A Catholic Bishop has issued a sharp rebuke to fellow Catholic Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) after the senator opined that he found the idea of rights coming from our creator and not government “troubling.”
“Basic to Jefferson was the fact that rights come first. They’re not invented by the government,” Bishop Robert Barron explained in a video posted on YouTube. “Government exists to secure these rights, doesn’t invent them, doesn’t ground them. It secures them, it recognizes them as objectively coming from God.”
Kaine made his stunningly ignorant comments during a Senate confirmation hearing for Riley Barnes, President Trump’s nominee for Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.
During the hearing on Wednesday, Barnes had quoted from remarks made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to State Department employees early in his tenure.
“We are a nation founded on a powerful principle, and that powerful principle is that all men are created equal, because our rights come from God our Creator—not from our laws, not from our governments,” Rubio had stated.
As most Americans know, this widely held concept was expressed by the founders in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.
Barnes said in his opening statement “that’s why the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor is important. We are a nation of individuals, each made in the image of God and possessing an inherent dignity. This is a truth that our founders understood as essential to American self-government.”
In reaction, Kaine said he found the “notion” that rights come from God—not government “extremely troubling” and compared it to the Islamic theocratic beliefs of Iran.
“The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator … that’s what the Iranian government believes,” he said. “It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Sharia law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities. And they do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator. So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.”
Bishop Barron, of the Winona–Rochester Diocese in Minnesota, said he felt obligated to speak out against Kaine’s remarks because he found them “so outrageous and really so dangerous to our Democracy.”
Barron explained that the very definition of inalienable rights, as embraced by our founders, means that they come from God, not the government, which can take them away.
“These rights are inalienable because they come not from the government, but from God. If the government creates our rights, it can take them away. If the government is responsible for our rights, well, then it can change them,” he said, adding, “if you think this never happens, you don’t know much about the 20th century.”
Look at the great totalitarian systems of the 20th century that followed from the denial of God and the denial of rights coming from God until those rights became eminently alienable whenever it served the purpose of the government.
Barron said he found it “extraordinary” that a “major American politician” doesn’t grasp this “really elemental part of our system.” The Bishop added “God help us” if our rights really come from the government “because that gives the government Godlike power.”
“We are a nation under God,” he continued, explaining that this means “our government recognizes our rights come from outside of government.”
“Government exists to serve them [human rights] and to secure them,” Barron stated.
The Bishop said he’s noticed that “this rhetoric” of rights coming from government, not our creator, has been increasingly promoted in the public domain.
During his presidency, President Barack Obama (D) may have been the first Democrat to push the idea that our fundamental rights come from the Government and habitually left out the phrase “endowed by our creator” when citing the Declaration of Independence in speeches.
“It’s troubling because it’s a fruit, I would say, of the increasing marginalization and privatization of religion, if not outright hostility to it,” Barron said.
Fortunately, the Trump administration has been working to reverse the anti-Christian trend in government.
A Department of Justice task force was created earlier this year to “ensure that “any unlawful and improper conduct, policies, or practices that target Christians are identified, terminated, and rectified.”
The Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias released a report Friday detailing how the Biden administration “weaponized the full weight of the federal government against Christians.”
The report includes “numerous instances” of anti-Christian bias during the Biden years and recommendations on how to protect faith in America.
“The Task Force makes this commitment: the federal government will never again be permitted to turn its power against people of faith,” the report states. “Under President Trump and Attorney General Bondi’s leadership, in partnership with all members of this Task Force, the rule of law will be enforced with vigor, and every religion will be treated with equality in both policy and action.”