Barack Obama has already spit in the face of Catholics with his radical anti-life policies.  His scheduled appearance to speak at the University of Notre Dame's commencement ceremony (where he will also be honored despite the U.S. Council of Bishops forbidding such a thing) has caused an uproar in the Catholic community with thousands of the faithful, including clergy and Bishops, in protest.  But Obama couldn't stop there.

Prior to speaking at Georgetown University's Gaston Hall this week (a Catholic and Jesuit institution), the White House reportedly asked the university to cover up the IHS monogram that would be seen behind Obama while he spoke.  IHS is an abbreviation for the name of Jesus Christ (read a brief history here). The university did oblige, although we are still waiting to hear a good reason why other than that Obama asked them to.

Many prominent officials have given speeches at Gaston Hall where the monogram was uncovered. Among those is First Lady Laura Bush.

Georgetown University professor James Schall asked some important questions about this issue in his article on The Catholic Thing:

If this president speaks at a Jewish Synagogue, or a Baptist church, or the Crystal Cathedral, or the Muslim Mosque on Massachusetts Avenue, the Ravens Stadium, the George Washington University, the headquarters of Planned Parenthood, or the hall of the local Atheist Society, will the same policy be followed? Will all signs of what the place actually is and stands for be covered over? If so, it represents equitable treatment, but is it wise? Is the president never to appear in any venue with obvious particular commitments, and why choose religious and not secular signs? Should, say, a university seal be exempted, but a crucifix not?

Will presidents be able to appear anywhere outside government buildings if the rules are really equally applied to both religious and secular? And this raises a real question: Is it American?

Many of these are questions the Obama administration will have to answer themselves. But Schall’s last question, “Is it American?” is an easy one. Resoundingly the answer is NO! 

Since our inception as a country American presidents and politicians have actively promoted religion among the people. Government officials have also gone so far as to promote unity among the citizens of different faiths by highlighting their common beliefs. And shockingly enough, presidents have even proclaimed national days of prayer.

In his first years as president, George Washington wrote letters to Presbyterians, Quakers, Hebrew Congregations, and Roman Catholics expressing his support for them as people of faith in America.

To the Catholics in 1790 Washington wrote, “And may the members of your society in America, animated alone by the pure spirit of Christianity, and still conducting themselves as the faithful subjects of our free government, enjoy every temporal and spiritual felicity.”

He wrote to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, 1790, “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

Of course today’s society has been radicalized to think that the government having anything to do with religion is unconstitutional, despite the numerous historical documents proving otherwise. 

What most people have yet to realize is that creating a system where the government is devoid of contact with the various faiths in our country in essence violates the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. But the laws being enacted against religion are themselves creating a de facto state religion: a secular humanist one. 

Government officials, government sponsored schools, official proclamations, etc. should actively support the religious faithful in America. To do otherwise violates the true intent of the Constitution.

President Washington assured Jewish Americans that, “there shall be none to make him afraid,” but when people cannot even pray at a high school football game, we have become afraid.