Day 71 The Religious Exception; and, In God We Trust, Of Course

New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced yesterday that religious ceremonies of no more than ten people would now be permitted in New York State as long as those who gather wear masks and practice strict social-distancing.

In his daily news conference, he said, “I get it. Former altar boy.” Mr. Cuomo said of faith leaders, “‘I understand their desire to get back to religious ceremonies as soon as possible. I think that even at this time of stress and when people are so anxious and so confused, I think those religious ceremonies can be very comforting. But we need to find out how to do it, and do it safely and do it smartly.” He’s working with his Interfaith Advisory Council to get it done.

The roots of these United States are deeply bound into the concept of religious freedom. It’s a fact that most Americans—persons of faith or not—are taught to be proud of when we learn American history. The founding of this country could, arguably, be said to rest on the freedom to worship as one is guided. Remember those words, freedom to worship.

The New York Coronavirus news aggregator went on, “The announcement was particularly significant for Jewish congregations, where a minyan, defined as 10 people over [the age of] 13, is required for a worship service.”

The C.D.C. was stopped from releasing their original re-opening guidelines by the Trump administration because of its recommendations for religious institutions. The regulation of, interference with, or weighing in upon anything at all having to do with religious practice is fraught in this country.

Think of the pictures that were published of the small numbers of state capitol demonstrators for the past week. A lot of their signage had to do with gathering for religious purposes. So did a lot of the Democratic Governor/Republican Legislature arguments, and lawsuits.

Linda Greenhouse covers The Supreme Court for The New York Times. Her article “Storytelling at The Supreme Court” details how the narrative ran for two religion cases. One piqued my interest particularly. Indulge me on the controversial nature of the case please; the citation does have a point.

“[W]e start from the shared premise, embodied in the Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause, that the state should give religious believers room to practice their faith without undue interference. Rather than either-or, the question often becomes how much room, under what circumstances.”

“The court heard two cases dealing with religion during its recent weeks of telephonic argument sessions, and on the surface both display this quality of shared premise. You might call it the ‘of course’ principle: Of course nuns shouldn’t be expected to subsidize birth control for their nonprofit institution’s employees. Of course a religious school should be free to hire and fire teachers whose job it is to impart to young students the core meaning of the faith.”

Of course someone will object if the State even attempts to speak to how we do Church.

When I was growing up in the 1960s, it was quite common for adults to pass on social wisdom as adamantly taboo or permissive. I remember my mother distinctly telling me that “a lady never discusses religion, sex, education, or politics.” Even at the time—I was about eight—I thought to myself, “Then what is there to talk about?”

As I’ve gotten older and witnessed an increasingly litigious world wherein lawyers give business to other lawyers, I am beginning to understand why she promulgated that thoroughly ludicrous piece of advice. One of the cases before SCOTUS is the reason.

Ms. Greenhouse, “Could Hollywood have come up with a better name to carry the flag against government-sponsored birth control than Little Sisters of the Poor? The sisters are members of a Catholic order that runs nursing homes for the elderly poor.”

Now remember this is a religion case.
In front of the highest court in the land.
On the telephone, upon which for the first time ever, ordinary citizens were invited to listen, in real time.

Is it really a religion case?

Are the lawsuits against state governors really religion cases?

Religion itself—any and all practices of it—has roots so deep that we cannot trace them to their ends. But we in these United States are guaranteed the freedom to worship, not the freedom to impose our faith on others.

The case before The Supreme Court is really about covering the non-Catholic employees of the Little Sisters’ service work, and the fact that their Christian insurer has already been exempted from covering birth control.

“The actual dispute before the court is between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, on one side, and the Trump administration on the other. The states sued to block the administration’s rule that lifts the contraception mandate entirely from any employer—profit, nonprofit, privately held or publicly traded—with a religious objection to covering birth control, as well as from any privately held employer that claims a ‘moral’ objection.”

What’s that adage about the making of laws and sausages? Don’t ask.

Religion, well, actually, a religious community—and let us add here, for clarity’s sake—a celibate, religious community gets to have a say in whether women who work in their nursing homes, most likely Certified Nurse Assistants, for what, admittedly I speculate here, cannot be even a life-sustaining wage, have babies.

How do they have the right to have a say in what their employees do? And how did it get to The Supremes?

The gears of the court system in this country grind slowly, but I would venture to say that it is no mistake that this case is before the court at this time. I might even posit that the timing is Cosmic.

The Trump Pandemic is bringing to the surface questions about every single legal right of every single resident of the United States, and really, people the world over.

Nothing that I do does not have an effect on everyone.
Nothing that you do does not have an effect on everyone.

Forgive the double negatives.

Everything that I do affects everyone else.
Everything that you do affects everyone else.
When I am at risk, I put you at risk.
The question of the risk is not if it exists, it is only one of degree.

Rights. Privileges. Responsibilities. Essentially, each person’s personal philosophy of living is up for question and at risk.

When President Obama left office, there was a provision of the Affordable Care Act that all organizations’ health insurance needed to supply “seamless” birth control, and that the government would pay for it where there were grounds for objection on the basis of religion.

Ms. Greenhouse writes, “But that still wasn’t sufficient, the religious employers said, to avoid their complicity in the sin of contraception because their insurance policy would still provide the link, however attenuated, between their female employees and contraception.”

The Supreme Court is adjudicating guilt by association? Could be.

What about the friend your friend goes to dinner with? Is he socially-distancing? Is she masking? Is now seeing your friend a health risk to you?

The Supreme Court is adjudicating complicity in sin? Could be.

What about the roommate who has missed his girlfriend for two months of lockdown? He takes off for her place for the weekend. What do you ask for when he comes home?

The Supreme Court is adjudicating discrimination against women, and poor women in particular? Could be.

What about the single mother who needs to leave her young children in daycare in order to go back to work? How does she pick them up? What’s the daycare doing for safety?

The questions are legion, and endless, much like religion in our country.

“The contraception case ... puts the Supreme Court to a profound choice. At issue is the nature of civil society itself.”

The very same words could be written about each individual and the responsibility each of us bears as we reopen the economy in the face of the pandemic.

“The notion that an employer can simply opt out of a legal obligation it finds objectionable on undefined ‘moral’ grounds, or on the basis of an evanescent ‘complicity’ with the distant choices of other actors, threatens the assumption that we all live by the same rules.”

At issue is the nature of civil society itself. The assumption that we all live by the same rules. In sad point of fact, we don’t.

The rules are up for grabs right now, and not even The Supreme Court, as august a body as it is, could litigate the behaviors of 31 million people to each one’s personal satisfaction.

“That thousands of Americans who accept jobs with religious employers might have to forfeit their statutory protections against discrimination—there are an estimated 150,000 lay teachers in religious schools—cuts a hole in a legal fabric designed to protect everyone.”

Take the concepts out of the particulars and apply it to the country-wide reopening of the economy: That thousands of Americans might have to forfeit their statutory protections against discrimination cuts a hole in the legal fabric designed to protect everyone.

That’s what’s at stake now in this coronavirus nightmare.
Not only that, but our very lives are as well.

The thing that struck me most fundamentally about the court case is that it boils down to an administrative glitch which is about money. Who is going to pay for what? And what does that mean?

Apply that to a worldwide pandemic.

Have you ever looked at the money we use in the United States? It’s full of metaphysical symbols, and the most famous words upon each printed bill are, “In God We Trust.” Few of us are thinking about this as we gratefully hand our hard-earned dollars to the gloved hand of the barista at the Starbuck’s drive-through.

The first order of business for the Founding Fathers after the Constitution was freedom of religion. But it was freedom to worship as each individual saw fit, not freedom to promulgate our religious beliefs or practices on others.

Can someone please explain to me what paying for birth control has to do with worship? Separation of church and state anyone?

The line between the two is there, but blurred, and blurring more daily. Rights that we have simply assumed are ours are evaporating. The Sneak-Thief-in-Chief is almost single-handedly reducing the Rule of Law to a mere wisp of smoky memory. Almost one hundred environmental regulations stricken from the record. Religious schools funded over public schools. Children all alone deported in numbers topping a thousand.

Ms. Greenhouse concludes her argument (I couldn’t resist.) “The belief that ‘we’re all in this society together’ is fraying rapidly enough without the Supreme Court’s help. But it remains an aspiration worth clinging to, a story worth telling. It is, indeed, the real story of the cases the justices heard on the telephone in the midst of the crisis of our lives—all of our lives.”

I would submit to you, Beloved, that we Americans, from devout to atheistic and everyone in between, function at the very least under a fiscal banner—that of In God We Trust—that gives the lie to our civic reality. Little Sisters of the Poor are not the only ones to have resorted to the judiciary to co-opt the freedom of others. Of course.

When Governor Cuomo announced his version of the religious exception, Motti Seligson, a spokesman for the Chabad Lubavicher community of Orthodox Jews responded, “Connecting to the almighty through prayer is part of who we are and it is something that helps us grow and also cope. At a time like this when there are so many challenges, not having that has been very hard for many people.”

Mr. Seligson is not alone, but he is also not insisting that other religious practitioners establish a minyan.

As a person who lives her faith, I am supremely grateful that there is a banner over our economy that reads In God We Trust. Even if we don’t or can’t or won’t practice it, we can view it as a goal, a dream, a vision, an intention. And that, Beloved, is how all real change begins. Of course.

Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com

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