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Special Report
The Apostolic Nuncio Explains It All
Religious freedom, persecution, and martyrdom in the age of Obama.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the Vatican’s Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, is a well-traveled man, having served in Iraq, Kuwait, Great Britain, Strasbourg, Nigeria and, now, the United States.
As a churchman and a diplomat, the Archbishop is in a unique position to analyze threats to religious liberty and practice (“a fundamental and non-derogable right”) under a variety of political regimes throughout the world. A month ago he offered his views on the subjects of religious freedom, persecution, and martyrdom at the University of Notre Dame conference, “Seed of the Church: Telling the Story of Today’s Christian Martyrs.”
Archbishop Viganò’s remarks are timely in light of the current Administration’s efforts to dragoon Catholic institutions into becoming funders of abortion, abortaficients, contraception, and sterilization in violation of Church law, tradition, and the consciences of the faithful.
The Archbishop is certainly mindful of more overt forms of religious persecution of Christians, up to and including even martyrdom, occurring in China, the subcontinent as well as Egypt, Nigeria, the Sudan and east Africa. He noted that “heavy hand of so called ‘anti-blasphemy’ laws has sometimes been the method to subjugate the Christian faith.”
But the Nuncio’s message in South Bend was geared to those who might not yet appreciate the threat to religious liberty in supposedly free countries including the United States.
“While it is necessary to remind ourselves of the obvious, we must also consider the not-so-obvious, for the great danger to the future of religious freedom lies with religious persecution that appears inconsequential or seems benign but in fact is not,” opined the Nuncio. These vital issues must be attended to “for these grave concerns exist not only abroad, but they also exist within your own homeland.”
Today, in western democracies, torture and death may not be a threat. However, “the objective of those who desire to harm the faith may choose the path of ridiculing the believers so that they become outcasts from mainstream society and are marginalized from meaningful participation in public life,” said the Archbishop. Such persons pursue various actions which promote difficulty, annoyance, and harassment “designed to frustrate the beliefs of the targeted person or persons rather than to eliminate these persons.”
The object is not “to destroy the believer but only the belief and its open manifestations,” argued the Apostolic Nuncio. “From the public viewpoint, the believer remains but the faith eventually disappears.”
He was making the same point made by many American defenders of the First Amendment, most notably, the late Father Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things: The Establishment Clause, along with right reason and natural law, protects not just the freedom to worship, but also the free and robust exercise of religion in the public square as much as in the private sphere.
The Archbishop describes this latter right as “a complementary right about the unencumbered ability to exercise religious faith in a responsible and at the same time public manner.”
Insisting on the freedom of the Church, libertas Ecclesiae, Archbishop Viganò maintained that “This freedom is essential to the religious freedom which properly belongs to the human person.” This is “a human, civil, and natural right which is not conferred by the state because it subsists in the human person’s nature.” So there is “a pressing need to protect religious freedom around the world.”
The “uncertainties surrounding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” is just one of many reasons to be concerned. “When Catholic Charities and businesses owned by faithful Catholics experience pressure to alter their cherished beliefs, the problem is experienced in other venues,” claimed the Nuncio. “Evidence is emerging which demonstrates that the threat to religious freedom is not solely a concern for non-democratic and totalitarian regimes.” We are also seeing it in the “great democracies of the world… a tragedy for not only the believer but also for democratic society.”
Religious freedom “is not an end in itself, because it has as its highest purpose protection of the ultimate dignity of the human person” — a point made eloquently by the American Jesuit John Courtney Murray, a leading light at the Second Vatican Council.
The Archbishop proceeds to cite a number of judicial decisions in England and the United States in which courts have obstructed believers’ rights in making moral choices regarding marital and family arrangements that they find contrary to their religious and ethical beliefs: Evangelical Christians held unfit to be foster parents because they find “certain sexual expressions by consenting adults are sin”; parents prohibited from opting out of courses and texts that elevated same-sex marriages to a normative status; and, of course, the recent opinion of Judge Vaughan Walker on Proposition 8 in California in which he opined that religious beliefs opposing homosexual marriages cause “harm” to gays and lesbians.
Add to these examples the cases of Catholic Charities across the country being removed from vital social services because they “would not adopt policies or engage in procedures that violate fundamental moral principles of the Catholic faith.”
About the Author
G. Tracy Mehan, III served at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the administrations of both Presidents Bush. He is a consultant in Arlington, Virginia, and an adjunct professor at George Mason University School of Law.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (23) | Leave a comment
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Appleby| 12.4.12 @ 6:39AM
This is an individual fight that each of us has to make for herself, although with the support of others fighting the same battle. They are going to come for you, yourself, even if you're customarily sitting in a back pew playing with your binkie during service, or you only attend services on Christmas and Easter...you're going to have to stand up and make that decision looking into the face of a smug brat who tells you tht God is a "fairy tale" and you have no right to talk about Him in public. I got the chance to explain to a high school girl collecting for AIDS day why I as a Catholic could not donate. She and I were both respectful, but she probably didn't understand me. Maybe she will ask her mother when she gets home.
Jack in Wi| 12.4.12 @ 7:52AM
Appleby: Catholics and other Christians have to speak up for their rights. We have to quit being bullied. I have the opinion from outside Canada that it is even worse where you are up there. Is this true? It isn't about gay marrriage which most Gays aren't going to do anyhow. It is about the gay mafia intimidating normal people into keeping their mouths shut about their preverions. The main goal seems to be in pushing those perversions to the young to recruit s many as possible.
Appleby| 12.4.12 @ 9:41AM
The Gay Thing is to go to court and force mayors, for example, to proclaim Gay Pride Week regardless of their consciences, even if the said major is willing to delegate this proclaimation to someone who has no objection to it. Currently there is a lesbian in Toronto who has filed suit to force a Muslim barber to cut her hair, although it violates his religious conscience (not allowed to touch women who are not relatives or spouses) and although there are others in his shop who would accommodate her. Oh, and the Teachers' Union, which is currently planning to fine members $500 per day if they actually do their jobs, is holding seminars on "Anti-Islamophobia" that will not include the many ways in which Islam denigrates women and girls. They plan to reply to such questions with "There are a lot of other groups that treat women as second class citizens" and move on.
Occam's Tool| 12.4.12 @ 11:37AM
I am not a fan of seeing Catholics bullied in the USA. Yet another reason to despise Der Fuerher.
da monk| 12.4.12 @ 5:45PM
How will you explain your reason for not giving to AIDS to and individual who was infected by AIDS whose cause was other then sex?
VaMom| 12.4.12 @ 7:44AM
Thank you for presenting the message of the Papal Nuncio. The media generally ignored his speech. He wasn't talking about the "right" to free contraception, the need for higher taxes or anything else about the issues which the New York Times, Washington Post, or the big three networks obsess. I appreciate your providing us with this discussion of the current state of religious liberty - thank you, Mr. Mehan!
PJ| 12.4.12 @ 7:48AM
I agree with everything the papal nuncio said. Obama & ilk are leading by benign autocracy.
Organizations run by the American Catholic Church such as Catholic Charities need to stop taking grants & contracts from the government. This will result in the shrinking of their size, ie a few employees or no employees & the rest consisting of volunteers. They then can be free to follow their consciences.
But there is 1 question I don't know the answer to: if Catholic Charities stop taking all types of money from the government & have well-under 50 employees or no employees, are they still obligated to follow any of the anti-religion regs coming from the government, esp from Obamacare? If yes, I would think that Catholic Charities are then going to go belly up. The local parishes will then take up the slack by their people volunteering while the local bishop guides them from afar. Subsidiarity will then be in full force, something the Church has always advocated.
As for Catholic hosptials, that's whole different issue. From where I'm standing they're will eventually have to separate themselves from their local diocese & transform themselves into ordinary private hospitals or cease to exist.
As for private Catholic employers, I hate to be in their shoes right now. I suspect many of these sincere Catholics are doing much soul-searching.
What a shame!
Joellen| 12.4.12 @ 8:44AM
PJ, so right on Catholic Charities - for since they take from the government, they are beholden to it. If you check out who Catholic Charities gives to, I think you might be very disappointed.
I havent and want give to the annual US Bishops Catholic Appeal - they give to very "social justice" causes, including ACORN.
PJ| 12.4.12 @ 9:02AM
There's a Catholic Charities located in OK or AR that doesn't receive any government money; they accept individual donations. As you can imagine, it's rather small in size but it takes care of the truly needy w/basic essentials. It always seems to be in the black by the end of the yr.
When I find out where this Catholic Charities is located, I think that I will donate a few dollars to it.
Al Adab| 12.4.12 @ 1:31PM
Beyond that, on the international front, is Voice of the Martyrs a most worthwhile organization dedicated to equipping those Christians suffering and persecuted in all too many regions of this world. Religious freedom is unknown in far too many places.
JP| 12.4.12 @ 8:18AM
How many times have you heard or read a secularists announce that he has no problem with Christians worshiping within the walls of their churches. The secularists however states that Christians lose their rights to the "free excercise of religion" once they stepped outside of the church doors.
What is under assault in the US is the notion of "free excericse of religion". When Bishop Jenky gave a homily last summer which preached that the Church can niether tolerate abortion nor the Catholic politicians who for advocate abortion, he was immediately attacked in the press. Additionally, he has been sued for illegally preaching "politics". It is this kind of persecution that will preface outright oppression. This event also put to rest the secularists assurances that Christians will be left alone if they just keep to themselves. Perhaps in the future bishops, priests, and ministers will have to have their homilies and sermons pass the IRS censors (For Catholics this is an impossibility, as the priest who gives a homily during Mass is speaking "in Persona Christi". The IRS, the last time I looked do not possess this charism).
Al Adab| 12.4.12 @ 1:36PM
Yes the free excercise clause is that which lies under attack. Alongside is the ever increasing demands of the State (our modern idol) which forces believers, not Christians alone, into financing, through their taxes, activities which are antithetical to their moral standards.
We must be prepared to remember that the Left taught us, "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" and to act, like Daniel, to maintain our moral values in the face of pagan idolotry.
Al Adab| 12.4.12 @ 1:38PM
Additionally, aside from the arrests of a few priests and ministers (which has already taken place) the next step will be the elimination of the tax exemption for churches, synagogues and mosques etc. as a means to force non-involvement and compliance.
JP Jones| 12.4.12 @ 10:12AM
This essay hits issue on the nail.
While actual liquidation of humans is taking place in many areas of the world,
The anti religion folks know its still hard to simply eliminate believers in mass like days gone by especially in the so called developed countries like the USA so their strategy has been to discredit their beliefs and refer to believers as retards for holding such beliefs.
This is not just a Christian issue (although the focus is on Christian)s
Folks of all Faiths need to see what is happening and what is going on here.
There is an organized and aggressive plan to rid society of true believers of religious doctrine.
Any notion that this is not the case is simply being in Denial.
At the rate this is going it will be against some law to openly practice your Faith or have more than one Child.
Hmmmm Darn it is already the law of the land in shall we say China.
Occam's Tool| 12.4.12 @ 11:39AM
Check out NEJM within the past few years: punch in "euthanasia services," read, and be appalled. I quit my subscription to NEJM not over the science/medical articles, which are first rate, but over the disgusting political views of the New England Journal of Medicine. Pro death, pro IPAB.
Pecos Pete| 12.4.12 @ 10:24AM
Quotes from Stalin:
"You know, they are fooling us, there is no God."
"God's not unjust, he doesn't actually exist. We've been deceived. If God existed, he'd have made the world more just... I'll lend you a book and you'll see."
"God is on your side? Is He a Conservative? The Devil's on my side, he's a good Communist."
Quotes from Karl Marx:
"Communism begins where atheism begins, but atheism is at the outset still far from being communism; indeed it is still for the most part an abstraction."
“The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion”
Quotes from Lenin:
“Atheism is the natural and inseparable part of Communism.”
“Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.”
Pecos Pete| 12.4.12 @ 10:24AM
And from Alexander Solzhenitsyn:
“The World has never before known a godlessness as organized, militarized and tenaciously malevolent as that preached by Marxism. Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin and at the heart of their psychology, HATRED OF GOD is the principle driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot. To achieve its diabolical ends, Communism needs to control a population devoid of religious and national feeling, and this entails a destruction of faith and nationhood. Communists proclaim both of these objectives openly, and just as openly put them into practice.”
dominic1955| 12.4.12 @ 11:01AM
This is a typical boil the frog situation-most folks (believers and non-believers alike) think its sheer crazy talk that the good ol' U. S. of A is starting to crack down on religion and that our freedoms are being eroded. It seems that unless the government starts sending out folks dressed in military uniform arrayed in swastikas, red stars, or the hammer and sickle to round up people into cattle cars its all good. If people even remember the evil that was embodied by the great totalitarian regimes of the 20th century they think they are gone, never to return. Unfortunately, while those embodiments are gone, the principles and lack of thinking that made them possible are still around in droves.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and we are now entering into a period in which we really have to be conscious of the enemies of true freedom's machinations. While our battle is with principalities and powers, their minions are earth are what we have to deal with now. At this stage, we are by and large having to deal with the masses of useful idiots. We have millions of people who think the government is our savior, whose idea of 'liberty' is nothing by licentiousness and while they might staunchly believe that God is a "fairy tale" or that one should be "spiritual not religious" they couldn't reason their way out of a wet paper sack. The state of the populace-their ignorance, greed, and depravity-is a tinderbox for materialist/secularist tyranny.
Petronius| 12.4.12 @ 11:37AM
The Catholic Church can gain acceptance quite easily. Repeal the 10 Commandments. The state is run by cultural bigots who either couldn't wait to quit going to,church when they left home and their mentors who never went. Now the Church is mostly run by them too. The clergy is packed with commies and queers. Their God is a Liberal. They'll tell you. After all that's why they took Orders. They wanted His power over others. And they voted for Obama to do Their bidding. Now they will get bits and pieces of it: reversal of fortune against the wealthy and sexual hedonism for as many as will. 40 years ago when I got kicked out of my old parish, God was "Murican." After 2100 years I wonder what the Almighty thinks of humanity. If the Maya were right about the end of this world, I'm not bothered. Civilization is already gone. And the Fatima Prophecies will come to pass.
Al Adab| 12.4.12 @ 12:05PM
The question is not whether God is on our side, but rather are we on Gods' side? For us as individuals the issue is how the believer should behave in a pagan society. The idolotrous, materialist modern world (of the west) finds believers a danger to the centralizing power. See the book of Daniel to understand the obligations of the believer when faced with worldly power.
Doctor Right| 12.4.12 @ 4:30PM
Catholics have the COOLEST titles!
"Apostolic Nuncio"!
Man, that is awesome.
Now if only they could get their parishioners to understand the Bible and vote accordingly, we might win a few more swing-states...
PJ| 12.4.12 @ 10:55PM
I can't be too sure because I can't seem to find the stats but I think it's the Hispanic Catholic who makes up the huge majority of the 50% that voted for Obama.
It's more than a lack of understanding of the Bible. It includes lack of understanding of American cultural principles, lack of a decent well-rounded education & lack of American-English fluency.
TLP| 12.5.12 @ 8:18AM
TLP| 12.5.12 @ 8:15AM
You don't understand, Joellen. He's not Rich. Just ask all of the Valets at all of the Hotels that he stays in. Ask the Waiters and Waitresses at those Restaurants. They'll tell ya.
Who do you think he Voted For?
Obama did get 70% of the Jewish Vote. And, since Ben doesn't believe in Our Messiah, maybe he figured it was high time he latched on to one of his own. A Messiah who thinks like he does, instead of the other way around.
Why is this guy even here? Why isn't he at The Daily Beast or Salon? Any Salon.
I would love for someone to ask him if he thinks that Liberal Democrats are Soft on Crime, and Weak on Defense? And, if he does? And, if does, he also HAS TO KNOW that they are TAX and SPEND Liberals, with this guy being the Worst.
"The Rich should pay more."
I disagree. Everyone who pays NOTHING should pay more, and a Flat Tax is the only way. What could be Fairer than EVERYBODY having Skin in the Game? EVERYBODY chipping in, like the old woman who gave Our Messiah 2 pennies.
His final paragraph is like a Premonition of the Death of this Country, as we knew it.
The Country is thisclose to the Abyss. It's Hemhoraging Jobs. Its Cities are fast becoming Third World No Go Zones, if not outright Unlivable. Whole States are seeking Bankruptcy Protection, and each day we inch closer and closer to The Weimar Republic, if not Zimbabwe.
I know - LET'S RAISE TAXES. Why not?
What's the worst that could happen?
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