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Remarks by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap
Religious Institutions Law Day October 7, 2004
I’m grateful to Martin Nussbaum for inviting me to join you this
morning. Rothgerber, Johnson and Lyons has represented the Archdiocese
of Denver in a distinguished way on many issues, over many years. Chuck
Goldberg, Glenn Burbridge, Susan Sperber and other members of the firm
do an outstanding job of serving the Catholic people of Colorado. I want
to thank them personally and publicly for their dedication.
I also believe that a gathering like Religious Institutions Law Day
serves the common good of the whole community, and I’m glad to be part
of it. Obviously I’m a Catholic bishop, speaking from a Catholic
perspective, in a year when national politics and Catholic faith have
overlapped in some challenging ways. But I hope at least some of my
remarks today will ring true with other religious communities, and what
I don’t cover in my comments, I’ll be glad to address through your
questions.
One of the books that shaped my thinking as a teenager was George
Orwell’s Animal Farm. Most of you know that it’s a political
fable.
Orwell imagined an English farm where the animals revolt and throw
out their human master. But instead of creating a utopia, they get a
regime run by pigs. The pigs behave even worse than the humans. And
whenever anyone tries to question the rules, the pigs bring in a chorus
of sheep, who bleat “Four legs good, two legs bad; four legs good, two
legs bad,” again and again, until everyone gets confused and goes home.
I’ve been thinking about those sheep all year long. I remember them
every time someone tells me that Catholics shouldn’t try to impose our
beliefs on society. I remember them every time somebody warns me that
religious believers need to respect the separation of Church and state.
I think these two concerns
—
“don’t impose your beliefs on society” and “the separation of Church and
state” —
aren’t the real concerns at all. They’re slogans. They’re sound bites
designed to shut down serious thought. No one in mainstream American
politics wants a theocracy. No one in mainstream American politics wants
to turn meatless Fridays into federal law. So we need to understand
these concerns for what they are: usually foolish, frequently dishonest
and ultimately dangerous arguments that confuse our national memory and
our national identity.
Consider a few facts. Ninety-six percent of Americans believe in God;
90 percent pray; 93 percent of American homes have a Bible; roughly 80
percent of Americans describe themselves as Christian; and more than 40
percent of Americans attend church weekly
—
which, at least on the surface, makes the United States one of the most
religiously devout countries in the world.
Somewhere between 50 million and 80 million American Christians claim
they’ve been “born again.” Americans spend $4 billion dollars a year on
CDs, books and bumper stickers honoring Jesus Christ. The Passion of the
Christ made more than $600 million in the first six months of its
release, most of it in the United States. Americans in 2004
—
and not only Christian Americans
—
remain a deeply religious people, not just in words, but also in
practice. That doesn’t stop us from also being sinners and hypocrites.
But it does mean that most of us draw the moral roadmap for our lives
from our religious faith.
Now, without simplifying things too much, law always involves turning
somebody’s ought into everybody’s must. When we say that we “ought to”
do something, we’re making a moral judgment. When we turn that moral
judgment into legislation, we’re imposing our views on society.
People shouldn’t jaywalk because trucks will run them over, and
that’s bad. Therefore we make rules against jaywalking. People shouldn’t
racially discriminate, because other people will suffer, and that’s bad.
Therefore we make laws to ensure civil rights. The racial bigots among
us may feel imposed upon, but that’s the way it is in a democracy. Some
interests win, and some lose. Racial bigots have the right to organize
and change the law. We hope they don’t succeed, but they have every
right to try. Until they develop a racist consensus, though, they suffer
under the weight of majority moral opinion.
Real pluralism always involves a struggle of ideas. Democracy depends
on people of conviction fighting for what they believe in the public
square —
non-violently and ethically, but vigorously and without embarrassment.
People who try to separate their private convictions from their
involvement in public issues are not acting with integrity, or with
loyalty to their own principles. And in doing so, they’re stealing from
their country.
Here’s an example. People who support permissive abortion laws have
no qualms at all about imposing their views on society. Back in the
1970s, they couldn’t do it democratically through the ballot box, so
they coerced it through the courts. And over the past 30 years, they’ve
fought every attempt to limit or change those laws through the
democratic process. That’s entirely appropriate. That’s their right.
They’re acting on their beliefs.
But in a democracy, everybody
—
including religious believers
—
gets to play that game. In fact, to be healthy, the political process
demands it. So for Catholics to be silent in an election year about easy
abortion laws and pro-abortion campaign agendas out of some misguided
sense of good manners is actually a form of theft from our national
conversation.
If Catholics really believe in the sanctity of human life, then there’s
no way we can stand by while some people choose
—
or allow others to choose
—
to kill their unborn children. There’s no way we can disassociate
ourselves from 40 million abortions since 1973. If we don’t try to end
abortion, not just socially but legally, we become complicit in that
violence.
Now we may lose the political battle to change our abortion laws, but
fighting that battle is the nature of the legal process. Fighting it is
thoroughly American. For religious believers not to advance their
convictions about public morality in public debate is not an example of
tolerance. It’s an example of cowardice.
If we believe that abortion is gravely wrong
—
that it kills an unborn child and attacks the common good
—
then we have a duty, not just a religious duty but also a democratic
duty, to punish the candidates who want to allow it. Failing to do that
is an abuse of power on our part, because that’s where we exercise our
power as citizens most directly
—
in the voting booth.
I think we can agree that the many religious believers who worked
against slavery and segregation, or in favor of farm worker rights and
industrial labor justice, served their country very well. They did what
they did because their view of human dignity was shaped by their
religious faith.
If Martin Luther King had not worked to “impose his religious views”
on society, the world would be very different and worse. So we need to
see that criticism for what it really is: a modern version of “Four legs
good, two legs bad.” People who fear and dislike religious faith don’t
want it to be part of our public discourse. But if we allow that to
happen, we not only delude ourselves about the nature of American
politics; but we also only have ourselves to blame.
The same applies to the idea that “separation of Church and state”
somehow means that religious believers should shut up about legislative
issues, the appointment of judges and public policy. To Catholics with a
sense of recent American history, “separation of Church and state” has a
uniquely anti-Catholic ring to it. Lurking behind those words in the
1960 presidential campaign was the hint that Roman dogma might somehow
trump the American Constitution if Kennedy were elected.
Kennedy handled it by simply separating his Catholic identity from
his public service. This wasn’t too hard because his faith seemed
largely nominal. But in doing it, Kennedy confused an entire generation
of Catholics and other Americans about the proper relationship of Church
and civil authority.
For Catholics, the civil order has its own sphere of responsibility
and its own autonomy apart from the Church. But that doesn’t mean that
civil authorities are exempt from moral engagement and criticism, either
by individual believers or by the Church as a body. And I think this
fits very comfortably with the mind of the Founders.
What the Founders intended was to prevent the establishment of an
official state Church. They never intended, and never wrote into the
Constitution, any prohibition against religious believers, religious
leaders or religious communities taking an active part in public issues
and the political process. The idea of exiling religion from public
debate would have made no sense to them.
While Jefferson and Franklin were Deists, most of the Founders were
practicing Christians. All of them were deeply influenced by Christian
thought. Our history as a nation is steeped in religious imagery and
language, so I don’t want to belabor the obvious. But I do encourage all
of you to read Vince Carroll’s excellent book, Christianity on Trial:
Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry. Vince is the editorial pages
editor of the Rocky Mountain News. Chapter 8 of his book does a great
job tracking the Christian roots and Christian contributions to American
democracy.
The idea that we can pull those religious roots out of our modern
political life without hurting who we are is very dangerous. The United
States is non-sectarian. That’s good. But “non-sectarian” does not mean
anti-religious, atheist, agnostic or even fully secular. Our public
institutions flow from a religious understanding of human rights and
human dignity.
When the “separation of Church and state” begins to mean separating
religious faith from public life, we begin to separate government from
morality and citizens from their consciences. And that leads to politics
without character, which is now a national disease.
From a Catholic perspective, the better we live our faith, the better we
live our citizenship. The more faithful we are as religious believers,
the more faithful we are as Americans. That may not get a candidate
elected, but it will keep him honest
—
and his honesty will make our public life more honest.
If people are serious about their faith, then their whole lives will
naturally be formed and guided by their religious convictions. For
Catholics, all of our actions and all of our choices should be rooted in
our Catholic identity and in our relationship with God. That means our
choices at work; at play; within our families; and also the choices we
make in living out our citizenship.
The Apostle James wrote that, "faith without works is dead." People
need to act on what they claim to believe. Otherwise they’re just lying
to themselves. Jesus told His disciples to render unto Caesar the things
that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. But what
belongs to Caesar is actually very limited. And our souls belong to God
—
not to Caesar. So for Catholics, our relationship with the surrounding
political order will always hinge on questions of faith. And it’s
exactly that foundation of faith that gives American democracy life.
Foreigners often see this more clearly about our country than we do.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great Lutheran pastor who was later killed by
the Third Reich, wrote that: “The American Revolution was almost
contemporary with the French one, and politically the two were not
unconnected. Yet they were profoundly different in character. [American]
democracy is not founded on the emancipated man, but quite the contrary,
on the kingdom of God and the limitation of all earthly power by the
sovereignty of God. [In contrast to] the Declaration of the Rights of
Man, American historians can say that the federal constitution was
written by men who were conscious of original sin” and the weaknesses of
the human heart.
Now having said all this, it’s also true that vast elements of the
American academic, scientific, literary, artistic and mass media
establishments routinely treat religion with contempt. Some of you will
remember the artist Andres Serrano’s creation where he portrayed a
crucifix submerged in urine. Or the New York public museum that featured
an image of the Virgin Mary smeared with elephant dung.
On a visit to Blockbuster last weekend, I counted more than 20
feature films released over the last decade that directly or indirectly
attack Catholic faith, practice or history. The New York Times and other
major urban newspapers routinely cast evangelicals and the so-called
religious right as dangerous zealots. The paranoia that preceded the
release of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was matched
only by the surprise of Hollywood at how well it did. And as Vince
Carroll shows in his book, public school textbooks have under-reported
and distorted the role of religion as a positive force in American
history for decades.
American religious tolerance owes as much to Roger Williams, who
founded the Rhode Island colony, and William Penn, who founded the
Pennsylvania colony, as it does to any thinker of the Enlightenment. But
you won’t hear that in the average high school history class. Both
Williams and Penn were devoutly Christian.
This gulf between what most Americans believe about God and the
anti-religious prejudice of many of our cultural leaders is a mystery.
Why does it happen? One answer is that religious believers cause some of
the problems ourselves. We’re sinners and hypocrites. That's pretty
obvious. Every case of clergy sexual or financial misconduct, and every
example of bigotry by a churchgoer, confirms our weakness.
But the struggle of religious believers against our own failures
isn't exactly news. It doesn't explain the scope of the hostility
directed toward religion in the United States over the last 50 years.
I think the real answer lies elsewhere. We can hear it in Ted
Turner's famous crack that, "Christianity is for losers." In a knowledge
economy, religion looks stupid. In an aristocracy of brains, faith is
for suckers. We can see traces of this attitude toward organized
religion as early as Jefferson and Franklin. But as America has become a
world power in science and technology, mass media, wealth and economic
influence, the confidence of her knowledge classes has grown.
Power breeds faith in itself. So do talent, achievement and success.
Many of America’s creative and professional leaders feel they don’t need
and certainly don’t want a competing source of authority outside of
themselves
— especially if it tries to tell them what they can and cannot do
in the name of a God they can’t see.
This is why spirituality seems so popular these days in the mass
media and “religion” doesn’t. Spirituality can be whatever an individual
wants to make it. Religion is a different story. Religion always
involves duty to a larger community and to truths bigger than oneself.
That’s what “religion” means. It comes from the Latin word religare,
“to bind.” The religious believer binds his or her life to a creed
shared by other people, and agrees to be judged by it. Religious faith,
lived consciously and seriously, is an act of humility, not
self-improvement.
Writing a decade ago, the historian Christopher Lasch saw that today,
“it is [America’s leadership classes]
—
those who control the international flow of money and information,
preside over philanthropic foundations and institutions of higher
learning, manage the instruments of cultural production and thus set the
terms of public debate
—
that have lost faith in the values” of the American experiment. In their
self-reliance and overconfidence, our “thinking classes have seceded not
just from the common world around them but from reality itself.”
This has very tough results both at home and abroad. As I said
earlier, most people at most times in history have drawn their moral
guidelines from their religious beliefs. That makes sense, because
religion is about the meaning of our lives. It’s about purpose and last
things and our final destination. If we begin with God’s love and the
goal of heaven in mind, then we order our behavior in this life
accordingly. We don’t steal, we don’t lie, we don’t commit adultery; we
help the poor, we comfort the sick, we shelter the homeless.
The secular view of the world, by its nature, can’t deal with
questions of larger meaning. And by refusing to engage the questions
that really matter in life, secularism robs us of the foundation for our
dignity and our moral vocabulary. It robs our politics of the ideals
that make us a nation and a people, rather than just a mob of
individuals.
What results is a loss of any sense of a common future
— a
loss of active hope
—
and when that happens you get the kind of demographic collapse we see
today in Europe. Population replacement requires 2.1 births per woman.
Overall European rates are already lower than 1.6. In rejecting its
Christian identity, Europe has basically erased its own memory. In a
hundred years Europe will be a radically different continent
—
and quite possibly Muslim, because Muslims continue to bear children,
and in having children, they claim the future.
Secularism also fails in its understanding of the outside world. I
have the privilege of serving on the U.S. Commission for International
Religious Freedom. It’s sobering work sometimes because so many nations
around the world simply ignore the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, and religious freedom often seems like a low priority even for
U.S. foreign policy.
But all across the southern hemisphere, Christianity and Islam are
growing very rapidly in numbers. We live in a religious age. Religion
has always been, and it continues to be, the most powerful
culture-forming force in history. Hostility to religion in our domestic
public life makes Americans unable to think clearly overseas.
This is a fatal weakness. The idea that we can have a dialogue with
the emerging world in purely secular language is ignorant and foolish.
We only need to look at our problems in Iraq. The assumptions we made
about creating a secular, democratic Iraq, and the realities we’re now
dealing with, are completely out of sync. If American policymakers
refuse to understand and respect the power of religious faith in the
world, we’re headed for more of the same problems at enormous cost.
We can’t give what we don’t have. Americans are a religious people.
We deny that at our peril. The more we drive religion out of our public
life, the poorer we become and the less we have to offer in our
engagement with the world.
We are more than simply “one nation under God.” In the case of the
United States
—
in the light of our history and the founding ideas and documents that
shaped us as a people
—
we are one nation because of our belief in God.
There is no more loyal form of citizenship than to protect that
religious heritage for the generations who will follow us.
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