Well just last week
I the privilege of spending four hours in the sistine chapel with my word on fire
Film crew and we're doing the Michelangelo episode so filming within the great sistine Chapel
But toward the end of our time the director of the vatican museums who have been there with us
So do you want to see the room of tears?
and I said [well] yes of course the room of tears is a little anti
Room off the sistine chapel where the [new] elected [pope] goes to be suited up in his white Cassock
Well the room now is filled with all kinds of you know historical artifacts and Memorabilia
struck me though is this row of
Elves and Chassis bulls and copes worn by famous popes and one that caught my eye was a cope
worn by Pope pius the 6th, not a household name
but pius the six was an intriguing figure pope from 1775 to
$70.99 so he was pope during our revolution and also during the French revolution
Well, he became a great critic of the French revolution
And it's rather bloody aftermath, [and] he saw what an opponent of the church the French revolution would become
Well, it didn't go [over] well with the french who invaded italy and they demanded that he cede the papal States
When he refused they arrested him kept him I think in florence for time then moved him to france
To the town of Valois and he died there about six weeks after he arrived
So a kind of martyr in his opposition to a very aggressive secular state
well, he was succeeded by pius the seventh who took his name as a sort of [omage] to pius the sixth in fact one of
His [stoles] or something was also in the room of tears well
paisa [Sevens] also ran afoul of the French now under the control of Napoleon and
Napoleon came into italy and
Arrested Pi7 brought him back to France held him prisoner
While there by the way [pi's] [1/7] got off, I think one of the great lines in the history of [papacy]
Napoleon came to see him, and he said I'm going to destroy the church and
Pi7 said oh you silly little man
You're trying to do what 17 centuries of priests and bishops have tried and failed to do so good for you Pi's
A7I these two pious a--'s are of course in a long line of great ecclesial figures who have kind of faced down
aggressive secular power go back to the beginning of the church the age of martyrs and everyone from Peter and Paul to
felicity and Perpetua to Clement to
Cyril and so on we're put to death by an aggressive
[State] come up into the the middle ages and you've got great read the seventh who faces down Henry the fourth come up into the
19th Century
And you have bismarck
Waging this great cultural competence the catholic church in Germany the 20th century is the greatest century of martyrs in the history of the church
So think of all those put to death by these very aggressive secular ideologies [all] right
You're wondering why is he bringing up all this rather grim history. Well I do so
Not to overstate the point, but to make a point about the recent
statement of the Supreme Court about gay marriage
What concerns a not inconsiderable number of Catholics and what frightens them a bit is?
the way the
Statement was made how it was framed and formulated
Namely as the discovery of a right a fundamental human right and freedom
Within the constitution for a gay marriage is he here's the problem the problem is once you formulate that way
That anyone who stands opposed to that point of view is
Is a bigot if someone who doesn't respect fundamental freedom?
someone really in the grip of A
irrational Prejudice
[you've] in a certain way cut off rational argument, and you've [just] said well this person doesn't recognize fundamental right and therefore
those persons can be
Ostracized they can be [censured] at the limit they can be
Moved off the public stage and so Catholics worry about a potentially
aggressive secular state on this issue now to be sure
Justice Kennedy in [his] formulation has said
Reassuring things about you know, we're gonna allow you to practice the faith as you see fit, but it seems to me
hard to understand how given the logic of the way the thing was formulated
That that could long endure
[would] someone say for example. Oh the government shouldn't get involved if a business
Refuses on principle to hire black people, but well no, I mean the government would legitimately move against that irrational prejudice
Will the Catholic church's opposition to gay marriage come to be seen in short?
Compass as an irrational prejudice that can be moved against, so I think that's what's concerning
Catholics
You know part of the issue here is
That for the past 100 years maybe or so we've been in a fairly Benign
relationship with the environment culture on these issues because there was a consensus across the the
Denominational divides, I'm a catholic jew protestant non-believer over the past hundred [years] or so
More or less believed the same thing about sexuality about marriage
and so on
Well all that blew apart let's say beginning in the 1970s and so that the consensus having been lost what we face now
is a kind of aggressive
ideology of the
Subject you [know] it's the free subject can determine what his or her life means and what stands a fort that is
The church that claims certain objectivity to Moral values, so I think that's part of what's facing us
Now is a new moment in this dialogue with the culture
You know I do think of cardinal George who is a kind of a mentor to me?
Very often said the first move will be to privatize religion to move it off the public stage and you've certainly seen that
but they said the second move once that's done cardinal always said is the secular state will go after those practices of arms and
Teachings of ours that it finds repugnant. That's what we're worried about now
I mean a lot of catholics feel a bit beleaguered and moved into a defensive posture
So what do we do? What do we do at this moment?
Well, I think
We continue to teach and to evangelize
We continue to put forward our point of [view] and the reasons for it and to do so in a winsome way
not defensively not aggressively, but in a
Winsome way reaching out to our opponents and presenting the teaching in a positive way, I think that's really a key
but also to keep in mind that we stand in a long and venerable tradition of
People who have stood up to an aggressive secular state. There's a great cloud of witnesses
both living in debt who surround us and who have
Made that stance taken that stance
Keep in mind that we've been through this before and we're still standing