Archbishop Charles Chaput in Toronto, Canada

Archbishop Charles Chaput in Toronto, Canada
In pursuit of the Truth – www.cinopsbegone.com – Tuesday, April 28, 2009

The following are selected excerpts from this insightful and poignant address given at the University of Toronto on Monday, Feb. 23, 2009 and posted by (Zenit.org) – Toronto, Feb. 24, 2009. The archbishop’s presentation was sponsored by the Archdiocese of Toronto, the Salt and Light Catholic Television Network, the Toronto Legatus Chapter, and the University of St. Michael’s College. The Archbishop spoke as follows:

I’ve learned from experience, though, that Henry Ford was right when he said that, “Two percent of the people think, three percent think they think, and 95 percent would rather die than think.”…

American consumer culture is a very powerful narcotic. Moral reasoning can be hard, and TV is a great pain killer. This has political implications. Real freedom demands an ability to think and a great deal of modern life – not just in the United States, but all over the developed world, it seems deliberately designed to discourage that. So talking about God and Caesar, even it wakes up one Christian mind in an audience, is always worth the effort..

The most important fact to remember about our discussion tonight is this: As adults, each of us needs to form a strong and genuinely Catholic conscience.. Then we need to follow the conscience when we vote. And then we need to take responsibility for the consequences of our vote. Nobody can do that for us. That is why knowing, living and submitting ourselves to our Catholic faith are so important. It’s the only reliable guide we have for acting in the public square as disciples of Jesus Christ. …

So what does the book say? I think the message of “Render Unto Caesar” can be condensed into a few basic points.

Here is the first point. For many years, studies have shown that Americans have a very poor sense of history. That’s very dangerous, because as Thucydides and Machiavelli, and Thomas Jefferson have all said, history matters. It matters because the past shapes the present, and the present shapes the future. If Catholics don’t know history and their own history as Catholics, then somebody else – and usually someone not very friendly – will create their history for them.

Here is the second point, and it’s the place where the Canadian and American experience may diverge. AMERICA IS NOT A SECULAR STATE. As historian Paul Johnson once said, America was “born Protestant.” It has uniquely and deeply religious roots. Obviously it has not established Church, and it has non-sectarian public institutions. It also has plenty of room for believers and non-believers. But the United States was never intended to be a “secular” country in the radical modern sense. Nearly all the Founders were either Christian or at least religion friendly. And all of our public institutions and all of our ideas about the human person are based in a religiously shaped vocabulary. So if we cut God out of our public life, we also cut the foundation out from under our national ideals

Here’s the third point, … When we subvert the meaning of words like “the common good” or “conscience” or “community” or “family” we undermine the language that sustains our thinking about law. Dishonest language leads to dishonest debate and bad laws.

Here’s an example. We need to remember THAT TOLERANCE IS NOT A CHRISTIAN VIRTUE. Charity, justice, mercy, prudence, honesty – these are Christian virtues. And obviously, in a diverse community tolerance is an important working principle. But it is never an end in itself. In fact tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of serious evil. … Real pluralism demands that people of strong beliefs will advance their convictions in the public square … without embarrassment. Anything else is bad citizenship and a form of theft from the public conversation. …

George H. Kubeck