The politicians have already learned their lesson. Now it is time for the Judges to learn theirs.

What matters more to you, God and eternal salvation, or your paycheck, prestige and power? We saw it with John F. Kennedy. JFK was given a litmus test regarding his faith or his country. JFK responded with that which the non-Catholic world wanted to hear. Since that time, every major U.S. leader has probably learned from the one and only Catholic President we have ever had. The lesson from JFK is two-fold. First, it is perfectly acceptable to ask a Catholic whether they are going to make professional and political decisions as a Catholic or if they are going to somehow turn off their Catholic faith and make their professional and political decisions according to popular opinion. The second lesson is that Catholics are expected to live and work as though they have no particular faith or belief.

The JFK example has prevailed for about 50 years. During that time, Protestants were relatively immune to this disease. Some of the immunity was due to the fact that non-Catholic Christians do not have the Pope, who is sometimes mistakenly viewed as the leader of a foreign nation. Protestants are never asked if they are going to make decisions based on their faith or based on secular ideals. Well, I shouldn’t say “never”. What was once unthinkable has now started to creep into the discussion. Catholics and their Pope were once portrayed as the greatest threat to the American way, but God has now been identified as public enemy #1. This is why we are now seeing florists, bakers and people like Brendan Eich, who are crushed under the mob mentality of wants, wishes and feelings. But more on that another time…

While JFK’s response to the question was at points, powerful, and eloquent, many Americans, both Catholic and non-Catholic, seemed to miss a significant part of his message and focus on a few smaller points. JFK properly said that as a candidate for U.S. President, the issue was not what kind of church he believed in, but what kind of America he believed in. Unfortunately, he then drifted into a common misinterpretation of the 1st Amendment, and said, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference…”.

Today, this is where a lot of current debates begin; with a flawed understanding of the separation of church and state. The 1st Amendment was not ratified to keep religion out of the government, it was ratified to keep the government out of religion. But JFK goes on: “I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.” This is an interesting statement, because unlike the United Kingdom, Catholics have not been officially eliminated as potential U.S. Presidents based on their Catholic faith. But JFK was likely aware of another Catholic presidential candidate from several decades earlier, Alfred E. Smith. JFK knew that Smith had suffered a very calculated and intense anti-Catholic attack from people who wanted voters to believe Smith would answer to the Pope instead of the American people, were he elected in 1928. Smith lost that election by a long shot. JFK’s response was therefore, a way to let Protestant American know that he was aware of the lesson learned from Smith and that he would keep his faith private. Contemporary Americans look at the word “private” and equate it to invisible, indiscernible and ineffectual.

Since JFK, many (if not most) politicians who happened to also be baptized Catholic, have fallen all over themselves trying to do the impossible. The impossible is the separation of their “private” faith from their “public” job. In fact, this futile feat has trickled down to nearly every aspect of public life. The result is that now there are a lot of people in America who are incapable of understanding the difference between reading the 1st Amendment as a guarantee of “freedom of religion” or simply the “freedom to worship” (the difference is vast). The 1st Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”. There is no mention of “worship”. There is no mention of “private”. In fact, there isn’t even any talk about “separation”. The 1st Amendment says that the government can’t establish a religion nor can it interfere with any religion.

But decades of fearful and weak politicians have failed to recognize these distinctions and therefore, most Americans are oblivious as well. The result is a culture where we can talk about how we like our sex, who we like it with and how causing our bodies to malfunction is actually healthcare, but if we mention God, faith or the bible, we are offensive, hateful and weird. Thanks a lot JFK.

Maybe we are seeing some courage in our judiciary that we have not seen in politicians. While Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and dozens of other politicians claim to be Catholic while handing their consciences over to the highest bidder, the Supreme Court justices have stepped completely out of line. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the issue was whether a closely held corporation can have a conscience. In order to think about the Hobby Lobby case, we need to know a lot of stuff, including what a “closely held” corporation is, and what a “conscience” is. A closely held corporation is one that is typically not publicly traded and is owned a small number of shareholders, commonly members of one family.

The word “conscience” is something that has grown vague to many Americans since the days of JFK. Your conscience is the internal judgments you make in order to take an action. The beauty of being human is that we have the free will to choose in everything we do, but we all make our choices based on our own personal conscience. Most of us form our conscience throughout our lives by learning and experiencing as we go. Some people fill themselves with really poor information and really bad experiences and end up with a poorly formed conscience. Some people turn their conscience over to others and simply take action that seems to conform with the other person’s agenda or the agenda of some entity. Biden, Pelosi and other politicians like them seem to have turned their consciences over to others. They have reaped significant earthly reward for doing so, but the eternal ramifications may be something entirely different.

Progressives, radical feminists, activists and many liberal politicians (collectively referred to as DB’s for the Deaf, and the Blind but certainly not the Dumb) are attacking the 5 Supreme Court justices who make up the majority vote on the Hobby Lobby case. These 5 justices are under attack just like Alfred E. Smith was under attack nearly 90 years ago. The DB’s are pushing because they want the judicial system to follow the example of the politicians and buckle under the fear that they will be eliminated from their positions simply because they are Catholic. After all, the 5 Supreme Court Justices who were in the majority on the Hobby Lobby case happen to be Catholics. If that isn’t appalling enough to the DB’s, they are also male. The horror! Unleash the propaganda…

Shouldn’t the DB’s read the decision before they start recording their propaganda? Heaven forbid…I mean, God forbid…, I mean, perish the thought. The DB’s can read and I’m sure some of them read the decision, but by most accounts, it appears that they haven’t. Some DB’s have gone on the major networks to say really stupid things, such as, we are at a point where “five guys decide whether contraception is legal or not”, or “five men should get down to the specifics of whether a woman should use a diaphragm…”. As usual, you can count on Pelosi to misunderstand everything except how to raise funds for her next campaign. Senator Dick Durban actually thinks the Hobby Lobby decision violates the fundamental right to privacy recognized by Griswold v. Connecticut. Durban must be a big picture guy. While behaviors such as sex and the pills and devices some people use while engaging in sex have traditionally been “private”, that is no longer the case in America. But more to the point, Durban misunderstands the Hobby Lobby decision because the decision doesn’t ban any contraceptives or abortifacients. It simply says that the employee can’t force her employer to pay for abortifacients on her behalf when the employer is a closely held corporation who objects based on the conscience of the shareholders. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid said, “It’s wrong for five men to decide what happens to women in America”. Apparently Scary Harry wants to take separation of church and state and apply it to the sexes. Women make women’s laws and men make men’s? Maybe Scary Harry hasn’t gotten the DNP memo that we can just change our gender classification based on the way we are feeling at the moment in America nowadays. Maybe the “five men” were in touch with their feminine side as they considered all the facts in the Hobby Lobby case and maybe those in the minority were all mixed up with one of the other types of gender now available to Americans and couldn’t rally and sway the vote.

In the end, all the DB propaganda is an effort to make those “five guys” and every other judge, politician, business owner and American, separate their conscience from everything that helped form their conscience over the course of their lives and simply hand all the thinkin’ over to the DB’s. The message is loud and clear: The DB’s expect all judges to take notes and know exactly how to decide cases so as not to rile the DB’s.

We recently saw this up close and personally with Judge Battalion in Omaha. When Judge Battalion ruled that a 16yr old girl, who was in foster care, was too immature to have an abortion, the DB’s went wild. The Nebraska Supreme Court agreed with Judge Battalion’s decision, but that didn’t stop the DB’s. NARAL Pro-Choice America and RH Reality Check, filed a complaint against Judge Battalion, in an effort to have him disciplined and possibly removed from the bench. The complaint was eventually dismissed, probably because Judge Batallion’s decision was wise and sound, but nonetheless, it shows that even local judges right here in good ‘ol Nebraska, are not immune to attacks from the DB’s. The DB’s feel like they can strike terror into the hearts of judges across the U.S., and thereby, win cases that would otherwise be decided on the merits and decided against the DB’s.

Attempts to remove judges are not uncommon anymore. Some such attempts have been successful, so the message to the judiciary is real for our judges: “Think like the progressives, activists, liberals and radical feminists, or you may be next.

The only way to make certain that the few, the shameful and the vocal don’t end up running this country into the ground is to stand up and let them know them know we won’t sit idly by and simply absorb their propaganda.