“The King's Good Servant, but God's First: Responses in Canon and Civil
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“The King’s Good Servant, but God’s First: Responses in Canon and Civil Law to Governmental Threats to the Church’s Freedom to Carry Out Her Mission” Speculum Iustitiae Conference for Canon and Civil Lawyers Shrine Of Our Lady Of Guadalupe La Crosse, Wisconsin August 3, 2021 Most Reverend Thomas John Paprocki, STL, MBA, JD, JCD Bishop of Springfield in Illinois Adjunct Professor of Law Notre Dame Law School Summary This presentation on “Responses in Canon and Civil Law to Governmental Threats to the Church’s Freedom to Carry Out Her Mission” will begin with examining the basic foundations for religious freedom in theology and natural law. After surveying key canons from the Code of Canon Law that deal with the rights of the Church and her faithful, an overview will be given examining some key cases of the United States Supreme Court dealing with COVID restrictions on freedom of worship; same-sex marriage; foster care and adoption services; abortion, contraceptive and abortifacient mandates; school funding; Blaine amendments; church and school employees/ministers; school prayer; and public expressions of religion. Finally, some resources will be noted highlighting organizations providing legal assistance for litigation involving religious liberty. I. Religious liberty in theology and natural law The title of this presentation is, “The King’s Good Servant, but God’s First: Responses in Canon and Civil Law to Governmental Threats to the Church’s Freedom to Carry Out Her Mission.” Not too long ago, references to “Governmental Threats to the Church’s Freedom to Carry Out Her Mission” would have brought to mind the repressive atheistic regimes of the Soviet Union and Communist China, as well as the ant-Christian laws of Muslim-dominated countries such as Saudi Arabia. While Communist China and predominantly Muslim nations certainly continue to impede the Church’s freedom to carry out her mission, it is disconcerting, to say the least, that threats to the Church’s freedom to carry out her mission are becoming 2 increasingly apparent here in the United States. It is here in our domestic context that I will focus our attention. A. Maxim: “Law follows theology” In the canon law courses that I teach at Notre Dame Law School, I emphasize the maxim that “law follows theology.” By that I mean that we canon lawyers do not just sit around making up canon law out of thin air. The norms of canon law emanate from the teachings of Sacred Scripture and the principles of our faith in the Sacred Tradition of the Church as handed down over the past 2,000 years by lawful ecclesiastical authority. Thus, the canons of the Code of Canon Law that address the preeminence of divine law and canon law over civil law are based on Sacred Scripture and Tradition. So we will look at some of these principles first. B. Sacred Scripture on the Preeminence of Divine Law The classic biblical basis for the relationship between religious belief and government authority is found in the instruction from Jesus for His disciples to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” in the translation that is most familiar to English-speaking people (cf. Matthew 22:21 and Mark 12:17). While at first hearing it may seem that Our Lord is making a neat distinction between Church and State, the more incisive listener will realize that since God is the Creator of the universe, everything in it effectively belongs to Him. Nevertheless, Our Lord is allowing that there are circumstances in which civil authority should be followed as long as they are not contrary to divine purposes. Thus, Saint Peter wrote that Christians should “Be subject to every human institution for the Lord’s sake, whether it be to the king as supreme or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the approval of those who do good. For it is the will of God that 3 by doing good you may silence the ignorance of foolish people.” But he quickly adds, “Be free, yet without using freedom as a pretext for evil, but as slaves of God” (1 Peter 2:13-16). We see Saint Peter put this teaching into practice in the Acts of the Apostles, which tells us about the activities of the first Christians during the earliest days of the Church. There we read that when the apostles were imprisoned for preaching about Jesus, the angel of the Lord opened the doors of the prison during the night and led them out, and said, “Go and take your place in the temple area, and tell the people everything about this life.” When they heard this, they went to the temple early in the morning and taught. When the high priest and his companions arrived, they convened the Sanhedrin, the full senate of the Israelites, and sent to the jail to have them brought in. But the court officers who went did not find them in the prison, so they came back and reported, “We found the jail securely locked and the guards stationed outside the doors, but when we opened them, we found no one inside.” When they heard this report, the captain of the temple guard and the chief priests were at a loss about them, as to what this would come to. Then someone came in and reported to them, “The men whom you put in prison are in the temple area and are teaching the people.” Then the captain and the court officers went and brought them in, but without force, because they were afraid of being stoned by the people. When they had brought them in and made them stand before the Sanhedrin, the high priest questioned them, “We gave you strict orders [did we not?] to stop teaching in that name. Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and want to bring this man’s blood upon us.” But Peter and the apostles said in reply, “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:20-29) Thus, we see both in the teachings of Jesus and the life of Saint Peter, the premise that Christians should generally comply with civil authority, however, that compliance is not absolute, but is conditioned on civil authority being subservient to the divine law. 4 C. St. Thomas Aquinas on religious liberty A comprehensive study of Thomistic thought on religious liberty if beyond the scope of this presentation, but a brief mention of some key themes will be illustrative. Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, taught that unbelievers who have never received the faith should not be compelled to believe. He wrote: Among unbelievers there are some who have never received the faith, such as the heathens and the Jews: and these are by no means to be compelled to the faith, in order that they may believe, because to believe depends on the will: nevertheless they should be compelled by the faithful, if it be possible to do so, so that they do not hinder the faith, by their blasphemies, or by their evil persuasions, or even by their open persecutions. It is for this reason that Christ's faithful often wage war with unbelievers, not indeed for the purpose of forcing them to believe, because even if they were to conquer them, and take them prisoners, they should still leave them free to believe, if they will, but in order to prevent them from hindering the faith of Christ.1 The corollary of this argument is that the faithful should not be compelled to act contrary to their beliefs. While Aquinas did argue that heretics should be compelled to keep the faith, he saw this more as a matter of enforcing the obligations of believers who had freely accepted the faith and thus were abjuring their promises as distinguished from compelling belief ab initio.2 D. St. Thomas Becket’s witness to the rights of the Church vs. the State St. Thomas Becket was born around 1118 in London, England. He served as Chancellor of England (1155–62) and Archbishop of Canterbury (1162–70) during the reign of King Henry 5 II. His career was marked by a long quarrel with Henry that ended with Becket’s murder in Canterbury Cathedral on December 29, 1170. He is venerated as a saint and martyr in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Anglican Communion. He was canonized in 1173 and his feast day is December 29th.3 E. St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher’s witness to the priority of God’s law The home page for Religious Freedom Week on the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has the following description of the heroic witness of the lives of Saints Thomas More and John Fisher: Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher were Renaissance men. Talented and energetic, they contributed to the humanist scholarship of early modern England. More wrote theological and philosophical treatises, while making a career as a lawyer and government official. Bishop John Fisher worked as an administrator at Cambridge, confronted the challenge Martin Luther presented to Christian Europe, and most importantly served as Bishop of Rochester. As a bishop, he is notable for his dedication to preaching at a time when bishops tended to focus on politics. These men were brilliant. They both corresponded with Erasmus, who helped Bishop Fisher learn Greek and Hebrew, and who also famously referred to More as a man for all seasons [which is the title of the 1964 movie about his life.