Sister Kathleen Nescia Explains it All for Us

Of all the silly notions that have come from pundits during the Great Contraceptive Flap involving a mandate that Catholic healthcare facilities make available birth control pharmaceuticals and devices, perhaps the most absurd is Kathleen Parker’s.  Writing in the illustrious Washington Post Ms. Parker finds a potential violation of the establishment clause, found in the First Amendment, which contains what Jefferson characterized as a wall of separation between Church and State.  Parker argues that “When the state insists that one’s religious beliefs be supplanted by another’s secularism, then might one argue that the state is establishing a religion in contravention of the Constitution’s intent?”

There’s no point trying to answer this rhetorical question because it was illogical to ask it in the first place.  (Yes, women can be illogical, although it’s hoped Ms. Parker is only anecdotal evidence.)  Since when is secularism a religion?  If religion is white, secularism is black: the absence in this instance not of all color but of religion.  Secularism and religion are anathema to each other, and they are polar opposites.  That Ms. Parker would confuse the two is simply indicative of her ignorance or talent for literary three card monte. 

Later in her piece, she manages to bring the Nazis into the equation, and I am surprised, given her mindset, that she didn’t bring in the atheist regime of Stalin as well. Most religionists of the Evangelicatholic stripe love to claim Stalin as Atheist One.  But make no mistake: Stalin saw religion as a threat to his own deity: in totalitarian regimes God is the center of the cult of personality. Stalin simply learned what he beheld: Hitler taught him a thing or two.  It is relatively easy to substitute for a hoary deity a living God.  That’s why you hire PR men like Goebbels.  That’s what a propaganda ministry is for.  Enemies can be sent to Siberia or shoved out upper KGB windows in the Kremlin telling Pravda “they jumped.”  Besides, Stalin himself was not godless.  He screened Disney movies all the time.  He was a devoted film buff and thought Hollywood musicals and comedies the best.

I just think Sister Kathleen Nescia, having explained it all for us, is misguided in claiming any relationship between secularism (a.k.a. humanism) and Catholicism.  That’s a stretch even a good Catholic might not appreciate.