In Sunday’s gospel for the third Sunday of Lent, Jesus
invites the Samaritan woman at the well to follow Him and receive the
life-giving water He offers. Scripture
scholars associate this scene with Jesus’ proposal to be the bridegroom of
humanity because the well was the place where a number of prophets met their
eventual spouses. The Samaritan woman, representing
sinful humanity, was invited by Jesus to accept His gift of salvation. This is a foreshadowing of Jesus’
relationship with all humanity which St. Paul describes as akin to a marriage
covenant in which Jesus is the bridegroom and we (the Church) are His bride.
Of course, a marriage covenant implies the total giving of
spouses to one another in a faithful relationship meant to last for all
eternity. For our part, faithfulness to
Christ is a challenge to our sinful nature and requires us to beg forgiveness
again and again. The practice of our
faith is a litany of missteps, apologies, and forgiveness. Maybe that’s why they call it
“practice.” Recently, the practice of
our faith has become even more of a challenge because of interference from our
government. This is not exactly a new
phenomenon, but one that has gone from opinion to interference by force of
law. The administrative laws put in
effect under Obamacare require all employers to pay for contraceptives,
abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilization, even though it may violate their
religious beliefs. Even religious-owned
and operated non-profits are required to comply with the new law. About 20 for-profit companies have won
exemptions from the HHS mandate in the lower courts, but the Obama
Administration has appealed all the way to the Supreme Court who will hear
arguments in the Hobby Lobby case this coming week. The 100+ religious organizations who have
filed lawsuits for relief will not come before the Supreme Court until much
later this year, or next.
Hobby Lobby would be forced to pay fines in excess of $1
million a day, if they lose this case and continue to refuse to comply, effectively
destroying their company. Ironically,
several thousand employers and unions have already been exempted from Obamacare
when they appealed to the President or then-speaker of the house Pelosi in the
first few months after the bill passed.
How did we get this this point where the religious freedom
of people who own businesses can be trampled by our government? The answer lies in recognizing that there has
been a concerted effort underway for several hundred years, not only to remove
the influence of Christianity from government, but to replace it with a set of
beliefs that are based on materialism. Materialism
asserts that religious belief is irrational and divisive, because the universe
and everything in it is simply matter and there is no spiritual realm, no soul,
no afterlife. For several hundred years,
liberals have been spreading these ideas in colleges and more recently in
public education where they promote the concept that everyone has the natural
right to pursue whatever makes them happy.
They believe the greatest moral good is individual freedom including the
“right” to choose abortion, homosexual marriage and euthanasia. This liberal morality is now being imposed
by force of law. Liberals have gone from
advocating tolerance, to imposing their moral views in what amounts to a form
of religious belief in itself.
This effort to replace Christian values with liberal beliefs
was in play at the time of our nation’s founding. When they chose the Great Seal of the United
States in 1782, our founders included the image of an all seeing eye above a
pyramid. This image is the same one used
by the “illuminati” and Freemasons at about the same time our country won its
independence. In the 17th century,
political philosopher Baruch Spinoza described an ideal form of government in
which humanity is described as a pyramid where an “enlightened few” were at the
top and under them were the most intelligent people who would carry out the
dictates they received from the intelligentsia.
This was to be accomplished by controlling education, the judicial
system, the sciences, and the government, in such a way as to direct and
control the more ignorant mass of humanity.
Spinoza wanted to limit or
eliminate the influence of the Church, but acknowledged the importance of a
role for the church as long as it took its direction from the head of
government and was used to control the masses.
Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and FDR were all “progressives” who
shared the idea that government should direct every aspect of society. FDR, who was a Mason by the way, added the
eye and pyramid to the one dollar bill in 1935.
When the people controlling government, the courts, and
education, believe there are no absolute moral truths, we end up with moral
relativism, in which everybody gets to make up their own truth. Pope Benedict XVI warned about “the
dictatorship of relativism,” not only because it would demolish long-standing
religious and moral traditions, but because it imposes its own brand of
morality on everyone. That’s exactly
what’s happening now. Not only are we
losing the freedom to live out our faith, Christians are being punished for
failure to comply with the government’s immoral dictates. Wedding photographers and others have been
fined for refusal to participate in gay weddings, and religious orders are
being fined for refusal to pay for abortion-inducing drugs, both on the charge
that they are violating people’s “rights” by their refusal. If this persists, and the Supreme Court
allows the government to prevail, we will be entering an era where Christians
are being prosecuted (persecuted) for their beliefs.
This Thursday (March 27th) President Obama meets
with Pope Francis in Rome. I wonder if
this will come up?
No comments:
Post a Comment