Tyranny vs. Religion

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”. — John 3:16

Mark Levine writes in in latest bestselling book Ameritopia:

“Tyranny, broadly defined, is the use of power to dehumanize the individual and delegitimize his nature. Political utopianism is tyranny disguised as a desirable, workable, and even paradisiacal governing ideology.”

Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Marx’s workers’ paradise are utopias that are anti-individual and anti-individualism. For the utopians, modern and olden, the individual is one-dimensional—selfish. On his own, he has little moral value. Contrarily, authoritarianism is defended as altruistic and masterminds as socially conscious. Thus endless interventions in the individual’s life and manipulation of his conditions are justified as not only necessary and desirable but noble governmental pursuits. This false dialectic is at the heart of the problem we face today.

In truth, man is naturally independent and self-reliant, which are attributes that contribute to his own well-being and survival, and the well-being and survival of a civil society. He is also a social being who is charitable and compassionate. History abounds with examples, as do the daily lives of individuals. To condemn individualism as the utopians do is to condemn the very foundation of the civil society and the American founding and endorse, wittingly or unwittingly, oppression. Karl Popper saw it as an attack on Western civilization. “The emancipation of the individual was indeed the great spiritual revolution which had led to the breakdown of tribalism and to the rise of democracy.” Moreover, Judaism and Christianity, among other religions, teach the altruism of the individual.”

For years the left through its political leaders and constant court cases has been attacking all forms of religion in the United States, especially Christianity in their push to create an egalitarian, secular utopia where the state is all powerful. This constant attack has numbed the American people to the fact that the left-wing progressive statist have slowly eroded our religious freedoms as granted in the First Amendment of the Constitution. They have claimed a “wall of separation” between church and state and have beaten us over the head with this argument on a daily basis.

They tell us we can’t have a nativity scene in the public square or a cross on the hill. They claim singing a Christmas song in school violates the rights of non-Christians. They spout off their anti-religious, anti-God whenever they get a chance and even go so far as to demand we trash the nation’s motto, “In God We Trust.”

Nowhere was this anti-Christian push demonstrated as forcibly as this week in Rhode Island, a state based on Roger William’s belief in religious freedom, this week when a group of Occupy Wall Street protesters disrupted a Right to Life rally and threw condoms on Catholic school girls inside the Rhode Island state capitol building.

Todd Starnes writes in a Fox News report:

“Barth Bracy, executive director of Rhode Island Right to Life, said their rally had to be cut short after the Occupiers began screaming and refused to allow a Catholic priest to deliver a prayer.

“This is their idea of civil speech but we believe it’s an outrage,” Bracy told Fox News & Commentary “They started heckling, chanting and blowing whistles. They shouted down a priest.”

Last week’s rally was held inside the rotunda of the state capitol in Providence. Bracy said the Occupiers, along with some pro-choice demonstrators, infiltrated the crowd of some 150 pro-lifers. He said the pro-life crowd was made up of senior citizens, mothers with young children, Cub Scouts, and school kids.

Bracy said one of the most egregious incidents occurred when an Occupier climbed to the third floor balcony and dumped a box of condoms on girls from a Catholic school.

“What kind of individual throw condoms at Catholic school girls,” Bracy asked.

Bracy said capitol police were outnumbered and overwhelmed by the protesters. At one point they even attacked State. Rep. Doreen Costa.

“This was one of the most disturbing sights I’ve ever seen,” Costa told Fox News & Commentary. “It was horrendous. “

Costa said a female Occupier hit her on the head with a sign and shoved her “moppy” hair in the lawmaker’s face.

“I told her that she really stunk bad and needed to take a bath,” Costa said.

Costa said she was “speechless” when they showered the young girls with condoms. So was Father Bernard Healey, the executive director of the Rhode Island Catholic Conference.

“It’s disgraceful behavior,” Healey said. “The week before, the pro-abortion people had their rally and no one bothered them. Apparently freedom of speech only applies to those who agree with you”

I’ll tell you the kind of people who do this. They are people who have been raised in a society where religious tolerance and acceptance is foreign to them. They have been brought up to believe that they are the masterminds and should not allow others with opposing views to exist in their utopia. They are the product of a state controlled society that will not accept an opposing view and have a deep hatred for those who challenge their conscience. They believe in their freedom, yet will not allow others to exercise their freedom.

The basis of their disdain of religion lays in their interpretation of the First Amendment which states:

“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.”

Last week the Obama administration spit in the eye of the First Amendment, as it did Article 2, Section 2 and Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution with their so-called recess appointment to appoint Richard Cordray as head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) without securing the Senate confirmation that is required by the U.S. Constitution.

This latest defilement of the Constitution is Obama’s Catholic universities, hospitals and charities will be compelled to pay for health insurance that covers sterilization, contraceptives and abortifacients.

Ed Henry of Fox News writes:

“Catholics are fired up over new rules implementing Obama's health care reform law forcing Catholic universities, hospitals, and charities to provide insurance for their employees covering contraception -- even though that violates church teachings.

"When you push people of faith and you tell them the government is going to knock down the wall of separation of church and state and overreach like the Obama administration, you've got a war on your hands," Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, told Fox News.

In an extraordinary move this past weekend, New York Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan and other archbishops throughout the nation had their priests read letters denouncing the Obama administration policy from the pulpit at Sunday Mass.

"Never before has the government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience," Dolan said in a web video that takes the battle online. "This shouldn't happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights. How about letting our elected leaders know that we want religious liberty and rights of consciences restored and the administration's mandate rescinded? We can't afford to strike out on this one."

Pressed on the matter at his daily briefing Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney repeated several times the administration believes it struck an "appropriate balance" in crafting the policy.

"The administration believes that this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious beliefs and increasing access to important preventive services," said Carney. "We will continue to work closely with religious groups during this transitional period to discuss their concerns."

Even some Catholic Democrats are not buying that claim, however, with liberal columnist E.J. Dionne ripping the policy in a Washington Post column. Dionne charged Monday that the president "utterly botched" the issue and "threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus."

This past Sunday, January 29, Roman Catholic congregations were read letters opposing the Obama administration's demand that all Catholic universities and Catholic-based charities make sure they provide all employees access to health insurance providing artificial contraception, including abortifacients and sterilization services such as vasectomies and tubal ligations. The "morning after" pill is also included.

The clerics' fiery rebukes follow Pope Benedict XVI's January 19 speech in which he warned the Catholic Church of the increasing threats of radical secularism's intrusion into politics and culture. The Holy Father specifically mentioned the U.S. church's need to be afforded conscientious objection to the administration's demand for compliance within one year.

No serious observer can believe that the administration's real goal is to ensure the acceptance or availability of contraception.

Everyone knows that anyone who wants contraceptives has easy access to such measures even if he or she does not have a health plan that provides for them. The local friendly drugstore has aisles stacked to the ceiling with condoms and other "family planning" measures, while clinics such as Planned Parenthood hand out birth control pills and abortions with abandon — sometimes even to underage girls, as damning videos taken by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles have shown.

No, the real issue is not birth control or the provision of it.

The central issue is government intimidation of and control over religious institutions. It is government's overriding of the consciences of Catholics and members of other denominations who oppose abortifacients and sterilization.

The 2013 deadline for Catholic institutions to conform to the health care mandate is the proverbial governmental foot in the door for controlling religious institutions — actually, for controlling all people of faith who disagree with the administration's stance toward abortion.

For the truth of the matter is that the U.S. government's intrusion into religious organizations, if not halted at this stage, will continue to press even harder for even more sacrifices of conscience. The next step on the part of the government will almost certainly force all religious institutions to provide access to health care insurance that provides coverage of surgical abortions. The administration's demands are only the first salvo in what is bound to be a continuing battle between the federal government and churches if ObamaCare continues its trajectory and is not dismantled.

But there are even worse consequences if the government continues to try to coerce the church against its conscience and doctrines of faith and practice. If the push to force the churches into positions compromising its rules of faith and practice succeeds, and the church capitulates, there is absolutely no church or church institution the government will not seek to control completely.

By insisting that the state override matters of conscience and faith established by the Church, the U.S. federal government will have followed the examples of tyrannous regimes which have sought to seek to establish government power over the Church. It will essentially be requiring what totalitarian regimes everywhere require of the Church — namely, no separation of Church and state. There will be only the State.

The present pope, formerly Cardinal Ratzinger of Germany, has fully understood from the experiences of his youth while in Nazi Germany — and from the experiences of his good friend and predecessor Pope John Paul II while under Nazi rule in Poland during WWII and under Soviet Communism during the Cold War — just what happens when the state dictates its policies to the Church. Both popes knew what it was like to live under a regime which reversed the roles of Church and state. Both saw the Church crushed under oppression.

The Christian view of the Church is that it must act in freedom. It must be free to stand apart from the government and act as the conscience of the state and its citizens. The state is never to act as the arbiter of the conscience of the church. The Church renders to Caesar what is Caesar's, and nothing more, as all else is rendered to God. The Church remains transcendent as God's kingdom, above all earthly powers.

Otherwise, when Caesar controls the Church and its entire hierarchy of bishops, cardinals, and even popes, all are forced to salute and to submit to the state, as this famous photo of Catholic clergy offering Nazi stiff armed salute to Hitler illustrates.

If they do not rise up in civil rebellion against this administration's demands, what will become of the Catholic Church and other denominations in America?

The answer to that question is as follows: they will cease to be the Church in any significant way.

And without the Church and people of good faith everywhere in all denominations acting as the conscience of our nation, our constitutional Republic will also cease to exist.