Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 5, 1995 TAG: 9504050059
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CAL THOMAS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
He said they are ``crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize.'' The pope added that there is a ``profound crisis of culture'' caused by an exaltation of the freedom of individuals at the expense of their personal responsibilities which, he said, has created ``a veritable structure of sin.''
The response, especially from some Catholic politicians, was predictable and unfortunate. Both Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and John Kerry, D-Mass., issued statements affirming their belief in church-state separation, ignoring the pope's arguments.
Yet it was Kennedy who, in a 1993 speech to the American Bar Association supporting the ABA's litigation program on civil rights, appealed to the same standard the pope used. Speaking favorably of Martin Luther King Jr.'s reference to the Declaration of Independence and its theological view that all of us are ``created equal,'' Kennedy noted, ``And Congress responded [to King] with those two great landmark bills on equal justice - the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.''
Why does it not violate church-state separation when a Baptist minister invokes a higher power to advance civil rights for blacks, but the Constitution is jeopardized when the pope says that in abortion and euthanasia ``the original inalienable right to life is questioned or denied on the basis of a parliamentary vote, or the will of one part of the people''?
Church-state separation is good when properly understood in its historical context, but not as it is defined by modernists as an irreconcilable divorce. We have erected a spiritual Berlin Wall, not between church and state, but between God and us.
It once was thought reasonable to worship God. Now we worship only ourselves and believe no outside wisdom is worthy of consideration. A magazine ad from the Nike shoe company attests to our idolatry: ``We are hedonists and we want what feels good. We are all basically hedonists. That's what makes us human. ... If it feels good, then just do it.''
The pope gets to the heart of the matter when he writes about the responsibility of governments, especially one such as ours that was established on a foundation of moral principles and self-evident truths. In the document cited by the pope, the purpose of government is ``to secure'' rights the Creator endowed. A government uninformed, uncontrolled and unanswerable to any authority other than itself can easily become totalitarian.
In an April 3 cover story on the Holocaust, U.S. News & World Report recalls an editorial by Christian Century magazine 50 years ago. About the atrocities, the editorial said they showed ``the horror of humanity itself when it has surrendered to its capacity for evil. ... Buchenwald and the other concentration camps spell doom. But it is not simply the doom of the Nazis; it is the doom of man unless he can be brought to worship at the feet of the living God.''
Continues the U.S. News writer, ``Even for secular intellectuals, the Holocaust supplied the most powerful brief yet for the existence of original sin. Two centuries earlier, thinkers were asserting the perfectibility of man. Now, they were debating whether Germans were human. The answer, tragically, was yes.''
There is a rich history of respect for spiritual ideas in the United States. The founding fathers were not arrogant enough to believe they could create a nation uninformed and uncontrolled by ideas rooted in such wisdom. Were all of them ignorant of the principle of church-state separation?
The pope was right and America's contemporary leaders are wrong, no matter what a ``majority'' might think at the moment. Speaking of ideas informed by biblical wisdom, Andrew Jackson observed, ``That Book, sir, is the rock on which the Republic rests.''
That the Republic rests none too well these days is due, in part, to its slipping off the rock. The pope's encyclical is an attempt to call our attention to the foundational fault line. We ignore it at our peril.
- Los Angeles Times Syndicate
by CNB