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We need Catholic judges to restore respect for objective principle, for the plain text of a constitutional provision or a statute.
Imagine this amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:
This Constitution shall be interpreted according to the plain language of its text. Any court decision inconsistent with the plain language of this Constitution shall be null and void.
The relativists would object strenuously, but it makes no sense for any five Supreme Court Justices to be able to amend the Constitution at will while the rest of us have to get amendments passed through both houses of congress, signed by the president, and approved by two thirds of the states.
So what have the relativists done through the privilege they have arrogated to themselves? Let’s take a look at objective principle in just one area: the relationship between church and state. The Constitution says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” “Establishment of” means an official state religion. The founding fathers were Englishmen who were well familiar with King Henry VIII’s establishment of an official religion, the Church of England, and with its bloody consequences. They wanted their new republic to have no official religion.
The Fourteenth Amendment says: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Congress can make no law abridging the free exercise of religion,” so the states can make no law abridging the free exercise of religion.
The Supreme Court of the United States has the Ten Commandments emblazoned on the very wall of the Supreme Courtroom, where the Justices sit to hear cases. They begin every year with the prayer, “God save the United States and this honorable court.”
Yet the Supreme Court announced one day in the Everson case, 1947, that the Constitution provides for separation of church and state, basing it on a letter of courtesy written by Thomas Jefferson. On October 7, 1801 the Danbury Baptist Association wrote to Jefferson encouraging him to be on the side of religious liberty. On January 1, 1802 Jefferson replied in a simple three paragraph letter that included this sentence: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and State.” Jefferson obviously meant by a “wall of separation” that Congress was prohibited from prohibiting the free exercise of religion.
However, Justice Hugo Black, for a sharply divided Supreme Court in Everson v. Board of Education 1947, wrenched the last part of Jefferson’s sentence from the first part, let alone the larger context of his actions over the years. Justice Black wrote: “In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a ’wall of separation between Church and State.’”
Now, did Jefferson really intend that church and state should be separate?
In 1774, in the Virginia Assembly, Jefferson introduced a resolution calling for a Day of Fasting and Prayer: “To invoke the Divine interposition to give to the American people one heart and one mind to oppose by all just means every injury to American rights.”
On July 6, 1775, Jefferson composed The Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms, in which he stated: “With a humble confidence in the mercies of the Supreme and impartial God and Ruler of the Universe, we most devoutly implore His Divine goodness to protect us.”
On July 4, 1776, Jefferson penned the words of the Declaration of Independence, which referred to God four times: “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God... Endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights... Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions... With a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.”
On November 11, 1779, as Governor of Virginia, Jefferson issued a Proclamation Appointing a Day of Public and Solemn Thanksgiving and Prayer to Almighty God: “That He would in mercy look down upon us, pardon all our sins, and receive us into His favor; and finally that He would establish the Independence of these United States upon the basis of religion and virtue.”
On April 30, 1802, President Jefferson signed the Enabling Act for Ohio, extending the Northwest Ordinance, which stated in Article III: “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, school and the means of education shall be forever encouraged.”
On December 3, 1803, President Jefferson approved a treaty with the Kaskaskia Indians which included the annual support to a Catholic missionary priest of $100, to be paid out of the Federal treasury. Similar treaties were made in 1806 and 1807 with the Wyandotte and Cherokee tribes. President Thomas Jefferson extended three times a 1787 act of Congress in which special lands were designated: “For the sole use of Christian Indians and the Moravian Brethren missionaries for civilizing the Indians and promoting Christianity.” President Jefferson signed bills which appropriated financial support for chaplains in Congress and chaplains in the Armed Services.
On April 10, 1806, President Jefferson signed the Articles of War, in which he: “Earnestly recommended to all officers and soldiers, diligently to attend divine services.” President Jefferson chaired the school board for the District of Columbia, where he authored the first plan of education adopted by the city of Washington, which used Isaac Watts’ Hymnal and the Bible as the principle books to teach reading to students.
In 1954, the United States Congress inserted the words, “under God,” in the Pledge of Allegiance. It remains there today.
In 1955 Congress emblazoned the phrase “In God We Trust” on all United States bills and coins of currency.
In recent years, the entire civil rights movement was run by the Southern Baptist churches under Rev. Martin Luther King, Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, and Rev. Jesse Jackson; We Shall Overcome was and remains a Georgia Baptist hymn. Martin Luther King’s great I Have a Dream speech was based on Christian teaching. King proclaimed on August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.” The entire quotation appears in Isaiah 40:4 and again in Luke 3:5. Its principles were signed into law as the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Justice William Rehnquist, who wrote in the 1985 U.S. Supreme Court case Wallace v. Jafree, 472 U.S., 38, 99: “It is impossible to build sound constitutional doctrine upon a mistaken understanding of Constitutional history... The establishment clause had been expressly freighted with Jefferson’s misleading metaphor for nearly forty years... There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the framers intended to build a wall of separation... The recent court decisions are in no way based on either the language or intent of the framers.”
Catholic judges would respect the principle that the constitution and the laws mean what they say, and should not be wrenched from context and twisted like a pretzel to achieve strange objectives inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States and the will of the American people.
Copyright © 1999-2008 Martin K Barrack. All rights reserved.