For the record, I am Catholic by birth, but a “generic” Christian by belief and tradition. Our pastor spoke in church recently about young people abandoning the Catholic faith. The Pope chastised young people earlier this week about the same thing and warned them against “do it yourself” religion. Our priest issued a warning not to criticize or abandon the Church without even knowing what it is. This certainly rang a familiar note, as I have been discussing this issue with my own daughter as she searches for a true relationship with God.

It is true that there is much about the Catholic Church and Church history that young people do not know. There are, however, many things that they do know about the current state of the Catholic Church as an institution. They know that the Church claims to be the exclusive and infallible oracle of God’s will, but it is not. They know that the Church believes itself to be unaccountable to civil and criminal law, as evidenced in the wake of the ongoing sexual predation scandal, but it is not. They know that the Church claims to have unique insight into the nature of God and that it seeks to define and govern the very private relationship between God and individuals. In that, the Church is in some ways a clear and present danger to the relationship between God and His people. What every person, young or old, should know is that no person or institution should ever stand as an obstacle or intermediary between one’s soul and its Creator.

Every person has a soul, which has a uniquely personal and spiritual relationship to its Creator. That relationship is inviolable but under constant threat. The Catholic Church provides the landscape for my journey, but it is by no means alone as an interloper between God and His people. Through the centuries, all religions have sought to redefine God’s relationship to His people though reinterpretation of canonical teachings and through the ever-growing body of post-scriptural tradition. Jesus himself was killed primarily for standing against the Pharisee’s corruption of the Mosaic Law. Luther’s crime was to stand against the corruption of the medieval Catholic Church. Today all of the major world religions struggle with the tension created by extreme factions who would compel others to relate to God only as they do. Religions are defined by the particular manner in which they relate to God, and it is a defining characteristic, or at least a constant temptation, to be intolerant of other traditions. Intolerance of the sacred relationship between one soul and its God is still intolerance, whether it comes from a religious institution, an “extremist” sect, a government, or anything else.

In this country, the debate over the separation of church and state is based on the fallacy that a church institution, any church institution, could have jurisdiction over God. Everyday, we see extreme, even absurd, examples of this hysteria. I once worked in a hospital that had banned images of the Peanuts character Snoopy as the “Easter Beagle”, on the grounds that this violated the doctrine of separation between church and state. The leadership finally adopted a compromise “Spring Beagle” and modified their decorations accordingly.

Unfortunately, not all such intrusions into our lives are so comical. Legislators have been only too willing to co-opt the issue according to their own political agendas, and the courts have established a veritable “juritocracy” based on this and a few other pet issues. The irony here is rich. Our founding fathers understood much better than us the sanctity of the individual’s relationship with God. What little there is in the Constitution, and more explicitly the evidence in Jeffersonian letters, makes clear that our forefathers primary concern in separating church and state was to protect the private relationship of God with our citizens, not to outlaw it. Greater scholars than myself would argue that the primary concern was not to keep God out of the state, but to keep the state out of our churches and to keep any one Church Institution out of the government.

The goal here was not to keep God out of society, but to allow Him to remain in it, at least for those who seek Him. Instead, we have lost this liberty at many levels, and this simply should not be. Our founding fathers provided for our right to a personal faith, and a right to express that faith without inhibiting the same liberty for others. Instead, we have liberal legal organizations fighting to proscribe any faith but atheism. We have conservative legal forces fighting for our right to relate to God according to their tradition but not others. We have an administration that has incited an unjust, “preemptive” holy war, contriving reasons to do so, bankrupting our country in the process, sharply limiting religious tolerance and civil liberties at home, and alienating nearly the entire planet in the effort.

No, our young people are right to question our institutions. Frankly, we’ve made a dreadful mess of things. We would do well to remember that there is a God. He is the God of Catholics, and Protestants, and Jews, and Muslims, and Hindus, and everyone and everything else, regardless of how our leaders may think they own or define Him. He is what makes us all desire peace and safety for our children and ourselves. He is the one that demands that we “forebear one another”, precisely because we all do have cultural differences. He is the One who reminds us, at least in the Christian scriptural experience, that “there is no Greek or Roman or slave or free” and that “all sin and fall short of the glory of God.” How sad that we are all so much better at judging than forgiving and better at condemning than loving. What we do have going for us is the spirit and the hope that drives our quiet, indomitable, personal relationship with God. We should applaud our kids for trying, for keeping that hope and breaking through the interference of man-made institutions. Hope is our greatest expression of faith in God. Grace is his greatest expression of faith in us, and His grace will sustain us long after our institutions have failed to. As societies, we should just get out of the way of that exchange and get back to the business of respecting liberty and freedom and of protecting each other from ourselves.