Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
Americans have long observed the Fourth of July as a celebration, so the story goes, of our ancestors’ liberation from a tyrannical regime which freed them to establish the United States as a constitutional republic. The shocking spectacle of American military, financial and political power being used to undermine the natural law foundation of societies all over the world is rapidly turning the “American dream” into a nightmare, not just for those who live in the United States but for much of the world’s population. Rarely do historians or political commentators acknowledge the roots of the current corruption of American domestic and foreign policy in the protestant theology of most of the founders of our republic. However, a careful examination of the devolution of American jurisprudence reveals that sola scriptura theology paved the way for an evolutionary interpretation of the United States Constitution which has essentially destroyed the rule of law and allowed those who hold power to abuse their authority at home and abroad with impunity.
The Evolution of the Constitution
Whether the founders of the American republic were protestants or freethinkers, virtually all of them were formed in a protestant milieu in which sola scriptura reigned supreme. Consequently, no matter how highly the founders esteemed the United States Constitution, it was inevitable that if the Word of God could be reinterpreted according to the subjective preferences of its interpreters, the word of the founders would sooner or later be reinterpreted in ways that the founders never intended.
Much of the current abuse of judicial, legislative and executive power to enforce violations of the natural law related to gender can be traced back to a Supreme Court ruling handed down more than four years ago. In the words of an American Family Association press release published soon after that 2019 decision:
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court bypassed Congress and by judicial fiat inserted sexual orientation and gender identity into Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The high court issued its 6-3 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, a decision that consolidated a total of three cases into one. The ruling shocked conservatives because joining the liberal wing of the court were two supposed constitutional justices –– Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch, who penned the wording of the decision.
The 1964 law prohibits discrimination on the basis of a number of characteristics, including "sex." Gorsuch admitted that the meaning of the word as written referred "only to biological distinctions between male and female" –– not sexual orientation and gender identity, as the plaintiffs claimed.
Nevertheless, Gorsuch proceeded to create a loophole through which he drove the legal result he desired.
Justice Gorsuch claimed he followed a strict textual interpretation of Title VII, which he said required the addition of sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes in federal law.
Justice Samuel Alito, in his dissenting opinion, issued a scathing response to Gorsuch. Alito wrote:
The Court attempts to pass off its decision as the inevitable product of the textualist school of statutory interpretation championed by our late colleague Justice Scalia, but no one should be fooled. The Court's opinion is like a pirate ship. It sails under a textualist flag, but what it actually represents is a theory of statutory interpretation that Justice Scalia excoriated––the theory that courts should "update" old statutes so that they better reflect the current values of society.
Justice Alito further dissented stating, "There is only one word for what the Court has done today: legislation. The document that the Court releases is in the form of a judicial opinion interpreting a statute, but that is deceptive. … A more brazen abuse of our authority to interpret statutes is hard to recall."
Repairing the Breach
In John and Stephen Wynne’s monumental study of the rise of evolution-based secular humanism, Repairing the Breach, and in the final episodes of our DVD series “Foundations Restored,” we show that the so-called “textualist school” of statutory interpretation is nothing but the ugly offspring of the evolution-based jurisprudence of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and his disciples. Having embraced the Cartesian-Darwinian Framework, these men abandoned the traditional interpretation of legal texts according to the original intent of the legislators in favor of an evolutionary interpretation that, to use Justice Alito’s words, “updated” old statutes so that they better reflected the current, “evolving” values of society.
In their written opinions in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, seven of nine Supreme Court justices signaled that they see nothing wrong—indeed, much that is heroic and praiseworthy—in a human being renouncing his biological sex and deciding that he or she will “become” a member of the opposite sex. Six of the Justices apparently see nothing wrong with forcing American taxpayers to underwrite the surgical mutilation of these poor, confused people, so that they can defy “nature and nature’s God,” in order to “become what they are not.”
One of our Kolbe supporters who is not university-educated but who prays and suffers continually for the restoration of the true doctrine of creation saw immediately what most of the political pundits on the left and on the right completely missed. The Justices who “read into” a 1964 civil rights law an unintended protection for people who want to defy nature and mutilate themselves so as to pretend to be a member of the opposite sex did so because they do not believe Genesis 1:27: “In the image of God, He created man; male and female He created them.” Instead, they apparently believe that man and woman are the products of hundreds of millions of years of an unguided material process of evolution, which is still in progress.
Evolution and the End of Natural Law
All natural law is based on the common sense reality that God created man as man and woman as woman “in the beginning,” and that from their stable human nature we can derive universal human rights, such as the right to life, liberty and property. When the most articulate defenders of “conservative” jurisprudence abandon the truth of man’s special creation for the myth of molecules-to-man evolution, there is no longer any rational basis for natural law or for universal human rights. All that remains are the “evolving” prejudices of an “evolving” society of “evolving” two-legged upright animals.
If one were to ask one of the Justices in the majority to explain why he has abandoned the traditional understanding of natural law in favor of an evolutionary interpretation of legal texts, no doubt any one of them would say that he did so because of the scientific “fact” that human beings have come into existence through a natural process of evolution and not through a divine act of special creation. Yet, in reality, 21st century genetics has confirmed the literal truth of the sacred history of Genesis which testifies that every human being on earth is descended from one man and one woman, created in a state of genetic perfection less than ten thousand years ago. Moreover, as the DVD series “Foundations Restored” demonstrates, the scientific evidence in every area of natural science proves that the naturalistic accounts of the origins of man and the universe completely fail to account for the evidence we observe in the natural world.
Emergency Plan
If we are going to save our children and grandchildren from becoming silent or active accomplices in the total destruction of the social order, like Catholic Chief Justice Roberts, we must teach them the true doctrine of creation and equip them to defend it against false pseudo-scientific evolutionary claims. The DVD series “Foundations Restored” is restoring the faith of thousands of Catholics in the traditional doctrine of creation, but we need to reach millions of Catholics. Please pray and think about doing one or more of the following things to spread the word about “Foundations Restored”:
- Purchase on-line streaming access or the physical DVD series for the priest, relative, friend or acquaintance whom you prayerfully discern to be the most likely to benefit from watching the DVD series, keeping in mind that, if finances are a problem, we will give on-line streaming access to anyone for whatever part of the suggested donation he can afford. Please do not underestimate the potential good that the DVD series can do for a family or an entire parish. A Catholic priest who belongs to the Ordinariate for Anglican converts to the Catholic Faith recently shared the following testimony with me:
I write in heartfelt thanks for all that you and your colleagues are doing at the Kolbe Center. I have just finished showing your wonderful DVD series, Foundations Restored, to my study group here in this parish. They were very excited by it and wanted me to write to convey their gratitude for teaching which they found both accessible and convincing. One or two expressed doubts at the outset along the lines of 'but science says', but they were won over by the depth of evidence provided and philosophical sophistication in the series. I must say too that I was reluctant to call myself a creationist because of the weight of scientific opinion but also because I was brought up in Genesis literalism (my parents were full-time ministers of the Jehovah's Witnesses) and thus have fought shy of it throughout my orthodox Christian life, first as an Anglican and now a Catholic priest. I might add that I attended a talk you delivered c.2007 in London to which I was taken by a Catholic while I was an Anglican and very keen on the Faith Movement's perspective on creation.
- As most of you know, the Faith Movement in the UK champions the reconciliation of the Catholic Faith with evolution as the best way—indeed, the only way—to evangelize contemporary men and women. Thus, you can see what a tremendous grace Our Lady obtained for this priest through our poor efforts, offered to Our Lord Jesus Christ through her hands! (Please note: There was an interval of more than ten years from this good father’s first attendance at a Kolbe seminar to his wholehearted acceptance of the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation!)
- Consider sending an email to EVERYONE you can think of who might be open to going to the Foundations Restored website and registering to view the first two episodes gratis or to the Sensus Fidelium website and viewing the first episode gratis without registration. Make a special effort to reach parents and teachers of home-educated children, catechists, and others who are involved in Catholic education.
- Take out an advertisement for the DVD series on a Catholic website or in a Catholic newspaper. We can provide you with artwork that will make your advertisement attractive to readers or viewers.
- Pray regularly for the success of the Kolbe Center’s efforts to help restore the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation. If you have never contributed financially to this apostolate, please consider becoming a regular or one-time donor through the donation button on the Kolbe website so that we can produce more materials and finish our new DVD series “How the World Was Made in Six Days” as quickly as possible.
Yours in Christ through the Immaculata in union with St. Joseph,
Hugh Owen
P.S. Our annual leadership retreat has been scheduled to take place from August 27-September 2, 2023, at the Apostolate for Family Consecration retreat center in Bloomingdale, Ohio. For more information or to register, please contact me at howen@shentel.net. If you know of any young adults who would like to attend gratis in exchange for helping out during the retreat, please let me know.
