Posted By Bernard Gaynor on Thursday, March 3, 2022 10:08 pm | 3 comments

There is an immediate solution to the ‘religious freedom’ problem. And there is a real solution to this problem.

The immediate solution is to recognise that we live in a world that is increasingly hostile to Christ. Those who desire for Christ to reign over society and in our laws and political activity are not going to win many battles without a miracle or two any time soon.

Politically, we have one realistic goal at the moment: do not make things worse.

We achieve this by doing all that we can to limit the exercise of power by those who abuse it to destroy freedom.

Supporting the Religious Discrimination Bill is doing the exact opposite of not making things worse. It gives people who hate Christianity and who are ruthless in exercising the power of state to destroy it more power.

I outlined in detail in Part 2 of this series some of the effects that we will face if this bill ever becomes law. Most Christians can see and understand that those effects will not be good for us.

But those problems are just the consequences. They are not the cause.

To truly understand why the Religious Discrimination Bill has so many evil effects, you need to truly understand what it does: it will require our Commonwealth institutions, our businesses, our social communities and even individual Australians to recognise that Christ and Satan are equal.

That is religious ‘equality’. That is what the Religious Discrimination Bill does.

The Religious Discrimination Bill has no regard for truth or good. It does not limit error or evil. Instead, it says all beliefs are equal and equally worthy of protection. All of them.

Understanding this, we can then grasp the proper and only solution to the issue of ‘religious freedom’. It is simple: the state must do its duty and uphold truth.

And the truth, when it comes to ‘religious freedom’, is that there is a God and He established a Church.

The state must recognise this God. It must recognise His Church.

To argue that the state must stand neutral on matters of religion is absurd.

Pontius Pilate asked ‘What is truth?’ It was a good question. And the answer was staring him in the face.

He had a duty to accept truth and protect it. But he chose not to. Evil resulted.

Christians who claim that the state must remain above questions of religion are no different to Pontius Pilate. They promote a bizarre world in which men must accept Christ as individuals but cannot do so as a collective. In this world, we are to expect that legislative bodies will ignore Christ and the source of their authority when making laws for the common good and that, somehow, these laws will still actually be good.

It is delusion.

Recognising God and His Church, the state must also remain secondary to the Church in relation to theological and moral teaching. The state is not the Church. Its job is to support the Church and ensure the common good of society so that each person may more easily know, love and serve God. In providing order for people to achieve natural happiness, the state provides the conditions for people to more easily obtain true happiness which can only be found with God.

It is only when the state does so that the true religion can be freely and properly practised both publicly and privately and both collectively and individually.

With this order established, the state can then ‘tolerate’ false religion to the extent that it does not undermine the common good.

Many Christians have no problem with the concept that the state should recognise Christ as King.

But most Christians reject the necessity for the state to recognise His Church. They do so because they face at an individual level the problem a generic ‘Christian’ state has at a collective level: they cannot define what Christ’s Church is.

They either do not know what it teaches. They have no defined dogmas.

Or they do not know what its structure is. They have no organisation.

Or they do not know who leads it. They have no source of authority.

Or they do not know what it was. They have no continuous link back to Christ.

For some, the Church is an esoteric, undefined and amorphous blob. It is without any structure or characterisation.

For others, the Church was started by Christ. Then it was completely lost for a period of time. And then some later person ‘re-discovered’ the ‘true’ teaching and structure of Christ’s Church.

Others still claim beliefs that are identical or almost identical to the teaching of the Catholic Church but reject the authority of the Pope.

No matter what category the non-Catholic ‘Christian’ belongs to, all of them in some way have established their own form of pope. This is undeniable.

Christ established a divine organisation. But it is also an organisation of humans. And there is no human organisation that ever existed without having a structure and a supreme living authority.

That person is either the Pope of the Catholic Church, or the ‘pope’ of some other ‘Christian’ entity (either an individual or a committee) which has decided for whatever reason that they, rather than the Catholic Pope, have the authority to know and determine what Christ taught and to lead the society that He established.

You either recognise the Catholic Pope as the living Pope. Or you recognise yourself or some other living person as the source of Christ’s authority on earth. There is no getting around this.

And whether you call that person the ‘Pope’ or not is irrelevant. You are still recognising a supreme, living authority in matters of Christ’s teaching.

Even one who claims that the ‘church’ exists only within the heart of Christians still has a ‘pope’. It’s themselves. And they’ve decided that they are the authority to determine what the Church ‘is’.

This webpage supports Catholic teaching. But it is not focused on theological issues. Instead, it focuses on matters of politics.

And I will point out here that there are political problems which flow from a failure to accept the Catholic Church.

If you think that the Church cannot be defined, then there is no legal way to recognise this undefined entity. As a practical matter, the state simply cannot ensure religious freedom.

If you cannot know who the ‘pope’ is, then the state cannot recognise the authority and structure of the Church that Christ established. As a practical matter, the state simply cannot ensure religious freedom.

If you cannot know precisely what the Church teaches, then the state cannot give legal protection to this unknown or undefined teaching. As a practical matter, the state simply cannot ensure religious freedom.

And if you cannot know how a ‘church’ links to Christ, then the state cannot protect or even know the historical reality of that organisation. As a practical matter, the state simply cannot ensure religious freedom.

As a practical matter, there is only one Christian ‘Church’ that the state can legally recognise as being the true religion in any meaningful way: it is called the Catholic Church.

To put this all another way: true religious freedom has been under increasing attack since and precisely because of the Protestant Revolution.

This revolution destroyed the concepts of Christian unity and authority and essentially allowed the state unfettered power to redefine them, while all manner of sects have spun off from the original ‘reformers’. There is no continuity within Protestantism, let alone any continuous link back to Christ.

The lasting effect of this disaster is that states took it upon themselves to determine ‘Christian’ dogma and the structure of the ‘church’. Always, this redefinition happened to coincide with the political interests of those leading the state.

The fruit of this revolution is that we now live in a time where even general ‘Christian’ concepts cannot be freely uttered while secular High Priests monitor each of us for heresy. This should not be surprising. When Christian authority is rejected it naturally follows that Christian teaching itself will eventually be rejected too.

I hate to break it to you, but there is no way to win the religious freedom wars outside of the Catholic Church.

Until that fact is recognised, these words – which most Christians would accept – will never be realised:

When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony. Our Lord’s regal office invests the human authority of princes and rulers with a religious significance…

…If princes and magistrates duly elected are filled with the persuasion that they rule, not by their own right, but by the mandate and in the place of the Divine King, they will exercise their authority piously and wisely, and they will make laws and administer them, having in view the common good and also the human dignity of their subjects. The result will be a stable peace and tranquillity, for there will be no longer any cause of discontent. Men will see in their king or in their rulers men like themselves, perhaps unworthy or open to criticism, but they will not on that account refuse obedience if they see reflected in them the authority of Christ God and Man. Peace and harmony, too, will result; for with the spread and the universal extent of the kingdom of Christ men will become more and more conscious of the link that binds them together, and thus many conflicts will be either prevented entirely or at least their bitterness will be diminished.

These words were written in 1925 and come from Quas Primas which outlined the necessity to recognise Christ as King over each and every society.

And they were written by the only person with the authority to direct them to secular leaders. He held that authority by virtue of his position as head of the one, true, catholic and apostolic Church: the Pope.

If you want to help win the religious freedom wars and improve society, get on board with the only organisation that can do it: the Catholic Church. The solution to this problem starts with you taking that first step.

*****

In this series:

• Introduction – The truth of it: do not donate another cent to the Australian Christian Lobby
• Part One – The Great Battle of the Losers
• Part Two – Baking for Beelzebub
• Part Three – I told you so, Australian Christian Lobby
• Part Four – Protestants can only be religious freedom losers