God Comes Before Caesar...And Allah, Too

Archbishop Chaput of Denver

Yesterday Archbishop Chaput of Denver gave a very stirring speech in Slovakia indicative of the "new direction of the American episcopate."  It was a speech about "living within the truth," and was a continued call for active Christian resistance in the ongoing spiritual war against societal notions that Christianity is intolerant and obsolete.  One need only look at the necessity of the fight by reading one of today's posts at Jihad Watch about New York state high school exams slamming Christianity while simultaneously praising Islam, an oppressive religion.  Here are various extracts of the Archbishop's speech:

Two of the biggest lies in the world today are these: first, that Christianity was of relatively minor importance in the development of the West; and second, that Western values and institutions can be sustained without a grounding in Christian moral principles. [...]

Downplaying the West’s Christian past is sometimes done with the best intentions, from a desire to promote peaceful co-existence in a pluralistic society. But more frequently it’s done to marginalize Christians and to neutralize the Church’s public witness.

The Church needs to name and fight this lie. To be a European or an American is to be heir to a profound Christian synthesis of Greek philosophy and art, Roman law, and biblical truth. This synthesis gave rise to the Christian humanism that undergirds all of Western civilization.

Relativism is now the civil religion and public philosophy of the West. Again, the arguments made for this viewpoint can seem persuasive. Given the pluralism of the modern world, it might seem to make sense that society should want to affirm that no one individual or group has a monopoly on truth; that what one person considers to be good and desirable another may not; and that all cultures and religions should be respected as equally valid.

In practice, however, we see that without a belief in fixed moral principles and transcendent truths, our political institutions and language become instruments in the service of a new barbarism. In the name of tolerance we come to tolerate the cruelest intolerance; respect for other cultures comes to dictate disparagement of our own; the teaching of “live and let live” justifies the strong living at the expense of the weak.

If human rights do not come from God, then they devolve to the arbitrary conventions of men and women. The state exists to defend the rights of man and to promote his flourishing. The state can never be the source of those rights. When the state arrogates to itself that power, even a democracy can become totalitarian.

What is legalized abortion but a form of intimate violence that clothes itself in democracy? The will to power of the strong is given the force of law to kill the weak.

There is much more to this speech, and I pray that the contents go viral on the web.  I found it referenced by Roma Locuta Est, who got it from Chiesa.  For God's sake, as well as ours, spread it around!