The Manhattan Declaration
Fr David Graham Scott
Alexandre Bilodeau, 22, won Canada’s
first Olympic gold medal won by a Canadian on Canadian
soil. His was an
amazing achievement after years of training, but his
inspiration was his older brother, Frederic, who has
cerebral palsy.
Soon after winning the medal, Alexandre
threw his arms around Frederic. Alexandre regarded Frederic
as his daily source of inspiration. When
training seemed too much, he thought of Frederic, and what
it takes for him to get out of bed every day.
Today Frederic and other disabled
persons, especially the unborn, are threatened by the
re-emerging eugenic notion about “life unworthy of life.” In
1997 six of America’s most influential secular philosophers
filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the
justices to declare assisted suicide to be a
constitutionally protected right. The
court unanimously declined to take such an initiative. But
the brief presaged today’s euthanasia chic.
In the face of the eugenic and other
secularist developments, one hundred and twenty Eastern
Orthodox, Roman Catholic and evangelical Protestant leaders
drew up and signed the Manhattan Declaration in the fall of
2009. Despite
their serious differences in sacramental doctrine, these
leaders united to bear witness to the sanctity of life, the
sanctity of marriage between a man and woman, and the
fundamental right of freedom of religion and conscience.
A portion of the text of this declaration
follows:
While the whole scope of Christian
moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and
vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled
that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the
disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that
the institution of marriage, already buffeted by
promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being
redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that
freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely
jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of
coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their
deepest convictions.
A culture of death inevitably cheapens
life in all its stages and conditions by promoting the
belief that lives that are imperfect, immature or
inconvenient are discardable. As
predicted by many prescient persons, the cheapening of life
that began with abortion has now metastasized.
No one has a civil right to have a
non-marital relationship treated as a marriage. Marriage
is an objective reality—a covenantal union of husband and
wife—that it is the duty of the law to recognize and support
for the sake of justice and the common good.
No one should be compelled to embrace any
religion against his will, nor should persons of faith be
forbidden to worship God according to the dictates of
conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply
held religious convictions. What
is true for individuals applies to religious communities as
well.
Because we honor justice and the
common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports
to compel our institutions to participate in abortions,
embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and
euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to
any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual
partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or
refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about
morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We
will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is
Caesar’s. But
under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is
God’s.
The one hundred and twenty leaders who
initiated the Manhattan Declaration last fall have so far
been joined by more than 425,000 individuals, including me. At
first I hesitated to sign, because the document is primarily
for Americans. But
Canada’s present moral and civil liberty situation is the
same as or worse than that of the United States, and so I
signed.
The declaration calls “upon all people of
goodwill, believers and non-believers alike, to consider
carefully and reflect critically on the issues we here
address as we, with St Paul, commend this appeal to
everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.” You
can read it at www.manhattandeclaration.org.
