by Thaddeus G. McCotter
When the state forces Catholic nuns to choose between their faith and caring for the dying, ideology has become a civil religion.
Sane people assume politics has no place in the provision of hospice care. The Left believes otherwise, convinced everything is political and, therefore, fair game for the coercive imposition of its civil religion.
The Left’s civil religion traces its intellectual lineage to the French philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose assault on the Enlightenment helped lay the foundations of modern totalitarianism. In a nutshell, Rousseau’s civil religion was a belief system born of the “general will,” as pronounced by the omniscient “Legislator.” It bound a people to the state and demanded universal assent and practice. Those who refused were “forced to be free,” either through exile from society or even execution.
Per Britannica:
A civil profession of faith ought to tolerate all and only those religions that tolerate others, he suggested, at least insofar as the respective religious groups do not uphold beliefs that run contrary to citizens’ duties. More extremely, Rousseau averred that penalties may rightly be applied against those who do not observe the civil religion. Although government cannot obligate a person to believe its dogmas, one who fails to adopt them can rightly be banished from the state on grounds of unsociability. Additionally, a citizen who publicly acknowledges civil dogmas may be punished with death if, subsequently, that citizen behaves as if he does not believe them.
Gee, to my less-than-nuanced ear, this sounds like a coercive, intolerant state demanding absolute adherence to its dogmas—or else. If this sounds familiar, it should. Political correctness and cancel culture are, in fact, milder forms of the same societal coercion, each representing another step toward the imposition of the civil religion. The Left’s logic is simple: dissent divides the masses; therefore, all dissent must be terminated.
Revealed religion is an inevitable target for Rousseau and his leftist acolytes. By perverting the term “tolerance,” the Left projects and accuses traditional religion of being a font of “intolerance” and further deems it to be a rival to the state and its civil religion for the allegiance of its citizens.
Of course, if the revealed religion alters its beliefs to align with the civil religion, thereby ceasing to be a potential threat to the state and its own, purportedly “unifying” civil religion, it may be allowed to exist. If the revealed religion dissents and does not submit to the dictates of the civil religion, the state will use every means at its disposal to compel compliance and total obedience to it.
To wit: the State of New York’s attack on the Dominican Sisters.
As reported by Zeale’s Elise Winland, during this year’s typically contentious New York gubernatorial election, the GOP challenger Bruce Blakeman has accused incumbent Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul, a fellow Catholic, of anti-Catholic bigotry.
The cause?
The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who operate Rosary Hill Home, a 42-bed residential hospice and nursing facility in Hawthorne, New York, that provides free care to poor patients with incurable cancer . . . have received three letters from the New York State Department of Health informing them of their obligation to comply with the law, as Zeale News previously reported. The complaint says violations could expose Rosary Hill Home and its staff to fines, the loss of the facility’s license, and, under some provisions of the state public health law, possible criminal penalties.
The state statute in question is New York’s LGBTQ Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights. (It was signed into law by Gov. Hochul in November 2023 and took effect in 2024.) “The law requires long-term care facilities to use patients’ preferred pronouns and assign rooms and allow restroom access based on residents’ ‘gender identities.’”
Yet throughout its long history, Rosary Hill Home has placed male patients together in rooms, placed male and female patients on different floors, and maintained separate-sex restrooms. Thus, knowing that complying with this relatively new law would compel them to violate their religious beliefs and “sacred obligations” to mercifully and dutifully tend the sick and dying, the Dominican Sisters have filed a federal suit seeking an exemption from the law.
One might ask why the State of New York, especially the governor running for reelection, wouldn’t simply avoid this public battle with the Dominican nuns and grant an exemption. Simply put, even if the governor wanted to, she couldn’t. The law allows no exception.
“The Residents’ Bill of Rights does not allow facility-based exemptions for religious or any other reason[s],” stated New York Assistant Attorney General Julia Busetti in a July 2 U.S. District Court filing cited by Carl Campanile in The New York Post.
Refusing to allow a religious exemption is typical of the Left’s relentless and increasingly aggressive attacks against revealed religion, perversely projecting its own intolerance onto those who dissent from its perpetually evolving and metastasizing civil religion. Though by no means a settled or unifying issue, according to the Democrat governor and the leftist-dominated legislature, their radical agenda is apparently now beyond questioning by any New York citizen, association, or religious order.
As the GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman told the Post:
What Kathy Hochul is doing to the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne is an absolute disgrace. For over 120 years, these incredible women have done God’s work, providing unconditional love, comfort, and dignity to people in their final days.
They are saints walking among us, and they represent the absolute best of New York. Yet, Kathy Hochul is actually willing to shut them down, strip away their license, and throw terminal cancer patients out on the street—all to enforce her woke garbage.
[Gov. Hochul] would rather leave dying people without care than allow Catholic nuns to practice their faith.
Naturally, the governor’s surrogates responded with their own ad hominem attacks and offered some familiar examples of hypocritical projection:
Bruce Blakeman wants to follow Trump’s lead to deny elderly LGBTQ+ New Yorkers the care they need when at their most vulnerable,” said Manhattan Assemblyman Tony Simone. “Weaponizing seniors’ health to score political points is gross, and joining with homophobes who want to eliminate same-sex marriage in America is despicable. New Yorkers want leaders who unite us, not the extremism of Blakeman.
The former state senator who sponsored the transgender law in question and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal also entered the political scrum:
Bruce Blakeman and the homophobes he campaigns with are opposed to marriage equality and even flying Pride flags. Now, they want to play politics with the lives of older LGBTQ New Yorkers. It won’t fly in New York.
New Yorkers can see through Blakeman’s blatant and cynical attempt to demonize LGBTQ New Yorkers for short term political gain. Our LGBTQ community refuses to be used as pawns in Bruce Blakeman’s latest culture war.
Here we see Herbert Marcuse’s repressive “liberating tolerance” in practice: the Left determines what is “unifying” and “tolerant”—namely, whatever it believes, however risible or radical. Those who dissent are silenced and punished.
The aim of the Left is to raze traditional society and radically transform it. Its steadily encroaching civil religion is both a feature of its strategy and an end unto itself. In seeking to raze America’s traditional culture and Western civilization more broadly, the Left necessarily commenced the culture war. To cover its tracks, it projects blame for that cultural warfare onto those compelled to defend themselves against its inane and insane attacks.
This is why the governor’s surrogates claim that the nuns will be denying care, when in reality it was the Left that passed the law preventing them from providing treatment unless they forsook their faith.
This is why the governor’s surrogates claim that the GOP candidate and his supporters are igniting a culture war, when in reality it was the Left that passed the law that started it.
This is why the governor’s surrogates claim that the nuns and the GOP have “weaponized” senior citizens’ health care for partisan gain, when in reality the Left passed the law precisely to create this conflict.
This is why the governor’s surrogates claim that their view—that men can become women and women can become men—is “unifying” and must be believed by everyone, when in reality a minority view is being coercively imposed upon the majority by a Left-dominated state.
And this is why Gov. Hochul can claim, with a straight face, that “hate will never have a place in New York,” when, in reality, that promise or claim applies only to those who toe the line of the Left’s civil religion.
Just ask the Dominican Sisters.
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An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) served Michigan’s 11th Congressional district from 2003 to 2012. He served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee and as a member of the Financial Services, Joint Economic, Budget, Small Business, and International Relations Committees. Not a lobbyist, he is also a contributor to Chronicles, a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars, and a cohost of The John Batchelor Show, among sundry media appearances.
Thaddeus G. McCotter
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/07/18/the-left-is-intrinsically-intolerant-attacking-new-york-nuns-is-a-feature-not-a-bug-of-the-lefts-civil-religion/
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