Kumbaya or Confrontation? The 1st Amendment Question!

If Jefferson Davis II were running for president on a platform of reimposing slavery, would a black minister have a right to tell his congregation to vote against Jeff Davis II?

If Adolf Hitler Jr. were running for president, promising to exterminate all Jews, could a Rabbi lawfully urge his congregation to vote against Hitler Jr.?

On April 14, Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, delivered an unusually forceful "anti-abortion" homily entitled, "A Call to Catholic Men of Faith."

Bishop Jenky accused the Obama administration of serious violations of religious liberty. Those who disagree with what he said have demanded his resignation from the University of Notre Dame Board of Fellows. Others have asked the IRS to revoke the dioceses' tax exemption.

Here are excerpts from that homily:

"For 2,000 years the enemies of Christ have certainly tried their best. But ... the Church survived...

"The Church will survive the entrenched corruption and sheer incompetence of our Illinois state government, and even the calculated disdain of the President of the United States, his appointed bureaucrats in HHS, and of the current majority of the federal Senate.

"We can no longer be Catholics by accident, but instead be Catholics by conviction.

"In the late 19th century, Bismarck waged his 'Kulturkampf,' ... against the Roman Catholic Church, closing down every Catholic school and hospital, convent and monastery in Imperial Germany.

"Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.

"In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama -- with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

"[T]his is not a war where any believing Catholic may remain neutral.

"This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries -- only excepting our church buildings -- could easily be shut down.

Because no Catholic institution, under any circumstance, can ever cooperate with the intrinsic evil of killing innocent human life in the womb."

Whether you think Bishop Jenky right or wrong on abortion, there can be no argument that killing a human fetus raises a moral and religious issue. For 3,000 years Jews and Christians accepted "Thou shall not kill" as God's Commandment. There is no question but that applies to all humans from the minute of their birth. The only issue is whether it also applies to the unborn.

It is historically and religiously the function of a bishop to teach and preach. Christ told his disciples, "to make disciples of all nations ... teaching them "

Teaching has been the bishops' distinctive function for 2,000 years. It was the bishops' office when the Constitution was adopted, and the Bill of Rights approved. Our Founding Father recognized that.

When a bishop sees what he perceives to be a serious violation of God's law, he has a First Amendment right to believe that what he perceives is an "enormous evil." As a teacher, he has a second First Amendment religious right to engage in the free exercise of his religion, plus a third First Amendment right (free speech) to speak to convince others to oppose the "wrong" and/or wrongdoer.

The fact that a man is a bishop doesn't deprive him of First Amendment rights of freedom of belief, or free exercise of his religion. Nor does it mean that he surrenders his right of free speech. Whether he speaks in church, on a street corner, in a Catholic newspaper or on television, he still has the same First Amendment rights. (He is not advocating a breech of the peace.)

The First Amendment exists to give Americans -- including bishops -- the right to convince fellow Americans that any politician is evil, unworthy to be elected, re-elected, etc.

IRS regulations that abridge Bishop Jenky's rights to freedom of religion and speech are unconstitutional.

The reason churches are tax exempt is because the "power to tax is the power to destroy" -- or control.

If churches can be prevented from speaking out on moral issues, or against politicians they perceive to have taken immoral positions on issues, such as extermination of Jews, killing the unborn, or "putting down" the retarded or the elderly, you have destroyed freedom of religion, as well as freedom of speech. Removal of a tax exemption is in essence a tax.

If Planned Parenthood has a right to speak for abortion, a church has a right to speak against it. If "pro-choice" individuals and corporations have a right to support the election of "pro-choice" politicians, Bishop Jenky and religious corporations have a right to oppose "pro-choice" politicians, and to call for the election of "pro-life" politicians.

That is what the Citizen's United case is all about, and why it was correctly decided. Without this right, you get the sort of church leaders who temporized as million Jews were murdered.

So, where do you stand? For Kumbaya or confrontation? What exactly does "Freedom of Religion" mean?

Is a priest to be limited to saying Mass inside his church? A minister, limited to reading scriptures from his pulpit? Kumbaya or confrontation? The 1st Amendment question!

Posted Online: May 01, 2012, 3:24 pm - Quad-Cities Online

by John Donald O'Shea
Copyright 2012, John Donald O'Shea