Kathmandu, Nepal, Apr 27, 2019 / 04:31 pm (CNA).- Reports of five Christians being arrested on faith-related charges in Nepal this week have sparked international concern and calls for changes to the country’s strict anti-conversion laws.
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Washington D.C., Apr 27, 2019 / 11:00 am (CNA).- The founding principles of American politics are at risk, Utah’s Senator Mike Lee told CNA April 26.
“There’s the problem of people’s reluctance these days to recognize truth–when it’s not accompanied by air quotes,” the senator told CNA.
“There really are some truths that are self-evident, and they exist not because any government declares them to exist, but because God made them that way,” he added.
Speaking to CNA about the launch of his new book on the Declaration of Independence, the senator said he is concerned that public respect for objective truth and basic freedoms has been lost in the face of an expanded role of government in American society.
Lee said that an erosion of freedom in American society is fueled by a growing ignorance of the nation’s founding documents, as well as a cultural shift away from the meaning of truth, including those which the Declaration held as self-evident: the equality of all people under God, and the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
He told CNA part of the inspiration behind his new book, “Our Lost Declaration,” was his desire to recover the self-evident truths laid out in the Declaration, and what they mean for civil society.
Lee said that individual liberties require space to be exercised, a space he claims expanding government structures are beginning to monopolize. To fix this, the senator proposed a cultural reset focused on a closer study and adherence to the country’s founding documents, especially the Declaration of Independence, which he described as the “older sister” of the U.S. Constitution.
The loss of a common recognition of objective truth, according to Lee, has led to an over-reliance of government to take its place – expanding to absorb what were once non-political areas of society. This expansion, he argues, will have the unintended consequence of crowding out the exercise of individual rights.
Stephen White, Fellow in the Catholic Studies Program at the Ethics and Public policy Center in Washington, said that Lee’s vision has some similarities to the Catholic understanding of political thought.
“Catholic social teaching is full of stern warnings about what happens when government and the civil law are not bound to higher truths,” White told CNA.
“Pope John Paul II, for example, warned that, unless democracy was rooted in the right understanding of the human person, it could easily turn into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism. He knew this from history and from his own experience.”
Lee cautioned that losing an objective understanding truth and freedom to a subjective definition through government action could become “the high road to tyranny.” “That worries me,” Lee said.
“Whenever government acts, they do so at the expense of the liberty and the dignity of individual human beings–and of families, of neighborhoods, of synagogues and churches, and other communities,” said the senator.
“When we allow government to get too big, this is the kind of thing that gets harmed–our most fundamental rights, including our religious freedom — they get trampled,” he said.
The senator said oversized government influence does accidental harm even when it seeks to act positively. “I sometimes explain it as when the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man steps on your house, it’s not because the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man necessarily hates you or singled out you for an attack,” said Lee.
“It’s because he’s huge. He’s the size of Godzilla, and your house happens to be in the way.”
The senator said that valuing the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence means respecting the freedom of individuals to live according to their beliefs and the dictates of the conscience, something constricted by a political culture which prioritizes the government’s right to intervene.
“We assume that government has the first right to act, rather than have to justify their actions,” explained Lee.
“If we reconnect with these founding documents, as my book helps people to do, I think culturally, we can get to the point where we can reclaim the rights and get back the kind of government that we need, that we want, that we deserve, and that will respect our religious and our other freedoms.”
While government can be harmful when it detaches from a proper understanding of human dignity and freedom, White told CNA that there was a risk of viewing government as necessarily opposed to the common good and individual liberty.
“The Catholic Church—even long before there was such a thing as ‘Catholic social teaching’—has always insisted that political authority has a natural and necessary role in ordering and governing human society for the common good,” White said.
“Government exists to be a guarantor of precisely that space in which true human freedom—freedom in solidarity, freedom for the good—can flourish.”
“Like all good things, government can be made to serve wicked ends. But government itself isn’t an obstacle to a healthy human society; it’s a necessary prerequisite of it.”
Vatican City, Apr 27, 2019 / 04:59 am (CNA).- Pope Francis sent a video message Saturday to the leaders of South and North Korea expressing his hope for a future of peace and unity for the peninsula on the anniversary of the inter-Korean summit.
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Denver, Colo., Apr 27, 2019 / 04:00 am (CNA).- Participants in a study spanning 27 countries say that religion plays a less important role in public life than it once did, though in many parts of the world, participants said that religion’s impor… […]
Brownsville, Texas, Apr 26, 2019 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- After a close vote, McAllen, Texas officials approved a new downtown location for a Catholic immigration relief center that was ordered by the city in February to leave its location in a residential n… […]
Rome, Italy, Apr 26, 2019 / 05:01 pm (CNA).- Countering critics of Benedict XVI’s recent essay on the scandal of sex abuse in the Church, Cardinal Gerhard Müller on Friday emphasized that Church renewal must […]
Colombo, Sri Lanka, Apr 26, 2019 / 04:40 pm (CNA).- The Sri Lanka chief of police resigned this week after bombings left dead more than 200 Christians on Easter morning. An official at the defense ministry has also stepped down.
Pujith Jayasundara ste… […]
Spokane, Wash., Apr 26, 2019 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- A federal judge in Washington state issued a nationwide preliminary injunction April 25, blocking a rule which would deny government funding to health clinics co-locating with abortion facilitie… […]
Vatican City, Apr 26, 2019 / 01:25 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis is widely expected to approve a new structure for the Roman curia in the near future. While the apostolic constitution outlining that structure is not expected to be released for several more w… […]
Paris, France, Apr 26, 2019 / 11:00 am (CNA).- The bishops of France have published a new document offering a summary of the Church’s teaching on the dignity of human nature and the importance of natural law in society.
The document, titled “What is man that you keep him in mind? Elements of Catholic anthropology,” was published April 23 by the permanent council of the Bishops’ Conference of France. It is intended to articulate a framework for discussion of the Church’s moral teachings and how they should be applied to wider human society.
In a foreword to the text, Archbishop Michel Aupetit of Paris said that the Church’s voice and wisdom were essential to preserving human dignity in society.
“To those seeing her from outside, the Church appears in the West as an old and shaken institution of scandals,” Aupetit said, while warning against the “myth of progress” in Western society “that is invoked without knowing exactly where it leads.”
“But the Church is beautiful – in the face of her saints, in the immense mantle of tenderness which she spreads over the world, especially over the most neglected of men. She is the ‘expert in humanity’ because her faith is based on God’s Covenant with His people, fulfilled in the Incarnation of Christ and Salvation by the Cross, open to the multitude of men ‘of every race, language, people and nation.'”
The Bishop of Blois, Jean-Pierre Batut, said at the document’s release that moral discussion had been distorted by relativism, and that without an understanding of the common dignity of human nature it was impossible to present the Church’s teaching in its fullness.
“There is a great need today, not for a moral discussion, but for one that is anthropological,” Batut said.
The bishop, who authored the afterword to the document, said that the spiritual crisis in France – illustrated by declining Mass attendance and vocations to the priesthood – was itself rooted in an “anthropological and civilizational” crisis through a loss of understanding of the natural law.
Natural law must be understood as the moral framework for all humanity, the bishops wrote, and not confused with the “law of nature,” which would place mankind on the same moral level as animals.
“From the point of view of humans, there is no point in learning whether monogamy or homosexuality exists among the animals. Animals do not even understand the prohibition against incest,” the bishops wrote.
Chad Pecknold, associate professor of systematic theology at The Catholic University of America, told CNA that the concept of natural law is essential to human dignity.
“The French bishops are exactly right that our moral disputes need to be rooted in shared premises about human nature,” Pecknold said. “We need to start with the understanding of the human person as a rational, relational, and religious creature made for happiness.
Pecknold said that the French bishops were also right to avoid being drawn into “moralizing discussions” about a law of nature which, he said, are “so often rooted in reductionist and materialist conceptions of human nature.”
The French bishops wrote that “natural law is a law of human nature, which explains what is right for human beings to do in order to achieve happiness.”
This, Pecknold said was a crucial distinction to make, since true happiness comes from the free choice to pursue the good in imitation of God.
“If we want to propose a true understanding of natural law as an ordinance of reason for the common good and flourishing of people, then we have work to do in helping our neighbors understand the reality of the human person as created in God’s image for a higher happiness than physical pleasure.”
© Catholic World Report