Thank you to this Baptist pastor for doing the right thing and pledging to go to jail rather than comply with an illicit law. The contention that law is no law if it is immoral or goes against God's laws is a long standing one, as we see from St. Augustine (“an unjust law is no law at all”) and St. Thomas Aquinas (“Human law is law only by virtue of its accordance with right reason; and thus it is manifest [i.e., evident, obvious, clear to anyone who can see] that it flows from the eternal law. And in so far as it deviates from right reason it is called an unjust law; in such case it is no law at all, but rather a species of violence.").
However, I only wish the first person to have said it would have been one of the bishops, archbishops, or, better yet, a cardinal. Still, it's been said. And in a way, the heartening thing is that it wasn't said by a Catholic. Rather, it was said by someone outside our fold. That shows this argument is getting legs. Maybe that's what helped seal the deal for the Obama Administration.
That said, am on deadline so don't have to read about the putative compromise that was announced this morning. However, CBS news reported it's based on the policy in effect at DePaul University in Chicago. Hearing that, I groaned. Have you ever been there? Have you ever heard or read what some of their philosophy and theology professors say? Judging by what I've read, I can confidently say several are heretics (or at least what they say about a subject is often totally in opposition to what the Magisterium teaches and what the Catechism says). These teach modernism, which Pope St. Pius X says, what's the quote? "The synthesis of all heresies"? "The mother of all heresies"? One of the two. Anyway, you get the picture. This means that people sending their children there are paying big bucks to have their children taught and likely infected with beliefs that are not designed to help them grow in holiness. They're the very modernist teachings that caused the implosion in teh Catholic Church since 1965.
Furthermore, quotes I've read from their administrators and about what they've allowed at a supposedly a Catholic university don't make me confident that they crafted a compromise with the state of Illinois that held the line on authentic, traditional Church teaching. Again, I haven't read the terms, so I don't know. I hope I'm pleasantly proven wrong. Nothing would make me happier.
Please, please, please Lord, do not let the bishops cave on this. Please. I think these secularists/atheists have shown their true colors too many times. Don't let them be like the frog or fox in the story where the snake asks for a ride on his back across a river he couldn't otherwise traverse. No way, says the fox/frog, you'll bite me, and I'll die. Nooooooo, says the snake, I promise. How do I know I can believe you? I don't think I can, he replies. The snake soothingly reassures him he has nothing to fear. Eventually, the fox/frog agrees and just as they've crossed over and are emerging from the water, the snake bites him. As fox/frog lays their dying, he asks the snake, Why did you do that? I thought you promised. I can't help it, says the snake. It's in my nature, and he left his helper there to breath his last.
So it is with these people. Give them an inch, and they will ultimately find a way to take a mile. We can't let them. By God's grace and our work, we won't.
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