Crisis Magazine | Oct. 16, 2019
Last week, presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke said outright that if he is elected president, he will work to eliminate the tax-exempt status for churches that hold traditional views of gender and sexuality. And O’Rourke is not the only candidate taking aim at groups that defend age-old beliefs about marriage and gender. His Democratic rival Cory Booker promised to punish religious organizations that do not celebrate same-sex “marriages,” though he did not specify the elimination of their tax-exempt status.
For faithful Catholics, this is a grim prospect. We have seen what happens to the Church when a secular government attempts to control doctrine and mandate certain teachings; just look at the tragic example of China. There, two churches—one that submitted to God first and foremost, and one that submitted to the godless communist government first and foremost—coexisted for decades. In exchange for its loyalty to communism, the politically correct state church received government protection and little perks here and there. The true Church, however, was persecuted and oppressed.
The story does not end well. Just last year, the Vatican caved and extended its official recognition to the politically correct church’s state-appointed bishops, leaving the longsuffering leaders of the true Church out in the cold. The moral is this: when governments can exert power over the Church—whether determining doctrine, picking bishops, or enforcing certain rules—the preaching of the Gospel suffers.