Rally!

In a bow to my paleo-hippie past, I went to the rally for Religious Freedom in Atlanta.

I noticed a few things right off.  First, neither a whiff of pot on the air nor an overhanging smell of tear-gas, something I recall with a certain clarity from my protesting days in college.  And the crowd was polite, well dressed and full of children, the little ones darting in an out of the forest of legs.  And we started and ended with prayer, for ourselves for each other and for the people who are visiting such injury on us. 

And we sang—but not protest songs.  First, the national anthem—never did that in my college days.  Then Amazing Grace—a reminder in Lent of our own brokenness and need for redemption.  At the end, God Bless America. 

Speaker after speaker brought into focus the fact that the HHS Mandate is not a Catholic issue but an American one.  A bishop commented on the rain that was falling, calling it a good sign, for just as God uses the rain to soften the ground, we can call on Him to soften the hearts of the officials who have proposed and support the HHS mandate.  A young woman, raised in Hindu India and the Muslim Middle East, related her astonishment that she was not impeded in the practice of her faith in those countries, but faces it here.  With quiet force and clarity she painted a picture of the moral cesspools modern colleges—even some nominally Catholic ones—have become.  A man, another immigrant,  pointed out that 237 years ago to the day, Patrick Henry stood up—in a church, and no accident that—and addressed the Virginia Assembly with the words “Give me liberty or give me death.”  A beautiful, dignified woman, dressed in a red suit that would never have seen the light of day in the 60s, a veteran of the Civil Rights movement and the housing projects of her youth stirred the crowd as only one gifted in the African-American style of rhetoric can.  She reminded us that it is in churches that the battle against injustice always begins; churches are always the safe haven for the oppressed.  And out of churches comes great moral power and witness.  She ended by calling us to stand with our God, and to bring others into the fight.

Something we really need to do because the turnout for the rally I attended was respectable but not impressive, especially for a town where 30,000 people regularly turn out--and spend big bucks to do so-- to do something as ultimately unimportant watch sports and cheer on their favorite team.  It was especially disappointing in a place in which the Catholic faithful are growing in numbers at an astonishing rate.  We filled the courthouse steps and a bit of the street, but we were small enough to be ignored.  From the rhetoric it was clear that we are engaged in a battle for religious rights the like of which this country has never seen—the likes of which no one thought we’d ever see.  But our numbers tell another story—too many of us, Catholic or not—are not taking this seriously enough to disrupt our lives to do something visible, vocal and obvious about it.  It is no particular help if we have great numbers on our side if those in power don’t know that.  As it stands they are ignorant—willfully or just blindly—of just how many Americans stand against the HHS mandate.  It’s our job to show them, for if the constitutional imperative of our position is not enough to sway them (and to date, it has not been), the numbers just might.

And if we don’t, the coming repression of religious faith in the public square—of all faiths, not just of Catholics—will disrupt all of  our lives and the lives of generations to follow.

Over and over again we were urged to prayer in the rally, and that is good.  Prayer is always the first step but it’s not the last, for prayer, in addition to raising our concerns to the God who already knows them, is a vehicle by which He prepares us and goads us into our own action.  Prayer, in all its power, changes us as much as it changes others. 

If we are to prevail on this matter, if we are to engage the sympathetic but apathetic, we must be both visible and vocal in our presence as well as our prayers.  And we must persistent in complaining in such a way that the powers that be cannot mistake us or distort our message.  The parable of the persistent widow and the corrupt judge is meant to remind us to be faithful in prayer to the just, Heavenly Judge—but it’s important to remember the widow’s noisy persistence had a certain salutary effect on the earthly powers, too.

So here’s my rally wish list for remaining visible and vocal:

(1)  Prayers of the faithful.  Until the matter is resolved, I’d love to hear included in the weekly prayers of the faithful a specific petition for support of the Bishops as they continue in this fight, something more than the general petition for bishops and public officials that we already say.  I’ve made it my practice to raise it myself in daily mass, when vocal petitions are encouraged.  If this is to be a matter of continual and particular prayer, what better place to model that than in worship?

(2)  Weekly bulletin updates.  Scarcely a day goes by without something happening in this fight.  Dedicating a portion of the bulletin to updates will remind the faithful that the problem hasn’t gone away. And while we are at it, ask our non-Catholic brethren to do the same—both in prayer and in presence in the bulletin.

(3)  Encourage Religious Liberty Committees in every parish to keep abreast of events and pass information along by e-mail, bulletin inserts and, when needed, telephone tree.  Even an interested person can miss important news—I only found out about the Atlanta rally two days before.  I was fortunate to be able to take a day off on short notice, but the people I asked to join me could not.  This is too important not to take a belt-and-suspenders approach to keeping the faithful informed.

(4)  Signs of the times.  As I drove home from the rally, I saw signs for various political candidates in many of the yards.  A few years ago, in my own little community there was a battle of the signs with respect to a proposed change in local laws.  The signs kept the issue alive in our minds and sparked comment, commentary and discussion.  No one in that town went to the polls uninformed that year.  Isn’t there a philanthropist somewhere willing to jump-start a sign program? Failing that---an old bedsheet and spray paint like we used to use for homecoming?  I saw plenty of those hung from windows in Maine in the run-up to the Super Bowl, proving once again that sports is the religion that unites American life.  If we can hang a sheet from our window to support the New England Patriots, why not to support the New Religious ones?  

(5)  Letter writing—not just to politicians, but to the local newspapers.  Most papers have a rule against publishing too many letters from a single source in a short period of time.  But regular letters on a subject, even if not published, might raise awareness that there IS a significant resistance to this mandate and that it remains an important issue. 

(6)  Awareness ribbons, lapel pins and bumper-stickers.  When I was a protesting college student, I went to class every day with a black armband on to protest the war in Vietnam. Tying on a a shred of black cloth was easy, cheap, easily identifiable and visible; I literally wore my opinion on my sleeve.  Like the road signs, it stimulated conversations.  Not all of them were pleasant and some of them were more heat than light—but at least I was talking to people who disagreed with me—giving me a change to make my point—and on those occasions when my temper did not get the better of me—opening the door to discovery of common ground.  I suggest a tasteful black ribbon (for the death of conscience) or lapel pins—there are a number of great designs like the one below at St. Peter’s List where  you can indicate your interest in buttons, t-shirts and the like. Perhaps another budding entrepreneur can come up with something equally eloquent--and FAST!

(7)  Visible solidarity with others of like mind and continuing public presence. One of my favorite movies when I was a kid was The Day the Earth Stood Still.  The alien in the movie arranged for everything run by electricity to stop for an hour on one particular day as a warning to mankind against the dangers of war.  I’ve no illusions that we can bring the world to a stop like that but imagine how powerful the witness would be if at noon every Friday from now until the mandate is rescinded, every person of conscience would stop what he is doing, step outside, bow his head and pray, quietly but vocally a prayer of his own choice, the quietly go back to his work.

The song Alice’s Restaurant was popular during my college days.  At the end of it, Arlo Guthrie spins a tale of what might happen if one person went into the Army Recruiter, sang a bar of Alice’s restaurant, and walked out.  In the language of the day, he points out that one person doing that might be thought crazy, a couple might be thought odd and dangerous, but if enough people participate, it’s a movement—and people pay attention to movements.

We have our consciences.  We had our rallies.  We have our websites and our champions and our spokesmen.  We have our cause and know our battle plan. We have our patrons (St. Thomas More, St. Edmond Campion and Blessed Mary Ball leap to mind—all martyrs to a religious persecution that came out of the same system of laws as our own). 

By the looks of the rallies yesterday, we have a movement.  Let’s now badger the living daylights out of the administration on the matter of this most unjust of mandates.

Mandates

I have followed the posture of the current administration toward the Catholic Church with some interest, ever since I first got wind of the suit against Belmont Abbey for refusing to provide insurance coverage that included sterilization.  This was in 2009—a short time into the current administration—and the complaint by the EEOC alleged that in failing to provide for contraceptives, Belmont Abbey was in violation of Title VII—designed to prevent discrimination on the basis of sex.  It was an early bellwether of the current crisis and went largely unremarked except for a few voices sounding the alarm.  Not only did it foreshadow the aggressiveness that the Obama Administration would have in coming after the Catholic Church in the public square, it gave a hint of the arguments that would be used.

It’s worth paying attention to those arguments, for they have great significance, not only in how this will play out in terms of national policy but also in terms of the way the Church sees itself.  The EEOC complaint against Belmont Abbey stemmed from its position as employer and took the posture that the Church when it pays people to work for it, is no different from any other employer in the marketplace.  In short—this administration draws a sharp line between employment—which it clearly considers simply a secular contractual arrangement—and exercise of religion.

Visit the comboxes on the blogs dealing with this and you’ll see the same thing.  Time after time, the argument put forth is this:  The Church is entitled to deference in its own sphere of worship, but when it enters the public arena and engages in secular pursuits, it should be treated just like any other employer.

Read that again, carefully.  In short, the argument is that the Christian life must be lived out only within the confines of the houses of worship—any activity outside the parochial world is automatically secular.  The public square is one in which the secular—not the religious—holds sway. 

If it were not such a desperate situation, this ignorant premise would be laughable.  The Church—the Catholic Church—is responsible for the establishment of schools, hospitals, orphanages, colleges and everything the modern world thinks of a “social service” agencies.  Read properly in the context of history, even our own brief national history, these institutions have, until only very recent times—been religious, not secular, in nature.  Until recently it was understood that religious people lived out their religious lives publicly, sometimes in providing schools, hospitals, and social services that other people needed.  That these were religious services—and that they were valuable and to be encouraged—was a given.

How is it that a good portion of the modern world thinks otherwise?  How is it that well-educated people can assert, with force and with some credibility, that the HHS mandate seeks only to regulate the Church when it seeks to act in a secular capacity?

Some of this, I think, is part of a well-calculated plan by what Father Barron terms liberal totalitarians to squeeze the Church out of the public square, making people dependent on the government instead of the Church.  In this regard, the clash we are witnessing is a clash of two religions: the Christian faith, most particularly as embodied in the Catholic Church, and the religion of Radical Secularism.  It’s no accident that this attack occurs in a time when radical, aggressive Atheism is also on the rise.

But we Christians—we Catholics—have to bear some of the blame.  When I came into the Catholic Church, I was astonished to find so many of my fellow Catholics so apathetic about the joys and riches of my newly-embraced faith.  I recall vividly that one woman friend, somewhat exasperated by my convert’s enthusiasm, told me:   You have to remember, we were taught that all we had to do was come to mass every week, and that was all we had to do.

Balderdash.  That may be what some of you cradle Catholics heard, but growing up in the same time and outside the faith, I knew the Catholic faith was much, much  more than Sunday worship. I was delivered by nursing sisters in a Catholic hospital—the only one in town.  I saw Catholic friends who saved their milk money to send it off to care for African orphans.  I saw priests and sisters put their lives on the line to help end segregation in the South and racism everywhere. Those of us who were stuck in the second-rate school system of my hometown wanted dearly to be able to go to the (integrated even before it was mandated)  Catholic schools.  I knew that being Catholic meant being very, very active in the world. And I admired it, even then.

Somehow, the world at large has gotten the idea that the Christian faith--Catholic faith-- is now a matter of mere intellect and freedom of thought and Sunday worship alone, of being free to go to mass and take Good Friday off and make the sign of the cross in public without getting attacked.

Balderdash again, and this time, shame on us for letting that happen. 

The Catholic faith is not just about being able to go to mass in peace.  It’s about being fed in the mass to take Christ out into the word where the worship of Him really begins.  The mass—source and summit of our faith-- calls us together as Act I of a great drama—the feeding and preparation of the faithful.  Act II is taking that faith into the world and making it—making Christ—present.  It’s important that the world understand that in operating hospitals and clinics and schools and social service agencies, the Church is not intruding on the secular world—we are simply continuing our worship.  We are—in the language of the constitution—exercising our faith.  Hospitals and schools and charities are not a handy sideline to the faith—they are the faith.

It is not the character of an at that determines worship—nor is it strictly the arena.  It is the intent, the purpose, the end to which it is directed. We simply cannot be Catholics without engaging in taking our faith into the world as we are commanded.  The constitution guarantees us freedom of exercise of religion—not mere freedom of worship.  It guarantees that the state—that would be HHS in this case—does not get to define what exercise of religion is.  That, after all, is what the Founding Fathers fled in England—the state dictating what religion could be.  And Catholics caught the hard edge of that sword as well—ask the recusant families in the time of Elizabeth I.

The same act can be completely different in quality, depending on who performs it. Feeding the poor can be a calculated act of political expediency or it can be a communion with Christ.  Caring for the sick can be a means to achieve great profits or it can be fulfilling the mandate of Christ to love one another.  A school can be a place of social indoctrination or a place of discovering one’s unique, precious and unrepeatable place in the world, according to God’s will.  Any program, any institution can be secular or religious—and the activities  each engages in can be very similar.  It is the actor, not the act, that makes the difference; the motive, not the activity.

Catholics have a long tradition (since Pentecost, in fact)  of worshiping God in the corporal acts of mercy: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving drink to the thirsty, giving shelter to the homeless, visiting the sick, ransoming the captive, burying the dead.  Roll in two of the spiritual works of mercy (instructing the ignorant and consoling the afflicted) and you have a pretty good description of the activities in the public square that the HHS mandate is designed to squelch. 

If this administration succeeds in forcing this mandate,  it will be because we Catholics have forgotten that worship isn’t just inside the four walls of our parishes and we’ve let others forget it as well.  It will be because we have forgotten to exercise our faith personally.  It will because we have forgotten that the dismissal of the mass is to send us as Catholics out do to those works of mercy that too few of us can even name any more.  It will be because we’ve bought into the idea that participation in public life means acquiescence with secular agenda.  It will be because we—like my friend—will have bought into the idea that all we have to do is go to mass every week and we are fine.

It will be because we’ve let the other side—even the other side that wishes to represent itself as Catholic when it is at variance with the teachings of the Church-- control the language and the argument. It will be because we lost sight of the real mandate--the mandate that we share the good news with all the world.  All of it.  Not just the part that HHS deems proper.

This isn’t about just about conscience—a word with little or no meaning in the public square.  It’s certainly not about women’s health.  It’s not about access to health care or discrimination. It’s not about a payment shell game that tries to trick inattentive Catholics into thinking that they have distanced themselves from participation in grave evil when they have not. And it matters not one bit whether a majority of Catholics or anyone else agrees that provision of contraception and sterilization and abortion services by employers is a good idea.

It’s about whether we Catholics are willing to stand up and demand that this administration honor constitutionally-given right to live out our faith as we see fit.  We are presented with two incompatible mandates, one from HHS and one from Christ.

It's up to us to choose which one we will support and act accordingly.