“Religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.” This proclamation, in various forms, has been given many times throughout history. But, coming from Hillary Clinton, it is the first time it has been iterated by an American who is a presidential candidate.
King Henry VIII declared the Act of Supremacy in 1534 that made him “the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England”. He broke with the Church of Rome because Pope Clement VII refused to grant him a divorce. Mrs. Clinton has taken issue with the Catholic Church and everyone in the country who is opposed to unrestricted abortion and has decided that America needs a new religion.
Hillary’s pretensions, however, are far wider than those of Henry VIII. Henry merely wanted the Church to permit him to divorce so that he could remarry and have, he hoped, a male heir. Hillary wants America to separate itself not only from religion, but also from science, reason, and a knowledge of history. It is science and reason that tells us that abortion is the killing of a human being. The Catholic Church affirms, but does not invent this. Hillary, therefore, makes herself an enemy of science and reason. Moreover, history tells us of the great contributions of Christianity, something that does not seem to concern the presidential candidate.
Her ambitions are indeed grandiose, though many voters prefer to see her merely as a champion of women’s rights. But in order to achieve her grandiose plans, she must silence a broader range of citizens than people of faith; she must also silence a segment of atheists who have recognized the positive contributions that Christianity has brought to the world.
In Sign of Contradiction, which is based on a private retreat that the then Bishop Karol Wojtyla gave to Pope Paul VI, we find an interesting reference to an article that appeared in a 1965 issue of a journal published by the Polish association of atheists and freethinkers. Bishop Wojtyla fully recognized that atheists can be reasonable, at least on certain important points. The author of the article is Leszek Kolakowski, a Marxist atheist. Its title is “Jesus Christ, prophet and reformer”.
According to Kolakowski, there are a number of fundamental values and cultural meanings that are derived solely from Christianity. Among these values for which the world is deeply indebted are the following: 1) the supplanting of law in favor of love; 2) the ideal of an end to arrogance in human relationships; 3) the truth that man does not live by bread alone; 4) the abolition of the idea of the chosen people in favor of a truly ‘catholic” or universal notion of human society; 5) that the world suffers from an organic imperfection.
How much worse the world would be today had these five values never come into being? Would it not be utterly foolish to disparage the source from which these values sprang? Would it not be severely counterproductive to seek to remove them? Kolakowski is a Pole, not an American. Nonetheless, the important point here, is that he exercised reason, not religious faith, in order to appreciate Christianity’s great and unique contributions. We find a similar conviction from another atheist, Mercello Pera who, in collaboration with Pope Benedict XVI, produced Without Roots in which they both expressed their great respect for the Christian heritage.
After the Act of Supremacy, Henry VIII had parliament enact The Treasons Act which punished those who would “disavow the act of Supremacy”. As a result, many Catholics, including Saint Thomas More, were put to death. If Hillary Clinton gains the White House, what kind of punishment does she envision for those, religious of otherwise, who continue to believe in the sanctity of unborn life? How does she envision a new Church of America?
A religion cannot be built from the premise of the right to divorce; nor can a civilized society be erected on the grounds of an unrestricted right to abortion. Hillary wants to invert society, making killing the unborn an absolute right, while relegating life, liberty, and the right to conscientious objection distant options. She does not appear to mind that religion and reason stand in her way. We are well served in recalling the words of the French poet, Jean de La Fontaine: “Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people.”
Dr. Donald DeMarco is a Senior Fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, CT, and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That is Going Mad and Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart are available through Amazon.com.
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