I was 8 years old in January 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court engaged in raw judicial activism to discover a fundamental Constitutional right to abortion, thereby invalidating every state law that protected unborn children from abortion. Because of my age, I don’t have memories of that infamous day.
I will never forget June 26, 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court again exercised raw judicial activism by interpreting the U.S. Constitution to require all states to license and recognize same-sex “marriage.”
In his well-reasoned dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts said the “majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court’s precedent. The majority expressly disclaims judicial ‘caution’ and omits even a pretense of humility, openly relying on its desire to remake society according to its own ‘new insight’ into the ‘nature of injustice.’
“As a result,” the Chief Justice continued, “the Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half of the States and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia.... Just who do we think we are?”
Justice Antonin Scalia expressed grave concern about the ruling’s attack on democracy. “Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact… of the Court’s claimed power to create ‘liberties’ that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention.
“This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine,” Scalia continues, “robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”
Equally ominous is what this decision may mean for the religious freedom and the conscience rights of those of us who believe that marriage can only be a union of one man and one woman.
“The majority graciously suggests that religious believers may continue to ‘advocate’ and ‘teach’ their views of marriage,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “The First Amendment guarantees, however, the freedom to ‘exercise’ religion. Ominously, that is not a word the majority uses… Unfortunately, people of faith can take no comfort in the treatment they receive from the majority today.”
Speaking as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Ky. said, “Mandating marriage redefinition across the country is a tragic error that harms the common good and most vulnerable among us, especially children.”
“Regardless of what a narrow majority of the Supreme Court may declare at this moment in history, the nature of the human person and marriage remains unchanged and unchangeable,” Archbishop Kurtz continued. “Just as Roe v. Wade did not settle the question of abortion over forty years ago, Obergefell v. Hodges does not settle the question of marriage today. Neither decision is rooted in the truth, and as a result, both will eventually fail… It is profoundly immoral and unjust for the government to declare that two people of the same sex can constitute a marriage.”
I highly recommend reading the majority and dissenting opinions in this decision as well as the responses of our bishops, all of which can be accessed at www.necatholic.org.
On the 4th of July, I joined my friends at the Nebraska Family Alliance in a prayer call for marriage, during which I led a prayer for hope. In my prayer I acknowledged the heavy hearts many of us have for our country and for the institution of marriage. I expressed sadness for the many ways in which our world has abused God’s gifts of life and love and sorrow for anything we have done or failed to do to live or proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ.
But I also recalled the words of St. Paul (Romans 5:2-5) who reminds us that through Jesus Christ “we have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Undoubtedly, many challenges lie ahead to living the Truths of our Catholic faith. But we must be reassured by the faith which we profess in our Lord’s passion, death and resurrection—that act of ultimate victory over sin and death. Our response to this—and every—challenge in our world must be to live and act as resurrection people with joy and confidence in knowing that we operate from Christ’s victory. In good times and in bad, our Lord asks one thing of us: to be faithful and persevere in proclaiming the Good News that is our Lord Jesus Christ.
