Forcible Separation of Church and State

Our own political heritage is one of religious freedom. Far from having a “wall of separation” between Church and State, until the 1960s, Churches and religious life were given various protections from the state: clergy-penitent privilege, exemptions for military service for those bound by conscience, Christian religious holidays were also government holidays. The American notion of politics and religion was one where traditional religious life was protected from state interference; at the same time, religious sentiments on everything from slavery to alcohol could find expression in the laws.

In contrast, the French Revolution and the continental liberals of the 19th Century were hostile to religion, as such, and were especially hostile to the Catholic Church, which they regarded as illiberal, controlling of the people, and a threat to the state’s “complete sovereignty.” This hostility persists today especially in Catholic countries, including Italy, Spain, and the Catholic countries of Latin America.

In Catholic countries, unfortunately, the extreme hostility of liberal secularists has led at times to an extreme reactionary position among the Church and its supporters, exemplified in Church documents like the Syllabus of Errors and political leaders like Pinochet and Franco.

Consider this precis on Mexico’s anti-catholic measures of the 1920s:

The 1920s -1930s struggle between Church and State in Mexico ultimately goes back to five articles of the 1917 Constitution. Article 3 called for secular education in the schools; Article 5 outlawed monastic orders; Article 24 forbade public worship outside the confines of churches; and Article 27 placed restrictions on the right of religious organizations to hold property. Most obnoxious to Catholics was Article 130, which deprived clergy members of basic rights and made them in effect second-class citizens. Priests and nuns were denied the right to wear clerical attire, to vote, to criticize government officials or to comment on public affairs in religious periodicals.

While American liberals will undoubtedly say they would not endorse such measures, their notion of protecting the state from religious influence (rather than the reverse) ultimately leads in this direction. America’s liberals have embraced this alien concept of state-church separation, opposing, for example, prayer in schools, civil marriage laws respectful of widely held religious traditions, and even-handed treatment of religious institutions in the dispersal of public funds. Americans embracing the “separation” mantra of the last 40 years should recognize how this is a foreign import that has led in other nations to the most vile forms of persecution against Christians, especially Catholics. And American Catholics, who are all too enthusiastic about massive illegal immigration from Mexico, should consider whether the unhappy history of the Catholic Church in Mexico may be repeated here, as these people import their political values when them when they cross the Rio Grande.