Read a report of an address on 11-X by Attorney William Barr, a Roman Catholic, at the University of Notre Dame’s Law School. This confirms my long-held view that Notre Dame and the Notre Dame Network are the Catholic version of the evangelicals, for both assign God and Mammon equal status.

Barr asserted his department’s commitment to religious freedom. I cannot figure out what reactionaries mean by religious freedom. Churches and synagogues are all open for business. EWTN and a chorus of televangelists enjoy perfect freedom on the airwaves. Religious books and magazines are censored only by the religious. The reactionary pep-rally called the National Prayer Breakfast continues unchallenged. Congress begins with a prayer; our national motto was changed to In God We Trust; the cold war slogan “under God” is still in the Pledge of Allegiance. The fact is that many Americans feel that nation, capitalism, patriarchy, and religion amount to the same thing, and reactionary forces never stop urging them to think this way.

Barr says Judeo-Christian values no longer direct our life as a nation. Does he mean those values that let us steal the Indians’ land and murder most of them? that enabled us to make slaves of black people and prolong their slavery for a century after Emancipation? that told us it was o.k. to steal half of Mexico? or that cheered us on as we added the Philippines to our empire by a savage war of repression? The U.S.A. has not been a good advertisement for Judeo-Christian values.

No, the Judeo-Christians have been quite free to live by their values, such as they are. What really has them upset is that they can no longer compel others to accept their values, that they are no longer the state religion, no longer “own” the United States of America. Their constant complaint that religion is ridiculed by “seculars” is unfortunately true, but it might help if the religious would stop doing and saying things that are ridiculous.