The Department of Injustice

This past week’s daily scripture readings included the beautiful first three chapters of The Book of Ecclesiastes.    Chapter one starts with, “Vanity of vanities, all things are vanity,” which the author explains to mean that all man’s toil and effort amounts to nothing because it cannot satisfy us, nor compare to God’s creation and eternal life.  Chapter three contains the beautiful verse that was put to music by The Byrds in 1969:  “There is an appointed time for everything… A time to be born, a time to die… a time of war, a time of peace,” etc.  The weekly scripture leads up to Sunday’s first reading from Ezekiel which proclaims that those who turn away from virtue will surely die, and those who do what is right and just, will save their (eternal) lives.  This culminates in the gospel when Jesus tells the chief priests and elders that tax collectors and prostitutes will enter heaven before them because they turned away from their sinfulness and have chosen the path of righteousness.

The name of the Byrds’ song was “Turn! Turn! Turn!” which may well have referred to the notion of turning away from futile human plotting in favor of righteousness.  Here’s a link to the song if you’re up for a blast from the past: www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4ga_M5Zdn4  

The theme of scripture for the past week seems to be that we can use our free will to turn away from the things that are futile and will never truly satisfy us, and turn instead to virtue as epitomized by Jesus Christ.  The terms righteousness and justice may seem archaic, and are surely misunderstood in our modern age.  Doing what is right forms the basis of being righteous, but what exactly is the right thing to do?  Although each of us has a free will and the ability to choose our actions, doing what is right depends on understanding what contributes to the good, both our own good and the common good.  Certainly we all make bad decisions from time to time and end up hurting ourselves or those around us.  This is why we need guidance.  If a child is left undirected, they are bound to hurt themselves in one way or another.  If we fail to mature and learn to control our appetites and selfish desires, our lives will turn out to be a mess.  We all need guidance to learn right from wrong, and to stay on the path of righteousness.  When we err, justice demands that we suffer the consequences, and this serves as motivation to do right and avoid wrong in the future.  It also implies that justice be based on what is right in the first place. 

For Justice to be just, it must comport with the common good, and to guide us in the right direction, God gave us His Law, in the form of the Ten Commandments.  In recent years, numerous efforts have been made, often successful, to remove images of the Ten Commandments from court houses and public properties.  Not surprisingly, our Justice system has taken a turn for the worse.  In times past, adultery was understood as a violation of a sacred oath and an affront to the common good.  Now it is considered commonplace and simply a fact of everyday life in which people are simply pursuing their own happiness.   Murder, while still a capital crime, no longer includes protection of  the unborn.   Instead, our justice system ensures access to abortion, with federal law overriding state laws to the contrary.   Fortunately, a recent effort by Democrats to strike down virtually every state law putting any sort of restriction on abortions or abortion facilities (such as requiring basic medical safety regulations) failed to pass in the Senate.   Marriage between one man and one woman, which has been considered fundamental to the common good of humanity and the continuation of our species for almost all of human history, is now considered an attack on the civil rights of gay couples.

Last week Eric Holder resigned as head of the Department of Justice.  In his six years, he has done more to undermine the common good than any other Attorney General I can think of.   Early on, Holder pursued a church (Hosanna Tabor) all the way to the Supreme Court, trying to force them to hire a gay minister.  Fortunately, he lost that one 9-0.  He has fought persistently to overturn numerous laws passed by state legislatures if they were in conflict with the liberal, progressive agenda regarding marriage, voter ID requirements, or religious freedom.  Most recently, Holder and his Justice Department have continued to pursue the Little Sisters of the Poor who won a reprieve in lower court from the Obamacare mandate that they provide contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs to their hospice and nursing home employees.  Holder and his minions plan to pursue this all the way to the Supreme Court, despite knowing that if the Sisters lose, they will shut down all their hospices and nursing homes rather than violate their religious beliefs.  How would that outcome benefit anyone, or the common good?

During his ongoing farewell tour, Holder touts his accomplishments on civil rights, including the rights of the LGBT and black communities.  I guess he thinks intervening in the Trevon Martin trial, and showing up in Ferguson Missouri before the facts have been investigated, demonstrate his zeal at ensuring civil rights, despite trampling all over due process law.  His persistent efforts to thwart state laws requiring voter ID are viewed as protecting civil rights, despite the high percentage of voter fraud that ensues when anyone can vote without proof of identity, much less citizenship.   His attempts to abolish state laws regulating the abortion industry are viewed as ensuring the civil right to an abortion.  Can any of this be considered right?  Does it contribute to the common good that unborn babies be killed, or that people be allowed, even encouraged, to vote illegally and more than once?   Does any of this comport with the Good as revealed by God in nature and natural law?  If not, how can it be called Justice?

It seems that under Eric Holder we now have a Department of Injustice, one that defies the constitution rather than upholding it.  Holder’s legacy is one of progressive activism that has striven to reshape our country in ways that redefine the common good as the exercise of absolute freedom, rather than adherence to God’s Law as revealed in scripture and in nature.   When human law begins to run contrary to divine law, society is at risk of committing suicide.  If this seems extreme, consider the trajectory we’re on with declining birth rates, declining morality, and the deterioration of the Judeo-Christian principles that formed the basis of our constitution.  It’s time to TURN! TURN! TURN!  before it’s too late.  The upcoming elections would be a good place to start, if we can elect legislators with the guts to restore Justice based on what is Right, rather than what is appealing to our increasingly secular society in its vain efforts to find comfort in its own dissolution.