Living The Worthy Life- Duty And The Government

The principle of democracy is a recognition of the sovereign, inalienable rights of man as a gift from God, the Source of law.  

Bishop Sheen 

As we head into what has to be one of the most important elections of our lifetime in 2020, it would be great to reflect a little on our rights.  Many of today’s politicians are quick to tell you that rights come from the government. Their idea of Government is that is huge one stop provider our needs and guarantor of our rights. Is this the case now?  Has this always been the case? What does history say about this and what does Bishop Sheen say about this? 

As a Catholic and Christian I believe God made man. As a historian I believe man created the government. Therefore God transcends all of man and what he created. Logically this the only way it could be. How could government issue rights when basically would it not just be man issuing rights? This odd concept and logical fallacy was clearly pointed out to me first in the clear words of Bishop Sheen on this very problem.  Bishop Sheen explained, “The principle of democracy is a recognition of the sovereign, inalienable rights of man as a gift from God, the Source of law.”  However, and sadly I may add, this is not a prevailing idea in our  society today. The Religious New Service  published an article on 15 December 2017 entitled, The Bill of Rights, Thomas Jefferson, and the danger of ‘God-given rights’, It was written by Andrew Seidel.

In this article Seidel wrote, “But for President Trump and many religious Americans, those rights are not secured by the Constitution or “We the People.” Instead, they are a gift from God. Trump is marking Bill of Rights Day and Human Rights Week with a proclamation that invoked our “God-given rights” three times. Trump has made similar claims many times, but so have other presidents, including President Obama. Roy Moore’s entire career is based on his idea that “Our rights are given by God.” He even argues that religious liberty “comes from God, not from the Constitution.” Premising our rights on some supernatural benevolence is dangerous.”

Then in an absolutely amazing piece of mental gymnastics, he supported this idea by adding “History has shown us that what is given by a god can be taken away by those who speak with or for that god. Slavery was God’s will, until it wasn’t. Segregation and anti-miscegenation laws were meant to keep the races separate, as God intended. The opposition to same-sex marriage was largely based in religion: “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Progress in many important areas of human rights has long been opposed by those claiming to know God’s mind and executing God’s will. True, religion helped in some of these causes, but the opposing justifications were nearly always situated in divine law. Human rights are absolute and universal; not susceptible to religious whim and fancy. Simply by virtue of being human — just because you were born — you have certain inherent, inalienable rights.”

Human rights are absolute and do not change according to this author and he concludes that are much better to base the rights on humans than God.  God is up to to humans according to Mr. Seidel whereas, the idea of man knows more than God. Can we as Catholics and Christians just sit by and do nothing as our precious institutions are being highjacked by this type of teaching? Do we want a society that cared for by the government or by God?

Is the Good News now a man or woman from the government knocking at your door and offering to help you?  This was not the America of the past? A government that watches over all of your actions is a government that could take away all  of your liberty as well. We must not allow sound bites or slogans to take over our lives, our liberty, and our country. On a brutally cold day in January of 1960, a young President told this nation, “ Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.”

Where has this idea gone?  What has happened to our nation?  What has happened to our leaders? What will be next?

Bishop Sheen spoke of exactly these problems when he said, “Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong. Right is right, even if nobody is right.”  Apply what Bishop Sheen said to President Kennedy’s quote- do we need a government that is of the people or by the people or do we need government to control the people?  It is clear today that many feel like later- we need a GOVERNMENT to do the will of the people.  

Clearly as Catholics we must now make a stand.  We must make a moral stand for what is right. It is not social justice if we try to replace God with the government.  That is theft pure and simple. Stand up and make a difference now and forever.  President Franklin Roosevelt said, “ Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.”

If President Roosevelt and President Kennedy are right, then big government is not the answer.  President Reagan summarized it best when he said, “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”   These words should be terrorizing because as Bishop Sheen explained moral principles do not depend on a majority vote whether it was in Congress or ballot box.  We can not adopt the idea that we obtain our morals from opinion polls. Many who are running for office now are exposing the qualities of socialism and communism and are very convincing in their delivery.  However convincing they may sound, remember these two quotes from Bishop Sheen. “Communism is the final logic of the dehumanization of man. The industrial civilization of the Western world has no intent to destroy man's freedom or to deny his personality. But Communism does. Denying God, it reduces man to a robot. Never will we be able to understand our times if we naively 'think' of this system of self-government as the work of a few gangsters or the creation of a pack of criminals we call a political party. The appeal of Socialism, Fascism and communism was principally negative; they were protests against a live and let live anything goes liberalism, a spineless indifference to causes, a failure to recognize that nothing was evil enough to hate, and nothing was good enough to die for.”