The Catholic Writers Guild

6 Replies to “Fortnight for Freedom 2014 – Join Us in Writing for Religious Liberty”

1. Christianity is Not a Religion

   The First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads:
   Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

   Today June 21, 2014 marks the beginning of a Fortnight for Freedom as called for by the Bishops of the United States. They felt compelled to do so because of the continuing overreach of the Federal Government and its unconstitutional intrusions into public and private life.

   The courts have been a battleground for over forty years now in the ongoing battle to keep religion out of Public Schools, Public Places such as Courthouses and out of Public Meetings. Unfortunately nearly 100% of the cases involve keeping Christianity out of these places.

   Newsflash: Christianity Is Not A Specific Religion!

   Not since before the split of the Church into the Eastern and Western branches could anyone claim that Christianity is a specific religion. With the Protestant Reformation Christian Sects were Fruitful and Multiplied. Today the multiplication of the sects rivals the multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes by Christ with now over 40,000 different sects claiming the moniker Christian.

   The Church established by Christ in 33 A.D. was unified until 1053 A.D when the Great Schism occurred. Since the Constitution of the United States was written in 1787 A.D. , a full 734 years later, the writers obviously were not talking about the first Christian Church in the world. The Protestant Reformation in 1517 resulted in the Lutheran Church being created in Germany. However the writers of the Constitution were not from Germany, they were Colonists of the British Empire living in the New World. At the time of the writing of the Constitution, the Anglican Church, as founded by Henry VIII, was the Official Church of England.

   The writers were all too familiar with the problems of an Official State Church. It was another means to discriminate against and control people. They realized that True Freedom involves freedom to participate in the activities outlined in the First Amendment without government interference of any kind. The establishment clause prohibits a Christian Sect, like Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism or The Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints from becoming the Official Faith of the Land! It also prohibits any law from being enacted that interferes with members practicing their faith.

   When courts rule that a Christmas Play with Angels and Christ in a Public School violates the First Amendment because it promotes Christianity, I have to ask, which Christian Sect do they mean? The ones who promote these types of activities or the ones who don’t! Some Christian Sects have forbidden celebrating Christmas in any way because they deemed it unseemly for such a Sacred Event.

   When the government requires that all employers provide Contraception as part of their Healthcare Insurance Plans it violates the First Amendment in two ways:

   First it violates the Free Exercise of Religion for those who see Contraception as against God’s Law according to their faith.

   Second it violates the Establishment Clause by implementing a law that promulgates Contraception as a Choice – a belief now adopted by many Main Line Churches. As such the law is aiding and abetting these churches in their doctrine.

   As it now stands the government of the United States is picking and choosing which Christian Churches it approves of. Soon it will get around to the Jewish, Muslim and other faith sects for their approval.

   The First Amendment is perfectly clear in what it means. A Fifth Grade History Lesson would clarify it even more for anyone. But this is apparently beyond the grasp of many of our Lawmakers and Jurists. It is either beyond their grasp or they are actively promoting an agenda that seriously limits the freedom of many of the Nation’s citizens.

   Such chicanery by the government is why the writers of the Constitution added the Bill of Rights. They were all too familiar with absolute power in anyone’s hands and the damage it can do.

   On the United States Council of Catholic Bishops webpage they explain the purpose for this year’s Fortnight and the significance of its timing:

   The Fortnight for Freedom: Freedom to Serve will take place from June 21 to July 4, 2014, a time when our liturgical calendar celebrates a series of great martyrs who remained faithful in the face of persecution by political power—St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, St. John the Baptist, SS. Peter and Paul, and the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome. The theme of this year’s Fortnight will focus on the freedom to serve the poor and vulnerable in accord with human dignity and the Church’s teaching.

   The Constitution’s writers knew of these famous martyrs and the many other people who were incarcerated by King George on charges of Heresy. If the United States government successfully enforces the H.H.S. Mandate, will speaking against Abortion and Contraception become Heresy, Sedition or Treason and be punishable under the law in the future?

   All people who truly value their freedom must stand up against this latest government tyranny. Whether you are for or against contraception is not the point. The point is stopping the government from taking control of another part of our lives. When was the last time you heard of any government saying it had too much power?

   Stand For Freedom! Stand for the Constitution! Stop the government overreach into our lives!

2. I am going to make a comment that might make you mad. I hope you will forgive me. I have been thinking about it all morning with dread, and I am going to say what I really think so I can get it off my chest and go make the birdbath I’ve been planning, so please, don’t be too mad at me, pray for me if you think I am so very wrong.

   So here goes. With all due respect and love.

   The idea of ‘religious liberty’ is not traditional in Catholicism and it is an idea of supreme importance (and one of three items of doctrinal change at Vatican II that keeps SSPX ‘on the porch in the rain knocking’ as Bishop Fellay put it, since the Vatican refused to answer the theological arguments). The Church always practiced tolerance (different from liberty, conditional on behavior–you didn’t have to tolerate just anything), but not until Vatican II did the Church abandon the formal responsibility of guiding the nations spiritually and declare that all religions should be considered equal by a secular state. However, the idea of religious liberty is much older than Vatican II, was born as soon as the Protestant Rebellion happened, with its resulting multiplication of sects piggy-backing on the original error of free thought, and subsequent war forced a peace on them which resulted in the society we have made since then. Our own America completely enshrines it. What is a secular society? One in which religion must be practiced privately, not publicly. All religions are considered to be equal and thus the values of none of them may be elevated to pride of place in any nation. The secular state must thus develop a guiding ethic out of consensus. That means (in the pursuit of votes) the path of least resistance, and we get legal abortion, no recognition of the sanctity of marriage, legal pornography, legal sodomy, legal drugs of all types (that’s coming), and euthanasia. Etc.et sickening cetera.

   Now, Catholics do not have to themselves follow these ‘options.’ That’s the justification. Since Vatican II, the Church has charged us to be ‘formers of conscience,’ who by our good example re-new the society with a desire to follow God’s will without any laws backing it up. And that sounds good. And our bishops still say it, still call for it, still call for us to ‘form consciences’ outside abortion mills when we know damn well they should be shut down, period, regardless of whose free-thinking religion is offended. So we know religious liberty doesn’t work, and not only that, it always gets worse, and now we’ve come so far that we will not be able to withdraw our services from support of sinful acts unless we give up our livelihoods. That was inevitable, given the nature of ‘religious liberty.’ Eventually the lowest common denominator will rule, by the logic of it, a logic our supreme court has followed relentlessly. But it’s not just Catholics who hurt–our schools suffer from no coherent moral code to teach our children, they are shooting each other, laying waste, our courts the same, our movies the same, our kids are force-fed poison as soon as they can watch a screen. All in the name of freedom.

   So? So, if the low road we took at Vatican II, in order somehow to reduce the growing conflict in the world, growing not inevitably, only ever since Henry VIII broke the church, does not work, then we must give it up. We must re-teach the way of Christ the King. We must fight for the votes to insure the morals He taught us be honored in our nation’s courts and schools and hospitals and legislatures. This is exactly what Hungary is trying to do right now, it is not a dream, it is a possibility. Please please review Quas Primas (Pius XI)! Of course it’s a long shot, but you cannot look at the proposals of either party right now and tell me anything seems likely to solve our crisis in a fundamental way–or heck, even a superficial one. Things are so awful. But there’s a good side to that. We have more of a chance now than ever, since ancient Rome, certainly than just after 1517 when the rebels could dangle the chance to strike it rich in front of the people–as if that were even a legitimate goal of a human being. But it worked anyway. We don’t believe that anymore (I hope).

   All the false paths have proved wrong: socialism, communism, fascism, and unless you have missed the last hundred years, it must be said that capitalism and its ruling philosophy, secularism, have been exposed, too. In 2014 we have been reduced to near slavery. A people who in 1517 owned their own ways to make a living, their tools, owned their own land, had working cooperatives for the more expensive procedures (the mills, common grazing lands, forges), were fully enfranchised, are now expropriated, and work for others when work is to be had at all. They had an economy based on Catholic charity, not on competition. That was what the Protestant Rebellion was for, to overthrow that–and it sure did make some people rich. One percent of them now own everything. ‘Religious liberty’ is capitalism’s lullaby. We must wake up and take back our nations–peacefully and slowly, but surely–in the name and culture of Christ. “All religions are equal, so leave us alone!” will not work anymore. We are sick from it, our whole land, our whole planet.

   1. One of the supreme ironies is that the Fortnight for Freedom cites St. Thomas More as a Patron of Religious Freedom. He was not in favor of religious freedom if it involved heretical teaching against the Catholic Church and Christ’s true doctrine. As Chancellor of England, he enforced his country’s heresy laws–to many now this seems a contradiction of his own claims to freedom of conscience when asked to take an oath proclaiming Henry VIII Supreme Head and Governor of the Church in England. But that view is based on a misunderstanding of conscience, one that has plagued the modern era and indeed even some Catholics, conscience as being consistent with oneself, as an act of self-will–what Blessed John Henry Newman in the 19th century called a counterfeit conscience that did not hear the voice of God, but one’s own voice. Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More, cited correctly by the USCCB as being part of “a series of great martyrs who remained faithful in the face of persecution by political power” did not die for religious freedom, they died for the unity of Jesus’s Church and for the truth.

      1. “The writers were all too familiar with the problems of an Official State Church. It was another means to discriminate against and control people. ”

         On the contrary, sir, it was a means to protect and care for Christ’s flock on their way to heaven! Profits could not be wrung off their backs under that ‘official state church’ that you dismiss. Land could not be alienated from the family, money could not be lent at interest, and people, most of people, were not commodities to be bought and sold. The monstrosity of the protestant rebellion brought us all those blessings. Yes, the Church certainly controlled SOME people better–the greedy, the unchaste, the liar, the adulterer, the scam artist. But life was rich for the ordinary person–the gradual transformation of serfdom left the serf in power, one third of the days of the year were feast days, and the beer was plentiful. At the end of the sixteenth century, 100% of Europeans owned their land and the means to work it and make a living,they were 100% enfranchised, and more of them were enrolled in university than now, relative to the population. Women, too. Do some homework, sir! The very idea of the university came from the Church. The laws (regarding privacy, regarding property, regarding human rights) all came from those centuries ruled by the merciful Catholic Church! You are no scientist or historian, sir, you are a propagandist for false liberty and elitism. We’ve had enough of it!

      2. Wow, Stephanie. It’s like the cavalry rode over the hill.

3. Here’s my post on 10 activities you can do as a whole family to celebrate the Fortnight for Freedom, even if your diocese has no scheduled events. http://contemplativehomeschool.com/2014/06/20/fortnight-freedom-activities-whole-family/

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