This speech by Attorney General William P. Barr is a powerful and I believe prophetic word to
the church in 21st century America. I find it totally appropriate
that the Lord would use a lawyer to argue the case that the courts and culture
is sick and dying and we have the cure, moreover we know the healer. Though he
is no evangelist, there is no doubt in my mind, his value of the church (even
beyond Catholic) is profoundly high. I believe it’s people like this that God
uses to stand between the church and severe persecution. The truths he presents are difficult to hear
but should spur us on to greater diligence as we engage the world for Jesus.
The speech is roughly a ½ hour and is available here:
it’s worth watching for his opening humor and kindness-it’s
obviously impromptu and is not included in the manuscript. I wish we could see
more of this wisdom in D.C. but at least we have this-which gives me hope. All
bold type is my doing for emphasis and astonishment.
Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Remarks to the Law
School and the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of
Notre Dame
South Bend, IN ~ Friday, October 11, 2019
Remarks as prepared for delivery
Thank you, Tom, for your kind introduction. Bill and Roger,
it’s great to be with you.
Thank you to the Notre Dame Law School and the de Nicola
Center for Ethics and Culture for graciously extending an invitation to address
you today. I’d also like to express gratitude to Tony de Nicola, whose generous
support has shaped – and continues to shape – countless minds through
examination of the Catholic moral and intellectual tradition.
Today, I would like to share some thoughts with you about
religious liberty in America. It’s an important priority in this Administration
and for this Department of Justice.
We have set up a task force within the Department in which
different components that have equities in this area including the Solicitor
General’s Office, the Civil Division, the Office of Legal Counsel, and other
offices. We have regular meetings. We keep an eye out for cases or events
around the country where states are misapplying the Establishment Clause in a
way that discriminates against people of faith, or cases where states adopt
laws that impinge upon the free exercise of religion.
From the Founding Era onward, there was strong consensus
about the centrality of religious liberty in the United States.
The imperative of protecting religious freedom was not just
a nod in the direction of piety. It reflects the Framers’ belief that religion
was indispensable to sustaining our free system of government.
In his renowned 1785 pamphlet, “Memorial and Remonstrance
Against Religious Assessments,” James Madison described religious liberty as “a
right towards men” but “a duty towards the Creator,” and a “duty….precedent
both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil
Society.”
It has been over 230 years since that small group of
colonial lawyers led a Revolution and launched what they viewed as a great
experiment, establishing a society fundamentally different than those that had
gone before.
They crafted a magnificent Charter of Freedom – the United
States Constitution – which provides for limited government, while leaving “the
People” broadly at liberty to pursue our lives both as individuals and through
free associations.
This quantum leap in liberty has been the mainspring of
unprecedented human progress, not only for Americans, but for people around the
world.
In the 20th century, our form of free society faced a severe
test.
There had always been the question whether a democracy so
solicitous of individual freedom could stand up against a regimented
totalitarian state.
That question was answered with a resounding “yes” as the
United States stood up against and defeated, first fascism, and then communism.
But in the 21st century, we face an entirely different kind
of challenge.
The challenge we face is precisely what the Founding Fathers
foresaw would be our supreme test as a free society.
They never thought the main danger to the Republic came
from external foes. The central question was whether, over the long haul, we
could handle freedom. The question was whether the citizens in such a free
society could maintain the moral discipline and virtue necessary for the
survival of free institutions.
By and large, the Founding generation’s view of human nature
was drawn from the Classical Christian tradition.
These practical Statesmen understood that individuals,
while having the potential for great good, also had the capacity for great evil.
Men are subject to powerful passions and appetites, and, if
unrestrained, are capable of ruthlessly riding roughshod over their neighbors
and the community at large.
No society can exist without some means for restraining
individual rapacity.
But, if you rely on the coercive power of government to
impose restraints, this will inevitably lead to a government that is too
controlling, and you will end up with no liberty, just tyranny.
On the other hand, unless you have some effective restraint,
you end up with something equally dangerous – licentiousness – the unbridled
pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good. This is just
another form of tyranny – where the individual is enslaved by his appetites,
and the possibility of any healthy community life crumbles.
Edmund Burke summed up this point in his typically colorful
language:
“Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion
to their disposition to put chains upon their appetites….Society cannot
exits unless a controlling power be placed somewhere; and the less of it there
is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal
constitution of things that men intemperate minds cannot be free. Their
passions forge their fetters.”
So the Founders decided to take a gamble. They called it a
great experiment.
They would leave “the People” broad liberty, limit the
coercive power of the government, and place their trust in self-discipline and
virtue of the American people.
In the words of Madison, “We have staked our future on
the ability of each of us to govern ourselves…”
This is really what was meant by “self-government.” It did
not mean primarily the mechanics by which we select a representative
legislative body. It referred to the capacity of each individual to restrain
and govern themselves.
But what was the source of this internal controlling power?
In a free Republic those restraints could not be handed down from above by
philosopher kings.
Instead, social order must flow up from the people
themselves – freely obeying the dictates of inwardly-possessed and
commonly-shared moral values. And to
control willful human beings, with and infinite capacity to rationalize, those
moral values must rest on authority independent of men’s will – they must flow
from a transcendent Supreme Being.
In short, in the Framers’ view, free government was only
suitable and sustainable for a religious people – a people who recognized that
there was a transcendent moral order antecedent to both the state and manmade
law and who had the discipline to control themselves according to those
enduring principles.
As John Adams put it: “We have no government armed with
the power which is capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality
and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.
It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”
As Father John Courtney Murray observed, the American tenet
was not that:
“Free government is inevitable, only that it is possible,
and that its possibility can be realized only when the people as a whole are
inwardly governed by the recognized imperatives of the universal moral order.”
How does religion promote the moral discipline and virtue
needed to support free government?
First, it gives us the right rules to live by. The
Founding generation were Christians. They believed that the Judeo-Christian
moral system corresponds to the true nature of man. Those moral precepts start of
course with Christianity and the Two Great Commandments – to Love God with your
whole heart, soul and mind; and to Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself.
But they also include the guidance of Natural Law – a real,
transcendent moral order which flows from God’s eternal law – the Divine wisdom
by which the whole Creation is ordered. The eternal law is impressed upon, and
reflected in, all created things.
From the nature of things we can, through reason,
experience, discern standards of right and wrong that exist independent of
human will.
Modern secularists dismiss this idea of morality as other
worldly-superstition imposed by a kill-joy clergy. In fact, Judeo-Christian
moral standards are the ultimate utilitarian rules for human conduct.
They reflect the rules that are best for man, not in the by
and by, but in the here and now. They are like God’s instruction manual for the
best running of man and human society.
By the same token, violations of these moral laws have bad,
real-world consequences for man and society. We many not pay the price
immediately, but over time the harm is real.
Religion helps promote moral discipline within society.
Because man is fallen, we don’t automatically conform ourselves to moral rules
even when we know they are good for us.
But religion helps teach, train, and habituate people to
want what is good. It does not do this primarily by formal laws – that is,
through coercion. It does this through moral education and by informing
society’s informal rules – its customs and traditions which reflect the wisdom
and experience of the ages.
In other words, religion helps frame moral culture within
society that instills and reinforces moral discipline.
I think we all recognize that over the past 50 years
religion has been under increasing attack.
On the one hand, we have seen the steady erosion of our
traditional Judeo-Christian moral system and a comprehensive effort to drive it
from the public square.
On the other hand, we see the growing ascendancy of
secularism and the doctrine of moral relativism.
By any honest assessment, the consequences of this moral
upheaval have been grim.
Virtually every measure of social pathology continues to gain
ground.
In 1965, the illegitimacy rate was eight percent. In 1992,
when I was last Attorney General, it was 25 percent. Today it is over 40
percent. In many of our large urban areas, it is around 70 percent.
Along with the wreckage of the family, we are see record
levels of depression and mental illness, dispirited young people, soaring
suicide rates, increasing numbers of angry and alienated young males, an
increase in senseless violence, and a deadly drug epidemic.
As you all know, over 70,000 people die a year from drug
overdoses. That is more causalities in a year than we experienced during the
entire Vietnam War.
I will not dwell on all the bitter results of new secular
age. Suffice it to say that the campaign to destroy the traditional moral order
has brought with it immense suffering, wreckage, and misery. And yet, the
forces secularism, ignoring these tragic results, press on with even greater
militancy.
Among these militant secularists are many so-called
“progressives.” But where is the progress?
We are told we are living in a post-Christian era. But what
has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system? What is it that can fill the
spiritual void in the hearts of the individual person? And, what is a system of
values that can sustain human social life?
The fact is that no secular creed has emerged capable of
performing the role of religion.
Scholarship suggests that religion has been integral to the
development and thriving of homo sapiens since we emerged roughly 50,000 years
ago. It is just for the past few hundred years we have experimented in living
without religion.
We hear much today about our humane values. But, in the
final analysis, what undergirds these values? What commands our adherence to
them?
What we call values today is really nothing more than
mere sentimentality, still drawing on the vapor trails of Christianity.
Now, there have been times and places where the traditional
moral order has been shaken.
In the past, societies – like the human body – seem to have
a self-healing mechanism – a self-correcting mechanism that gets things back on
course if things go too far.
The consequences of moral chaos become too pressing. The
opinion of decent people rebels. They coalesce and rally against obvious
excess. Periods of moral entrenchment follow periods of excess.
This is the idea of the pendulum. We have all thought that
after a while the “pendulum will swing back.”
But today we face something different that may mean that we
cannot count on the pendulum swinging back.
First is the force, fervor, and comprehensiveness of the
assault on religion we are experiencing today. This is not decay; it is
organized destruction. Secularists, and their allies among the “progressives,”
have marshalled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the
entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and
traditional values.
These instruments are used not only to affirmatively promote
secular orthodoxy, but also drown out and silence opposing voices, and to
attack viciously and hold up to ridicule any dissenters.
One of the ironies, as some have observed, is that the
secular project has itself become a religion, pursued with religious fervor. It
is taking on all the trappings of a religion – including inquisitions and
excommunication.
Those who defy the creed risk a figurative burning at the
stake – social, educational, and professional ostracism and exclusion waged
through lawsuits and savage social-media campaigns.
The pervasiveness and power of our high-tech popular culture
fuels apostasy in another way. It provides an unprecedented degree of
distraction.
Part of the human condition is that there are big questions
that should stare us in the face. Are we created or are we purely material
accidents? Does our life have any meaning or purpose? But, as Blaise Pascal
observed, instead of grappling with these questions, humans can be easily
distracted from thinking about the “final things.”
Indeed, we now live in the age of distraction where we can
envelop ourselves in a world of digital stimulation and universal connectivity.
And we have almost limitless ways of indulging all our physical appetites.
There is another modern phenomenon that suppresses society’s
self-corrective mechanisms – that make it harder for society to restore itself.
In the past, when societies are threatened by moral chaos,
the overall social costs of licentiousness and irresponsible personal conduct
becomes so high that society ultimately recoils and reevaluates the path they
are on.
But today – in the face of all the increasing pathologies
– instead of addressing the underlying cause, we have cast the State in the
role of Alleviator of Bad Consequences. We call on the State to mitigate the
social costs of personal misconduct and irresponsibility.
So the reaction to growing illegitimacy is not sexual
responsibility, but abortion.
The reaction to drug addiction is safe injection sites.
The solution to the breakdown of the family is for the
State to set itself up as the ersatz husband for single mothers and the ersatz
father to their children.
The call comes for more and more social programs to deal
with the wreckage. While we think we are solving problems, we are underwriting
them.
We start with an untrammeled freedom and we end up as
dependents of a coercive state on whom we depend.
Interestingly, this idea of the State as the alleviator
of bad consequences has given rise to a new moral system that goes hand-in-hand
with the secularization of society. It
can be called the system of “macro-morality.”
It is in some ways an inversion of Christian morality.
Christianity teaches a micro-morality. We transform the
world by focusing on our own personal morality and transformation.
The new secular religion teaches macro-morality. One’s
morality is not gauged by their private conduct, but rather on their commitment
to political causes and collective action to address social problems.
This system allows us to not worry so much about the
strictures on our private lives, while we find salvation on the picket
line. We can signal our finely tuned
moral sensibilities by demonstrating for this cause or that.
Something happened recently that crystalized the difference
between these moral systems. I was attending Mass at parish I did not usually
go to in Washington, D.C. At the end of
Mass, the Chairman of the Social Justice Committee got up to give his report to
the parish. He pointed to the growing homeless problem in D.C. and explained
that more mobile soup kitchens were needed to feed them. This being a Catholic
church I expected him to call for volunteers to go out and provide this need.
Instead, he recounted all the visits that the Committee had made to the D.C.
government to lobby for higher taxes and more spending to fund mobile soup
kitchen.
A third phenomenon which makes it difficult for the pendulum
to swing back is the way law is being used as a battering ram to break down
traditional moral values and to establish moral relativism as a new orthodoxy.
Law is being used as weapon in a couple of ways.
First, either through legislation but more frequently
through judicial interpretation, secularists have been continually seeking to
eliminate laws that reflect traditional moral norms.
At first, this involved rolling back laws that prohibited certain
kinds of conduct. Thus, the watershed decision legalizing abortion. And since
then, the legalization of euthanasia.
The list goes on.
More recently, we have seen the law used aggressively to
force religious people and entities to subscribe to practices and policies that
are antithetical to their faith.
The problem is not that religion is being forced on
others. The problem is that irreligion and secular values are being forced on
people of faith.
This reminds me of how some Roman emperors could not leave
their loyal Christian subjects in peace but would mandate that they violate
their conscience by offering religious sacrifice to the Emperor as a God.
Similarly, militant secularists today do not have a live and
let live spirit -- they are not content to leave religious people alone to
practice their faith. Instead they seem to take a delight in compelling people
to violate their conscience.
For example, the last Administration sought to force
religious employers, including Catholic religious orders, to violate their
sincerely held religious views by funding contraceptive and abortifacient
coverage in their health plans.
Similarly, California has sought to require pro-life pregnancy centers
to provide notices of abortion rights.
This refusal to accommodate the free exercise of religion is
relatively recent. Just 25 years ago,
there was broad consensus in our society that our laws should accommodate
religious belief.
In 1993 Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration
Act – RFRA. The purpose of the statute was to promote maximum accommodation to
religion when the government adopted broad policies that could impinge on
religious practice.
At the time, RFRA was not controversial: it was introduced
by Chuck Schumer with 170 cosponsors in the House, and was introduced by Ted
Kennedy and Orrin Hatch with 59 additional cosponsors in the Senate. It passed
by voice vote in the House and by a vote of 97-3 in the Senate.
Recently, as the process of secularization has accelerated,
RFRA has come under assault, and the idea of religious accommodation has fallen
out of favor.
Because this Administration firmly supports accommodation of
religion, the battleground has shifted to the states. Some state governments
are now attempting to compel religious individuals and entities to subscribe to
practices, or to espouse viewpoints, that are incompatible with their religion.
Ground zero for these attacks on religion are the schools.
To me, this is the most serious challenge to religious liberty.
For anyone who has a religious faith, by far the most
important part of exercising that faith is the teaching of that religion to our
children. The passing on of the faith. There is no greater gift we can give our
children and no greater expression of love.
For the government to interfere in that process is a
monstrous invasion of religious liberty.
Yet here is where the battle is being joined, and I see the
secularists are attacking on three fronts.
The first front relates to the content of public school
curriculum. Many states are adopting curriculum that is incompatible with
traditional religious principles according to which parents are attempting to
raise their children. They often do so
without any opt out for religious families.
Thus, for example, New Jersey, recently passed a law
requiring public schools to adopt an LGBT curriculum that many feel is
inconsistent with traditional Christian teaching. Similar laws have been passed in California
and Illinois. And the Orange County
Board of Education in California issued an opinion that “parents who
disagree with the instructional materials related to gender, gender identity, gender
expression and sexual orientation may not excuse their children from this
instruction.”
Indeed, in some cases, the schools may not even warn parents
about lessons they plan to teach on controversial subjects relating to sexual
behavior and relationships.
This puts parents who dissent from the secular orthodoxy to
a difficult choice: Try to scrape together the money for private school or home
schooling, or allow their children to be inculcated with messages that they
fundamentally reject.
A second axis of attack in the realm of education are state
policies designed to starve religious schools of generally available funds and
encouraging students to choose secular options.
Montana, for example, created a program that provided tax credits to
those who donated to a scholarship program that underprivileged students could
use to attend private school. The point
of the program was to provide greater parental and student choice in education
and to provide better educations to needy youth.
But Montana expressly excluded religiously-affiliated
private schools from the program. And
when that exclusion was challenged in court by parents who wanted to use the
scholarships to attend a nondenominational Christian school, the Montana
Supreme Court required the State to eliminate the program rather than allow
parents to use scholarships for religious schools.
It justified this action by pointing to a provision in
Montana’s State Constitution commonly referred to as a “Blaine Amendment.” Blaine Amendments were passed at a time of
rampant anti-Catholic animus in this country, and typically disqualify
religious institutions from receiving any direct or indirect payments from a
State’s funds.
The case is now in the Supreme Court, and we filed a brief
explaining why Montana’s Blaine Amendment violates the First Amendment.
A third kind of assault on religious freedom in education
have been recent efforts to use state laws to force religious schools to adhere
to secular orthodoxy. For example, right
here in Indiana, a teacher sued the Catholic Archbishop of Indianapolis for
directing the Catholic schools within his diocese that they could not employ
teachers in same-sex marriages because the example of those same-sex marriages
would undermine the schools’ teaching on the Catholic view of marriage and
complementarity between the sexes.
This lawsuit clearly infringes the First Amendment rights of
the Archdiocese, by interfering both with its expressive association and with
its church autonomy. The Department of
Justice filed a statement of interest in the state court making these points,
and we hope that the state court will soon dismiss the case.
Taken together, these cases paint a disturbing picture. We see the state requiring local public
schools to insert themselves into contentious social debates, without regard
for the religious views of their students or parents. In effect, these states are requiring
local communities to make their public schools inhospitable to families with
traditional religious values; those families are implicitly told that they
should conform or leave.
At the same time, pressure is placed on religious schools
to abandon their religious convictions.
Simply because of their religious character, they are starved of funds –
students who would otherwise choose to attend them are told they may only
receive scholarships if they turn their sights elsewhere.
Simultaneously, they are threatened in tort – and,
eventually, will undoubtedly be threatened with denial of accreditation – if
they adhere to their religious character.
If these measures are successful, those with religious convictions will
become still more marginalized.
I do not mean to suggest that there is no hope for moral
renewal in our country.
But we cannot sit back and just hope the pendulum is going
to swing back toward sanity.
As Catholics, we are committed to the Judeo-Christian values
that have made this country great.
And we know that the first thing we have to do to promote
renewal is to ensure that we are putting our principles into practice in our
own personal private lives.
We understand that only by transforming ourselves can we
transform the world beyond ourselves.
This is tough work. It is hard to resist the constant
seductions of our contemporary society.
This is where we need grace, prayer, and the help of our church.
Beyond this, we must place greater emphasis on the moral
education of our children.
Education is not vocational training. It is leading our
children to the recognition that there is truth and helping them develop the
facilities to discern and love the truth and the discipline to live by it.
We cannot have a moral renaissance unless we succeed in
passing to the next generation our faith and values in full vigor.
The times are hostile to this. Public agencies – including
public schools – are becoming secularized and increasingly are actively
promoting moral relativism.
If ever there was a need for a resurgence of Catholic
education – and more generally religiously affiliated schools – it is today.
I think we should do all we can to promote and support
authentic Catholic education at all levels.
Finally, as lawyers, we should be particularly active in the
struggle that is being waged against religion on the legal plane.
We must be vigilant to resist efforts by the forces of
secularization to drive religious viewpoints from the public square and to
impinge upon the free exercise of our faith.
I can assure you that, as long as I am Attorney General, the
Department of Justice will be at the forefront of this effort– ready to fight
for the most cherished of our liberties – the freedom to live according to our
faith.
Thank you for the opportunity to talk with you today. And
God bless you and Notre Dame.
Component(s):
Office of the Attorney General
Updated October 14, 2019
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