Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
RELIGION IN OUR STATE INSTITUTIONS.
“No member of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived of any of the rights or privileges secured to any citizens thereof, unless by the law of the land or the judgment of his peers.”
“The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall for ever be allowed in this State to all mankind.”—Constitution of the State of New York, Art. i. Sects. 1 and 3.
The first article of all the old English charters which were embodied in, and confirmed by, the Great Charter wrung from King John, was, “First of all, we wish the church of God to be free.” In the days when those charters were drawn up there was no dispute as to which was “the church of God.” The religious unity of Christendom had not yet been reformed into a thousand contending sects, each of which was a claimant to the title of “the church of God.” The two sections of our own constitution quoted from above, which establish in their fullest sense the civil and religious liberty of the individual, are taken from those grand old charters of Catholic days. The only thing practically new in them is the substitution, for the “church of God,” of “the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference.” The reason for this alteration is plain. Civil liberty is impossible without religious liberty. But here the founders of our constitution were confronted with a great difficulty. To follow out the old Catholic tradition, and grant freedom to the “church of God,” was impossible. There were so many “churches of God,” antagonistic to one another, that to pronounce for one was to pronounce against all others, and so establish a state religion. This they found themselves incompetent to do. Accordingly, leaving the title open, complete freedom of religious profession and worship was proclaimed as being the only thing commensurate with complete civil liberty and that large, generous, yet withal safe freedom of the individual which forms the corner-stone of the republic.
This really constitutes what is commonly described as the absolute separation of church and state, on which we are never weary of congratulating ourselves. It is not that the state ignores the church (or churches), but that it recognizes it in the deepest sense, as a power that has a province of its own, in the direction of human life and thought, where the state may not enter—a province embracing all that is covered by the word religion. This is set apart by the state, voluntarily, not blindly; as a sacred, not as an unknown and unrecognized, ground, which it may invade at any moment. It is set apart for ever, and as long as the American Constitution remains what it is, will so remain, sacred and inviolate. Men are free to believe and worship, not only in conscience, but in person, as pleases them, and no state official may ever say to them, “Worship thus or thus!”
Words would be wasted in dwelling on this point. There is not a member of the state who has not the law, as it were, born in his blood. No man ever dreams of interfering with the worship of another. Catholic church and Jewish tabernacle and Methodist meeting-house nestle together side by side, and their congregations come and go, year in year out, and worship, each in its own way, without a breath of hindrance. Conversion or perversion, as it may be called, on any side is not attempted, save at any particular member’s good-will and pleasure. Each may possibly entertain the pious conviction that his neighbor is going directly to perdition, but he never dreams of disputing that neighbor’s right of way thither. And the thought of a state official or an official of any character coming in and directly or indirectly ordering the Catholics to become Methodists, or the Methodists Jews, or the Jews either, is something so preposterous that the American mind can scarcely entertain it. Yet, strange as it is painful to confess, just such coercion of conscience is carried on safely, daily and hourly, under our very noses, by State or semi-state officials. Ladies and gentlemen to whom the State has entrusted certain of its wards are in the habit of using the powers bestowed on them to restrain “the free exercise of religious profession and worship,” and not simply to restrain it, but to compel numbers of those under their charge to practise a certain form of religious profession and worship which, were they free agents, they would never practise, and against which their conscience must revolt.
This coercion is more or less generally practised in the prisons, hospitals, reformatories, asylums, and such like, erected by the State for such of its members or wards as crime or accident have thrown on its hands. Besides those mainly supported by the State, there are many other institutions which volunteer to take some of its work off the hands of the State, and for which due compensation is given. In short, the majority of our public institutions will come within the scope of our observations. And it may be as well to premise here that our observations are intended chiefly to expose a wrong that we, as Catholics, feel keenly and suffer from; but the arguments advanced will be of a kind that may serve for any who suffer under a similar grievance, and who claim for themselves or their co-religionists “the free exercise of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference.” If the violation of this article of the constitution to-day favors one side under our ever-shifting parties and platforms, it may to-morrow favor the other. What we demand is simply that the constitution be strictly maintained, and not violated under any cover whatsoever.
The inmates of our institutions may be divided into two broad classes, the criminal and the unfortunate. From the very fact of their being inmates of the institutions both alike suffer certain deprivation of “the rights and privileges” secured to them as citizens. In the case of criminals those rights and privileges are forfeited. They are deprived of personal liberty, because they are a danger instead of a support to the State and to the commonwealth. The question that meets us here is, does the restriction of personal involve also that of religious liberty and worship?