The recent fluttering by Catholic bishops and various other religious conservatives in the United States has generated a cascade of self-doubt in my mind.  These men claim that a recent requirement made by the Federal Government that employers provide healthcare that meets the needs of all of their employees, male and female, Catholic and non-Catholic, at associated, yet non-religious, institutions such as hospitals and universities is a violation of the First Amendment.

Since then, the airwaves and newspapers have been inundated by the clamoring of theologians, religious leaders, lawyers, politicians and political pundits of questionable punditry.  I’m not going to comment upon the fact that there are, according to various news reports, thirteen states which require the same healthcare requirements.  Nor am I going to comment upon the fact that the Catholic bishops seem to have no problem with that, even though each state is required to adhere to the Constitution of the United States.  Put another way, the states aren’t allowed to violate 1st Amendment rights anymore than the Federal government or the Catholic Church.

Nor am I going to comment upon the fact that the Canadian healthcare system guarantees contraception to women.  And the Catholic Church doesn’t make a complaint based upon some obscure Papal decree.  Nor am I going to comment upon the fact that the Catholic Church does not have a tax exempt status in Canada and the taxes that are paid by the Catholic Church help to fund healthcare, part of which are for services related to health issues specific to women such as contraception.  I have yet to hear any Catholics up here in Canada cry at the outrage of being forced to support something that so reprehensibly offends their moral sensibilities.

The reason I won’t make any comments is that my confusion has nothing to do with any of this.  My uncertainty comes from the fact that it appears that the education about American history and the influences that shaped the writing of the Constitution that I received appears to be vastly different from the education received by the Catholic bishops or their supporters.  Perhaps these Catholic bishops are not American citizens by birth.  That would explain why there is such a disparity in my understanding and theirs.  Having had to learn the history of the United States as an adult would have meant that their interpretation of American history was most likely processed through the eyes of their Catholic faith and it is their strict faith and adherence to Catholic doctrine and their sworn allegiance to their sovereign, the Pope, that helped them get the gigs as bishops.  Unfortunately, this hypothesis doesn’t appear to be supported by the facts.  A quick look at the birth places of American bishops listed at Wikipedia indicates that almost all of them were born in the U.S.A.

I remember as a child learning about the Pilgrims and their journey to Plymouth Rock.  In fact, every year before Thanksgiving, we would be inundated with images of happy Indians, turkeys and Pilgrims wearing those funny hats with buckles.  They wore the buckles on their hats rather than on their belts because they were Dissenters.  In other words, the Church of England believed that buckles should be worn on belts and the Pilgrims disagreed.

Also known as Separatists, the Dissenters believed it to be their moral duty to dissent from the established church which was the Church of England.  The Church of England, in keeping with the traditions developed by the Catholic Church, had used its power as the established church to have laws passed requiring everyone to attend Anglican services.  Apparently, attendance was required to make sure that the buckles were worn properly by everyone[1].   Failure to attend church could result in horrible penalties such as fines.  The Dissenters, who didn’t like giving their money to another religious organization, fled to Holland.  They knew better than to go to France or Spain, where they would have been burned at the stake by the Catholic Church due to the heretical nature of their beliefs.  The Dissenters, who were the forbearers of the American Puritans, a deeply conservative Christian group who believed that sex was bad and money was good, didn’t approve of the free use of dykes by the Dutch.  Fearful that they would become just as tolerant as the Dutch about forming relationships with dykes, they boarded the Mayflower, crossed the Atlantic Ocean and landed on Plymouth Rock.  The story ended with the Pilgrims killing a few turkeys, the Indians bringing some corn and squash, and the entire group sitting down to a great feast and giving thanks to God for bringing the Pilgrims to this land of underused potential.

We were led to believe that it was due to the Pilgrims’ tragic story of persecution that the 1st Amendment protecting religious freedom was added to the Constitution.  Never again would Americans allow a tyrant such as King George, the head of the Church of England, or the Pope, the head of the Catholic Church, to dominate the political field and religious life.

When I got older, we learned more of the Pilgrim’s story.  For example, a good portion of the Pilgrims died from starvation and they would have all died if the Native Americans hadn’t taught them how to farm.  You have to kind of wonder about a group of people who would travel almost half-way around the world to a new land without any survival skills.  Also, on their way to becoming full-fledged Puritans, they realized that God had meant all of this land to be for good Christians.  So they began to systematically destroy the native pagan culture and kill off the Native Americans.  Later, as Puritans, they engaged in burning heretics at the stake.  A heretic for the Puritans was any person who didn’t adhere to their particular interpretation of Christian morality.  Kind of like the Catholics.

We also learned that the 1st Amendment had nothing to do with the Pilgrims.  It turned out that the American Constitution and its Bill of Rights was written during a historical period referred to as the Age of Enlightenment (or Reason).  This period had emerged after nearly two hundred years of wars; wars in which Christians were told by their religious leaders to kill other Christians who had a different group of religious leaders.  Totally disgusted with the murder of tens of thousands in the name of religious faith and morality, a secular society developed, pushing religious zealousness to the fringes.  The Founders of the United States and Framers of the Constitution believed in the reasoning power of the individual to discern the truth.  For many it may be shocking to discover that Ronald Reagan’s idea of the rugged American individualist can be seen to originate with intellectual lives of these 18th century secularists.

Deists like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin as well as many other visionaries, saw the United States as a shining city on the hill, where reasoned discourse took place, instead of violence in the name of religious faith.

To understand the 1st Amendment, one has to consider the historical philosophy in which it was written.  It was believed that a just and strong society should be tolerant to all religions.  So the religious beliefs of the individual were to be protected, regardless of what those beliefs might be.  But it wasn’t government that those beliefs needed to be protected from.  It was the overreaching power grabs of the different religions and their leaders that people needed to be protected against.

I like the fact that I grew up in a society that is based upon religious tolerance. I like a society that recognizes the Native American Church and respects Jews, Baptists, Anabaptists, Muslims, Mormons, Methodists, Anglicans, Episcopalians, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Wiccans, and even Catholics, Sikhs, Atheists and so many more.  I love the fact that all of these groups can safely express their perceived truths.

But expression of perceived truths is not the same as imposing one’s “truth” upon others.  I am perplexed as to how the Catholic bishops and various religious and political conservatives can take “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” to mean that religious groups are exempt from following the law of the land.  Nowhere in the phrasing of the 1st Amendment do I see anything that even suggests that religions are allowed to impose their beliefs upon the American people.

Furthermore, the Papal decrees, doctrines and bulls that the Catholic bishops are trying to impose upon the American people are the product of a foreign sovereign.  What’s next?  Will Queen Elizabeth, the head of the Church of England, be invited back and given equal power?

The Catholic bishops and the Pope are welcome to determine what they find morally acceptable for themselves and for their Catholic flock.  However, that is the extent of it.  Their religion does not put them above or beyond the pervue of the Constitution of the United States.  And the Constitution protects all Americans from the whims of religious groups such as the Catholic Church.

The Catholic bishops and other religious conservatives need to learn to abide by the Constitutional guarantee of freedom from religious tyranny.

[1] This is a complete fabrication.  The religious argument in England during the 17th century had nothing to do with buckles.  Instead the English were bogged down in an argument about which end of the egg, small or wide, was the proper end to use to open it.