cent, and (3) there are well over 1 million abortions per year in the United States. So, yeah, making sure every librarian at Notre Dame gets free birth-control pills is just what the country needs to turn the corner on poverty.
The column gets worse and worse. He of course cites the Planned Parenthood–affiliated and pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute as a “nonpartisan” expert on the cost-savings of “family planning.” (Unsurprisingly, it is cheaper to dismember children in the womb than to bear the costs of a lifetime of doctor’s visits.) But the dime-store liberal theology has to be read to be believed:
[B]irth control is not a frill that can be lightly dropped to avoid offending bishops. Coverage for contraception should be a pillar of our public health policy — and, it seems to me, of any faith-based effort to be our brother’s keeper, or our sister’s.
Really? Is he not even remotely familiar with the fullness of Catholic theology regarding sex and families? Does he not realize that living out Catholic theology — intact, God-honoring, mother-father households joined in a sacramental relationship for life — would actually do more to end poverty than dump trucks full of free birth-control pills?
Yes, Jesus spoke quite a bit about the poor, and as our Creator He understands how we truly flourish. And it’s not by viewing sex as god and forcing even His church to bow before the latest cultural “health care” fashions. The issue isn’t about “offending Bishops.” It’s about whether people like Nicholas Kristof (except that they draw a government check and work for a technocratic liberal administration) can tell the Church not only that it can’t live its own values but that it has to actively advance the other side’s failed agenda.
That’s worse than censorship; it’s compulsory participation in the sexual revolution. But I guess that’s okay. HHS — after all — knows best.
I didn't have a chance to read this whole post, but I read enough to quote Edward Norman, Canon Chancellor of York Minister, Dean of Peterhouse, Cambride:
"Thus a secularised version of the love of neighbor is released from the constraints of an articulated moral system--least of all from one claimed to be of divine origin--and elevates human need as a sovereign principle. Once Christ has been represented as primarily concerned with justice and welfare, rather than with sin and corruption, the equation of his religion with the leading tenets of modern Humanism is easily effected. Humanism, however, in whatever guise it presents itself, is about the sovereignty of humanity and its imagined needs, and not about the demands of God at all. It is not only inherently an enemy of authentic Christianity, but also its probable successor."
And if you want to keep reading, try on a little from Fr. R.L. Bruckberger writing in 1959:
"To abolish divine right in politics...it is not enough merely to give the people full sovereignty. It must also be recognized that men's inalienable rights, upon which their sovereignty is baed, is derived from God, Creator, Providence, and Judge. It is true that the people have rights, and that those rights are imprescriptible and inalienable; but not every right is theirs. THEY HAVE NO RIGHT TO DEIFY THEMSELVES. Since their rights derive from God, they can exercise them only according to God's will. In their very sovereignty the people are subject to God. Without religion even democracy is exposed to all the perils of tyranny. The American Declaration carefully avoided making a philosophical absolute of the people; it did not give the people precedence over God in the chain of succession; it maintained the traditional chain of succession and traced back men's imprescriptible rights to God, the source of all justice and all rights.
...In this chain of political sovereignty the people are always subject and at the same time always free and sovereign. They are subject to their own laws and to God's justice. They are free because they obey only their own laws. They are sovereign because their sovereignty is part of the sovereignty of God.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse--Image of America pp. 103-104
It's easy to cut and paste a bunch of quotes that explain nothing but the fact that you want religious freedom as long as we all do what you believe god tells us. The founding fathers recognized freedom extents beyond the control of the church as our country was originally founded by people wanting to worship how ever they see fit. What someone does, who someone sleeps with, is not a constant test of my faith as you will have me believe. If you want to walk in the footsteps of god, it takes more than quotes from the bible, or a return to complete church control of our lives. I am not willing to give up my freedom only to proscribe to yours.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou have been misinformed: religiously-affiliated schools and hospitals are emphatically not telling you or anyone else what to do. It is your side telling them what to do.
You need to reconsider your bitterness -- you're targeting the wrong people. The "consenting adults" sphere of liberty can't just insulate who you sleep with -- it also has to protect who you work with, who you worship with, who you buy your insurance from.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@texasace00
1) The quotes weren't from the Bible.
2) The keystone of the Declaration of Independence is the assertion that our rights come from God, not men. And no, that founding idea does not assume that "God" is something you invent in your basement.
3) What does anything you wrote in your last three sentences have to do with my comment or anything that David French wrote? What in the world are you talking about?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseActually, let me amend my point #3. What does ANYTHING you wrote have to do with my comments or the original post? It's as if you got out of bed and decided you had something to say, and then just closed your eyes and started clicking until a website with a comment field came up. Try to follow the conversation, and I think you'll be less confused and angry.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe kind of liberal represented by Mr. Ace has been taught from such an early age that he is enlightened and others benighted, that he has forgotten how to argue the case for how and why this is so.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnother article long on opinion and short of fact. You spend so much time dissecting every policy decision while avoiding the truth. As a life long catholic it's offensive and insulting to me that you and other outlets for hate, in the name of religion, tell me how I think and feel. Talking about religious freedom while simultaneously attempting to infuse your religious doctrine into every public policy decision smells of unlimited hypocrisy. Truth is, to be spiritual is to be tolerant, least we forget that we can have it both ways. We are entitled to our freedom of worship unless the church tells us otherwise. Try as you might, you infuse the discussion with falsehoods and assumptions and try to paint me as some stupid, intolerant bigot, you're wrong. It's my choice not to use contraception, while others make that choice it's not up to me to tell them what to do, their choices do not take me away from my faith. Practice what you preach, for once
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think the Left does understand religious liberty -- and consciously subordinates it to sexual license. When that sexual license is "guaranteed" by a regime, it acts as sort of a poor dictator's bread and circuses -- keep the people rutting and they'll never notice that we're looting their public weal.
Skeptical? Ask a liberal what they think about private arrangements made by two consenting adults. In the sexual realm they will brook no regulation. But if the arrangement is financial or religious they see few limits to how the state can micromanage it.
In other words, sex-without-consequences is the one private sphere they decided to respect and all others must fall before it. They threw the Constitution overboard (and SCOTUS with it) to keep abortion on demand, they certainly don't care what we think about other, more important private spheres.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou sure spend a lot of time telling others what they think, and make a strong case of how your morals are better than others. If I were you, I would not hold anyone's faith up for judgement, that's up to God not you. I'm sure there are many people of faith who can make a conscience decision without deferring to the church. As for holding up our churches as shining examples, you fall way short. Many people of faith feel stranded and disenchanted because of bible thumpers like you making us all out to be morons..You do not speak for me or my faith and if you want freedoms, try tolerance.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDude, it's your side doing all the coercion. All of it. You're aware of that? Or are you just annoyed that we don't all think like you?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI really do not think that they understand that.
Man of Faith: I don't believe in contraception or abortion, and will not support it
Employee of Man: Give me free contraception and abortifacients!
Man of Faith: I can't, of good conscience do that.
Employee of Man: You evil bigot, how dare you tell me what to do!
Man of Faith: I'm not telling you to do anything, you can go and get your own, that's on your conscience.
Employee of Man: But I'm entitled to free contraceptives and abortifacients!!!!
Man of Faith: But am I obligated to provide them to you, even though I view them as abhorrent?
Employee of Man: Yes, you have to, the Obama says so. You have to pay for my lifestyle choices with which you disagree.
Man of Faith: This truly is the Land of Liberty... /facepalm.
Employee of Man: Being forced to give me something you find detestable and evil is not coercion... it's really freedom!
Man of Faith: You do not see this as forcing me to do as you wish against my will and conscience?
Employee of Man: My desire for you to provide me these things is more important than your faith.
Man of Faith: But you can provide them for yourself with the paycheck I give you.
Employee of Man: I AM ENTITLED BY EXECUTIVE FIAT THAT YOU GIVE THEM TO ME WITH YOUR MONEY, NEVER-MIND THAT I CAN GET THEM ANYWHERE VERY CHEAPLY!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTolerance? Really? A left-winger calling for tolerance?
It is the anti-religious Left that is on the attack, trying to tear down any shred of religion from the public square. It is Freedom OF Religion.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFeel free to express your beliefs in any way you choose, that is TOLERANCE.
But don't try to shout down, silence, or tear down other's expressions of thier beliefs - that is INTOLERANCE and is exactly what the Atheist agenda seems to be.
Another use of "brother's keeper." They have no idea in what context that phrase was used in the Bible. It's pathetic.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI had a similar thought. As I recall, Cain's "Am I my brother's keeper?" comment could essentially be translated as, "I'm not the boss of him. He's allowed to come and go as he pleases, and he doesn't have to tell me where he's going."
The idea of the federal government being "my keeper" is more than a little frightening. I'm a little surprised that the same people who screamed bloody murder over the Patriot act should keep invoking that phrase as a positive thing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePerhaps we should respond to their calls for "social justice" with some words from Jesus ourselves. "The poor will always be with you". We can't eliminate the poor or poverty. It is impossible. All we can do is move the level that is considered "poor". Look at how our "poor" live compared to the middle class in most other countries. Look at the census data for the last 50-years. You find that now matter how much money we devote to the "war on poverty" (which is actually a war on the middle class) the poverty level stays at approx. 12-15% of the population. Drop the whole program, allow the Churches to actually do their job, and society will improve. While we are at it, eliminate about 1/2 of the federal workforce (5-10% a year) which only serves to administer the beast.
Liberals want to create Utopia here on earth. It is patently impossible (with mankind). G*d created utopia. He put just 2-people in it and gave them 1-rule, "Don't eat the apple". We blew it! Are Liberals so arrogant they believe they are smarter than G*d?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDoes the Left Understand Religious Liberty?
Absolutely.
Like the Devil knows scripture.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe real issue here is whether the government is forcing any individual person, catholic or otherwise, to use contraception, and there is no such mandate. Mr. French and others know this so they focus on the canard that contraception is the source of most social ills.
He also writes: "Does he not realize that living out Catholic theology — intact, God-honoring, mother-father households joined in a sacramental relationship for life — would actually do more to end poverty than dump trucks full of free birth-control pills?"
Joined in a sacramental relationship for life? Really? Catholic couples divorce just as any others do, and the holy catholic church grants annulments regularly as a cynical and false basis to allow a divorced catholic to remarry in the church and take another shot at the "sacramental relationship for life."
This is about the power of men who run an earthly institution that poses as a god-ordained and guided power structure. Thinking people don't buy the preachy pablum offered by Mr. French and others.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNo, the real issue here is whether the government can force any organization, even Catholic ones conducting various ministries, to fund contraception and abortifacients.
You know that, but instead invoke a strawman. Very presidential, Barry.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBoozwha: You need to look a bit broader and not ignore other relevant aspects of this issue. Mr. French has broadened the discussion to include the points I addressed, so I'm not offering any strawmen.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOh, I thought the words "the real issue here is..." represented a narrowing of the issue, a distillation of the core controversy.
LOL, just kidding. I knew you would want to keep it a moving target.
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