Lux Lucet

Marco Rubio, neo-evangelical favorite.

Have you ever noticed this strange phenomenon, that those at the forefront of a movement or discipline generally are the ones doing the most to undermine it? Take, for example, the legal profession. Among lawyers, there is no more prestigious assignment than to be named to the US Supreme Court. And yet these high-powered legal minds – supposedly the best and brightest the profession has to offer – routinely made a hash of the Constitution, the very document on which they claim expertise. Economists are in the same boat, the majority of whom are intellectual thralls to the economy destroying nonsense taught by John Maynard Keynes. Business leaders are anti-business, favoring programs of crony capitalist government bail-outs over the free market that allowed them to prosper in the first place.

To this list you can add another category of prominent individuals doing their best to undermine the very cause for which they claim to stand: evangelical insiders. According to a poll released by World Magazine, the favorite 2016 presidential candidates of these anointed insiders – World does not tell us what criteria it uses to select these insiders, describing them only as “well-connected evangelicals” – are, drum roll please…Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina. Somehow, I’m not surprised by this. In fact, given the long-standing Romeward and feminist drift of the neo-evangelical movement. it was almost inevitable that the poll would turn out as it did.

But are these evangelical insiders thinking Biblically? Even posing this question may come as a surprise to some. What may be even more surprising to them is to hear that there are sound arguments against Christians supporting either one for president.

Marco Rubio

A few weeks ago, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson stirred up a bit of controversy when he, said, “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that.” As CNN reports,

Carson, meanwhile, was asked Sunday whether a president’s faith should matter to voters.

“I guess it depends on what that faith is,” he said. “If it’s inconsistent with the values and principles of America, then of course it should matter. But if it fits within the realm of America and consistent with the Constitution, no problem.”

Carson, of course, was absolutely correct in what he said. There are some religious systems of thought that are consistent with the US Constitution, and there are some, such as Islam, that are not. The Roman Catholicism espoused by “evangelical insider” favorite Marco Rubio is another system at odds American constitutionalism. In light of this, it is not surprising that tin response to Carson’s statements, CNS reports that, “Rubio called the debate sparked by GOP presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson’s remarks about how a president’s faith should allow him to uphold his oath of office and the Constitution “silly” and that his own Christian faith informs what kind of president he would be.” In truth, it is Rubio’s comments that are silly. For religious ideas are the most powerful of all ideas. What a man believes about God will affect all of his thinking.

There was a time when Evangelicals understood that the religion of the Roman Catholic Church-State, with its megalomaniacal absolute monarch of a pope, was antithetical to the spirit of the Constitution of the United States. For example, Rome has always hated the idea of freedom of religion as expressed in the Article I of the Constitution. In his 1927 Open Letter to Roman Catholic presidential candidate Al Smith, Charles Marshall wrote,

That great compendium of Roman Catholic teaching, the Catholic Encyclopedia, declares that the Roman Catholic Church ‘regards dogmatic intolerance, not alone as her incontestable right, but as her sacred duty.’ It is obvious that such convictions leave nothing in theory of the religious and moral rights of those who are not Roman Catholics. And, indeed, that is Roman Catholic teaching and the inevitable deduction from Roman Catholic claims, if we use the word ‘rights’ strictly. Other churches, other religious societies, are tolerated in the State, no by right, but by favor.

Pope Leo XIII is explicit on this point: ‘The (Roman Catholic) Church, indeed, deems it unlawful to place the various forms of divine worship on the same footing as the true religion, but does not, on that account, condemn those rulers who, for the sake of securing some great good or of hindering some great evil, allow patiently custom or usage to be a kind of sanction for each kind of religion having its place in the State.’

That is, there is not a lawful equality of other religions with that of the Roman Catholic Church, but that Church will allow state authorities for politic reasons – that is, by favor, but not by right – to tolerate other religious societies. We would ask, sir, whether such favors can be accepted in place of rights by those owning the name of feemen?

In what is a glaring example of Evangelical stupidity, the World
article goes on state that the same “evangelical insiders” who pick Marco Rubio as their top choice for president also name “religious freedom” as the top issue when selecting a candidate. What makes these “insiders” think for a minute that Rome favors religious freedom? Rome, as Charles Marshall pointed out almost ninety years ago, is dead-set opposed to religious freedom. And it has always been. Have these people never heard of the Spanish Inquisition? Does the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre mean nothing to them? These are two classic examples of how Rome views “religious freedom” when given the opportunity to call the shots. And if anyone supposes that these are just examples of ancient history with no application to today’s world, let him consider the words of the popes quoted by Marshall. Should she ever be given the opportunity, rest assured that the Church of Rome once again will make herself drunk with the blood of the saints.

As recently as 1960, Evangelicals still had discernment enough to question whether John F. Kennedy’s Roman Catholicism would allow him to serve as president. But here in enlightened 2015, not only do “evangelical insiders” show no skepticism at all about the ability of a Romanist to take the presidential oath of office, but they seem to go out of their way to favor him.

For example, the World article presents the foolish comments of Eric Teetsel – Teetsel is the executive director of the heretical Manhattan Declaration – without any sort of warning to its readers, leading one to assume that Teetsel speaks for the magazine as well. Teetsel is quoted as saying,

While the success of Pat Robertson, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum demonstrates the significant influence of the evangelical faction of the GOP primary voters, it also proves its limitations…Rubio’s sincere faith and record of leadership on the issues of life, marriage, and religious liberty- combined with his charisma and communication skills – have captivated evangelicals hungry for a win.

Hungry for a win. That’s just it, isn’t it? Teetsel and his fellow travelers are more interested in winning an election than they are concerned with being faithful to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. In their eyes, if winning means presenting a Roman Catholic who admits he, “craved, literally, the Most Blessed Sacrament, Holy Communion, the sacramental point of contact between the Catholic and the liturgy of heaven,” as a Christian while ignoring the serious and irreconcilable conflicts between the politics and social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church-State and the Constitution of the United States, so be it. In so doing, these double-minded “evangelical insiders” have failed to bring all their thoughts into captivity to Christ, placing themselves outside the preceptive will of God. Thus for all their efforts, as James tells us, they should expect to receive nothing from the Lord.