Conscience and Tyranny

A little while ago, I was hiking up a mountain in Lake George, NY with my father, two brothers, and youngest sister.  Happily the mountain was a very small one, for my father and I probably could have handled little more.  As we huffed and puffed in growing fatigue, my sister, then about 5 minutes ahead of us, waited for us to catch up and then told us about some disfavor she had fallen into at her work.  In response, I told her about a tyrant who once showed a visitor to his garden.  Among the plants in the garden, one had grown above the rest.  The tyrant showed his visitor about the garden and as they approached the one plant that grew above the rest, the tyrant pulled out a machete and quickly cut it down to the level of the others.  The message was clear: no subject must be allowed to rise above the rest.  Tyranny can tolerate mediocrity but never excellence. 

The tyrant in question might have been any number of men over the years.  It might have been Napoleon  Stalin, or Henry VIII.  Robert Bolton captured well the attitude of Henry VIII toward the few men that dared raise their heads above the rest, toward the few plants that dared grow above their appointed bounds.  When Henry VIII broke with Rome and declared himself the head of the Church of England, he demanded that everyone follow him.  Nearly everyone did—but nearly was not enough.  When almost everyone else went along, Thomas More, did not.  He did not speak or write against Henry, he simply remained silent.  One silent man perhaps should not have seemed too much of a threat to Henry VIII, but Henry did not want More’s silence, but his approval.  When everyone else supported Henry, why should one silent man have bothered him so much?  Bolton’s Henry, speaking to More, gave the answer:

            Because you're honest... and what is more to the purpose, you're known to be honest. There are those like Norfolk who follow me because I wear the crown; and those like Master Cromwell who follow me because they are jackals with sharp teeth and I'm their tiger; there's a mass that follows me because it follows anything that moves. And then there's you...

The existence of even one good man is a spur in the conscience of the wicked.  The existence of one good man tells the rest of the world what it should be and that it should not be what it is.  Even schoolchildren know this; it is why they dislike excellence in their classmates.  Henry stood condemned not by any word of Thomas More’s, but by his existence.  He stood judged not by a letter of More’s, but by his very life.  Faced with this condemnation, Henry could have beaten his own breast in repentance, or he could have beaten More’s head off.  He did the latter. 

More was not the first to lose his head to the tyrant’s blade.  John the Baptist lost his head in like circumstances to the same sort of petty tyrant.  King Herod had married his brother’s wife while his brother was still living and John forbade him this.  John was only one weak prophet.  He had no armies and was no threat Herod, save that he threatened his conscience.  But that was enough.  John was a good man, known to be a good man and hence by his very existence condemned Herod.  And so Herod (and his wife) had to destroy John.  If there were only one good man (or woman) in a bad world, the world would have to destroy that one man.  How could it not, when on a gibbet before the nations, it unfurled goodness itself (1)? 

The same persecution is still the case even today.  Many supporters of same-sex “marriage” insist they simply want to be “married” and will leave everyone else alone.  But this is not true.  There are multiple examples of bakeries refusing to make a cake in celebration of a same-sex wedding, and being attacked because of it (2).  Why that should be when many other bakeries would happily make such a cake should now be obvious.  It would not matter if 99 bakeries in a city would happily make a cake for such a wedding.  As long as only one would not, that one would be too much.  If one man only refuses to support same same “marriage” and stands on silence, that one man will be too much and it will be for the same reason Henry VIII could not stand for Thomas More’s silence.  As Bolton’s Cromwell put it, “silence can, in fact, speak--” sometimes too much for a guilty conscience to bear.

(1). Fulton Sheen, Life of Christ

http://www.amazon.com/Life-of-Christ-ebook/dp/B001E2NXGG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1378058425&sr=8-1&keywords=the+life+of+christ+sheen

(2). http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/31/economic-terrorism-bakery-that-refused-to-make-gay-couples-wedding-cake-gets-threats-could-close-down/

(3) See also the interesting article: http://www.albertmohler.com/2013/08/26/it-is-the-price-of-citizenship-an-elegy-for-religious-liberty-in-america/

Manhattan for Beads, Mankind for Condoms

Tradition generally holds that in 1626, Peter Minuit, leader of the Dutch colony in the New World,  purchased the Island of Manhattan for about 24 dollars worth of trinkets.  Today, this is often presented as a classic example of American Indian ill-use at the hands of European colonists.  I do not dwell here on potential errors in this view (1), but am here content to let it stand as an example for purposes of illustration.  Similarly, moderns regret how European colonists would sometimes attempt to cause Indians to become drunk and dependant on alcohol in order to cheat them in trade.  In essence, colonists knew that by causing Indians to become dependent on alcohol, they would abandon their freedom.  Drunk men are easily cheated. 

Modern man is just as drunk as the Indians of Colonial America.  Where the Indians were drunk on alcohol, man today is drunk on something else.  The modern world is drunk on sex.  A man can scarce think otherwise when condoms are widely handed out on college campuses and in high schools, or given the popularity of Playboy (magazine and digital content) and cheap romances.  One might likewise point to the widespread use of sex in advertising, on TV, and in movies, to sell all manner of nonsense to a drunk public.  For a drunk man is a man with little sales resistance. 

Just like colonists wanted the American Indian drunk and dependant on alcohol, so too do modern “colonists” want man drunk on sex.  Advertisers want man drunk in order to sell him trash.  Sex sells cars, tools, soap, perfume, and alcohol (the better to get one doubly drunk).  The reason is simple enough.  As the American Indians gave something up for the alcohol on which they became dependant, so man gives something up by his drunkenness on sex.  He gives up some degree of his freedom and some degree of his humanity.

Advertisers are not the only ones who want man drunk on sex.  The federal government does as well.  The US government has commanded that all employers, even those with religious objections, must provide free contraceptive coverage to their employees.  Desperate for the free contraception, and drunk on the need to gratify his sex instinct, man, like American Indians dependant on alcohol, gives something up.  Among other things, he gives up his conscience.  By declaring that religious entities must provide contraception though it violates their religious beliefs and consciences, the government has claimed authority over man’s conscience.  It has claimed the power to tell man when he may follow his religious beliefs and when he may not.  In exchange, it offers free contraception, the ability to further gratify one’s sex instinct.  Alcohol for trinkets and land, contraception for one’s conscience, both for man’s freedom. 

Man often sells himself too cheaply; the flaw runs deep in human nature.  But when he sells his conscience away for free contraception, when he prizes the gratification of the instinct over his conscience, he gives up himself for too mean a price.  As Fulton Sheen said, "Our hopes and our liberties are sold too cheap when they are bartered away to him who feeds the body and leaves the soul naked." Judas sold God for 30 pieces of silver; when man gives himself to the government for free contraception, he is little better.  Judas thought he sold God, Who really gave himself for man.  When he sells his conscience for 30 shekals, though, man gives himself for nothing. 

(1). This would consist of about $1000 dollars today, that the event is only badly attested in one source, that the claim the Island was sold for beads and trinkets is not in that early source, and that the concept of sale for the Dutch was probably different from modern concepts of sale. 

Human Conscience, State Power

At the end of the First Century AD,  as the Emperor Trajan continued the persecution of Christianity, the Roman magistrate Pliny wrote to him for advice regarding that persecution.  Pliny wrote that it had been his practice to interrogate those who were denounced to him as Christians: 

             “I interrogated these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; those who persisted I ordered executed. For I had no doubt that, whatever the nature of their creed, stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy surely deserve to be punished.” (1)

What is interesting about Pliny and Trajan’s exchange is not only that they wanted Christianity persecuted—they were hardly unusual in that—but one of the reasons that Pliny gave.  For Pliny, Christians ought be persecuted because “whatever the nature of their creed, stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy... deserve to be punished.”  

Pliny objected to Christianity not only for its beliefs, but for the mere fact that its adherents dared to hold those beliefs when commanded by the state to believe otherwise.  For him, the beliefs themselves hardly mattered—“whatever the nature of their creed”—but what did matter was the stubbornness with which the early Christians held them.  What mattered was that the early Christians rejected the State’s claim that it would tell them what they were free to believe.  What mattered was that they rejected the State’s claim to authority over the human conscience.  

As far as Pliny was concerned, Christianity almost might as well have declared the world round when Rome professed it square, or else preferred rose granite to Rome’s marble.  The point was not only the beliefs themselves, but that early Christians held those beliefs when Rome commanded them to think otherwise.  The agnostic Robert Bolt almost grasped this when he had his hero, Thomas More, on being asked why he held to his beliefs in defiance of Royal authority reply, “because what matters is that I believe it, or rather not that I believe it, but that I believe it.”  As almost 1500 years earlier, King Henry VIII would claim authority over More’s conscience and More would accede no more than would the Christians condemned by Pliny, Trajan, and Rome.  

Why could Rome not tolerate the beliefs of what were then a small minority?  Because Rome would suffer no rival, not even the few followers of a Nazarene carpenter.  When those followers proclaimed that man, executed by Rome, risen, Rome saw a threat to its power. When  they called Him the Son of God, which Caesar said he was, Rome saw a threat.  And when they called the risen carpenter Lord, which Caesar said that he alone was, Rome saw a threat to its power.   

If Christianity is true, then the state may last a thousand years, as Rome did, but man will live forever.  Man, therefore, will always take precedence over the state.  If Christianity is true, then there exists something higher and holier than the state to which a man owes his obedience, his devotion, and his conscience. That was why the Early Christians would not burn incense to Caesar as a god, they bowed to a higher one.  

 This was the threat the a powerful state could not bear, either two thousand years ago or today, whether that state is Rome, Tudor England, Soviet Russia, or Modern America, which has recently claimed authority over the human conscience (2). A powerful state can suffer no rival, but it can make its rivals suffer.  Yet, the reason for which the state would not tolerate the early Christians, and may soon not tolerate modern ones, is precisely the same one for which the Christians continued and will continue to defy the State’s claim to authority over their consciences.  They hold to a higher and holier God than Caesar, or as St. Peter put it when he defied the power of the ruling classes, “it is better to obey God than man.”

(1) http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/texts/pliny.html

(2) http://thesparkandtheflame.blogspot.com/2012/07/hhs-contraception-and-religious-liberty.html

The Christian in Revolt

When in the first century AD, the Roman Emperor Nero smeared Christians with pitch and lit them to serve as nighttime torches or covered them in animal hides and set dogs on them, he was among the first to recognize Christianity as an intolerable religion, though many have recognized it as such since.  Christianity was the only religion that ancient Rome could not tolerate—and the Romans could tolerate everyone.  Numbers of conquered deities, Greek, Egyptian, Middle Eastern, made their way into the Roman pantheon, but the Nazarene carpenter who was God never rested there. 

Christianity was the only religion that a tolerant world could not tolerate.  It is the same in the modern secular world as the ancient pagan.  A tolerant world can accept everything and everyone, any religion, and nearly any deviation, but it cannot accept Christianity.  Today the Christian is attacked for his hostility to abortion and infanticide, as indeed he was in ancient Rome.   He is attacked as being too anti-woman (when in the past he was attacked for being too pro-woman); he is attacked for being backward, unprogressive, medieval, and out of keeping with the spirit of the modern world.   And so he is.

The Christian does not get on well with the spirit of the world because he is in revolt against it.  He is in revolt against a world that proclaims the death of God either by the slow route of a secularism that denies Him a place in public (and soon private) life or by the quick route of atheism that denies God a place at all.  The Christian is in revolt against a world that proclaims the non-existence or irrelevance of moral values and duties, of good and evil, of right and wrong.  He is in revolt against the claim that some things are true for one man but not another, that good and evil are relative or subjective, and that there exist only shades of gray.  The Christian is in revolt against the claim of the atheist Richard Dawkins when he professes:  there is "no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."

Thus the world is.  Thus it demands that Christians should be.  And thus, we will never be.

Now, we come to why Christianity is intolerable in a materialist culture, whether ancient or modern.  The world now, as then, told Christians to go along with the spirit of the world, to go with the flow, not to rock to boat.  But not only does Christianity want to rock the boat, it wants to capsize it.  Against a world that proclaims the death of God, man, and morality only one response is possible.—whole hearted and outright defiance.

The modern materialist or secularist looks on the suffering in the world and professes that what little hope there is for it lies in "slowly evolving social standards," vague notions of progress, the next scientific breakthrough, the next political leader or social program.  The Christian, however, looks on the suffering and brokenness in the world and sees hope for it not in vague notions of progress or evolving standards, but in judgment. 

The world may hold that right and wrong are subjective and relative, that there is no black and white, but only shades of gray.  Against this, though, the Christian proclaims that some things  really are right and some wrong, some good and some evil.  It proclaims that there are not only shades of gray, but that black is black and white is white and never the twain shall meet save on the field of battle.  Nor shall they hesitate or compromise until one lies defeated. 

 The world will not like this.  It crucified God who was also in revolt against the spirit of the world.  It beheaded St. Thomas More.  More told his daughter that he was "not the stuff of which martyrs were made," but when the command came, "In the name of the king, you shall do thus," Thomas More gave the only reply he could.  "In the name of God, I will not."  And the same is true today, when the United States government proclaims, through its HHS mandate, "in the name of Caesar, you shall do thus," the Christian can only reply, "in the name of God, we will not."  And woe to him who proclaims otherwise.  

Rather than have his conscience separated from his head, Thomas More preferred that his head should be separated from his body.  His head was something that could be taken from him, but his conscience was something that he alone could surrender.  Against that demand he rebelled, and his revolt was not only against the world that was, but for the world that might be.   May it be likewise with the Christian today. 

HHS, Contraception, and Religious Liberty

Some friends and my wife and I wrote this several months ago with the intention of publishing it as an op-ed in a newspaper.  The two newspapers to which we submitted it declined it, so I post it here for the Fortnight for Freedom.

The Obama administration has recently decided to force Catholics to violate their consciences and religious beliefs by requiring that they provide coverage for contraception and sterilization procedures.  An outcry has rightfully arisen against a powerful and highly secular government that has targeted the unpopular beliefs of a religious minority.  Equally disturbing, however, and more overlooked, is the fact that this government has now claimed the final authority over the human conscience.  

 States have claimed authority over the human conscience before, when an equally secular and hostile to Christianity Roman empire required Christians to burn incense to Caesar, when Henry VIII tried to force Thomas More to approve his divorce and remarriage, or when Stalin sought to purge religious freedom from his empire.  There was no room for individual freedom of conscience; the only freedom was the freedom to act and think as the state commanded, the only conscience the state conscience.  

The human right to religious freedom, however, and a person’s right to follow his religion and conscience is undeniable.  One could only ever hope to justify trampling this right by claiming that contraception is so absolute and necessary a right as to overrule the right of freedom of religion and conscience. Consequently, the government and its defenders argue that contraception is a matter of necessary medical care as well as a matter of women’s rights and health. Yet, it is very clearly none of these things. 

At least three problems exist with the claim that contraception is a right.  First, the claim that contraception is necessary medical care is highly doubtful.  The purpose of medical care is to correct diseases or disorders and promote the proper and healthy functioning of the human body.  Contraception certainly does not do this.  Fertility is not a disorder and pregnancy not a disease.  In this way, contraception actually interferes with the natural and healthy functioning of a woman’s body, causing her reproductive system to become disordered. 

Second, there is no argument from necessity, only personal desire.  A person may strongly want to have sex and strongly want to avoid pregnancy while doing so, but there is no logical inference from this to the claim that contraception is necessary.  Two “wants,” however strong, do not equal a need and personal desires, however strong, do not make a right.  Though it may be necessary to avoid pregnancy for serious medical reasons (though such situations are rare), it does not follow that there exists a right to contraception.  In this case one may either practice abstinence or a sophisticated fertility awareness method such as the Creighton, Marquette, or sympto-thermal models.  

 Third, there is no right to enjoyment of a thing (sex) and avoidance of its natural consequences (pregnancy).  The natural end of sexuality is reproduction, whether a person may wish to acknowledge it or not.  To say that one has a right to have sex and avoid pregnancy is like saying one has a right to overeat and not gain weight.  

Nonetheless, Catholics do not seek to impose their beliefs on anyone.  We simply object to being forced to pay for or provide coverage for something we consider to be immoral. It is gravely insulting to suggest  that our consciences can be assuaged by the cheap accounting trick that the current administration has styled as an “accommodation.”

Under the guise of science and women’s rights, the government has launched a short-sighted attack on religious liberty and freedom of conscience.  It has begun by attacking an unpopular Catholic doctrine, but it will not end there.  By the same logic, it may force Christians to pay for or provide abortions, attack the Jewish practice of circumcision, require burning incense to Caesar, and end with either state control of religion, or its ban from both public and private life.

The government now decrees that one must render to Caesar that which decidedly does not belong to Caesar at all, one’s conscience.  Bribery by the state of those governed in exchange for political power is an old and hallowed political tradition.  Roman emperors appeased the populace with bread and circuses; modern politicians seek political power through the offer of government grants, earmarks, and other inducements to individuals and groups.  Today, the state turns to a new prize.  Offering “free” contraception, it seeks not only political power, but authority over the human conscience.  If the American conscience can be bought for so mean a price, the end of American liberty may be at hand.