Catholic Church has no rights. Neither do corporations. And other leftist nostrums

Over at Richmond’s Style Weekly, former history teacher Rick Gray has an op-ed charging that the Catholic Church, conservatives and, presumably, the ghost Chief Justice John Marshall are in league to undermine the Republic by daring to argue that the federal requirement that religious entities provide birth control to their employees violates the First Amendment:

The Catholic-Republican position is, in terms of the American political tradition, complete nonsense. But it’s dangerous nonsense — part of a broader agenda by which conservatives are attempting to introduce medieval, corporate ideas into America’s modern, individualist political tradition.

In simple terms, the conservative position asserts that the Catholic Church possesses a corporate conscience entitled to First Amendment protection. This assertion is precisely analogous to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission — that a corporation enjoys a right to free expression entitled to protection under the broad language of the First Amendment.

Both of these conservative positions rely upon a fundamental — and deliberate — misunderstanding of our Constitution, and of the Constitution’s roots in Enlightenment philosophy. And this is important, for American institutions can be properly understood only in terms of the philosophical and legal ideas that prevailed at the time they were established.

While I am always pleased to see a Liberal embrace, if only at the uttermost end of need, original intent, sand castles have firmer foundations than Gray’s blinkered view of American history (which makes the fact that he once taught high school history genuinely chilling).

But let’s give Mr. Gray the benefit of the doubt. By his reasoning, the Catholic Church is not entitled to any sort of corporate protections, like free speech. It is, in his mind, “…a voluntary association of individual members. Its rights derive entirely from the individual rights of its congregants…”

That will come as news to the church’s accountants and lawyers, who enter into contracts, fight lawsuits and pay bills in the name of the corporate entity every day — as opposed to having the individual members of the parish having to do so. For a broader consideration of the Church as a corporate entity, this is an excellent resource — one that Mr. Gray’s editors would be well-advised to consult when they take up the laborious task of writing their corrections to his piece.

We can also expect that when the Church, say, advocates for amnesty for illegal immigrants, or urges the spread of peace, reversing nuclear proliferation, calls for the end of the death penalty, supports policies to prevent climate change and ensure things like living wages and the right to unionize, Mr. Gray will take to the pages of Style and assert that it’s all nonsense intended to promote the insidious agenda of “a self-perpetuating, absolute, medieval monarchy whose official conscience resides entirely between the ears of a single German priest in Vatican City.”

I won’t hold my breath, though I will continue to wonder when Style decided it was just peachy to publish anti-Catholic diatribes.

But what of the charge, famous among Occupiers and their fellow travelers, that corporations have no rights, let alone rights to speech? This post is long enough, so I won’t drag you through the jurisprudence on the 14th Amendment, or John Marshall’s foundational work on the subject of corporate personhood in Dartmouth College v. Woodward.

For those so inclined, though, here’s a video that thoroughly demolishes the notion Gray advances that corporations lack rights. I’d like to think he might watch it, but as it runs so counter to his narrative, that’s unlikely. But if you were a student in one of his history classes, consider it essential corrective viewing:

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