U.S. Supreme Court Sides With Church Against Womenpriests

President Obama suffered a humiliating defeat as all nine justices
essentially threw his case out of the Supreme Court on its ear.

THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: This will buy us some precious time...

(The American Catholic) - As expected, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a church school cannot be sued in court over an employee’s discrimination complaint.

In a unanimous decision SCOTUS overturned the earlier ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission et al which had allowed the lawsuit to move forward, saying the teacher’s work was more secular than religious.

The high court disagreed.

Consistent with precedent, SCOTUS ruled that the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion shields churches and their operations from the reach of anti-discrimination laws when dealing with employees of religious institutions. SCOTUS also extended this precedent to include complaints of discrimination under the Americans With Disabilities Act....

read full story here

The decision allows the Catholic Church, and other religious institutions, to freely practice religion in regards to clergy selection. The unanimous margin (9 to 0) by which the decision was made insures this will remain settled law (stare decisis) for some time. That's a very good thing, but we should not count on this remaining a permanent fixture of the American legal landscape. As we know, the Supreme Court does NOT write its decisions in stone. New presidents can nominate new supreme court justices, and new justices can overturn previous decisions. Therefore we should not get into the comfortable position of thinking the matter is settled. It is not.

What has been determined however is this. There are forces in this country (most recently concentrated in the Obama administration, but by no means limited to it) that are hell-bent on making sure churches are FORCED by law to hire female ministers. From a Catholic perspective this is particularly insidious, because if implemented it would mean the hand of the government is being used to interrupt authentic priestly ordinations and authentic apostolic secession. Nothing could make the devil happier!

The problem is not so much legal as it is cultural. Legal systems have existed in the Western World for centuries and we've never encountered a problem quite like this before. This kind of problem only arises when the culture itself is infected with the cancer of liberal Modernism. The only reason why the Obama administration was able to muster enough support to even put this case forward is because he was elected by a culture that tolerated what he said during the campaign and was pleased with the way he conducted himself in office. Indeed, had the culture been more 'christian' (small 'c' here) than a man like Obama would have never been elected in the first place. Then again, a man like John McCain would have never won the 2008 GOP primaries either.

In Europe the cultural problem is endemic to the whole region, save a few isolated spots here and there, with the nations of Hungary and Poland being exceptions for the time being. In the United States of America, things are a little different. For the most part, the entire Northern and Western portions of the United States have a similar problem as Europe, albeit not as severe yet, in that Christianity has been abandoned as a source of public moral guidance. In the Southern Midwest to Southeast (Old Dixieland) the problem still exists, but there is still a sizeable remnant that clings to the virtues of Christendom. Of course the biggest problem here is that most of those people are Evangelical Protestants and that makes them highly susceptible to change. The best thing that could happen to the American Southeast (Dixieland) right now would be for traditional Catholicism to move in and help crystallise the Dixieland tendency to cling to tradition. This would solidify the Old South's stand against Modernism.

I think perhaps what might have made this possible in Dixie is something really awful that may perhaps work its way out as a blessing in disguise. (God works all things together for good for those who love him.)  I'm talking about the loss of the Civil War. You see, ever since the South lost the Civil War, it has to this day found itself subject to the ridicule and oppression of Northern (Yankee) culture. Southerners (Dixians) continue to be mocked for their language, accents, manners, morals and beliefs. This has caused some Dixians to embrace Yankee Modernism, but it has also cause a lot more to dig in their heels, galvanise and defiantly hold their ground throughout the decades. It is perhaps this very form of liberal Yankee persecution that has in effect made it possible for the South to still find herself a bastion of faith and culture while the rest of America has gone to hell in a hand basket.

So why am I bringing this up, and what does it have to do with the recent Supreme Court decision? Well, as I said above, this recent decision buys the U.S. Catholic Church some precious time, but it does not settle the matter. The liberal Modernists (Yankee style) will return and this issue will be revisited sooner or later. Nothing will really change until the culture changes, and the one place in America where the culture is most likely to change in the Church's favour is in the American Southeast -- Old Dixieland. Catholics should concentrate our efforts there, to help galvanise what is left of Christendom in this region. There we can take our stand against the corruption of liberal Modernism in the rest of America. I firmly believe the Old South, of all places ironically, is the one area that is most likely to restore Christendom to the rest of North America. Of course many people say Catholic New England is the key, others say the Catholic portions of the American Southwest are the key. I say none of the above. It's Dixie or nothing. You want to change the culture in America, than help make Dixie more Catholic, or else forget about it!