As a companion to my post Is God Necessary to Liberty? and Black3’s comments, posts and scholarship in the subject, I would like to point your attention to this from the Archdiocese of Washington, written by Msgr. Charles Pope.
Msgr. Pope is the pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian, a vibrant parish community in Washington, DC. A native of Chicago with a bachelor degree in computer science, his interest in the priesthood stemmed from his experience as a church musician. He attended Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary and was ordained in 1989. A pastor since 2000, he also has led Bible studies in the U.S. Congress and at the White House in past years.
He writes:
We live in an age of demanded secularism. If a religious utterance is made by the State or Government officials the cry goes up from an increasingly hostile minority and there are the usual platitudes about “Separation of Church and State,” a phrase that does not occur in the Constitution.
Free Exercise Clause – It is well true that the First Amendment requires that the Congress shall pass no law establishing an official State religion. That same amendment though, requires that the State not prohibit the free exercise of religion. But this second pillar, protecting religious expression is eroding. Increasing demands are made (even in the comments of this blog) that religious bodies (especially the Catholic Church) have no right to attempt any influence in the legislative process. They must “stay out” of meetings with elected officials, testifying at hearings and seeking to influence public policy decisions. But this of course limits our ability to freely exercise our faith, a major pillar of which tells us to take it to the streets, to evangelize, to be a light to the world, to testify to the truth. Many Secularists are increasingly arguing that the only valid place for religious expression of any kind is in the four walls of a Church.
Many secularists argue that the Founding Fathers wanted it this way and that a wall of separation pleased them since most of them were either irreligious or deists. But what is interesting is a all the founding Fathers spoke freely of God, and included appeals to God and God’s will in their remarks. This is true even of Thomas Jefferson. Any visit to the Jefferson Memorial will demonstrate that. A number of his writings and speeches are chiseled on the walls, most of them referring to God. Most of these Founding Fathers who, according to modern secularists, want this dramatic separation of Church and State, were involved in drafting the Constitution.
Most secularists love to point out that God is never mentioned in the Constitution. But actually He is! Specifically Jesus is mentioned and called our Lord! The final line of the Constitution reads thus:
Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth. In Witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names:
Guess the Drafters never got the Memo – In the year of our Lord?! Oops! Where did that come from? I guess the drafters of the Constitution never got the memo that God is unmentionable in Government documents or functions. The Lord referred to is none other than Jesus Christ for the year corresponds to the years since his birth.
Please visit and read what he has to say about Washington and Lincoln.
Secularists like our friend dougindeep and anti-religion zealots like Kos, love to wail about what is NOT SPECIFICALLY WRITTEN in the US Constitution while building an entire argument for secularism on something that is NOT SPECIFICALLY WRITTEN in the US Constitution, namely Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists.
Strike you as logically inconsistent? Me, too.
Something is rotten in the State of Denmark, methinks.
The Rio Norte Line 
Scratch one straw man off. He’s pulverized but good, he is.
Yea, verily; something wicked this way comes. Doth it not seem that upon thine weighted brow, a mostly mild distraction interrupts a thought? Couldst it not be then that the noblest of efforts is merely panem et circenses in order that one doth not see truth?
Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn’d,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee: I’ll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn’d,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous; and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?
My Lord, have mercy! Wouldst thou not speak in the manner that causes my countenance such weakness? Willst thou have me swoon?
…And swooneth thou shalt, my love.
O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o’er my head
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes
Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds
And sails upon the bosom of the air.
Steel-on-target, Utah. You have me feeling sooo inadequate this morning, but so proud to be your friend.
Unfortunately, the sad reality of straw men is, as quickly as you can tear the stuffing out of them, the idiots can just as easily stuff the straw back in the shirt and stand them up again. But still, we are tasked to keep up the fight (now, has anybody seen my lighter?)
I’m just 6 hours and about a gallon of coffee ahead of you, that’s all…
@B. : You, dear sir, seem to behold the ways and means by which to extract mine merriment in the clouds by pulling me to the Earth! Why dost thou persist with this cruelty?
Kells,
Since I cannot do this myself, please help me out. As a former military mechanic who is expertly certified in BFH maintenance, I am aware that the first thing you do when you encounter a malfunctioning machine is to WHACK it! So, kindly go to the nearest wall and slam your head into it, then let me know if your brain housing group reboots and you start making sense.
I’ll hold here while I wait on your report. 🙂
Doth thou speakest in riddles? What, praytell, is BFH? Mine head is now bloodied and cannot withstand another bashing. Prithee, good sir; cans’t thou not speak in a manner to which mine ears can adjust?
In the army, it was short for a “Big Hammer”
Marcus, all is thus explained then; for methinks it not a happy event for a man to service hammers from sunrise to sunset, Mine own personage would not be so disinclined, but I suppose it has cast a most foul mood on dearest Joseph.
You never “get it,” do you, Kells. One does not “service” a “big freakin’ hammer,” one uses a “big freakin’ hammer” to administer the first rule of mechanics: if force don’t work, more force will.
🙂
Thou art a brute, sir! Lest thee be unknowing of the word’s meaning, I have conscripted the most willing participants in my aid and defense.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/brute
Yep, a brutish brute – and I LIKE IT! 😀
(In Larry the Cable Guy voice) “Y’all be naughty today.”