Written By: Bill Colley
The faithful have to go to jail. I reached the conclusion while listening to a presentation about religious liberty. There was a rally for religious freedom Wednesday night at St. Jude the Apostle Church in Lewes, Delaware. While I didn’t make the street demonstration because of a work commitment I did reach the church’s recreational hall for the presentation by Father Leonard Klein, the Director of Pro-Life Activities for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington.
Pastor, Fr. Leonard Klein (Credit: Totus Tuus Family)
Two months ago I listened to the same man’s remarks prior to a Walk for Life. Klein is a dedicated servant of God and a convert to Catholicism from Lutheranism. During Wednesday’s talk he remarked during our school days we learned about the “Religious Wars” of Europe following the Protestant Reformation. As he pointed out, the people of the day just called the conflicts wars. Religion as the primary mover may be a modern invention. European princes had many causes for war throughout history and generally the expansion of power and wealth was a far greater motivation.
Men who labeled themselves modernists and enlightened were hostile to religion and their efforts in appointing self before God have been passed down through centuries. Today science rules and the people making laws and administering government blame religion for the world’s woes. Otherwise the blame would need another assignment and it’s often found in mirrors.
Religion and the faithful are obstacles to modernity. Opposition to abortion reminds the issue isn’t “settled” and demands an accounting. Belief in something greater than earthly powers threatens the established order.
Following the speech I participated in question time. American churches and synagogues are prohibited (depending on the politics of pastors and rabbis) from engaging in political endorsements from the pulpit. It’s a modern law. What would happen if pastors from many denominations began objecting every weekend? Would they be arrested? Would the jails have enough space to hold the clergy and the faithful? If there was refusal to comply with taxation would church doors be shuttered? Would services then take place in meadows? This is more than an academic exercise. Students of history will recall the 1916 Easter Rising didn’t have popular support among the Irish people. Then the course abruptly changed. When the English jailers executed many of the revolt’s leaders it awakened the Irish to nationalism, faith and liberty.
Jailing the faithful has two benefits. The obvious is a great many hardened criminals are going to be immersed in a sudden cultural shift. They’ll be surrounded by prayer and mercy. Secondly, and I believe more obvious, as pulpits, pews and parsonages are suddenly emptied the American people will recognize this is about much more than condoms and Sandra Fluke.
Driving home from church Wednesday night I realized the faithful must go to jail.
Yesterday morning I read a newspaper column written by a self-described “Democratic Socialist” named Harold Meyerson. He was writing for the Washington Post about the myth of voter fraud on the same day and a few miles away a Richmond paper carried a story about liberals attempting to register dogs and cats as voters. Meyerson wrote the United States partially ended poll taxes on voters to impress the planet during the Cold War. I don’t recall my history texts making any mention of world opinion but I’m sure it did have an impact in some corners of post-colonial Africa and Asia just as my country escalated a war in that part of the world. The war was promoted by President Lyndon Johnson. In the prior decade then U.S. Senator Lyndon Johnson was responsible for gagging pastors from possibly making political pronouncements. If the world was impressed by Johnson’s Civil Rights legislation then I very much believe the world would today take notice if our prisons became cathedrals and monuments to religious liberty.
The Irish didn’t win many global converts after the executions of Pearse, Clarke and Connolly but the rebels won the respect of the people at home.
It starts here and it starts now.
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