You have to hand it to Barack Obama. He has unmasked in the
most thoroughgoing way the despotic propensities of the administrative
entitlements state and of the Democratic Party. And now he has done
something similar to the hierarchy of the American Catholic Church. At
the prospect that institutions associated with the Catholic Church would
be required to offer to their employees health insurance covering
contraception and abortifacients, the bishops, priests, and nuns scream
bloody murder. But they raise no objection at all to the fact that
Catholic employers and corporations, large and small, owned wholly or
partially by Roman Catholics will be required to do the same. The
freedom of the church as an institution to distance itself from that
which its doctrines decry as morally wrong is considered sacrosanct. The
liberty of its members – not to mention the liberty belonging to the
adherents of other Christian sects, to Jews, Muslims, and non-believers –
to do the same they are perfectly willing to sacrifice.
This
inattention to the liberties of others is doubly scandalous (and I use
this poignant term in full knowledge of its meaning within the Catholic
tradition) – for there was a time when the Catholic hierarchy knew
better. There was a time when Roman Catholicism was the great defender
not only of its own liberty but of that of others. There was a time when
the prelates recognized that the liberty of the church to govern itself
in light of its guiding principles was inseparable from the liberty of
other corporate bodies and institutions to do the same.
I do not mean to say that the Roman Catholic Church was in the
more distant past a staunch defender of religious liberty. That it was
not. Within its sphere, the Church demanded full authority. It is only
in recent years that Rome has come to be fully appreciative of the
larger principle.
I mean that, in the course of defending its
autonomy against the secular power, the Roman Catholic Church asserted
the liberty of other corporate bodies and even, in some measure, the
liberty of individuals. To see what I have in mind one need only examine
Magna Carta, which begins with King John’s pledge that
the
English Church shall be free, and shall have her rights entire, and her
liberties inviolate; and we will that it be thus observed; which is
apparent from this that the freedom of elections, which is reckoned most
important and very essential to the English Church, we, of our pure and
unconstrained will, did grant, and did by our charter confirm and did
obtain the ratification of the same from our lord, Pope Innocent III,
before the quarrel arose between us and our barons: and this we will
observe, and our will is that it be observed in good faith by our heirs
forever.
Only after making this promise, does the King go on
to say, “We have also granted to all freemen of our kingdom, for us and
our heirs forever, all the underwritten liberties, to be had and held by
them and their heirs, of us and our heirs forever.” It is in this
context that he affirms that “no scutage nor aid shall be imposed on our
kingdom, unless by common counsel of our kingdom, except for ransoming
our person, for making our eldest son a knight, and for once marrying
our eldest daughter; and for these there shall not be levied more than a
reasonable aid.” It is in this context that he pledges that “the city
of London shall have all it ancient liberties and free customs, as well
by land as by water; furthermore, we decree and grant that all other
cities, boroughs, towns, and ports shall have all their liberties and
free customs.” It is in this document that he promises that “no freemen
shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way
destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the
lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land” and that “to no
one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice.”
One
will not find such a document in eastern Christendom or in the sphere
where Sunni Islam is prevalent. It is peculiar to Western Christendom –
and it was made possible by the fact that, Christian West, church and
state were not co-extensive and none of the various secular powers was
able to exert its authority over the church. There was within each
political community in the Christian West an imperium in imperio –
a power independent of the state that had no desire to replace the
state but was fiercely resistant to its own subordination and aware that
it could not hope to retain its traditional liberties if it did not
lend a hand in defending the traditional liberties of others.
I am
not arguing that the Church fostered limited government in the Middle
Ages and in the early modern period. In principle, the government that
it fostered was unlimited in its scope. I am arguing, however, that the
Church worked assiduously to hem in the authority of the Christian kings
and that its success in this endeavor provided the foundation for the
emergence of a parliamentary order. Indeed, I would go further. It was
the Church that promoted the principles underpinning the emergence of
parliaments. It did so by fostering the species of government that had
emerged within the church itself. Given that the Church in the West made
clerical celibacy one of its principal practices (whether it was
honored in the breach or not), the hereditary principle could play no
role in its governance. Inevitably, it resorted to elections. Monks
elected abbots, the canons of cathedrals elected bishops, the college of
cardinals elected the Pope.
The principle articulated in canon
law — the only law common to all of Western Europe — to explain why
these practices were proper was lifted from the Roman law dealing with
the governance of waterways: “Quod omnes tangit,” it read, “ab omnibus tractari debeat:
That which touches all should be dealt with by all.” In pagan
antiquity, this meant that those upstream could not take all of the
water and that those downstream had a say in its allocation. It was this
principle that the clergymen who served as royal administrators
insinuated into the laws of the kingdoms and petty republics of Europe.
It was used to justify communal self-government. It was used to justify
the calling of parliaments. And it was used to justify the provisions
for self-governance contained within the corporate charters issued to
cities, boroughs, and, in time, colonies. On the eve of the American
Revolution, you will find it cited by John Dickinson in The Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer.
The quod omnes tangit principle
was not the foundation of modern liberty, but it was its antecedent.
And had there been no such antecedent, had kings not been hemmed in by
the Church and its allies in this fashion, I very much doubt that there
ever would have been a regime of limited government. In fact, had there
not been a distinction both in theory and in fact between the secular
and the spiritual authority, limited government would have been
inconceivable.
The Reformation weakened the Church. In Protestant lands, it
tended to strengthen the secular power and to promote a monarchical
absolutism unknown to the Middle Ages. Lutheranism and Anglicanism were,
in effect, Caesaro-Papist. In Catholic lands, it caused the spiritual
power to shelter itself behind the secular power and become, in many
cases, an appendage of that power. But the Reformation and the religious
strife to which it gave rise also posed to the secular power an almost
insuperable problem – how to secure peace and domestic tranquility in a
world marked by sectarian competition. Limited government – i. e., a
government limited in its scope – was the solution ultimately found, and
John Locke was its proponent.
In the nascent American republic,
this principle was codified in its purest form in the First Amendment to
the Constitution. But it had additional ramifications as well – for the
government’s scope was limited also in other ways. There were other
amendments that made up what we now call the Bill of Rights, and many of
the states prefaced their constitutions with bills of rights or added
them as appendices. These were all intended to limit the scope of the
government. They were all designed to protect the right of individuals
to life, liberty, the acquisition and possession of property, and the
pursuit of happiness as these individuals understood happiness. Put
simply, liberty of conscience was part of a larger package.
This is what the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church forgot.
In the 1930s, the majority of the bishops, priests, and nuns sold
their souls to the devil, and they did so with the best of intentions.
In their concern for the suffering of those out of work and destitute,
they wholeheartedly embraced the New Deal. They gloried in the fact that
Franklin Delano Roosevelt made Frances Perkins – a devout
Anglo-Catholic laywoman who belonged to the Episcopalian Church but
retreated on occasion to a Catholic convent – Secretary of Labor and the
first member of her sex to be awarded a cabinet post. And they welcomed
Social Security – which was her handiwork. They did not stop to ponder
whether public provision in this regard would subvert the moral
principle that children are responsible for the well-being of their
parents. They did not stop to consider whether this measure would reduce
the incentives for procreation and nourish the temptation to think of
sexual intercourse as an indoor sport. They did not stop to think.
In
the process, the leaders of the American Catholic Church fell prey to a
conceit that had long before ensnared a great many mainstream
Protestants in the United States – the notion that public provision is
somehow akin to charity – and so they fostered state paternalism and
undermined what they professed to teach: that charity is an individual
responsibility and that it is appropriate that the laity join together
under the leadership of the Church to alleviate the suffering of the
poor. In its place, they helped establish the Machiavellian principle
that underpins modern liberalism – the notion that it is our Christian
duty to confiscate other people’s money and redistribute it.
At
every turn in American politics since that time, you will find the
hierarchy assisting the Democratic Party and promoting the growth of the
administrative entitlements state. At no point have its members
evidenced any concern for sustaining limited government and protecting
the rights of individuals. It did not cross the minds of these prelates
that the liberty of conscience which they had grown to cherish is part
of a larger package – that the paternalistic state, which recognizes no
legitimate limits on its power and scope, that they had embraced would
someday turn on the Church and seek to dictate whom it chose to teach
its doctrines and how, more generally, it would conduct its affairs.
I
would submit that the bishops, nuns, and priests now screaming bloody
murder have gotten what they asked for. The weapon that Barack Obama has
directed at the Church was fashioned to a considerable degree by
Catholic churchmen. They welcomed Obamacare. They encouraged Senators
and Congressmen who professed to be Catholics to vote for it.
I do
not mean to say that I would prefer that the bishops, nuns, and priests
sit down and shut up. Barack Obama has once again done the friends of
liberty a favor by forcing the friends of the administrative
entitlements state to contemplate what they have wrought. Whether those
brought up on the heresy that public provision is akin to charity will
prove capable of thinking through what they have done remains unclear.
But there is now a chance that this will take place, and there was a
time – long ago, to be sure, but for an institution with the longevity
possessed by the Catholic Church long ago was just yesterday – when the
Church played an honorable role in hemming in the authority of
magistrates and in promoting not only its own liberty as an institution
but that of others similarly intent on managing their own affairs as
individuals and as members of subpolitical communities.
In my lifetime, to my increasing regret, the Roman Catholic
Church in the United States has lost much of its moral authority. It has
done so largely because it has subordinated its teaching of Catholic
moral doctrine to its ambitions regarding an expansion of the
administrative entitlements state. In 1973, when the Supreme Court made
its decision in
Roe v. Wade, had the bishops, priests, and nuns
screamed bloody murder and declared war, as they have recently done, the
decision would have been reversed. Instead, under the leadership of
Joseph Bernadin, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Chicago, they asserted that
the social teaching of the Church was a “
seamless garment,” and they treated abortion as one concern among many. Here is
what Cardinal Bernadin said in the Gannon Lecture at Fordham University that he delivered in 1983:
Those
who defend the right to life of the weakest among us must be equally
visible in support of the quality of life of the powerless among us: the
old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, the undocumented
immigrant and the unemployed worker.
Consistency means that
we cannot have it both ways. We cannot urge a compassionate society and
vigorous public policy to protect the rights of the unborn and then
argue that compassion and significant public programs on behalf of the
needy undermine the moral fiber of the society or are beyond the proper
scope of governmental responsibility.
This statement, which came to be taken as authoritative throughout the American Church, proved, as Joseph Sobran
observed seven
years ago, “to be nothing but a loophole for hypocritical Catholic
politicians. If anything,” he added, "it has actually made it easier for
them than for non-Catholics to give their effective support to
legalized abortion – that is, it has allowed them to be inconsistent and
unprincipled about the very issues that Cardinal Bernardin said demand
consistency and principle.” In practice, this meant that, insofar as
anyone pressed the case against
Roe v. Wade, it was the laity.
I
was reared a Catholic, wandered out of the Church, and stumbled back in
more than thirteen years ago. I have been a regular attendee at mass
since that time. I travel a great deal and frequently find myself in a
diocese not my own. In these years, I have heard sermons articulating
the case against abortion thrice – once in Louisiana at a mass said by
the retired Archbishop there; once at the cathedral in Tulsa, Oklahoma;
and two weeks ago in our parish in Hillsdale, Michigan. The truth is
that the priests in the United States are far more likely to push the
“social justice” agenda of the Church from the pulpit than to instruct
the faithful in the evils of abortion.
And there is more. I have
not once in those years heard the argument against contraception
articulated from the pulpit, and I have not once heard the argument for
chastity articulated. In the face of the sexual revolution, the bishops
priests, and nuns of the American Church have by and large fallen
silent. In effect, they have abandoned the moral teaching of the Roman
Catholic Church in order to articulate a defense of the administrative
entitlements state and its progressive expansion.
There is another
dimension to the failure of the American Church in the face of the
sexual revolution. As, by now, everyone knows, in the 1980s, when
Cardinal Bernadin was the chief leader of the American Church and the
man most closely consulted when the Vatican selected its bishops, it
became evident to the American prelates that they had a problem – that,
in many a diocese, there were priests of a homoerotic orientation who
were sexual predators – pederasts inclined to take advantage of young
boys. They could have faced up to the problem at that time; they could
have turned in the malefactors to the secular authorities; they could
have prevented their further contact with the young. Instead, almost
certainly at the instigation of Cardinal Bernadin, they opted for
another policy. They hushed everything up, sent the priests off for
psychological counseling, and reassigned them to other parishes or even
dioceses – where they continued to prey on young boys. In the same
period, a number of the seminaries in which young men were trained for
the priesthood became, in effect, brothels – and nothing was done about
any of this until the newspapers broke the story and the lawsuits began.
There
is, I would suggest, a connection between the heretical doctrine
propagated by Cardinal Bernadin in the Gannon Lecture and the
difficulties that the American Church now faces. Those who seek to
create heaven on earth and who, to this end, subvert the liberty of
others and embrace the administrative entitlements state will sooner or
later become its victims.
Earlier today, Barack Obama offered the hierarchy “
a compromise.”
Under its terms, insurance companies offering healthcare coverage will
be required to provide contraception and abortifacients, but this will
not be mentioned in the contracts signed by those who run Catholic
institutions. This “compromise” is, of course, a farce. It embodies a
distinction where there is, in fact, no difference. It is a snare and a
delusion, and I am confident that the Catholic Left, which is still
dominant within the Church, will embrace it – for it would allow the
bishops, priests, and nuns to save face while, in fact, paying for the
contraception and abortifacients that the insurance companies will be
required to provide.
As if on cue,
Sister Carol Keehan, a prominent Obamacare supporter who heads the
Catholic Health Association, immediately issued a statement in which she
announced that she is “pleased and grateful that the religious liberty
and conscience protection needs of so many ministries that serve our
country were appreciated enough that an early resolution of this issue
was accomplished.”
Perhaps, however, Barack Obama has shaken some
members of the hierarchy from their dogmatic slumber. Perhaps, a few of
them – or among younger priests some of their likely successors – have
begun to recognize the logic inherent in the development of the
administrative entitlements state. The proponents of Obamacare, with
some consistency, pointed to Canada and to France as models. As anyone
who has attended mass in Montreal or Paris can testify, the Church in
both of these places is filled with empty pews. There is, in fact, not a
single country in the social democratic sphere where either the
Catholic Church or a Protestant Church is anything but moribund. This is
by no means fortuitous. When entitlements stand in for charity and the
Social Gospel is preached in place of the Word of God, heaven on earth
becomes the end, and Christianity goes by the boards.
It took a terrible scandal and a host of lawsuits to get the
American Church to rid itself of the pederast priests and clean up its
seminaries. Perhaps the tyrannical ambitions of Barack Obama will
occasion a rethinking of the social-justice agenda. The ball is now in
the court of Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, who
has welcomed the President's gesture without indicating whether
it is adequate. Upon reflection, he can accept the fig leaf that
President Obama has offered him. Or he can put Sister Keehan and her
supporters in their place and fight. If he wants to regain an iota of
the moral authority that the Church possessed before 1973, he will do
the latter. The hour is late. Next time, the masters of the
administrative entitlements state won’t even bother to offer the
hierarchy a fig leaf. They know servility when they see it.
UPDATE:
Friday night, shortly after I posted this piece, the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops issued a carefully worded statement critical of the fig leaf
President Obama offered them. In the meantime, the Rev. John Jenkins,
President of the University of Notre Dame, applauded "the willingness of
the administration to work with religious organizations to find a
solution acceptable to all parties."
