• OPINION: HOUSES OF WORSHIP
• APRIL 14, 2010

A Shining Target on a Hill That Nobody Tries to Hill

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By EUGENE KONTOROVICH The First Amendment prohibits any "law respecting an establishment of religion," and in recent years the Supreme Court's Establishment Clause cases have focused on religiously themed public displays. Yet the court has failed to develop clear rules for deciding such cases, ensuring further litigation. There is something picayune about these disputes, over courthouse Ten Commandments displays or school-yard crèches. In this term's Establishment Clause case, Salazar v. Bruno, for instance, the justices will soon decide whether an eight-foot cruciform war memorial in a park in the Mojave Desert violates the Constitution.

All the while, the court has never come to grips with the existence of a literal established church on a hill just across town—the National Cathedral. Although the Cathedral helps put issues like those in Salazar in proper perspective, it seems the court can't see the Cathedral for the crosses.

The Cathedral's parent body, the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation, was "constituted" by an act of Congress in 1893, and the cornerstone was laid in the presence of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907. The charter Congress issued on the Feast of the Epiphany called on the Foundation to "establish…within the District of Columbia a cathedral . . . for the promotion of religion" and other worthwhile causes.

No one has ever challenged the constitutionality of the Cathedral, and rightly not. The Establishment Clause, as understood for most of the nation's history, does not concern itself with such passive ceremonial nods to religion.

The Cathedral is a private entity. It stands on private land and no public money has ever been used for its construction, maintenance or for any other expenses. Congress has no say in its operations (although the first board of trustees, named in the charter, included the sitting vice president and chief justice). The Cathedral has no formal governmental role.

Yet the chartering had clear religious dimensions. The recognition of the Cathedral's special status has since been abundantly confirmed in practice, with it hosting the inauguration of four out of five of the latest presidents, as well as state funerals, memorial services and, under FDR, "annual national patriotic services." At the Cathedral's final dedication in 1990—private funds take a long time to raise—President George H. W. Bush called it "a house of prayer for the nation."

To be sure, the Cathedral's charter gives it no special prerogatives. Yet its generally undisputed status as the "national" cathedral is owed to the charter, and to its subsequent use for official ceremony. By contrast, when a Washington synagogue dubbed itself the "National Synagogue" several years ago, its claim was not accepted by others and it enjoys no particular distinction.

This setup—official recognition, private management and funding—was arrived at specifically because neither Congress nor the clerics of the time wanted an established church. As Bishop Henry Satterlee, the first head of the Cathedral, put it: "The Framers of the Constitution . . . held, from religious conviction, the necessity of the separation of Church and State. . .Unlike the Medieval Cathedrals of Europe. . .Washington Cathedral will stand on the firm foundation of a Free Church in a Free State—free from any entangling alliance with the government; free to declare the whole Word of God without fear or favor of any political party."

The Cathedral's presumptive constitutionality suggests some broader points about Establishment doctrine. When the Supreme Court attempts to reconcile its increasingly broad prohibition against Establishment with the ubiquity of religious symbolism in public life, it resorts to some dubious distinctions. When the court sustains a particular religious display, it says that the symbols in question do not "endorse" religion, or are denatured—essentially "secular." Yet the governmental use of religious symbols, from among all possible symbols, necessarily reflects a favorable view of faith. To call such displays secular either trivializes the faith of those for whom they are meaningful, or simply underscores that their spiritual message is widely subscribed to.

The existence of the Cathedral illustrates the weaknesses of these tests. "Religious and patriotic associations have [always] been intertwined," Satterlee wrote, and thus some public religious forum is needed to give full scope to peoples' national feeling. (Consider the national motto, or the Pledge of Allegiance.) The Cathedral's charter suggests Congress agreed. It would be hard to pass off a working cathedral as predominantly secular.

While the ACLU and other plaintiffs have scoured public spaces for religious symbols to challenge under the First Amendment, no suit has questioned the Cathedral's constitutionality. That in 120 years Americans of all and no creeds have not found it obnoxious is excellent evidence that it is not. In deciding Salazar, the court would do well to be aware of the full extent and rich history of governmental use of religious symbols, such as the Cathedral. A decision against the Mojave cross could have larger implications than the justices might desire.

Mr. Kontorovich is a professor at Northwestern University School of Law.

Gregory Kane: Without church and parents, kids run wild By: Gregory Kane
Examiner Staff Writer
April 19, 2010 Just 7 years old. That's the age of the little girl who was gang-raped in a Trenton, N.J., apartment building a little over two weeks ago.

It's a crime so monstrous, so vile and so despicable that it has to boggle the mind. So far four people -- three juveniles ages 13, 14 and 17, and a 19-year-old adult -- have been arrested in connection with the atrocity. All are male. I refuse to call the 19-year-old a man for a very good reason.

He isn't.

Even a pack of wild dogs wouldn't have done what these males did. According to news reports, at least three other males were involved. This is what happened, according to Trenton police and several news stories.

The 7-year-old had a 15-year-old stepsister. Apparently, the 7-year-old had more good sense than the 15-year-old. The elder stepsister went to a party on the 13th floor of Trenton's Rowan Tower apartment building. The 7-year-old, concerned for her older stepsister's safety, tagged along. According to an April 2 Associated Press story, here's what happened next:

"The 15-year-old sold sex to men in the room, then took money to let them touch the younger girl. Touching turned to forcible sex as at least seven men raped the 7-year-old. The little girl then put her clothes on and left the apartments. That's when two women found her crying and took her home."

Police booked the 15-year-old sister on charges of promoting prostitution, aggravated sexual assault and other charges, according to the AP story.

This crime almost tops the one that occurred three years ago in West Palm Beach, Fla. In that case a bunch of thugs gang-raped a Haitian-American woman, brutally beat her then-12-year-old son and then forced her to perform oral sex on the boy at gunpoint. Juveniles as young as 14 years old were among the assailants.

We should all be wondering just how we reached this point in America, and we are no doubt asking where are the parents in all this.

Just where, exactly, were the parents of the 7-year-old victim and her stepsister? Where were the parents of the 13, 14 and 17-year-old suspects? Where were the parents of the juvenile suspects in the West Palm Beach incident?

Where were those parents, and what kind of values were they giving their children? I'm far from a saint, and not much of a churchgoing man, but I still remember the values my mother -- a single mom, by the way, who had to raise six children alone and refused to go on welfare -- gave me.

When I was 4 years old, I was in a movie theater watching Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 version of "The Ten Commandments." On Sundays, I was at Mass, and then Sunday school. When school dismissed for the summer, she made sure I made it to the Bible school of the nearest Catholic parish.

All that religious training, at the very minimum, instilled in me some very important values. Like not stealing or lying. Or brutalizing and raping.

Today many Americans openly sneer at religious values. Bill Maher, one of those who sneer at religion most passionately, has his own show on the HBO network. Illusionists Penn and Teller, two more members of the anti-religion brigade, have their own program on the Showtime network.

Today's entertainment industry has no tolerance for religion, while promoting the most gratuitous displays of sex and violence. The answer to the question of where those Trenton and West Palm Beach parents were may be an easy one.

Nowhere to be found, and letting television do the baby-sitting for them.

Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.