Open Letter to Senator Carl Levin

Senator Carl Levin
℅ United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510-2202

April 20th, 2012

    
Dear Senator Levin,

I received your letter, dated March 12th, 2012, explaining your reasoning for rejecting my request, as your constituent, that you vote in favour of Senator Blunt's amendment (S.AMDT.1520) to the Surface Transportation bill (S.1813) that would have granted all Americans the right to choose whichever insurance coverages they would provide for themselves or their employees based on the already Constitutionally guaranteed right to free exercise of their religion. Although, based on your history, I expected a negative response to my plea; what I did not expect was the nature of your response. There are many statements within it that either suggest wilful negligence on your part regarding the matters that constitute the very core of your duties as a United States' Senator, or, on the other hand, wilful obfuscation of the truth. Both possibilities are extremely troubling, but I can see no others.

In the second paragraph, for instance, regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA, P.L.111-148) and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (P.L.111-152), collectively known as health care reform, or more colloquially "ObamaCare," you state that "Under current law, insurance companies are required to offer preventive health coverage for certain services free of charge." It would seem that this statement is referring to the so-called "accommodation" suggested by President Obama in response to many Americans' objections to the Health and Human Services' (HHS) mandate that all employers (save a very few, of whom we shall speak of later), not insurance companies, provide coverage for contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilizations for their employees, and that all private citizens who do not have jobs must buy the same coverage. The "accommodation" that would have shifted the burden (only in theory, not in practice) to insurance providers, however, is nowhere found in the law as it currently stands. It was merely presented as a possibility in a press conference mere hours before Secretary Sebelius published the previously mentioned mandate "without change." Thus, this statement is nothing more than an untruth. And, even if the aforementioned "accommodation" had been written into the law, it would be idiocy to believe that the economics of insurance companies would actually make it possible for them to provide any of their coverage "free of charge" to the consumer. Thus, I cannot help but believe one of two things about why you have written this. Either you are 1) both negligent of the very basics of economics as they relate to insurance and of the current status of the legislation that you yourself helped to pass (which strongly suggests to me that you are either overworked to the point of exhaustion or that you have a general disregard for the specifics of those things which most immediately pertain to your position and thus, either out of a concern for your health or concern over your job performance—well, both, really—you should be replaced at the next election), or 2) you are deliberately misrepresenting the facts in an attempt to confuse or mislead me (which again strongly suggests that you need to be replaced at the next election). Either way, the blatant falsehood here is most disconcerting.

The next problematic statement entails an incorrect remark regarding the same matter. In the fifth paragraph, you write, "In response, the administration worked with concerned groups and forged a compromise to allay their concerns." In this case, I would call this statement more of a... slight of words (worthy of President William Clinton) than an outright lie. Firstly, to state that the administration "worked with concerned groups" is a bit of a stretch since the most concerned group, namely the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), was never consulted but rather told that negotiations of any kind were completely "off the table"1, though they were cordially invited to the White House in order to personally receive this proverbial slap in the face from President Obama, so I suppose some might call that "work[ing] with concerned groups." Secondly, as stated above, the administration presented a hypothetical "compromise"—a compromise, I might add, that in no way allayed the concerns of the USCCB or any other truly concerned group of American citizens—but then at nearly the same moment published the HHS mandate "without change." Thus, in order to assume here that you did not intend to lie, I am forced instead to assume that you meant a play on the word "forged" insinuating to the naïve reader that a compromise had indeed been "created" (one definition of "forged") when in fact you meant that a compromise had been "faked" (a second definition of "forged"; i.e. "created a falsehood with no actual value or truth behind it"). This is thus, at best an ignorance of the truth, and at worst a deliberate twisting of it. Unfortunately, either reading is distressing, given your responsibility to your constituents. Either we are to believe that you lied, telling us that a compromise that actually addresses the concerns of the USCCB and millions of other religious and non-religious Americans has been entered into law where none such has, or we are to believe that you feel that some sort of nefarious slight of hand on the part of the administration (and now on your own part) in order to deceive us is nothing to be concerned about (given the generally accepting tone of your letter in relation to this "forgery"). Again, either interpretation is very distressing and, again, suggests an attitude vastly unbecoming of a United States Senator.

Thus ends the obfuscation, but, not the distressing implications regarding your attitude toward your responsibilities to the American People and the Constitution of these United States of America. In the seventh paragraph, you finally address the amendment which was the actual subject of my initial correspondence with you, saying, "Senator Blunt's amendment would go far beyond nullifying the administration's rule to implement the provisions contained in the ACA requiring access to some preventative services at no cost." When you say that the Blunt amendment "would go far beyond nullifying the administration's rule," you are absolutely correct, since the administrations rule went far beyond the scope of the government's power under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Yet you seem to think that thusly safeguarding the freedoms granted to Americans under the Constitution is a bad thing. The "administration's rule," aka "the HHS mandate," restricted the power of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to a smaller sphere than had ever been considered before in the history of this country: essentially granting it only to those Americans who in no way allow the exercise of their religion to inform any portion of their life. This is an absurd and appalling interpretation of the First Amendment, especially when one considers that the man who apparently conceived of it, President Barack Obama, was trained as a Constitutional lawyer! Anyone with even the most basic understanding of the Constitution and its history knows that the Bill of Rights was never meant to be limited by the very government that it was written to limit such that the American People would no longer be protected by it. So, you're absolutely right that the Blunt amendment "would go far beyond" the administration's unprecedented and wildly unconstitutional mandate; that is merely because the administration, in issuing it, went far beyond its authority under the bounds of the very Constitution that brought that administration into existence. The Blunt amendment actually dared to reinstate, with the force of law, the First Freedom of all Americans as guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Constitution. Frankly, I am appalled to find that that kind of faithful adherence to the founding documents of this great nation is somehow repugnant to you, a man whose very livelihood depends very directly on that same Constitution which you apparently disregard so flippantly!

Finally, you state, with supreme (and apparently blind) irony, that "Congress took a bold and historic step by passing healthcare reform in 2010." Again, I must wholeheartedly agree with your words, while completely disagreeing with the salutatory tone in which you write them. Congress did indeed take a bold and historic step: for the first time in history, by passing a law with virtually no specifics yet written into it upon passage, you gave the administration the apparent power to override the United States Constitution in a way that curtails the very freedoms upon which this great nation was founded. The fact that you either are incapable of seeing this reality, or see it as a good thing is utterly astounding. That you hold the Constitution, and the Liberties for which generations of self-sacrificing Americans have given their lives, with so little regard deeply grieves me.

Frankly, Senator, everything in your letter gives me great pause, and it is for this reason that I have taken so long to respond to it: I wished to give it due and careful consideration. What I find most troubling is that I can see only two possible causes for the blatant falsehoods and misrepresentations of the truth found in your letter. One the one hand, it is possible that you are truly ignorant of the facts of these tmatters. On the other hand, assuming the first option is false, one is left to assume that you are deliberately lying to myself and the rest of your constituency (since I know that this is a form letter because my wife received an identical one). It is my fervent wish to give you the benefit of the doubt by assuming the very best I can of you. However, with these choices, I do not know which option casts the most favorable light upon you. In the first case, I am left to believe that you are ignorant of the very things that your position, as a U.S. Senator, requires you to deal with day in and day out. It is these very facts and others like them upon which you are called to make judgements every day on the floor of Congress. So, if I assume that you believe that the things you have said are true, then you are negligent in the fulfillment of your duties, and not merely negligent but egregiously so, given the ease with which I, a common citizen, am able to find out the error in them. In the second case, the assumption is that you are doing your due diligence as you act on the Congressional floor, but you are deliberately lying to your constituents about doing so. This is, to me, just as egregious as the first option, since you have merely replaced one unconscionable form of disrespect for the duty that the American people have entrusted you with for another form of disrespect. In the first case, you disrespect us by not doing due diligence in the first place; in the second, you disrespect us by implicitly stating by these falsehoods that you believe we, whose servant you claim to be, are either unworthy of knowing the truth about that which we ask you to do on our behalf, or incapable of understanding it as you do. Put another, more crass, way, either you think we're too stupid to realize that you aren't bothering to do your job as well as we expect you to do, or you think we're too stupid to understand the complexities of it and so we should stop bothering you with our pathetic and ignorant attempts to explain our views on the issues you deal with because we can't possibly know what's best for ourselves and our country. Again, I want to believe the best about you; I do not want to believe that you are mishandling the trust placed in you by the people of Michigan. However, neither of these options—the only two options which seem supportable by the letter you sent to us—allows me to do that. Both suggest that you have little to no regard for the citizens of Michigan who voted you into office, who pay your paycheck, and who are immediately effected by everything you do in office. And that, sir, is a profoundly unacceptable attitude, no matter how you look at it.

In the past, I have chosen to vote against your re-election because I believed that we merely disagreed on policies and other issues and thus other candidates would better represent me in the Senate. But in the future, I must vote—and much more than that, I must and shall loudly and profusely advocate—against your re-election based on the now blatant fact that you have little or no regard for the hearts, minds, and lives of your constituency, and that you likewise have little or no regard for the very principles and documents upon which this country in general, and your elected position much more specifically, are founded. As such, I no longer consider you merely a Senator with whom I disagree, but rather a man who is not fit to be a Senator because he has lost sight of the profound gravity and responsibility inherent in that position.

    
Disappointedly, your constituent and fellow American,
    
    
Jackford R. Macarius B. Kolk

1. March 3 Letter from Cardinal Dolan to Members of the USCCB, page 3, http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/upload/Dolan-to-all-bishops-HHS.pdf, Accessed April 20, 2012.

Authority & Truth: Part II

Pillar & Foundation

          The difficulty, I think, in admitting that some (or all) Christian doctrinal frameworks─be they Calvinist, Catholic, Lutheran, Wesleyan, Zwinglian, or whatever─must be wrong on any number of issues is not that any one Christian or group of Christians fails to believe that the Truths of the faith which they hold to are in fact universally True and universally vital for eternity, but rather that each individual Christian innately fears that, if God truly wants us to believe in one specific and complete set of Doctrines, then each one of us must therefore devote ourselves, to the exclusion of all else, to finding that Singular Deposit of Faith's position on each individual issue. Like any sufficiently complex research project, this process is, to put it mildly, daunting. We are finite; God is infinite. To discern every conceivable Truth with absolute certainty would not merely take a lifetime of concerted study, but rather an eon of it... or more probably all of eternity. We know that every human (save Jesus) is fallible (that is, capable of error), and not only fallible, but likely to err... a lot! So how could any one of us ever hope to find the Fullness of Truth on our own without the slightest hint of error? This is the herculean task that the cry of the so-called "Reformers" of the 15th century, "Sola Scriptura," lays before us, because it tells us that, because humans are involved in all interpretive traditions, no tradition can be trusted, so we only have our own minds, the Holy Spirit, and the Bible to draw from. (Granted, some versions of sola Scritura claim that their interpretive traditions can be trusted, but since that claim springs from the fact that that tradition stems from the rejection of another previous tradition, this conviction is devoid of intellectual integrity.1 But, this is a topic for a different time.) Thus sola Scriptura sets the individual Christian adrift in the tempestuous sea of competing theologies, lost and alone. How, then, are we to respond? We must seek Truth, or all else is lost! but where? how??
          First, we need to have faith; we need to trust that, when we're ready to really seek the Truth, we will find it. But not by our own effort or intelligence; only by the Providence of God and the guiding graces of His all-loving Spirit. Indeed, we must remember that faith upon which we rest our hope is not something we create in ourselves; it rather can only be a gift given to us by God. Like all other gifts, we can either accept it or not; we can either use it or not, but the source of faith is ultimately God, not us.
          As I said in the introduction, I think the foundation of the culture of relativism─and make no mistake, the problem of the multiplicity of Christian theologies is firmly grounded in that culture─is doubt. Doubt about whether Truth matters, but also doubt about whether Truth is even knowable. Perhaps it is even more fundamental than that: perhaps it is fear in the face of that most profound unknowableness. However, this is exactly the wrong attitude. To quote Pascal, "the supreme act of reason lies in recognizing that there is an infinity of things that surpass it" (Pensees §267). The unknowableness of God need not scare us, but rather excite us, thrill us! Still, before we try to find the Truth, we need to bolster our faith by remembering what God's attitude toward our pursuit of Truth is. God is first and foremost not a god of confusion (cf. I Cor. 14:33), but the God of Truth, Unity, and Love. It is Satan who wants us to despair and admit defeat.
          As a Protestant, I used to believe that all Truth was extracted from Scripture. I still believe that Sacred Scripture is an inerrant, infallible, and inexhaustible source of inspired Divine Truth. The problem is not the inspired nature of Scripture, but the private interpretation of it apart from the authority of the Church that Christ instituted to infallibly explain and defend it. As they say, and have been saying for some 500 years, sola Scriptura is the rallying cry of Protestantism, but to be honest, it isn't much of a rally. Because, once you've declared that Scripture is the only sure source of Truth, you must of necessity ask, "what Truth, exactly, has It declared?" And since Scripture is thus placed alone, without the pedestal of Truth (i.e. the Church) next to which It was meant to sit, each and every Christian must answer that question him- or herself; "Aye," in the words of Hamlet, "there's the rub." Because every one of us has experienced the reality of the disparity that thus instantly develops. The first Protestant leaders experienced this when they came together in a council, hoping to find unity and end the bickering between them so that they could once and for all sit down and begin rebuilding what they believed the Catholic Church had obscured: authentic Christianity. But, they left that council completely unable to find consensus because without an authentic, infallible interpreter of Truth, there is no way to find the Truth. Consensus in Truth was lost, and then even consensus on the meaning of sola Scriptura was lost.
           Certainly, we can, and naturally often do, surround ourselves primarily with those who interpret Scripture mostly the same way we do (not to mention the fact that St. Paul warns against that particular practice in II Timothy 4:3), but every one of us also encounters at least one other person who sees things differently. Especially in this global culture, where we have virtual "social networks" that connect people from far, far away, we can easily come "face to face" (or rather, screen to screen) with people who assert things that are not only fundamentally different than what we believe and understand, but things that cause us to ask, "how in the world can they think like that?!?"
           The solution though, is not to look at the disarray, shrug our shoulders, and return to our like-minded, itchy-ear cliques in a vain attempt at sticking our heads in the sand. It is to turn to God and say, with sincerity and faith, "Lord, I am lost in a sea of confusion, but You are a God of Truth, Unity, and Love. Lead me to Your Truth, that I might worship You in spirit and in Truth. Amen."
     
"Tell It to the Church..."
     
           The problem with the ambiguously pluripotent concept of sola Scriptura (besides the fact that any term that is never defined the same way twice is thus inherently useless in any discussion or debate), is that nothing like it ever appears in the Bible. Sacred Scripture never, ever instructs anyone to use or interpret Itself apart from Its Author or the community through which He inspired It to be written. The Bible instead points us directly to that community, promising that the Author who inspired the Word would inspire the leaders of that community.2
           Indeed, Jesus Himself told the Apostles (not all his followers, mind you; just the Twelve) in the Upper Room on the night that He was betrayed, "When the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you into all the Truth; for He will not speak on His Own Authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come" (John 16:13). Speaking of St. Paul's letters, St. Peter says, "There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures" (II Peter 3:16). In the Acts of the Apostles, the Ethiopian eunuch reads Scripture and when asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" the eunuch replies, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" (Acts 8:30-31). All this is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, when it comes to the interpretive authority of the Church to infallibly declare God's Truth, but it can be condensed to the following quote from St. Paul's first letter to Timothy:

"I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these instructions to you so that, if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the Household of God, which is the Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Bulwark of the Truth."

-I Timothy 3:14-15 (emphasis added)

           It is Paul's description of the Church that is most telling, but its context is also significant. He says that his letter is written, not so that Timothy might read it and built a system of theology solely from it and from his writings, but rather that Timothy might use it to guide his behaviour. But it is not merely a guide to behaviour alone. It is a guide to Timothy's behaviour within the Household of God. Too often today, especially in the United States, Christianity is so focused on one's personal relationship with Jesus Christ, that we almost forget that the only way we can know Him is by being in relationship with His entire Body, which is the Church. In order to behave rightly, we must allow His Body to be the organism within which we strive to serve Him, in cooperation with one another, not in individualistic autonomy. This is the context of Paul's letter, and the reason which compels him to expound briefly on the nature of that mystical Body of Christ.
           He thus calls the Body, the entire Church, "the Household of God, which is the Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Bulwark of the Truth." The general sense of sola Scriptura, no matter how it is defined, is that there is only one thing that has the absolute surety of being True in an eternal and universal sense: the Bible alone.3 But Paul's praise of the Church says that the Truth is grounded and held up, as with the strength of the Living God, not by "the Bible alone," but by "the Household of God." Now, I implore you, contemplate this deeply: the Truth here mentioned is the very Truth of God; it is not the empty or vain "personal truth" of the modern age, which the Relativist claims for himself but for no one else, as fickle and fleeting as an insect floating on the surface of a stream, one moment falling from above to alight on the river of life, the next getting caught on a protruding log to be smothered and subsumed into the gathering grime of fluvial decay. No, this Truth is immutable, incomparable, illocutible, and invincible as God Himself, yet Paul says that it is not maintained by the Written Word of God, but by His Living Church, His Divine Household! What eternal fortitude he grants to the Church! It's almost shocking! ... Except that we should have expected such eternal fortitude, knowing that Christ Himself said of the Church, "the gates of Hades shall not prevail against It" (Matt. 16:18b).
           In these two verses we find the clearest─though by no means the only─indication that the very same Church that Christ our Lord founded so many centuries ago in the Holy Land must still exist and be so unshakeable as to be always and everywhere identifiable on the Earth as His Church teaching His Truth to His People, with Teaching that, like Christ Himself, who is the Truth (cf. John 14:6), "is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). As the Truth is eternal and unshakeable, so too must that by which It is exalted and grounded be. It is because of the clarity of these facts that I dare proclaim that the Pillar and Bulwark of the Truth is the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. It is this Church within which St. Paul calls us to behave. This is the Church to which Jesus directed us when He said,

"If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the Church; and if he refuses to listen even to the Church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector."

-Matthew 18:15-17 (emphasis added)

           There are many myths about the Catholic Church. Some say she was founded not by Christ in the first century, but by Constantine in the fourth. Others say that she fell into utter apostasy sometime between the beginning and the 15th century, and so the "dead husk" of the Catholic Church had to be utterly cast off in order to "reform" Christ's Church using "the Bible alone" as the blueprint. In between these are a million other theories, all with one common thread: the idea that the Church that Jesus Christ truly founded and intended, at some point failed, sinking in the marshes of history never to be seen again... until someone took it upon themselves to remake it. This is the heart of every single myth of every single self-proclaimed reformer, no matter what they call themselves or when they decide to reforge the Church.
           There is only one problem: it contradicts the promise of Christ. A Church that needs to be rebuilt from scratch is a Church against which the gates of Hades have most certainly prevailed. A Church that fell into complete and total apostasy is a Church incapable of being called "the Pillar and Bulwark of the Truth." Thus, in order to buy into this theory and start Christianity over from the private interpretations of one man or one group of men, one must first accept the founding principle that God is powerless to keep His promises. The Bible clearly promises that the thing that will uphold the Truth for all eternity is the Church, yet the a priori assumption of the Reformation is that the Truth was lost somewhere in the first 15 centuries of Christendom and must be reconstructed by questioning everything that came before then! Jesus Christ Himself clearly promises that the gates of Hades will never overcome the Church that He founded, yet the a priori assumption of the Reformation is that they did! Someone must be lying, and we know that it cannot be God Incarnate...
           From this basis, Jesus' command that every disagreement be finally and decisively settled by the Church is utterly defunct. When the very reason for the existence of any self-proclaimed Christian "church" is that the original Church became, one way or another, (to borrow a phrase from Jean Calvin) "totally depraved," we have utterly no reason whatsoever to believe that the "church" to which we belong isn't also completely devoid of authority. After all, if even God cannot keep His promises, why should we trust men to keep theirs? Thus, we have no reason to trust the decisions of that "church" when a dispute is settled by it, and we have no reason to accept its pronouncement that either we or the other party are actually wrong. This is precisely why, every time a congregation finds itself in disagreement on "the non-essentials," no one is successfully treated "as a Gentile and a tax collector." Instead, the one becomes two. The single congregation splits into two congregations, both believing its own theology to be "True" and the other's to be "the doctrines of demons" (I Tim. 4:1).
           But this is not what God intended, and this does not in the slightest reflect the infinite power, authority, and majesty of God Almighty, the God of Hosts. Jesus said, "What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder" (Mark 10:9), yet we have thus taken the "one Body" (Eph. 4:4) that God has joined, not only to itself but to Himself, and let absolutely any man "put [it] asunder" for any reason. The only solution to this dilemma is to reject the founding principle, that the Church is lost to history or remained but completely lost sight of the Truth. We must instead seek out the one Church which has never ceased to exist and which has never ceased to "stand firm and hold to the traditions which [She was] taught by [the Apostles], either by word of mouth or by letter" (II Thess. 2:15). Unless we find and freely submit ourselves to this Church─the One and Only Church which Jesus Christ, the Word Made Flesh, founded─we will never be able to follow His command to "tell it to the Church..."

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1. e.g. John Calvin's ecclesiology which, while claiming sola Scriptura as its basis for rejecting the authority of the Catholic Church, still clings to the idea that somehow the schismatic "church" thus formed out of a rejection of Church authority is touted as having complete authority over individual Christians. While the initial foundation of his doctrine of Church authority, as outlined by Calvin in his Institutio Christianae Religionis (Book IV), is essentially scriptural, the fact that the book he wrote it in was itself written in direct rejection of the authority of the very Church by whom he knew which books belonged to Sacred Scripture belies the hypocrisy of his ecclesiology. The utmost irony of his entire ecclesiological discourse, of course, is found in the fact that he repeatedly and forcefully argues for the utter necessity of remaining within the visible Catholic Church, because to do otherwise is to jeopardize one's immortal soul, while he himself has already cut himself off from the visible Catholic Church (or to use his words, "produce[d] revolt from the Church") and done everything that he warns his readers against: "Still, however, even the good are sometimes affected by this inconsiderate zeal for righteousness, though we shall find that this excessive moroseness is more the result of pride and a false idea of sanctity, than genuine sanctity itself, and true zeal for it. Accordingly, those who are the most forward, and, as it were, leaders in producing revolt from the Church, have, for the most part, no other motive than to display their own superiority by despising all other men. Well and wisely, therefore, does Augustine say,

"Seeing that pious reason and the mode of ecclesiastical discipline ought specially to regard the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, which the Apostle enjoins us to keep, by bearing with one another (for if we keep it not, the application of medicine is not only superfluous, but pernicious, and therefore proves to be no medicine); those bad sons who, not from hatred of other men's iniquities, but zeal for their own contentions, attempt altogether to draw away, or at least to divide, weak brethren ensnared by the glare of their name, while swollen with pride, stuffed with petulance, insidiously calumnious, and turbulently seditious, use the cloak of a rigorous severity, that they may not seem devoid of the light of truth, and pervert to sacrilegious schism, and purposes of excision, those things which are enjoined in the Holy Scriptures (due regard being had to sincere love, and the unity of peace), to correct a brother's faults by the appliance of a moderate cure" (St. Augustine of Hippo, Contra Epistolam Parmeniani, chapter 1). To the pious and placid his advice is, mercifully to correct what they can, and to bear patiently with what they cannot correct, in love lamenting and mourning until God either reform or correct, or at the harvest root up the tares, and scatter the chaff (Ibid., chapter 2). Let all the godly study to provide themselves with these weapons, lest, while they deem themselves strenuous and ardent defenders of righteousness, they revolt from the kingdom of heaven, which is the only kingdom of righteousness. For as God has been pleased that the communion of his Church shall be maintained in this external society, any one who, from hatred of the ungodly, violates the bond of this society, enters on a downward course, in which he incurs great danger of cutting himself off from the communion of saints. Let them reflect, that in a numerous body there are several who may escape their notice, and yet are truly righteous and innocent in the eyes of the Lord. Let them reflect, that of those who seem diseased, there are many who are far from taking pleasure or flattering themselves in their faults, and who, ever and anon aroused by a serious fear of the Lord, aspire to greater integrity. Let them reflect, that they have no right to pass judgment on a man for one act, since the holiest sometimes make the most grievous fall. Let them reflect, that in the ministry of the word and participation of the sacraments, the power to collect the Church is too great to be deprived of all its efficacy, by the fault of some ungodly men. Lastly, let them reflect, that in estimating the Church, divine is of more force than human judgement" (Inst. Christ. Relig., Book IV, chapter I, §16).

2.Indeed, before the Bible even existed, it was Moses and his successors who had the authority to hear and interpret the Word of God for the People of God (cf. Exodus 18:13). This authority remained even until the time of Jesus, who said, "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice" (Matthew 23:2-3, emphasis mine). The continuity of authority was instituted by God and thus could only be affected by God. And so it was, when Jesus, in Matthew 16:19, alluding to the imagery of Isaiah 22:22 (where the King's Chief Steward was defrocked by God Himself and his authority over the Kingdom of Israel was transferred to another), to transfer the chair of divine authority from Moses' successors to Peter and Peter's successors. We'll get into the meat of these passages and their contexts later, but the gist is that in the Old Testament, for the sake of guaranteeing that His People would know the Truth, God ordained that His authority on earth should rest on Moses and his successors via the protection of the Holy Spirit, and in the New Testament God did the same thing for the same reason, merely transferring the office from the scribes and Pharisees to Peter and the Apostles.
           As can clearly be seen in the Gospels, though the Pharisees could clearly sin, and did often, Jesus nonetheless ratifies their teaching (Matthew 23:2ff), the authority resting specifically with the High Priest (cf. John 11:49-52 & Acts 23:3-5). (A helpful summary explanation of the Chair of Moses, with citations both Scriptural and historical, can be found here.) Similarly, Peter clearly sins many times throughout the New Testament, but he never teaches error (cf. Acts 15:7-11 where he teaches that Christians need not obey all aspects of the Law of Moses, despite the way he later acted as though he were ashamed of this pronouncement, cf. Gal. 2:12). In the same way, the Catholic Church is founded, by Christ, on the infallible authority of the Chair of Peter (i.e. that the Holy Spirit protects Peter and his successors from teaching any error, exclusively when speaking ex cathedra ("from the chair [of Peter]") on matters regarding faith and morals), as we'll discuss in later sections, but we do not teach nor believe that Peter and his successors are impeccable (i.e. are incapable of sinning).

3. I am not here trying to refute sola Scriptura, for no single, authoritative definition of it exists, therefore it can neither be proven nor refuted─which ironically is precisely the same problem with the lived practice of it─rather I offer the common essence of it in order to contrast it with the essence of I Timothy.

Authority & Truth: Part I

An Alternate IDIC:

Infinite Doctrine in Infinite Christianities

        The most basic teachings of Christianity are claims to Absolute Truth. We say, "There is a God, and Jesus Christ is His Son." We even dare to say that this God, who stepped out of the infinite reaches of unreachable infinity and into the finite world that He created, lived a human life at a specific time, in a specific place on this very specific planet. By this, we claim that the Transcendent God─the Being by whom the existence of every sub-atomic particle in the inconceivable enormity of the vastness of the entire universe is constantly, wilfully preserved─gave Himself a human Body, was born of a particular Jewish girl, one named Miriam (a.k.a. Mary), during the reign of a documented Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus, in the town of Bethlehem, lived for about 33 years, was killed under the authority of a Roman governor named Pontius Pilatus, and rose from the grave 3 days (by Jewish reckoning) later. This is an audacious claim. It is utterly ludicrous. The specificity alone is unfathomably uncalled for, especially when compared to the Truth-claims of all other religions throughout the world before our little "upstart sect" of Judaism appeared. Yet it is True, it is historical, and it is so astoundingly important that this one Life has shaped the entirety of human history both before and since.

        But what else do we know of this God-Man? What did He teach? History tells us that He taught for 3 years before His death. The Bible and many other ancient writings confirm this. And the Bible dares even to say that He taught for 40 more days after His Death (and Resurrection)! But, again, what did He really teach? Some Christians say that He founded a Church on Peter, that His Church was given authority from Heaven that would last forever, and that Christ Himself instituted seven Sacraments whereby the very grace of Almighty God is actually, really conferred on those who receive them, and moreover that the Sacrament of Baptism actually saves us from eternal damnation. Others say instead that Jesus founded His Church only on the faith of Peter (not on Peter himself), that His Church is not visible but is made up of certain believers known only to God, and that there are no Sacraments, that Baptism is nothing more than a voluntary (and unnecessary) practice by which we only profess the faith by which we are saved. And thousands of other Christians believe thousands of other things about the teachings of this ancient Jewish Rabbi that fit somewhere in between these two positions (or somewhere wildly outside of both). The point, of course, is that although all of these people claim to live by and to believe what Jesus Christ taught, many of their beliefs are completely contradictory to the beliefs of other Christians.

        Growing up, I suppose I was vaguely aware of this diversity of beliefs about Jesus and His teachings, but I didn't think anything of it. In fact, I didn't think on it at all; no one seemed to. It was normal because we've been living in this sea of theological diversity (perhaps we should call it anarchy) for at least 500 years. No one remembers a time when unity was not only expected, but of primary importance, because none of us were alive when that was the case. But, thanks to my wife, who in college was told about the entire history of Christianity (not just the history since A.D. 1510 or so), I was awakened to the idea of questioning this status quo.

        The questions I asked myself were these: is this the way God wants it to be? is it enough for Christians to only have a shared belief regarding "the essentials" (whatever those are) and to let every other question of Truth be settled in Heaven? does anyone even know what "the essentials" are?
     

Leaving the Door Open

   
        The status quo is this: from One infallible Teacher, the Man who is God Himself, we claim to have a dizzying menagerie of competing and incompatible teachings, and almost no one among us claims to be infallible in teaching them. The question is this: does that One infallible Teacher want that to be the status qou? To discern whether this is or is not a problem, let's see what Jesus and the Apostles, whom He commissioned to "[g]o therefore and make disciples of all nations, ... teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you;" (Matthew 28:19-20), have to say about differing teachings.

        To start with, St. Paul expresses a strong concern for correct teaching in all matters. In Romans 16:17-18, he says, "I appeal to you, brethren, to take note of those who create dissensions and difficulties, in opposition to the doctrine which you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by fair and flattering words they deceive the hearts of the simple-minded." Notice, there is no qualification of which doctrines are being opposed, no mention of "essential" doctrines at all, but merely of "the doctrine which you have been taught." Paul emphasizes in many passages the importance of keeping all teachings in line with those passed on from Christ through himself and the other Apostles.

        In his first letter to Timothy, for instance, he begins with this very message:
     

    "As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than the divine training that is in faith; whereas the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith. Certain persons by swerving from these have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the Law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make assertions."

-I Timothy 1:3-7, emphasis added

   
Again, he gives no qualification about which false doctrines are to be opposed and which might be acceptable. Instead he tells Timothy to make sure no one teaches "any different doctrine." In fact, he gives examples that, to the modern Protestant ear, are not essential at all, but are perhaps the most trivial ideas of all: "myths and endless genealogies." And remember, he says that any who teach anything "in opposition to the doctrine which you have been taught ... do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites". Those are pretty harsh words!

        The danger, Paul explains, is that, "by swerving... [they] have wandered away into vain discussions... without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make assertions" (v. 7) Or, to put it another way, by allowing any seemingly "non-essential" (a.k.a. "vain") false doctrine to slip in, the whole foundation could become rotten. Like a house, any tiny crack in the exterior, not matter how small, if left untended, leaves the whole house open to leaks. And under the right circumstances, those leaks could become a flood that in turn does so much damage that the entire house must be condemned. Though these persons may think they're merely discussing inconsequential minutia, they may inadvertently miss the implications of their musings and stumble into grave errors. G.K. Chesterton likens this danger to balancing a massive structure on the edge of a precipice. If we waver too far on the side of pacifism, we live in danger of failing to protect the most innocent and vulnerable among us, but if we lean too far the other way, we find ourselves engaging in the excesses of fanatical suicide bombing to kill those who disagree with us rather than attempting, through love and reason, to peaceably convert them. Either way, the slightest imbalance in any doctrine causes the entire structure (i.e. the soul of the individual who believes it) to topple, making everything plummet into the pit below.

        The reason that the Catholic Church sees nothing that the Apostles passed down to us through the centuries as non-essential, to put it another way, is this: "so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles" (Ephesians 4:14). Paul's command that we not change any doctrine at all is merely the boundary that the Church sets around us in order to protect us from the deadliness of these winds. I have always liked the analogy used by G.K. Chesterton to describe this:
     

"Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff's edge, they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased."

-Orthodoxy, IX

Without boundaries, we either get so excited about "freedom" that we dash ourselves on the rocks below, or we become so terrified by "the naked peril of the precipice" that we are no longer excited about anything. Yet, it is the same island, the same faith in which God wants us to frolic. The only difference is that we have removed the walls that kept us safe.
        Or, as Paul puts it elsewhere, allowing the "godless chatter" of unchecked doctrinal speculation "will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will eat its way like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the Truth by holding that the Resurrection is past already. They are upsetting the faith of some" (II Timothy 2:16-18). Notice that these two men "have swerved from the Truth by holding that the Resurrection is past already." In another place, he shows how those who reject the idea of resurrection altogether have lost the claim to Christ's saving Resurrection (cf. I Corinthians 15:12-19), but these two "are upsetting the faith of some" by simply believing in the wrong timetable for the Resurrection. (This warning is especially pertinent to this century, where we have multiple teachings about that timetable swirling about our heads─Pre-Millenialism, Post-Millenialism, Amillenialism, etc.) Paul extols us, "Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings; for it is well that the heart be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited their adherents" (Hebrews 13:9).

        In Jesus' day, too, the Pharisees and the Sadducees disagreed about a great many things; there was confusion in Israel over the Truth of God, not unlike there is today (although, I dare say there are a great many more competing theologies in Christianity today than there were in first century Judaism). So, when all this finally broke into my consciousness, I had to ask myself, did Jesus sit back and say, "well, as long as they agree on the essentials, it's not a problem"? What I found was that Matthew 15:1-9, & 12-14 cast quite a different picture:
     

    "Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 'Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.' He answered them, 'And why do you transgress the Commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, "Honour your father and your mother," and, "He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him surely die." But you say, "If any one tells his father or his mother, 'What you would have gained from me is given to God,' he need not honour his father." So, for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the Word of God. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:

        `This people honours Me with their lips,

        but their heart is far from Me;

        in vain do they worship Me,

        teaching as doctrines the precepts of men."'"

"...Then the disciples came and said to him, 'Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?' He answered, 'Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.'"

   
"So, for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the Word of God. You hypocrites!" Jesus says. This is an astonishingly sharp criticism; could it be because they're misleading the Jews on "the essentials"? Look at the example Jesus uses. It's about honouring one's parents and it's in response to a question about hand-washing; this is hardly the stuff of obviously eternal consequences. I don't think many today would call these disagreements "the essentials", yet Jesus is livid, telling the Pharisees that they are far from the heart of God because of them, and telling his disciples that they were liable to "fall into a pit" (an obvious metaphor for Hell). Again, it looks like Jesus takes the position that there is no such thing as a "non-essential" teaching.

        Perhaps this is because these are some of the things that still divide us. "God commanded, 'Honour your father and your mother,'" yet by their actions so many Protestants say, "What [Mary] would have gained from me is given to God, [so I] need not honour [the Mother of My Lord.]" Yet, aside from being just the Mother of God (as if that were any small thing), did not the Gospel of John and the book of Revelation also reveal her as the mother of all Christians (cf. John 19:26, Rev 12:17)? and did not the Gospel of Luke also say of Mary, "behold, henceforth all generations will call [her] blessed" (Luke 1:48)? As my Marian pages show, the Catholic Church has fulfilled this prophesy throughout every generation, but it is precisely this hypocrisy of the Pharisees that persists to this very day in many people's hearts, dividing brother from brother and sister from sister, because some honour the Blessed Mother, but some ignore her, worsening the centuries of division that Christ's Body, the Church, has suffered. Perhaps it wasn't so inconsequential after all...

        Matthew 5:17-20 also suggests that, like Catholics (and St. Paul), Jesus taught that no teaching is non-essential:
     

    "'Think not that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, till Heaven and Earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven'" (emphasis added).

   
To Jesus, even a relaxed teaching on just "one of the least of these commandments" is enough to bring serious and eternal disgrace on the teacher. How much more would we be disgraced for relaxing one of the medium-level commandments? or one of the most important? And what if we fully reject the least one? Will we then no longer be in the Kingdom at all?? These are not trivial questions. They are clearly incredibly important to Our Lord, so they should be incredibly important to us as well.

        John, "the Disciple whom Jesus loved," is also very strict on this matter. He says, "Any one who goes ahead and does not abide in the Doctrine of Christ does not have God; he who abides in the Doctrine has both the Father and the Son. If any one comes to you and does not bring this Doctrine, do not receive him into the house or give him any greeting; for he who greets him shares his wicked work" (II John 1:9-11). And James too cautions us, saying, "Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we who teach shall be judged with greater strictness" (James 3:1).

        When I finally noticed these verses, I was glad that I had not followed my initial impulse and endeavoured to become a Protestant pastor, with no authority behind my teaching but my own interpretations of the Bible. If believing some wrong doctrine can lead to grave error, and God judges those who then go on to teach those errors to others even more harshly than he does those who merely believe the wrong things, I most certainly didn't want to be held responsible for the souls of others when I didn't even know how to be sure that what I taught them was the whole Truth of God and nothing but the Truth of God. I wanted to know God's eternal and universal Truth, but I also knew from experience that it is far too easy to fool myself.

        When I was in high school, I was rather pathetically infatuated with a certain girl, but, in "loving" her from afar, it often became painfully apparent (usually whenever I occasionally made romantic overtures toward her) that the girl I "loved" (i.e. the girl in my head) was quite a bit different from the real-life girl. The one in my head was going to respond, "Why of course, I'd love to be your girlfriend! You're the most kind, loving, romantic man I've ever met!" while the real one said things more like, "O, um," (painfully awkward pause,) "I value your friendship, but I can't," (painful pause #2,) "...right now." While I'm not in a position to judge how real or intimate any particular Christian's relationship with Jesus is─and I would never presume to─the innumerable conceptions of who He is and of what He wants us to believe do suggest that at least some of us aren't sufficiently well acquainted with Him and have, no doubt inadvertently, constructed imaginary Jesuses in our minds in lieu of the Real One. In high school, I saw and even spoke to the girl nearly every day, but I was still able to construct a false mental version of who she was and what she wanted of me. Jesus lived 2000 years ago in a land that many of us have never even seen. Isn't it possible that our mental versions of Him and of what He wants of us is flawed too? 
     

There Can Be Only One

   
        Returning, then to the idea that the doctrines we proclaim as Christians are inherently claims of absolute Truth, we must realize that each and every one─not merely the so-called "essentials" but all Christian Teaching─by its very nature, claims to apply universally to every human being everywhere and at all times, indeed to every speck of reality in the created universe. No one is exempted. No Christian Truth is good for you but not for me. That's not to say that every specific practice, personal and public, must be practiced by all; but the Truths─the Doctrines, the Teachings, those things that apply to matters of faith and morals─all apply universally. So when we have a disagreement among Christians about any one of these things, we cannot all be right. It is a logical impossibility that every Christian or every group or denomination has come up with a correct interpretation of a Teaching. Someone has to be wrong, whenever our interpretations are fundamentally incompatible. For true Christian unity─the very thing for which Jesus begged the Father, just prior to His final act of ultimate love for us (cf. John 17:20-26)─a "union" of permissive relativism will never do; in fact it is no union at all. Where you and I disagree, we are not unified, no matter how amicably we do so. For true Christian unity, only a universal acknowledgement of the One Universal Truth will suffice.

        As a matter of example, we cannot call ourselves one, as Jesus and the Father are One, while simultaneously professing, a) that Jesus' Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity is absolutely and incontrovertibly 100% truly and substantially present in Holy Communion, and b) that the very same Holy Communion is nothing more than a memorial meal that we do in obedience to cognitively remember the night before He died on the Cross for us. Either "This is My Body" (Matthew 26:26, Mark 14:22, Luke 22:19, & I Corinthians 11:24), or "This is [not] My Body." These are mutually exclusive statements and we cannot claim to be perfectly one with one another until we all proclaim the same Truth-claims about reality, the same all-encompassing Creed. Either "Baptism... now saves you" (I Peter 3:21) or "Baptism... now [only signifies that faith which] saves you." Either "the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Matthew 7:14), or "the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to [eternal damnation], and those who find it are few." In any such disparity of creeds, one belief (at least) must be false. There can be only One Truth, and His Name is Jesus. He is not many, but One. His Teaching is One, Universal, Eternal, and Unchangeable; just as the Father is; just as the Spirit is. For the Christian, relativism, even in the supposedly narrow framework of "disagreeing only on the non-essentials," is simply not an option.

Open Letter to Vice President Biden

The following is a wonderful letter written by my beloved wife to Vice President Biden who, on a radio interview on April 1st, 2012, flat-out lied both about "where we ended up" with regard to the HHS Mandate promulgated by Secretary Sebelius under the direction of President Obama, and about those who oppose these and all the other unconstitutional actions of the current Administration. I would comment on the specifics of this incident if I thought that were necessary, but they're covered very well by my lovely wife and her sources are clearly sited, so any interested parties can follow up easily. Please share this and everything trustworthy regarding the truth about the Administration's attack on our First Amendment rights, keep yourself informed at StopHHS.com, and join with all patriotic Americans in defending our first freedoms.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vice President Joseph Biden
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington D.C. 20501

Dear Vice President Joseph Biden,

I am incredibly disappointed that you would perpetuate falsehoods and fantasies in your interview on Face the Nation on April 1, 2012.  You made several statements during that interview that were patently false and outright lies.

First, you state that the current place "where we ended up" is that "every woman in America should be able to have insurance coverage for birth control, if she so chooses. And that the Catholic Church and other churches should not have to pay for it, or provide it."1  The rule that was placed into law, however, is the initial rule that was repugnant to Archbishop Timothy Dolan and the other leaders of the Catholic Church and many others of other religious persuasions.  The rule as it stands is that insurance plans not covered by the exemption cover "All Food and Drug Administration approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity."2  The exemption as written in law continues to be so narrow that it excludes religious hospitals, schools, and charities which have a faith-driven mission to serve the whole world, whether their beneficiaries share the same faith or not.  As Bishop Zubik says, this mandate is so narrowly drawn that "Jesus Christ and his Apostles would not fit the exemption."3   This mandate continues to force these institutions to choose between their mission and their deeply held religious conviction that pregnancy and fertility should not be treated as a disease and that life begins at conception.  This mandate forces the President's beliefs on these employers, insisting that they violate their conscience and their religion to buy something mandated by President Obama.

The fact is that the mandate, as repugnant as it was to so many, was finalized without change.  The accommodation that was touted is still in a comment period and is not even binding.  The accommodation continues to violate religious freedom and conscience with its shell game.  To pretend that an insurance plan, provided by and subsidized by a Catholic employer, will provide free "contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity" without passing on the costs to the payer suggests a grave mischaracterization of how our economy works.  Furthermore, even if some feel this, as yet non-binding, accommodation provides conscience protection, the fact is that others do not: hence, this continues to force institutions and individuals to violate their conscience.

Second, you state "They're saying that the-- we should-- women should be prescribed or states can prescribe or individuals can proscribe. Women say, you can't use birth control? I mean, I-- I-- I-- I think it's totally out of touch with reality, and totally out of touch with what the independents and the right of women to decide for themselves whether or not they want to use contraception, and I-- I just find it remarkable that the argument is even taking place."1  This, too, is an outright lie about your opponents.  The fact is that not one of the Republican candidates for President or Republican politician has suggested that birth control be banned.  The fact is that not one of the US Catholic Bishops or those who stand with them have suggested that birth control be outlawed or that doctors be prohibited from prescribing birth control or women be told that they cannot take birth control.  Given these facts, your statement can be characterized as nothing else but a lie.  As such, I demand that you retract it, issuing a public apology for lying about them.  There is no excuse to lie like this.

What we do oppose is being forced to pay for a product, in this case insurance policies that provide birth control free of cost, that violates our conscience, institutional or individual.  With this mandate, the government is compelling institutions and individuals to purchase something that violates their conscience.  This is a grave violation of our rights to practice our religion freely.  In the words of our bishops:

"We wish to clarify what this debate is—and is not—about. This is not about access to contraception, which is ubiquitous and inexpensive, even when it is not provided by the Church's hand and with the Church's funds. This is not about the religious freedom of Catholics only, but also of those who recognize that their cherished beliefs may be next on the block. This is not about the Bishops' somehow "banning contraception," when the U.S. Supreme Court took that issue off the table two generations ago. Indeed, this is not about the Church wanting to force anybody to do anything; it is instead about the federal government forcing the Church—consisting of its faithful and all but a few of its institutions—to act against Church teachings. This is not a matter of opposition to universal health care, which has been a concern of the Bishops' Conference since 1919, virtually at its founding. This is not a fight we want or asked for, but one forced upon us by government on its own timing. Finally, this is not a Republican or Democratic, a conservative or liberal issue; it is an American issue.4 (emphasis added)

We oppose the federal government taking it upon itself to define what a religious employer is.  Even with the accommodation this extremely narrow definition would continue to persist.  This intervention into church governance is unwarranted, unprecedented, and unconstitutional.  It brings to mind the words of Chief Justice Roberts in the opinion delivered for a unanimous Court, that in interfering with the employment decisions of the Hosanna-Tabor school, "the state infringes the Free Exercise Clause, which protects a religious group's right to shape its own faith and mission through its appointments. According the state the power to determine which individuals will minister to the faithful also violates the Establishment Clause, which prohibits government involvement in such ecclesiastical decisions."5  Again, in the words of our bishops:

"HHS thus creates and enforces a new distinction—alien both to our Catholic tradition and to federal law—between our houses of worship and our great ministries of service to our neighbors, namely, the poor, the homeless, the sick, the students in our schools and universities, and others in need, of any faith community or none. Cf. Deus Caritas Est, Nos. 20-33. We are commanded both to love and to serve the Lord; laws that protect our freedom to comply with one of these commands but not the other are nothing to celebrate. Indeed, they must be rejected, for they create a 'second class' of citizenship within our religious community. And if this definition is allowed to stand, it will spread throughout federal law, weakening its healthy tradition of generous respect for religious freedom and diversity. All—not just some—of our religious institutions share equally in the very same God-given, legally-recognized right not "to be forced to act in a manner contrary to [their] own beliefs." Dignitatis Humanae, No. 2."4

Furthermore: "Those deemed by HHS not to be "religious employers" will be forced by government to violate their own teachings within their very own institutions. This is not only an injustice in itself, but it also undermines the effective proclamation of those teachings to the faithful and to the world."4

The HHS mandate goes further in intruding upon the conscience rights of individuals, who are left with no conscience protections at all.  It provides no protection for the individual Catholic, operating a business, who finds it a violation of her conscience to purchase these insurance plans for her employees.  It provides no protection for an individual Catholic who finds purchasing a health plan for themselves that subsidizes birth control to be a violation of their conscience.  As our bishops state "this, too, is unprecedented in federal law, which has long been generous in protecting the rights of individuals not to act against their religious beliefs or moral convictions."4

Please cease and desist in lying about those of us who oppose the Mandate which violates our Freedom to Exercise our Religion, as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America.  Please stop spreading misinformation, mischaracterization, and untruths about those of us who object to being forced to violate our consciences and those of us who object to others being forced to violate their consciences.  You say that you are Catholic - to spread such lies about those who oppose the mandate is to commit the grave sin of calumny.  As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) states "Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury.  He becomes guilty [...] of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them" (§2477)6.  This is precisely what you have done.  Further, the CCC states in §2482-2483 "A lie consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving.  [...] Lying is the most direct offense against the truth.  To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error.  By injuring man's relation to truth and to his neighbor, a lie offends against the fundamental relation of man and of his word to the Lord."6  Later the CCC states "Since it violates the virtue of truthfulness, a lie does real violence to another.  It affects his ability to know, which is a condition of every judgment and decision.  It contains the seed of discord and all consequent evils.  Lying is destructive of society; it undermines trust among men and tears apart the fabric of social relationships.  Every offense committed against justice and truth entails the duty of reparation, even if its author has been forgiven."  (§2486-2487, emphasis added).6  Again, this is precisely what you have done.

As a fellow Catholic, I ask you to repent, to make public reparation for the lies you have perpetuated.  This is what the Church you claim to belong to demands when an offense against truth is committed.  Will you listen to your Church - or have you separated yourself from the Catholic Church?  I pray, for your sake, that you will turn from your wicked ways and cease bearing false witness against your neighbor.

Sincerely,

Elisa J. Kolk

1. "Face the Nation transcript: April 1, 2012".  CBS News.  Page 5.  http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57407723/face-the-nation-transcript-april-1-2012/?pageNum=5&tag=contentMain;contentBody. Accessed 2 April 2012.
2. Women's Preventive Services: Required Health Plan Coverage guidelines. http://www.hrsa.gov/womensguidelines/.  Accessed 3 February 2012.
3. Bishop David A. Zubik, Diocese of Pittsburgh. To Hell with You. http://diopitt.org/bridging-gap/hell-you . Accessed 3 February 2012.
4. March 14 Statement on Religious Freedom and HHS Mandate.  A Statement of the Administrative Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.  March 14, 2012.  http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/march-14-statement-on-religious-freedom-and-hhs-mandate.cfm.  Accessed 2 April 2012.
5. Supreme Court of the United States Syllabus "Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Et Al."  Argued October 5, 2011.  Decided January 11, 2012.  http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-553.pdf Accessed 3 February 2012.
6. Catechism of the Catholic Church.  Second Edition.  Libreria Editrice Vaticana,1997. United States Catholic Conference, Inc. - Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997.

Introduction to Ecclesiology

"Quid est Veritas?" said Pilate, to Jesus...

        "Quid est Veritas?" is the fundamental question of our time. "What is Truth?" 2000 years ago, Pontius Pilate rhetorically asked this question of Jesus in what seems to be a tone of dejected surrender. He believed that the Truth of Who Jesus was could not save him from the wrath of the Jewish people, nor from the wrath of an Emperor who threatened to punish him should those Jews mount any more revolts. The Truth was only an inconvenience, which, even if he believed it, would only add a heavy conscience on top of his already heavy heart. Too often this is how each of us feels today. The Truth is not sought because it makes no practical difference in our lives. It is at best an inconsequential curiosity. We have suffered under this misapprehension for so very long, that the cry of the culture has become, "There is no such thing as absolute Truth." Logic tells us that this very statement is itself an hypocritical claim that asserts itself as absolute Truth, but the inherent contradiction little matters since the point is not whether or not it is true, but rather whether or not anything that is true could possibly change anything about how our day to day lives will turn out.
        But what if it did? What if, whether someone's claim that something was absolutely, ultimately, and undeniably True, could change your life? What if the answers to the seemingly irrelevant "fundamental" questions (what Douglas Adams referred to as "the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything") wasn't merely theoretical, but could actually change everything for you? What if that question wasn't merely a cosmic joke with no answer, but an eternal Promise with an Answer that was knowable and foundational to every individual life? What if it changed not just how you lived your life today, but where you ended up because if it?
        For me, it does. For me, my life began to be filled with an unshakable foundation of joy, that carries me safely through even the most difficult times in my life, precisely because I know the Answer to the Ultimate Question. Because the answer is not abstract at all. It is a Person, and He is real, He is tangible, and He is loving!
        But unless we can know with an unshakeable certainty whether these hypotheticals are true, then there is no point in asking, and the dejected resignation of Pilate is warranted. This is why God gave us not only the Bible, but the Church to interpret It. This is why St. Paul writes, "if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the Household of God, which is the Church of the Living God, the pillar and bulwark of the Truth" (I Timothy 3:15). Because the Holy Spirit who inspired Paul to write this just as He inspired all the Scriptural authors, meant to assure us that we can have certainty regarding Truth. And that certainty is that the Church is the foundational guarantor of all Divine Truth.
        On other pages, I explore the specific Truths taught by the Church, and attempt to suggest how they might affect your life, but in these pages it is my aim to show you how it is that we can first be certain that there is knowable Absolute Truth; how it is that the Catholic Church that alone is capable of guaranteeing God's Truth in the face of the nearly infinite interpretations and interpreters of the Bible and the world around us.