Church-State separation…clarified

This cannot be clarified enough, given the persistent barrage of disinformation about what the Establishment Clause supposedly said about the separation of church and state. Because of that confusion, and the tendency in media and politics to hurl that charge at every convenient opportunity, Theresa wrote in and asked what that phrase really means. “What I mean by that,” she writes, “is that I’ve seen people have issues with preists who talk about political issues and a response I’ve heard is ‘Don’t they know about separation of church & state?'”

That’s what they say, alright, especially when they don’t like what the priest is saying. But every issue we face somehow reflects and impacts the condition of modern man, and some value system informs every decision. That’s why the Founding Fathers based the original documents on the belief in God’s guiding hand. But more on what they wrote, and intended, in a minute….

Realize first that the Second Vatican Council came together to re-present teachings of the Church in continuity with tradition and in light of modern times. Pope John XXIII’s great concern was that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine be handed on faithfully and taught more effectively to the modern age. One of the most important documents out of that Council was “The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,” Gaudium et spes. It addressed the whole world and not just Catholics. And it opened with this:

“The joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these too are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts.”

It put Christians on a mission to emphasize the true meaning and brotherhood of all people. Gaudium et spes presents an excellent summary of this mission, and of basic Christian teaching about the dignity of all human persons. That entails the responsibility to preserve, protect and defend human rights and social justice. Upholding these principles is just the consistent ethic of life, and it’s not political, except to the people who oppose them.

As for the history and origin of the Establishment Clause in the Constitution, and clarification on what it means, one of the best sources I’ve seen is a section of the book “The Marketing of Evil.” Author David Kupelian did thorough research for that book, and he explains it very clearly for mass consumption. He has a chapter titled “Buying the Big Lie: The Myth of Church-State Separation” that covers the issue well in twenty compelling pages.

Somehow, though the vast majority of Americans are repulsed by it, a virulent and increasingly pervasive legal theory of the First Amendment holds that Christmas manger scenes must be eliminated from public places, commencement exercises conducted without prayer, and kids must refrain from saying “Merry Christmas” at school.

That’s just a one-line re-statement of the problem.

The truth is, the notion of “the constitutional separation of church and state” that underlies all of these cases, indeed, that underlies the legal transformation of America into a de facto atheistic, secular state, is a lie. It is one of the truly outrageous, malignant – and provably false – “Big Lies” of our generation.

Kupelian proceeds to lay out the proof.

In reality, throughout the late 1700s-the era of the Revolutionary War and the subsequent adoption of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment-Christianity permeated America from top to bottom.

There’s some interesting background there. Then, the “civics lesson” on the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

There’s the establishment clause (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”) and the free exercise clause (“or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”). The establishment clause – that’s the one today’s courts almost always focus on – simply prohibits the federal government from “establishing” a national church or from interfering with the established churches in the states!

Possibly you wonder whether the issue is really this cut-and-driedl. After all, for the last half-century, judicial acdtivists on the Supreme Court and lower courts, ACLU lawyers, the press, and the secular culture in general have ambraced “the constitutional separation of church and state” as though it actualoly existed somewhere in the Constitution. Of course, none of these words – “separation,” “church,” or “state” – are in the First Amendment…

Common sense provides ample proof to a rational person that the First Amendment’s religion clauses couldn’t possibly mean what the ACLU and many of today’s judges say they man, since there is simply no evidence of it in history.

So that being the problem, Kupelian asks what we are to do about it. After all, in America, “the power really does reside in the people.”

We have the legal means of making this the most enlightened nation in history, administered by a limited, constitutional government…Moreover, we elect the congressmen who actually have the constitutional power to control the federal judiciary…

Thus if government is not populated by godly, principled people, we are doomed to live as glorified serfs. Why? Because true religion and its fruits – love of truth and one another – constitute a powerful force working against the natural tendency to corrupt. To put it another way, without having a real relationship with the Living god, men automatically become their own miserable “gods.”

Which, by the way, Pope Benedict has addressed repeatedly, in so many words, in his warnings about the “dictatorship of relativism.” But that’s another whole story…