Secular Sanity

By Marie Alena Castle
[I sent the following to the Strib. Of course it won't be printed.]

Reports of the excommunication of Sister Margaret McBride for allowing an abortion to save a woman’s life need to be understood in the context of Catholic theology.

Excommunication essentially consigns a person to hell and is the Church’s harshest punishment. Abortion earns this for one reason only — it prevents the fetus from being baptized and therefore closes it off forever from the ultimate heavenly bliss of seeing God face to face. (Infanticide is actually only a mortal sin, easily forgiven in confession, because infants can be baptized.) Since heaven is a goal to be sought above all others, no humanitarian concerns take precedence over attaining it.

This theology explains why the Catholic Church can be so lax about priestly sex abuse of children yet so determined to outlaw abortion. The problem is that our church-instigated anti-abortion laws have no place in a secular legal system. They are entirely unnecessary, yet there they are, oblivious to the theology on which they are based and serving only to validate a particular religious belief. They are inherently an unconstitutional and extremely harmful establishment of religion.

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By Marie Alena Castle
[I sent this to the Strib. Don't hold your breath waiting to see it in print.]

When I read Katherine Kersten’s April 11 defense of the pope in the pedophilia scandal I was struck by how little value was placed on real people. It’s all about protecting religious institutions and saving imaginary souls. Pedophilia has been rampant, and ignored, in the Church for centuries. For example, the historical record shows that an 11th century priest, Father Damian, complained bitterly to the pope about the church ignoring the “unbridled wickedness” of priestly pedophilia, to no avail.

It took the modern day tort law system to call the Catholic Church, as well as others, to account. They do not understand right and wrong. That is why it is necessary to go after their money, and do it publicly, because religions rely on a good public image to maintain power. It’s all about image, not children, in the Church’s centuries-late interest in controlling pedophilia.

As for understanding right and wrong, Kersten and these patriarchal religions seem unclear on the concept. Kersten lauds the Catholic Church’s stands against abortion, stem-cell research and same-sex marriage. These stands are based entirely on unverifiable religious beliefs that value “saving” imaginary souls at the expense of the health and wellbeing of real live people. Beliefs that cause so much demonstrable harm have no claim on society’s support.

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By Marie Alena Castle

[I sent this to the Strib, which will, of course, not print it.]

Your Jan. 30 Letter of the Day wondered why prochoice groups would complain about a Super Bowl ad featuring a woman who chose not to have an abortion. As long as abortion is a legal medical procedure, women will always make whatever decision is best in their circumstances. They don’t need an ad to tell them what to do and that is not the ad’s purpose. The purpose is to persuade citizens that abortions are never justified and so should be made illegal. Just to balance things, perhaps the prochoice groups could run an ad featuring some of the tragic outcomes of a pregnancy misguidedly brought to term.

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By Marie Alena Castle

Ken Herman’s Dec. 30 article questions why women aren’t treated the same as men regarding Selective Service. It’s because women are not free citizens; they are essentially social property because of their role as childbearers. Keeping them from full participation in military service preserves the availability of that property to society by reducing their exposure to combat injuries and death. Even so, for women in the military, their role as childbearing property is protected to the extent that they have no effective legal protection from rape and are denied the right to abortions.

As the sign over the desk of a former “prolife” legislator in Minnesota said, “Women weren’t meant to be free. They were meant to have babies.” When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “All men are created equal,” he meant literally all men. The Equal Rights Amendment was never ratified so as to prevent women from claiming autonomy in their childbearing role, especially in the right to abortion. The U.S. Supreme Court, in ruling on a challenge to the Hyde Amendment, said that, since government has a compelling interest in promoting childbirth, not funding abortions was constitutional. That essentially declared women property to serve the childbearing interests of the state.

The Roe v. Wade decision, while only affirming the way women manage problem pregnancies anyway, indirectly embedded in law that women are something of a public utility that government can regulate, and it has been doing so ever since. And now we have a health care reform bill that will probably remove even more of what little reproductive autonomy women have managed to retain. If women are going to fight to defend this nation’s freedom, they should first free themselves.

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By Marie Alena Castle

One special interest that should not be involved in the debate on health care reform is religion. Yet provisions are proposed that exclude abortion to accommodate religious belief in such things as single-celled persons, and others that disadvantage equitable coverage for same-sex partners out of ignorance of sexuality and its variations. Now there is a requirement to pay for prayer-only treatment for Christian Scientists. It’s in the Kerry-Hatch amendment C-14-short title: “Religious Non-discrimination in Health Care.” This is payment for “treatment” that consists entirely of refusing to admit an illness exists! How irrational can health care reform get? This one beats “death panels” for the looney-tune prize-and it is actually in the bill!

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By Marie Alena Castle

If Gov. Pawlenty had stated in his Sept. 18 Washington speech that his conservative values included marginalizing racial minorities, the uproar would be worse than what we have over health care reform. Yet, he shamelessly marginalized the majority of Americans who are non-Christian, liberal Christian or nonreligious by advocating that our laws and public policies be based on his fundamentalist version of Christianity.

It is entirely appropriate for Pawlenty to advocate for his preferred economic and other public policy issues, but sectarian religious beliefs are personal and have no place in government. Europe suffered through centuries of religious wars as sect after sect attempted to take over and impose its beliefs on the entire population. Our nation’s founders learned from that and gave us the First Amendment prohibition against mixing religion and government. If Pawlenty does not understand this basic fact of our history, and cannot keep his religious beliefs to himself, he is unqualified for any public office.

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By Marie Alena Castle

The plan to etch “In God We Trust” and the “under God” version of the Pledge of Allegiance on the Capitol Visitors Center in Washington D.C. is not harmless civic piety. Yes, it is an unconstitutional establishment of religion, as the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s lawsuit charges, but in some ways it is far worse. It is as much an establishment of bigotry as Jim Crow laws, differing certainly in degree, but not in kind.

This motto and phrase became established as propaganda weapons during the Cold War. The enemy was the Soviet Union but the attack was aimed at loyal Americans who happened to be atheists. This supposedly connected them with Russian communism, although Christian Americans were never connected with Christian Nazi Germany.

The Congressional Record of that time shows clearly that hatred of atheists was the overriding motivation for putting “under God” in the pledge and “In God We Trust” on our money. The level of hostility was high. For example, when Rep. Louis C. Rabaut introduced the “under God” bill in the House on Feb. 12, 1954, he said, “… You may argue from dawn to dusk about differing political, economic, and social systems, but the fundamental issue which is the unbridgeable gap between America and Communist Russia is a belief in Almighty God.” He then went on to charge atheism with being the root of “the evil weed” of communism, materialism and political dictatorship. He said, “An atheistic American, … is a contradiction in terms” and affirmed that only “under God” can there be “liberty and justice for all.”

There were many such statements from legislators and public officials — including President Eisenhower — extending even into civil rights. During debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1963, the following amendment was offered: “Notwithstanding any other provision of this title, it shall not be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to refuse to hire and employ any person because of said person’s atheistic practices and beliefs.” The amendment was debated on February 8, 1964, in the House, where it passed 137 to 98, but it failed in the Senate.

There is a strong legal precedent for keeping the Visitors Center free of divisive and bigoted religious sentiments in the Lawrence v. Texas sodomy decision. In that case, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor based her ruling for reversal of Alabama’s anti-sodomy statute in part on it being “a bare desire to harm an unpopular group.” The same rationale can be applied to the current controversy. Most Americans today would be embarrassed to know that what they want etched on the Visitors Center walls stems directly from a deliberate, mean-spirited attack on decent citizens who happened to be nonreligious. To add those words — and at a cost of $100,000! — would be an insult, not just to nonbelievers, but to every fair-minded believer as well.

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By Marie Alena Castle
Gov. Pawlenty’s budget cuts affecting local government are certain to require property tax increases to maintain essential services. If this burden is to be shared equitably, perhaps religious institutions, which are exempt from taxes, should be asked to contribute by paying a fee for the city services they receive at no cost. Some clergy have been expressing support for increased taxes in general, so might be agreeable to a service fee. There are churches that have at times voluntarily paid a service fee as a community obligation. Others might do likewise and may only need to be asked. If this were done it might greatly reduce the harmful effects of the Pawlenty budget. As one clergyman wrote in the June 18 Letters column, “Many of us would prefer to have our pocketbooks taxed — not our basic values.” A tax burden shared equitably would uphold those values.

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By Marie Alena Castle

On April 28, 1998, at a Minneapolis symposium on religion in public life that I attended, Lutheran theologian Martin Marty said in his keynote speech, “It is the role of unbelievers to force religions to be benign.”

That’s what we atheists try to do. The liberal Marty would probably be at odds with Katherine Kersten’s uninformed opinion of atheists in her June 7 op-ed column. Traditional religious morality, which Kersten, at least for the most part, supports, is notorious for the astounding number of ways it hurts people. Benign it is not. On a short list are: slavery, subjugation and reproductive control of women, persecution of homosexuals, religious wars, cruelty to children, torture and execution of heretics, denial of end-of-life self-determination, and opposition to every advance in science and medicine that has not conformed to dogma.

There are always individuals, both religious and atheist, who will, if given the power, do evil. We’ve had the fascist-Christian Hitler (who opposed atheism) preaching Christianity’s historic hatred of Jews. There was the atheistic political-economic ideologue Stalin, determined to stamp out all remnants of the czarist-Orthodox feudal system. There have been, and are, and will be, many more such people. The evil they do is made possible by having absolute power, which never fails to corrupt. Only a constitutional democracy can prevent that. There is no support for such a freedom-enabling system in Kersten’s Bible, only for the tyranny enabling divine right of kings and unquestioning obedience to religious authority.

Given our job description and reason for existing, how well do we fit Kersten’s description of us as morally compromised and purposeless hedonists, indifferent to social values? Unlike religious zealots, we don’t cause trouble. We have no rituals or beliefs that require others to accommodate us. We have no unverifiable beliefs to impose on the political system or educational curricula. Of all groups, we are the most committed to secular government, the Bill of Rights, and especially freedom of conscience. We have been in the forefront of every movement to repeal oppressive, unconstitutional, religion-based laws. This includes support for the civil and human rights of women, sexual and racial minorities, workers, children, and the hopelessly ill, as well as support for scientific research to advance human wellbeing. We seek a peaceful world where life for all can be good.

Our humanistic philosophy goes back at least to the ancient Greeks. Since the Enlightenment, religious liberals have developed human-centered views that are essentially the same as atheistic views. We now share with them a common concern for human welfare. However much Kersten wants to, it is impossible to base moral standards on the shifting sands of unverifiable and mutually contradictory religious beliefs. There can only be secular standards set by open discussion and evaluated for their social impact, protection of individual rights, and contribution to the common good.

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By Marie Alena Castle

Regarding the murder of Dr. George Tiller, the anti-abortion zealots would like everyone to think late-term abortions are performed in the last couple of months of pregnancy, and never for a good reason. (Women’s life, health and wellbeing, and severe fetal defects are not considered good reasons.) Perhaps a real-life example will help everyone (at least the decent people) understand this issue.   When I was 5 ½ months pregnant, I started filling up with huge amounts of fluid. The doctor said it indicated a severe fetal abnormality of some kind. Since I was a devout Catholic at that time, abortion was not even considered.   I spent the next 2 ½ months in considerable physical and mental pain. (Misogynist anti-abortion zealots, I have found, dismiss this as unimportant. They have empathy only for fetal life — and then only until it’s born.) At 8 months, the doctor said there was no point in continuing the pregnancy and the suffering I was enduring, so he decided to induce labor. If the fetus was actually OK, the slightly premature birth would do no harm.   A cute red-haired baby girl was born looking quite healthy, although weighing only 4 pounds. However, examination showed her esophagus was solid instead of hollow and her intestines were just a fibrous mass. She could not eat. It took her a few days to starve to death.   Late term abortions are performed to prevent such needless tragedies. (Of course, the baby was baptized, so I’m sure the zealots think that made the ordeal well worthwhile.)

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