October 10, 2004

On October 1, former U.S. Attorney General William Barr gave a stirring address to the First Friday meeting of the Guild of Catholic Lawyers in our undercroft. In vivid terms he analyzed the cultural war that now engages us and the problems caused by the judiciary's usurpation of the legislating function of government. As cultures are shaped by the perception or rejection of eternal truths, our present cultural war is a spiritual one and at stake are the basic facts of natural law, the right to life, the institutions of marriage and the family, and objective moral order as a reference for social liberties and constraints.

The most important issue in the forthcoming national elections is so volatile that it is largely unspoken: the appointment of justices to the Supreme Court. That will determine the fate of our spiritual combat. When these subjects are raised, those who deny the objectivity of truth invoke the "wall of separation" between Church and State as a smokescreen for the diminution of moral perceptions. There is a palpable hypocrisy in those who invoke this disestablishment principle to intimidate Catholics and Evangelicals while using pulpits of sympathetic sects to campaign politically. Social engineers who want to legalize abortion, assisted suicide, infanticide, and other moral offences must criminalize God.

The dissenting opinion of Chief Justice William Rehnquist in Wallace v. Jaffree eloquently explained how prejudiced parties misuse the concepts of "separation of church and state" and the "wall of separation” between them. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibited the establishment of a state church and the favoring of one religion over another. It did not prohibit the free exercise of religion. Thomas Jefferson had nothing to do with that amendment, being in France at that time, and even that Deist, atypical among our nation's founders in his skepticism, acknowledged the states' authority to promote religion in his second inaugural address. On the day the First Amendment was passed, Washington invoked "prayer" and "Almighty God" in proclaiming a national Day of Thanksgiving. None of the Founding Fathers would have countenanced abuse of the First Amendment to ban the Ten Commandments from civil discourse or to prohibit public celebrations of Christmas and Easter. The national elections in November will test our religious integrity. Baptism disenfranchises no one. The baptismal renunciations of Satan and all his evil works and all his empty promises are the surest safeguard of our civic integrity.

Fr. George W. Rutler