One of the merits of the separation of Church and State is to insure that the State does not take over the Church.

The Slide Toward State Control

by Donald DeMarco

Over the past decades, however, Christians have been surrendering to Caesar, piece by piece, what belongs to Christ. As a direct result, religion has become more and more a private matter and less and less societal. The logical end of this series of surrenders is a totalitarian State. T. S. Eliot warned against this phenomenon in his 1965 book, The Aims of Education: “The assertion that a man’s religion is his private affair, that from the point of view of society it is irrelevant, may turn out in the end to lead to a situation very favorable in the establishment of a religion, or a substitute for religion, by the State.”

The widespread acceptance of divorce, co-habitation, contraception, abortion, pornography, indecent language, embryo research, an array of reproductive technologies, and same-sex marriage, together with a growing hostility toward pro-life advocates and those who support traditional marriage, has widened the gulf between the secular world and people of religion. This separation has set the stage for a culture war between the Culture of Death and the Culture of Life.

At the close of Pope Benedict’s pontificate, the hopes that he expressed during his visit to America have been contradicted by an increasingly intolerant secular world. What will Pope Francis say to Americans when it is his time to visit the United States?

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Archbishop Charles Chaput, toward the end of his important book, Render Unto Caesar, makes the following comment: “The world would be very different today if Catholics had ‘stayed out of politics’ in Poland under the Communists, or the Philippines under Marcos, or Malawi under Banda. Would we really be better off if those regimes had endured because Catholics decided that good manners prevented them from speaking up?” Timidity, deference, non-involvement, and faithlessness do not comprise what this archbishop regards as the cardinal virtues. In answering the question he posits, Archbishop Chaput urges American Catholics to work together to overcome the facile acceptance of the evils that mar the contemporary American landscape: “violence, greed, vulgarity, abortion, and rejection of children.”

The survival of America depends on the survival of religion, 

which embraces the very values that are its legacy, its leaven, and its lifeblood.

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