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    • E. Christian Brugger, D.Phil. – E. Christian Brugger is a Senior Fellow of Ethics and Director of the Fellows Program at the Culture of Life Foundation in Washington, D.C. and the J. Francis Cardinal Stafford Professor of Moral Theology at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado. He has Master degrees in moral theology and moral philosophy from Seton Hall, Harvard and Oxford Universities and received his D.Phil. (Ph.D.) in Christian ethics from Oxford in 2000.  Christian has published over 200 articles in scholarly and popular periodicals on topics in bioethics, sexual ethics, natural law theory, as well as the interdisciplinary field of psychology and Christian anthropology.  He lives on a farm in Evergreen, Colorado, with his wife Melissa and five children.
    • Helen Alvaré, J.D. – Helen Alvaré, J.D. is Honorary Fellow in Law at the Culture of Life Foundation.   Helen is an Associate Professor of Law at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia where she teaches and publishes in the areas of property law, family law, and Catholic social thought. Professor Alvaré serves as Consultor for the Pontifical Council for the Laity, Senior Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute where she chairs the Conscience Protection Task Force, is President of the Chiaroscuro Foundation and most recently Editor and Co-Author of Breaking Through: Catholic Women Speak for Themselves.From 2000 to Spring 2008, Professor Alvare taught at the Catholic University Columbus School of Law. Professor Alvare also lectures widely in the United States and Europe on matters concerning marriage, family and respect for human life. She is a consultant to ABC News and to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Marriage and Pro-Life Committees. In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI named Professor Alvare a Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Laity.From 1987-2000, Professor Alvare was an attorney with the USCCB’s General Counsel Office and director of information and planning for the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities. In these positions, she testified before the…
    • Jennifer Kimball Watson, Be.L. – Jennifer Kimball Watson joined Culture of Life Foundation as Executive Director in November of 2007. She is an Adjunct Professor of Bioethics at the Ave Maria School of Law in Naples, F.L.. Previous to her work with the Culture of Life Foundation Jennifer was a Wilbur Fellow of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal located in Michigan. Jennifer earned a Licentiate in Bioethics from the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum School of Bioethics in Rome.  Her prior undergraduate studies were in International Administration and Government Policy at the Evergreen State College in Washington State.Jennifer’s areas of specialization include Eugenics in Artificial Reproductive Technologies, Heterologous Adoption and Transfer of Embryos, The Womb in Reproductive Technologies, and the Role and Significance of The Medical Act. She interviews with National Conservative and Christian Radio Syndicates as well as several foreign and secular reporters. Jennifer has spoken on the dignity of women and women’s social issues to various audiences since 1999 and has spent several years in advocacy work with various international organizations in the field of life sciences. From 2000 to 2006 she recruited and coordinated grass-roots social policy efforts that consisted of a public and private sector network of professionals and academics…
    • Margaret Datiles Watts, J.D. – Margaret Datiles Watts, J.D., is Culture of Life Foundation’s Associate Fellow in Law. Maggie is member of Washington, D.C. and Maryland bar associations.  She holds a B.A. in Philosophy (Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude) and a Certificate in Classical Philosophy from the University Honors Program at The Catholic University of America. She earned a Juris Doctorate from Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America, where she served as a Research Fellow at CUA Law’s Marriage Law Project. She also studied Roman Law and EU Law at Magdalene College, University of Oxford, England.A former Fellow and Staff Counsel for Americans United for Life, Datiles co-authored an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court of the United States in the landmark partial birth abortion case, Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, et al., companion case to Gonzales v. Carhart (2007). She also advised legislators, policy groups and the media (radio and newspapers) on abortion and bioethics laws and drafted pro-life model legislation.Her areas of research and/or publication include legal issues surrounding abortion, government funding restrictions for abortion, contraception, healthcare rights of conscience, stem cell research, artificial reproductive technology, population decline, physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage.She currently publishes articles…
    • William E. May – William E. May is Senior Research Fellow of the Culture of Life Foundation and emeritus Michael J. McGivney Professor of Moral Theology at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he taught the academic years from 1991 through 2008 after teaching for 20 years at The Catholic University of America. He is the author of more than a dozen books. The 2nd edition of his Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life was published by Our Sunday Visitor (2008), and a substantively revised 3rd edition is scheduled for publication in 2013. In 2003 Our Sunday Visitor published a revised and expanded edition of his Introduction to Moral Theology. Among his other books are: Marriage: The Rock on Which the Family Is Built (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1995; 2nd revised edition, 2009)); and, with Ronald Lawler OFM Cap and Joseph Boyle, Catholic Sexual Ethics (rev. and enlarged ed. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1998; 2nd rev. edition, 1998; a 3rd edition, substantively revised by May alone, was published in 2011); Theology of the Body: Genesis and Growth (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2010) He has published more…
    • Frank J. Moncher, Ph.D. – Dr. Frank Moncher received his Ph.D. in Clinical-Community Psychology from the University of South Carolina in 1992, following which he spent several years on faculty of the Medical College of Georgia, with a focus on Adolescent Intensive Services. In 2000 he moved to the Washington, DC area to teach at a graduate school of psychology which had a mission of integrating the science of psychology in the context of the Catholic Christian view of the human person. Concurrent with this, over the past 12 years he has consulted with 11 different religious orders and 4 dioceses to provide psychological evaluations of aspirants and candidates, as well as consulting with different diocesan marriage tribunals.His research interests include the integration of Catholic thought into psychotherapy, child and family development issues, and integrated models of assessment of candidates for the priesthood and religious life. Frank is published in Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services, Adolescence, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Edification, and the Journal of Psychology and Christianity, as well as contributing to several book chapters on children, families, and religious issues.Since 2010, Dr. Moncher has worked for the Diocese of Arlington and Catholic Charities as a psychologist and consultant.  His…
    • Steve Soukup – Fellow in Culture and Economy Steve Soukup is the Vice President and Publisher of The Political Forum, an “independent research provider” that delivers research and consulting services to the institutional investment community, with an emphasis on economic, social, political, and geopolitical events that are likely to have an impact on the financial markets in the United States and abroad. Mr. Soukup has followed politics and federal regulatory policy for the financial community since coming to Washington in 1996, when he joined Mark Melcher at the award-winning Washington-research office of Prudential Securities. While at Prudential, he was part of the Washington team that placed first in Institutional Investor magazine’s annual analyst survey for eight years in a row. Mr. Soukup left Prudential with Mr. Melcher to join Lehman Brothers in the fall of 2000 and stayed there for two years, before leaving early in 2003 to become a partner at The Political Forum. While at Lehman, Mr. Soukup authored macro-political commentary and followed policy developments in the Natural Resources sector group, focusing on agriculture and energy policy. He also headed Lehman’s industry-leading analysis of asbestos litigation reform efforts. At The Political Forum, Mr. Soukup was initially the editor and junior partner,…
    • Dr. Pilar Calva, M.D. – Dr. Calva is a medical doctor specializing in Human Genetics with a Cytogenetics subspecialty from The University of Paris, France. In Paris, she was the under-study to the world-renowned Professor Jerome Lejeune, who is considered by some to be the father of modern genetics. In 1958, Lejeune discovered that an extra 21st chromosome is responsible for Down syndrome, or Trisomy 21. Lejeune dedicated his life tirelessly and unfailingly to defend the unborn, especially those with Down syndrome, testifying before scientific conferences and lawmakers. He was appointed by Pope John Paul II as the first President of the Pontifical Academy for Life. In Dr. Calva’s own words: When I arrived in France, I lived a life divided between faith and reason. I thought that from Monday to Saturday, I put on my white coat for my scientific tasks, and Sunday was the day I took off the white coat, put on my crucifix and dedicated myself to my religious duties. Professor Lejeune truly converted me, making me see that one can wear the white coat and the cross, at the same time. That is, one can fly with the wing of faith and the wing of reason. Inspired by the life…
    • Elyse M. Smith – Elyse M. Smith is an associate attorney with a northern Virginia law firm working in nonprofit and church law, estate planning, and civil litigation. Ms. Smith graduated magna cum laude from Ave Maria School of Law in Naples, Florida, where she served on Law Review and was published in the Ave Maria International Law Journal. She was named “Most Dedicated Editor” for her work on Law Review. Ms. Smith earned her bachelor’s degree in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia.  
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  >  Issue Briefs  >  Blog  >  A Constitution Made Only For A Moral And Religious People

A Constitution Made Only For A Moral And Religious People

Posted: September 22, 2015
By: Steve Soukup
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If you pay even the slightest bit of attention to the social debates of the day, you are bound, sooner or later, to hear someone declare that just about any and all behavior must be allowed and even sanctioned by the state because “you can’t impose your values on society.”  Whether the subject is same-sex marriage, the contraception mandate in Obamacare, abortion or euthanasia, the argument is that nothing can be limited by the government, for fear of the imposition of “values.”

Values, you see, are presumed to be religious, specifically Christian.  And the imposition on the masses of religion, especially Christianity, is said to constitute a regressive and superstitious appeal to outdated notions that conflict directly with the spirit and the energy of contemporary Western society.

Ironically, the political and moral solons of the day usually start by citing the Constitution and the Founding Fathers as evidence of their conviction that values and religion have no place in civil society.  The 14th Amendment guarantees equal treatment under the law, they insist, which precludes the imposition of any moral beliefs.  Likewise, the Establishment Clause forbids the imposition of religious notions upon the nation.  And, of course, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the rest of the Founders insisted that Christianity was not a motivating force in the creation of the American Republic and should not be treated as such.  Or as John Adams put it – and as the anti-moralists repeatedly remind us:  “The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

The problems with this argument are manifold.  The two most obvious are the presumption that ethics, morality, and “values” are necessarily religious notions; and the corollary presumption that removing religion from the public sphere will therefore create value-free governance.  Both presumptions are patently false.

As it happens, values are inherent in any choice and are therefore an essential part of any decision – political or otherwise.  Values represent mere preference calculations, which is to say that any choice between two or more alternatives denotes the creation and imposition of a value.  The twentieth-century retreat from religious values was not a retreat from values altogether, but merely a conscious choice to substitute contemporary value judgments for traditional standards; that is, to abandon the longstanding moral conclusions of Western civilization for the situational ethics of the post-Enlightenment era.

This rejection of traditional, pre-modern values has created a bifurcated society, Western Civilization split in two, divided along epistemological and moral lines.  On one side of the divide are the traditionalists, and on the other are what I will call the postmodernists, who believe in no moral absolutes whatsoever and no objective definitions of right or wrong.  The postmodernists choose instead to define those terms on an ad hoc basis and in light of the idea that morality and “truth” are mere expressions of power and preference.

Each of these moral systems, in turn, fits into a broader conception of virtuousness.  The postmodern moral code is, in its essence, utilitarian, which is to say that its notions of right and wrong spring not from universal truths, but from outcomes, from the belief that utility is a far better measure of virtue than are the artifacts of pre-modern superstition.

Utilitarianism, as any schoolboy knows, is most generally associated with the British social reformer Jeremy Bentham.  Bentham, defined “the good” as that which produces the greatest pleasure (or happiness) for the greatest number.  In practical terms, Bentham believed that government can’t help but favor one constituency over another; and since this is the case, the best of governments – which is to that which operates most ethically – is that which favors constituencies and policies that produce the greatest collective pleasure.

More specifically, today’s postmodernists believe that suffering, as they define it, occurs everywhere and at all times in the absence of government action.  Therefore, government acts best when it alleviates that suffering to whatever degree is possible.  Individual men and women are free to pursue their own interests as long as those interests don’t conflict with the greater good, again, as the postmodernists define it.  In that rights are a human construct, when interests do conflict, moral government is obligated to suppress those interests that offend.  In today’s parlance, then, religious liberty is perfectly fine and acceptable, unless and until it brushes up against the greater good, the greater happiness of society.  In the postmodern moral scheme, then, the utilitarian ethic triumphs over individual self-regard.

The opposite of utilitarian morality is that which can most easily be described as deontological ethics, the belief that the morality of an action is dependent on the action itself, that man has a duty to do what is right, and that right and wrong are clearly defined, rule-based, and largely independent of consequences.  Right is right.  Wrong is wrong.  And an evil act may never be considered good, even if it produces profit or pleasure.

Deontological ethics is, by any measure, the foundational moral code of Western civilization, running through both the Judeo-Christian tradition and the Hellenic and Roman traditions.  Nine-hundred years ago, Aquinas put it simply: “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.”  More than a thousand years before that – before Christ and thus before Christianity – Cicero put it similarly:

So let us regard this as settled: what is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage.  The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.

Now, it is no mere coincidence that Aquinas’s first precept of Natural Law is the above-noted summation of deontology: do and pursue good and avoid evil.  Natural Law – which is to say law that is in keeping with nature and the will of the Creator – is part and parcel of the deontological ethic.  The law should represent and enable that which is right and good; and that which is in keeping with Natural Law is right and good.

It is also no mere coincidence that Natural Law served as the foundation for the “certain inalienable Rights” held by all men and “endowed by their Creator” that inspired the founding of the United States.  The Founding Fathers may or may not have wished for an explicitly Christian nation, but in the end, it doesn’t matter.  The Founders were part of the Hellenic-Judeo-Christian tradition and therefore saw the nation, its purpose, its establishment, and its principles in explicitly moral and explicitly Judeo-Christian terms.  They understood their moral “duty” to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”  The deontological ethic and its expression in Natural Law reached its theological apotheosis in Aquinas, who merged the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman traditions.  It reached its philosophical apotheosis in Locke and his construction of the social contract.  And it reached its political apotheosis in Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and in the republic that sprang from it.

The Founding Fathers may well have abjured official state imposition of religion and faith, as the postmodernists insist.  But they were, nevertheless, guided by the same principles that form the foundation of Christian morality and, indeed, understood man, the state, and their relationship in explicitly Christian terms.  All of which is to note that the same John Adams who, as the postmodernists note, rejected a United States government “founded on the Christian religion,” also wrote the following:

While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned us by Providence.  But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation, while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candour, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world.  Because we have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion.  Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net.  Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. (emphasis added)

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