St. Austin Review: Reclaiming Culture

December 7th, 2009Secular Fundamentalist Dictatorship or Religious Freedomby Joseph Pearce

Ferdi McDermott’s post earlier today lamenting the outlawing of the crucifix by the iniquitous European Court of European Rights raises some intriguing questions. For example, isn’t the banning of Christianity in public places simply the imposition of secular fundamentalism? Isn’t it simply the draconian imposition of de jure atheism and relativism? Isn’t it the dictatorship of huge centralised states and courts over the wishes of ordinary people?
 
As I read Ferdi’s post I was reminded of a similar situation affecting my adoptive home state of South Carolina about three weeks ago. In mid-November a US federal judge ordered South Carolina not to issue cross-adorned “I believe” car number plates to those who request them on the grounds that it violates the constitutional separation of church and state. The judge ignored the fact that the state legislature, a democratically-elected body, had voted unanimously to approve the car number plates that incorporate a cross in the midst of a stained glass window. And the judge also ignored the fact that these number plates will only be issued to those car owners who want them and request them, expressing their freedom of choice.
 
Let’s reassess the situation and then suggest an obvious solution.
 
In Europe, huge undemocratic bodies like the European Union and European Court of European Rights are serving as the juggernauts of the de facto atheism of secular fundamentalism; in the United States, the Federal Government and its courts are similarly imposing a state-sponsored atheism on an overwhelmingly Christian people.
 
Such is the situation.
 
Here’s the solution …
 
South Carolina and all the other states must fight for their political as well as their religious freedom by demanding a return of the power usurped from them by the Federal Government. In Europe, the nations of Europe must fight for their political as well as their religious freedom by demanding a return of the power usurped from them by the European Union and the European Court. Genuine democracy only works on a local scale and what we have in the United States and Europe is a bogus democracy that rides roughshod over the will and the freedom of ordinary people.
 
Not surprisingly, the Catholic Church has shown how true freedom and true democracy can be restored to the Christian peoples of Europe and the United States. It is through the implementation of the principle of subsidiarity, as expounded in encyclicals by Leo XIII, Pius XI, John Paul II and most recently by our present Holy Father, Benedict XVI, in Caritas in veritate.
 
Let’s state the matter bluntly. Secular fundamentalism is the enemy of true political and religious freedom. The subsidiarity espoused and expounded by the Catholic Church is the only path back to religious and political freedom.