Un procuratore in missione

MOREOVER, THERE HAS BEEN AN EFFORT -- LARGELY SUCCESSFUL -­ TO DRIVE OUT OF SCHOOLS AND PUBLIC EDUCATION ANY KIND OF MORAL PERSPECTIVE OR MORAL CONTENT. THIS MORAL LOBOTOMY OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS HAS BEEN BASED ON EXTREMIST NOTIONS OF SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE OR ON THEORIES OF MORAL RELATIVISM WHICH REJECT THE NOTION THAT THERE ARE STANDARDS OF RIGHT OR WRONG TO WHICH THE COMMUNITY CAN DEMAND ADHERENCE . . WHATEVER THE BASIS FOR DRIVING ANY MORAL PERSPECTIVE FROM PUBLIC SCHOOLS, IT IS DIFFICULT TO SEE HOW SCHOOLS CAN HELP INCULCATE VALUES IN AN ATMOSPHERE OF COMPLETE MORAL 'RELATIVISM -­ HOW CAN SCHOOLS HELP TEACH SUCH SIMPLE THINGS AS THE IMPORTANCE OF HONESTY, OF RESPECT FOR PROPERLY CONSTITUTED AUTHORITY, OF THE IMPORTANCE OF DEFERRAL OF GRATIFICATION.
William Barr April 1992

From a legal standpoint, our initial focus should be on education and efforts to strengthen and finance education. This means vouchers at the state level and ultimately at the federal level to support parental choice in education. We should press at every turn for the inclusion of religious institutions. We need to fight those cases in the states up to the Supreme Court. Whether or not we prevail on programs should make no difference. The message will get stronger.
Even without legal change, we need to restructure education and take advantage of existing tax deductions for charitable institutions to promote Catholic education. We must rethink some changes implemented in Catholic education over the last twenty or thirty years. Education in the basics of faith should again be the primary mission of the parish Church. We should reaffirm the mission and duty of Catholic parents to educate their children in the faith,' and we should help change laws to reduce the costs to parents who want that choice.
William Barr 1995 The Catholic Lawyer

Religion helps promote moral discipline within society. Because man is fallen, we don’t automatically conform ourselves to moral rules even when we know they are good for us. But religion helps teach, train, and habituate people to want what is good. It does not do this primarily by formal laws – that is, through coercion. It does this through moral education and by informing society’s informal rules – its customs and traditions which reflect the wisdom and experience of the ages. In other words, religion helps frame moral culture within society that instills and reinforces moral discipline. I think we all recognize that over the past 50 years religion has been under increasing attack.
...This is not decay; it is organized destruction. Secularists, and their allies among the “progressives,” have marshaled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.
...I was attending Mass at a parish I did not usually go to in Washington, D.C. At the end of Mass, the Chairman of the Social Justice Committee got up to give his report to the parish. He pointed to the growing homeless problem in D.C. and explained that more mobile soup kitchens were needed to feed them. This being a Catholic church, I expected him to call for volunteers to go out and provide this need. Instead, he recounted all the visits that the Committee had made to the D.C. government to lobby for higher taxes and more spending to fund mobile soup kitchen.
  William Barr October 2019

La linea di pensiero del procuratore Barr, rispetto ai danni che un certo tipo di accanito secolarismo può arrecare all'armonia della società, non nasce con il discorso di Notre Dame. E' parte di una impostazione maturata e sostenuta in decenni.
Il richiamo ai valori e all'etica propri del cristianesimo è per molti versi condivisibile. Le religioni monoteiste sono fonte di arricchimento interiore che può, e anzi deve, essere messo a disposizione della comunità. Se ogni nostro pensiero è ispirato dal creatore e a Lui si ispira, le azioni che ne derivano non sono il frutto di principi asettici concepiti semplicemente per fare in modo che la società che essi regolano nel suo complesso risulti funzionante. Quando tutto è ricondotto a Dio Onnipotente, quel tutto assume un senso ben preciso.
Il ragionamento di Barr sugli interventi statali introduce però un elemento che suona un campanello d'allarme circa gli obiettivi reali del procuratore. Tanto più che mette da parte la separazione tra stato e Chiesa e ignora il contributo fondamentale fornito dalla società civile alla nazione.
Al di là della visione ultraortodossa, all'orizzonte pare esserci un piano per aumentare la sfera di controllo da parte dello stato e limitare la natura inclusiva che da sempre caratterizza la società americana.
Il profilo che emerge, del soggetto che si sono ritrovati davanti i direttori dei nostri servizi, è quello di un uomo fortemente ancorato ai principi e alle tesi che questi gli hanno permesso di elaborare.
Non un tipo tale da inventarsi cose o da intestardirsi per il gusto di vincere la partita. Al contrario.
Ma uno che difficilmente si smuove dai propri convincimenti se non gli vengono presentate argomentazioni forti e concrete.
E in Italia di sicuro ha trovato persone preparate e altrettanto determinate.