Justice Kennedy’s notion of “liberty” will wield serious damage as it works its way through our cultural, religious, and political institutions.
Also this week: Steve Mosher takes a sober look at the “science” in Pope Francis’ latest encyclical, “Laudato Si.”
PRI Review Podcast
July 17, 2015
Justice Kennedy’s Marriage Decision
ChallengesThe Church and Society
Are you enjoying your liberty today? You might want to think twice before you answer – the Supreme Court has just decided how free you really are!
The court’s new definition of liberty comes in Obergefell v. Hodges, The ruling forces every state in the union to accept same-sex marriage.
In one sense, this is curious. John Stuart Mill was a big fan of liberty. He even wrote a book about it. Well, Mr. Mill describes marriage as slavery because wives are slaves to their husbands.
Well, I guess now wives can be slaves to their wives, too.
It reminds me of that French Enlightenment philosopher, Denis Diderot. He explains the difference between “to bind” and “to attach” this way: “a man is attached to his mistress, but he is bound to his wife.”
Well, if Marriage is bondage, why is the left celebrating?
There’s method to this madness – and, believe me, it IS madness.
In the twentieth century, feminists picked up the “slavery” chant – marriage condemns women to children, church, and the kitchen, they roared.
Well, For the left, marriage and family have always been the enemy.
Karl Marx hated marriage, and his wife and children were always destitute.
But wait – doesn’t the left support marriage today? Well, yes – as long as it is between sodomites.
Now – Isn’t that kind of a contradiction?
Well, not really. As Robert Reilly argues (Making Gay OK – Ignatius Press), counterfeit currency always debases the real thing. And counterfeit marriage aims to do exactly that – it will make marriage worthless.
There’s a lot more going on about marriage outside the courts these days, as well. Pope Francis will attend the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia this September, and a month later he will host bishops from around the world in Rome at a Synod devoted to the Family and the Sacrament of Marriage.
But like Roe v. Wade, the dust won’t settle from the fallout of Obergefell. In the long run, it will just be one more step towards making nihilism the national religion.
What does nihilism mean? Moral chaos. And that is always followed by the iron hand of tyranny.
That’s why the Left likes it.
In a moment, we’ll look at how the Church might deal with that fallout. But first, let’s look at some background – because the marriage decision is revolutionary and at the same time it is the result of a long process.
Since the 1960s, a steady breakdown of the country’s moral culture combined with an effective propaganda effort to advance the sexual revolution. Once abortion rights were guaranteed by the court 42 years ago, the revolutionaries made homosexual rights their next cause.
The court’s latest decision will undoubtedly not be its last attempt to alter the course and culture of American life.
So let’s look at the principles that inform the decision, because, destructive as they are, they are going to be destroying a whole lot more before they’re through.
Justice Kennedy invented the court’s definition of liberty in a case called Planned Parenthood v. Casey, back in 1992. Like Obergefell, Casey was decided in a 5 to 4 decision, with Kennedy casting the swing vote.
Here are Kennedy’s memorable words from that 1992 case:
“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
Note that Kennedy doesn’t merely say “imagine” – like John Lennon, maybe. No, he says, “define.” Each of us has the right to define what reality is for us– and then apply it to everything we do!
My, that sounds just wonderful, doesn’t it? We can all dream the impossible dream and then make it come real – for us, anyway. If you want to marry your kid brother, or your entire high school graduating class, Justice Kennedy will cheer you on.
So let’s see where Kennedy’s definition of liberty takes us.
In “Notes towards the Definition of Culture,” T.S. Eliot introduces a riveting epigraph.
According to the Oxford English dictionary, he observes, “to define” means “the setting of bounds” or “limitation.”
Limits are essential to every definition, says the dictionary. And yet, Kennedy has “defined” his notion of liberty as the abolition of all limits.
Curiously, this reminds me of Bobby Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1968.
In the spring of 1968, Kennedy’s campaign manager at Notre Dame had a huge poster on his dorm room wall featuring a thoughtful Bobby thinking his famous campaign slogan.
This is how it read, “You see things and you say ‘Why’? But I dream things that never were, and ask ‘Why not?’”
Now, Bobby’s flaks borrowed that line from George Bernard Shaw – a fact his fawning biographers generally acknowledge. What they don’t mention is its origin: it comes from Shaw’s 1921 play, Back To Methuselah – about the Garden of Eden.
Surprise – Bobby Kennedy actually borrowed his beloved slogan from Satan! Because Shaw depicts Satan using that exact phrase to tempt Eve.
Satan wanted Eve to be free!
Reject God, His creation, and His commands! Dream on, and be your own God!
No limits!
Satan promises Eve that she can create a better world than God did – all by herself, using her own imagination – a world that she could continually recreate every day, as easily as a serpent sheds his skin.
But why would she want to do such a thing?
Even the socialist Shaw knew better than to call that “liberty.”
The serpent was offering Eve a beautiful fruit, disguising disobedience as “liberty.”
Today that fraudulent promise of Satan still haunts us. It’s a bloodthirsty dagger of denial aimed at the heart of Christendom, the Incarnation, and all of reality.
And now it’s legal, thanks to the Supreme Court.
What happens next? Chaos – and then, tyranny.
Socrates recognized long ago that the tyrant longs to impose his worst nightmares on the rest of us during his waking hours.
And Justice Kennedy tells the tyrant – hey, dream on! Go for it!
Sure, this is insanity, as Socrates warned us long ago. But what makes it legal?
It’s called “Legal positivism, ” a theory that prevails today in much of the West. Its founder was Hans Kelsen, who introduced it 100 years ago.
Legal positivism says that there are no moral grounds for law. Once a law is passed according to the official rules of procedure, then there is no “higher law” by which we can judge it.
Does it work?
Well, in fact, after World War II, Kelsen bluntly admitted that there was no moral standard by which the murders of millions of innocent people by Stalin and Hitler could be condemned.
Why? Because those murders were all “legal.”
With positivism, right and wrong are intentionally placed in the hands of politicians; if the law says sodomy is a public good, it is to be protected by the force of law.
We cannot appeal to a higher law – because it doesn’t exist!
Before you say “hey, that can’t happen here,” please recall that Satan’s temptation succeeded. And, with Mr. Kennedy’s latest decision, it has happened here.
Get ready for the nightmare.
When we come back, we’ll take a look at the scientific fallacies that worked their way into the pope’s latest encyclical. Does someone in the Vatican owe Pope Francis an apology?
This is PRI Review from www.pop.org. We’ll be right back.
== break:
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2. Laudato Mosher
Our last podcast took a first look at the latest encyclical of Pope Francis. It’s called “laudato Sii, Domine” – praised be the Lord,
It addresses the earth – our common home – and offers a blend of theological truths with a variety of opinions regarding the environment. Steve Mosher, president of the population research Institute, has taken a closer look at it.
Mosher is a longtime scientific researcher, as well as a farmer in the Shenandoah Valley who has raised nine children.
In brief, Mosher concludes that The Earth is not “Sick,” and Mankind is Thriving as Never Before
Mosher’s careful reading of Laudato Sii finds what he calls “many unsubstantiated claims and groundless assertions.” Many of them are so over-the-top that they can even be falsified by citing the UN documents they pretend to rely on.
The document’s affirmations of Catholic doctrine are welcome, but they are not new. From a strictly scientific point of view, however, Mosher calls the Encyclical an embarrassment.
Of course, the document often lapses into hyperbole. Mosher, a prolific writer himself, forgives its references to the “environmental crisis” and “the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air, and in all forms of life.” After all, occasional exaggeration for effect is part of the writer’s craft, he explains.
But what about the document’s support of Global Warming? Mosher sets that issue aside for the scientists – and Pope Francis admits that the science isn’t yet clear on the issue. In fact, Mosher doesn’t criticize the pope at all – Francis isn’t a trained scientist, and that is Mosher’s focus.
No, the Holy Father relied on environmental “experts” selected by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to advise him on these matters. The responsibility for these embarrassing lapses lies with them, not with him.
Mosher drills into the scientific fictions that crept into the document.
“the quality of water available to the poor is constantly diminishing,” it alleges.
Really?
According to The Millennium Development Goals 2014 Report – from the United Nations – over the past twenty years, “Access to an improved drinking water source became a reality for 2.3 billion people.”
2.3 billion more people with improved drinking water? That doesn’t sound like “diminishing.”
How about what the document calls the “Loss of Biodiversity”?
“Each year sees the disappearance of thousands of plant and animal species which we will never know, which our children will never see, because they have been lost forever,” the document alleges, blaming human activity.
Many species have seen their natural habitats reduced, of course, and their numbers threatened, Mosher points out, but now / nature preserves / encompass some “14.6 percent of the earth’s land surface area and 9.7 per cent of its coastal marine areas.” The document ignores that reality – in fact, we are already achieving the goal of protecting biodiversity and reducing anthropogenic species extinction in this way. There is no need for panic.
The document alleges that the past 200 years have seen a decline in the Quality of Human Life and the Breakdown of Society.
Mosher disagrees.
“In 1815 there were approximately 1 billion people alive on the planet, he writes. “The average lifespan was 30 years, and the per capita income was a mere $100. The life of man in nature, as Thomas Hobbes famously remarked, was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
Well, today there are 7.2 billion people living on Planet Earth, the average lifespan is 71, and the GDP per capita, using purchasing power parity, is over $12,000. In other words, as our numbers have grown, so has our well-being and prosperity. Lifespans have more than doubled and per capita incomes have risen over a hundred times!
That improvement in the quality of life is unprecedented in human history – how can it be so cavalierly dismissed?
But wait – what about the poor – billions of people, the document asks.
In fact, the worldwide reduction of poverty is a great success story. The UN’s own studies admit that “The world has reduced extreme poverty by half. In 1990, almost half of the population in developing regions lived on less than $1.25 a day. This rate dropped to 22 per cent by 2010, reducing the number of people living in extreme poverty by 700 million.”
“This means that the world reached the UN’s target—of cutting in half the proportion of people living in extreme poverty—five years ahead of its own 2015 deadline. Meantime, the absolute number of people living in extreme poverty fell from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 1.2 billion in 2010.”
Mosher asks the simple question – are we moving in the right direction? The folks who wrote the document say no; According to the facts, the answer is a resounding yes.
Mosher makes an interesting point about poverty politics. “One can always redefine poverty upward,” he writes, “as we have done repeatedly in the United States since the War on Poverty began. It is no secret that this has been done for political reasons by a certain political party to ensure that they “will always have the poor with them”… in the voting booth.”
Walter Williams, a black economist who actually grew up in extreme poverty, puts it more bluntly: “A lot of the money goes to the poverty industry’s double parasites people who suck the blood of the affluent and fester the sores of the poor.” If all the money that the United States spends on the poor actually went to the poor, every poor family of four would have forty-eight thousand dollars, adjusted for inflation.
Of course, that would put the poverty parasites out of business.
Mosher condemns the “apocalypse now” attitude that pervades the entire document. Consider this one: “Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or distain. We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation and filth. … our contemporary lifestyle [is] unsustainable …”
We’ve heard all this before. For many years, quack scientists have been predicting that an environmental, economic and societal collapse is just around the corner – unless we put them in charge.
They’ve always been wrong, of course – and they’re wrong now.
But they were in charge of writing the encyclical, and Mosher wonders why.
As Morton Blackwell explained long ago, personnel makes policy. Given the document’s content, Mosher finds it unsurprising that that Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, an atheist population controller, had a part in drafting it. Dr. Schellnhuber was apparently selected for this role by Archbishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, the head of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, who has since defiantly appointed him to the Academy.
Personnel makes policy. The head of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences should have ensured that this encyclical was free of errors of scientific fact. Who but the head of the academy should have selected experts who were committed to both scientific reason and the Catholic faith?
In selecting Schellnhuber, he might as well have turned the manuscript over to a fundraising copywriter for the Environmental Defense Fund.
While he was in Paraguay just last week, Pope Francis admitted that he didn’t know much about economics. We should not be surprised that he doesn’t know much about climate science, either. But Archbishop Sorondo should – and his malfeasance has embarrassed Pope Francis and the Church.
Mosher is right. Archbishop Sanchez Sorondo has squandered the moral authority of the Papacy. He should accept full responsibility and resign.”
When we come back, èwe’ll take a look at the future – what challenges will we face when the government starts imposing the supreme court’s marriage doctrine on the rest of society?ç
This is PRI Review from www.pop.org. We’ll be right back.
Part Three
In coming weeks we’ll be following the marriage story closely. Let’s start by looking at the basics of the supreme court’s same-sex marriage decision.
After Justice Kennedy’s opinion redefining marriage was announced, Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, the Catholic bishops’ point man on religious freedom, predicted that the court’s decision “will give rise to many challenges and legal controversies.”
He wasn’t exaggerating.
Most Catholic bishops found the decision disappointing. Beyond that, they took two approaches.
First, Donald Cardinal Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington.
“The law of the land is the law of the land,” says Cardinal Wuerl. “We certainly follow what the law says. That doesn’t mean we change the word of God. That doesn’t mean we change the scriptures, or the church’s millennia-long tradition of what marriage is.”
“Everyone is welcome to the faith,” Wuerl continued: “Nobody is turned away because of their sexual identity, because of their race because of their ethnic background.”
Hmmmm. Is being gay is like being black or Hispanic?
Well, we have to bear in mind that Cardinal Wuerl’s archdiocese contains the most concentrated power-center of gay-rights activists in the world. And the church is their mortal enemy.
Or should I say “immortal”?
Well, Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas took a different approach. The decision amounts to an “unjust” law “contrary to the moral order, he said. It is “not binding in conscience.”
Bishop Strickland insists that the church’s pastoral care of homosexual persons “cannot and will not “lead to condoning homosexual behavior or the “acceptance of the legal recognition of same-sex unions.”
“We know that unjust laws and other measures contrary to the moral order are not binding in conscience. Thus, we must now exercise our right to conscientious objection against this interpretation of our law which is contrary to the common good and the true understanding of marriage,” he wrote.
“[T]his extremely unfortunate decision by our government is unjust and immoral, and it is our duty to clearly and emphatically oppose it.”
Thus far Bishop Strickland.
Accept it? Or oppose it?
A review of statements on the decision from several dozen bishops around the country indicates that the majority are taking Cardinal Wuerl’s approach. But when the rubber meets the road, I predict that Cardinal Wuerl will sound more like Bishop Strickland with every passing day.
Because, whether the Catholic Church follows his position of treating the decision like the law of the land, or follows Bishop Strickland’s road of active resistance, the Catholic Church will eventually confront sustained lethal attacks on its ability to maintain a foothold in the public square.
Archbishop Lori is right.
There are several paths that can be followed. So far, the church, religious orders like the Little sisters of the poor, religious institutions like Notre Dame, and countless other entities and individuals have had to sue in federal court to defend their religious rights against the Obama Administration.
They have been forced into this defensive posture by the brilliant tactics of Obama and his gay – activist allies. Let’s face it, Obama is a disaster at running the country and our foreign policy, but he is a razor-sharp Chicago pol when he attacks religious values and religious organizations – yes, and religious people – in the United States.
Consider: the HHS mandate was promulgated by Obama’s HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, a bitter, excommunicated Catholic.
Yet, in combating this outrageous diktat, all of these plaintiffs have spent tens of millions of dollars to defend themselves against the immoral and unjust actions of the Obama government.
Obama knows full well that those tens of millions will now not be spent to defeat the politicians who support his policies in the Congress and the courts.
Pretty slick, isn’t it?
Bishop Strickland is right – the decision “is unjust and immoral, and it is our duty to clearly and emphatically oppose it.”
But that won’t be easy.
Never forget that pro-abortion, pro-sodomy politicians have very thin skins. They will not take opposition lightly.
And criticism? No way!
Like Obama, they will launch a frontal attack, and in the Catholic Church’s case, they will focus on four targets:
First, Congress allocates over $1 billion a year’s to the US Catholic bishops conference and its subsidiaries. Senior prelates admit that this cash has had an impact. The bishops criticism of the government and its insidious attacks on the church have to be muted because, after all, they’re on the government payroll.
Nonetheless, the threat of losing that billion dollars a year is real.
And if they lose it, where else are they going to get it?
Our bishops realize that they have lost the support of many of the faithful – in fact, Cardinal Dolan admits that at least a third of Catholics in America have left the church altogether. According to the Pew Trust, former Catholics – thirty million of them – constitute the second largest denomination religious denomination in the country.
Second, gay activists and their allies have made it no secret that they plan to sue every entity and person who refuses to embrace same-sex marriage publicly.
And, since the Catholic Church is ultimately the only rock-solid source of moral truth that does not change at the whim of Caesar, the Catholic Church will be the primary target of opportunity for those attacks.
Third, an avalanche of demands and lawsuits will attempt to deprive the church of its tax-exempt status. Already, Time magazine has editorialized that the faithful should no longer have the right to deduct their donations when they file their tax returns.
This is not far-fetched. We have already seen revelations of the rogue operations by the IRS, illegally attempting to influence federal elections and leaking confidential taxpayer information to Obama operatives.
Americans no longer trust the revenuers at all – they are just one more belligerent and partisan arm of the Leviathan.
What can they do? Well, for starters, Imagine a few hundred Catholic critics of Obama being called in for an audit.
That’s what Bill Clinton did – and Hillary had over a hundred secret FBI files in her White House library, all of them conservatives that were on her enemies’ list.
Both Bill Clinton and Obama have sicced the IRS on their enemies. There is plenty of precedent. As I said, the threat is not far-fetched. And now that the NSA has our every spoken and written word in its database, there’s a turnkey tyranny just waiting to happen. And remember, the Catholic Church is Caesar’s public enemy number one.
Third, we must remember that Obama and his allies never rely on any single line of attack against their enemies. Every single bureaucracy – the IRS, the EPA, the Interior Department, the TSA, and hundreds of other substantive bureaucratic subsidiaries of the Leviathan will harass and punish his opponents, one individual at a time. In fact, they already do.
Our bishops don’t complain because, after all, they could be next.
Mao Tse Tung said, “Let a hundred flowers bloom.” This is a classic tactic of budding tyrants, and it increases when, like sharks swimming in the ocean, the troops of the tyrant smell blood on the water.
In this case, the flowers are wrapped in thorns.
Fourth, as the late Cardinal George predicted, Catholic bishops who stand up to the government assault will be ferociously attacked.
What will happen when Catholic bishops begin publicly to call out the Catholic pro-abortion, pro-sodomy politicians?
Canon 915 reads: “Those who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”
There are pastoral reasons for that. First of all, this action warns the sinner – hey, your soul is in peril, don’t make it worse!
Second of all, this action demonstrates to the faithful that the Church’s teachings about the Eucharist and morality are serious, and that our bishops take them seriously enough actually to defend them.
Will that happen? We should hope so. But don’t expect pro-abort politicians to jump up and cheer when it does.
Back in 2007, when Pope Benedict calmly affirmed church law, that pro-abortion politicians should not receive the Eucharist, a Capitol Hill reporter asked Patrick Leahy, the Catholic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, for comment on the pope’s statement,
Leahy, who is pro-abortion, was blunt: “I’ve always thought that those bishops and archbishops who for decades hid pederasts and are now being protected by the Vatican should be indicted,” he said.
That statement, made by the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was undoubtedly on top of every bishop’s inbox the next morning.
Archbishop Lori was right. There are challenges coming – perhaps even chastisement.
Are America’s bishops ready for the persecution? Are we?
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Next week we’ll take a look at the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, including the distressing role that many of America’s so-called allies are playing in it. Patriarchs from across the Middle East are begging for help. Is there anything we can do?
And we’ll look at how the gay government’s persecution of marriage supporters is picking up steam.
To find out, tune into the PRI Review from www.pop.org. Until then, this is Christopher Manion, thanks for listening.
