Washington D.C., Sep 12, 2017 / 03:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A Colorado baker’s fight to maintain his freedom of expression could be the most influential religious freedom decisions of the US Supreme Court in years, as the court considers the case this term.
“There is far more at stake in this case than simply whether Jack Phillips must bake a cake,” the US bishops’ conference and other Catholic groups stated in an amicus brief in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. “It is about the freedom to live according to one’s religious beliefs in daily life and, in so doing, advance the common good.”
The Masterpiece Cakeshop case, to be decided by the Supreme Court in the next term, dates back to 2012. In July of that year, Jack Phillips went to work one July day at Masterpiece Cakeshop, his Lakewood, Colo. bakery in the suburbs of Denver.
Phillips had started his business in 1993 as a way to integrate his two loves — baking and art – into his daily work. Philipps named his shop “Masterpiece” because of the artistic focus of his work, but also because of his Christian beliefs. He drew from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, specifically the commands “no man can serve two masters” and “you cannot serve both God and mammon.”
“I didn’t open this so I could make a lot of money,” Phillips said of his business. “I opened it up so that it would be a way that I could create my art, do the baking that I love, and serve the God that I love.” Phillips spoke last Wednesday at the Heritage Foundation at a panel event on his upcoming Supreme Court case.
One day in July of 2012, two men walked in to Masterpiece Cakeshop and began looking at pictures of wedding cakes. Phillips approached them and quickly ascertained that they were planning their own wedding and had wanted him to bake them a cake for their same-sex wedding.
“Right away, I’m thinking ‘how can I tell them politely that I can’t take care of this wedding for them, because I don’t do same-sex weddings’,” he recalled.
Phillips explained to the couple that he could not serve same-sex weddings – to do so would have been a violation of his Christian beliefs. He said has declined to make a number of types of cakes, including cakes for Halloween, bachelor parties, and a divorce, cakes with alcohol in the ingredients, and cakes with atheist messages.
Once they heard they would not be able to buy a cake from Masterpiece, the couple stormed out of the store angrily. During the ensuing hour, Phillips said his store received about a half-dozen threatening phone calls. Days later, he received a death threat where he had to call his sister, who was at the store with her four year-old daughter, and tell her to hide in the back of the store until police arrived on the scene.
The couple, meanwhile, filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission for discrimination.
The commission ordered Phillips to serve same-sex weddings and to undergo anti-discrimination training. In a hearing in 2014, the civil rights commissioner Diann Rice compared his declining to serve same-sex weddings to justifications for the Holocaust and slavery.
“Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust,” Commissioner Rice said.
Alliance Defending Freedom took up Phillips’ case in court. He lost before an administrative judge in 2013, who ruled that the state could determine when his rights to free speech unlawfully infringed upon others’ rights.
Phillips then appealed his case to the state’s human rights commission, which ruled against him. He appealed again to the state’s court of appeals, which also ruled against him. The Colorado Supreme Court did not take up Phillips’ case.
The case was appealed to the Supreme Court. It was re-listed repeatedly throughout the winter and spring of 2017, before the Court finally decided to take the case in June, at the end of its term.
Once the case is decided at the Supreme Court, the ruling is expected to cap one of the most decisive religious freedom cases of this century.
“It has been said, and I think accurately so, that this could be one of the most important First Amendment cases in terms of free speech and the free exercise of religion in a century or more, and it could be a landmark, seismic kind of case of First Amendment jurisprudence,” Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) stated at a Thursday press conference at the U.S. Capitol.
As state amendments defining marriage as between one man and one woman were declared unconstitutional by the court in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2013, states have also begun enforcing laws against discrimination on basis of sexual identity. The conscientious refusal of certain business owners, like florists and bakers, to serve same-sex weddings has been ruled unlawful in several states, including Colorado.
In Phillips’ case, he has a right to freedom of expression as an artist, Alliance Defending Freedom has argued, and this right has been recognized as protected by the First Amendment. If the Supreme Court rules in Phillips’ favor in this case, it could have ramifications in other cases where business owners face discrimination lawsuits.
“The Supreme Court has said that things like that [art] are covered under the protection of the First Amendment,” Kristen Waggoner, senior vice president of the U.S. legal division for ADF, stated at the Heritage Foundation panel event.
Throughout the ordeal, Phillips has paid a heavy price for his stand. He has lost 40 percent of his family’s income and more than half his employees, he said.
The initial briefs have been filed with the Supreme Court. Amicus briefs are currently being filed, the opposing briefs will come in October, and the reply of ADF to those briefs the following month. The case will likely be decided late next spring.
ADF has argued in its brief before the Supreme Court that the rulings by the state’s court of appeals and human rights commission that the state can determine which free artistic expression is protected under the First Amendment stands in flagrant opposition to the original meaning of the Constitution.
“But just as the Commission cannot compel Phillips’s art, neither may the government suppress it,” ADF stated.
Instead, the conflict between Phillips’ freedom as an artist and the wishes of his customers should be solved by the citizens themselves, and not by the government, ADF said.
“There is a better way – one that allows the Commission to ensure that businesses do not refuse to serve people simply because of who they are, but protects individuals like Phillips from being forced to create expression about marriage that violates their core convictions,” ADF’s brief stated.
“The path to civility, progress, and freedom does not crush those who hold unpopular views, pushing them from the public square,” ADF said. “It allows free citizens to determine for themselves ‘the ideas and beliefs deserving of expression, consideration, and adherence’.”
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, along with the Colorado Catholic Conference, the Catholic Medical Association, and other Catholic non-profits have also weighed in on the case, submitting an amici curiae brief on behalf of Masterpiece Cakeshop.
Religious freedom must never mean just the freedom to worship or the freedom to practice one’s religion in private, the brief said. The First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause “guarantees every individual the right to seek the truth in religious matters and then adhere to that truth through private and public action.”
In an apostolic exhortation on the proclamation of the Gospel, Pope Francis recently insisted that “no one can demand that religion should be relegated to the inner sanctum of personal life, without influence on societal and national life, without concerns for the soundness of civil institutions, without a right to offer an opinion on events affecting society.”
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I’m sick of polls regardless of who’s conducting them..
Agree re the polls.
But when the Holy Eucharist is “handed out” so casually with little or no reverence by unnecessary lay ministers you have but one ingredient to the decline in this foundational belief.
I do grow weary of it all.
You sound very dejected yourself … do you not want to know how affected your work is as a Deacon? … no wonder Catholic are loosing faith when you seem to be losing your!
David Brown: I’ll let you know when your services as a psychologist or spiritual advisor are needed. Give me your contact information so that, if and when the need arises, I’ll know where to reach you. You’re obviously highly skilled since by reading one sentence written by someone you’re able to devine so much about him. Remarkable!
I’m sick of reading about polls, and most especially polls about Catholics. Tell me one instance when a published poll had any effect on this degenerate culture other than to amuse for approximately 30 seconds. Tell me, instead, about the individual hearts and minds that have been converted through God’s grace and the evangelization efforts of Catholics..
After some pondering, I think I agree with you. I recalled how our Bishop (a good sincerely believing Bishop) cracked in his Christmas homily the fact that, according to the recent survey, more than half of Australian Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence. Somehow, he made it a point of his homily. It was one of my early years of worshiping with Catholics and I was stunned and became depressed. I could not understand why so many Catholics do not believe but even more than that – if they don’t why do they come to the Church? In a word, it was all I could think about on that night in the Cathedral.
And truly, why should I know those statistics? They achieve nothing. Our task is to live that Real Presence, nothing else. Whether others believe in it is between them and God. I think those surveys have something vulgar about them.
A quibble, but not really:
It’s amusing when people say “the Church.” That is a very sloppy and imprecise way of looking at things. Who, exactly, is “the Church”? Is it Pope Francis? Should we accept his teachings on global warming? Is it the people who put together the last catechism, with their teachings on nuclear war somehow being more evil than war with arrows and swords? Is it St. Augustine? Is it the people who wrote the Catechism of Trent? Is it the moderns who honor/worship Mary?
I think all intelligent Catholics need to get out of the habit of saying “the Church” and should, instead, be very specific on who in the Church is teaching what. It would be very enlightening.
BTW, if the writer of this article is the same Matthew Bunson who used to do the Catholic Almanac, then I say “thank you, thank you, thank you for all your work on those books!” I used many of them!
With such a watered down faith and the mindset of many which is, “Come let us worship each other”, or like the famous burger joint’s motto is “Have it your way”, which I call the Burger “K” Gospel, is anyone really surprised?
Another Catholic article focusing purely on externals and peripherals and calling it “spiritual”.
How about, “How many Catholics have sought God?”, “How many have loved God?”, “How many have found God?”, and “How many clergy have taught you how to find God?”.
The answers would show a generally dead spirituality from top to bottom, and explain quite handily the collapse.
This external-only observance was what the Christ spoke so stridently against, and that is pretty much all we have today, People Of The Book who have lost sight of to what the rules are supposed to lead.
Gloom and doom, an unhappy forecast by Real Clear’s poll the numbers reflecting in comparative accuracy Pew and other polls. Despite the slivers of resurgence by the Eucharist Congress and other attempts at revival of the faith they’re small in comparison.
Perhaps Catholics who are beginning to return to Mass and confession read the signs of the times. Many of us do sense this although others point to previous crises that eventually ended, doomsday syndromes that occur periodically in which people were convinced the Second Coming is at hand. Of course that would be a happy turn of events, except perhaps not for some who may have a desire for highly spectacular entertainment.
From observation as a priest it’s likely that the disaffection is centered on belief in the real Prince in the Eucharist. Several decades of distorted liturgy at the altar priests suddenly transformed into showmen, entertainers, and the more subdued flight attendant. Solemnity vanished along with the fire except for the resurgence of the TLM and those of us who offer the Novus Ordo Mass with reverence and love. They’re other factors: the explosion of sensuality in conjunction with the pill poor and frequently heretical catechesis and so forth and so on. Although it all comes back to that real belief in the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
It’s been argued then that we suffered and survived similar. Here is where there’s strong disagreement from some including myself. We’ve never had heresy flow down to the faithful from the apex of hierarchy. Example the Arian heresy began with a priest and assumed by hierarchy. All the major heresies I’m aware of were singular issues, theological misinterpretations. The other marked difference is that the current heresy seriously affects all Apostolic doctrine, the fundamental premise that intrinsic moral principles are not permanent, in effect that truth and permanence are not congruent, that human behavior need not be moderated in accordance with Christ’s.
What we may infer from this heresy is that if there are no permanent truths, the fallacy is revealed in declaring that itself to be a truth. In other words, the premise cancels itself. For the vast majority we’re basically talking over their heads when we argue this point. What the Catholic public perceives is a Church in which all is questioned now permanently by a process called Synodality. And a clergy bishops included who are basically, except for the rare few who are quickly suppressed, rendered catatonic. Anyone in the house with smelling salts?
Amen Father. Heretical Modernist have destroyed so much beauty and worse of all led so many souls to Hell.
The young will save the church from those that say in the pews and said nothing in the early 70s.
Yes. There’s reason why hope is a theological virtue, as evident in times like these when there seems no hope.
The Novos Ordo can sometimes be celebrated with dignity. TLM can never be offered with indignity. Which is most pleasing to God?
As much as I would like to believe these results, there is absolutely no way the results are close to accurate – unless the people polled are CWR readers or were leaving Mass on a Sunday morning. CARA has been doing polling since 1964. From their 2023 poll: “Prior to the pandemic 23% reported attending weekly. By comparison 21% said they were attending this frequently now. There are also slightly fewer saying they attend almost every week (10% now compared to 13% prior to the pandemic).” https://nineteensixty-four.blogspot.com/2023/ As for the “12% that attend daily” I think they need to move the decimal point one place to the left.
I do not believe that this poll agrees with the CARA polls (Center for Applied research on the Apostolate. It makes a difference whether the poll was in person, phone, or questionnaire. People tend to exaggerate their performance. when talking to a live person. Was Mass attendance done on a survey or by head count? Different methodologies produce different results.
Crusader – full agreement. If these numbers were even close to the facts, then we should see traffic congestion on Sunday mornings.
Harris’s support for a constitutional amendment that would legalize abortion without any restrictions, including allowing an infant surviving an abortion to die, is barbaric. This woman also supports gay marriage and the mutilation of children through transgenderism. Thus, she openly opposes basic moral principles thar are foundational to Catholic teaching. This woman is an arm of Satan. These policies along with her economic and immigration policies will destroy this country
The US has a problem of passing ANYTHING as law so long as it got duly voted. Is that in the US Constitution? It is asserting that “we the people” clause is MEANT to give such a reading to the whole document but without actually saying so.
In typical law-making down through the ages except the 20th Century, abortion is crime as it always is and should be; PLUS, merely SPEAKING about certain things so as to promote them, is subversion, i.e., is treated as subversion as it always was and should be. The idea that law is found ONLY through a vote is unjustifiable.
Please do not use the term “gay” to mean homosexual.
As the Stonewall Institute has told us, homosexuals prefer not to be called homosexual, and to use the term “gay” is to be an ally of the LGBS community.
I disagree, as a priest, I see first hand the state of things, we in the US have about 12% of Catholics coming to Mass every Sunday. If you count REGISTERED CATHOLICS, who are registered in a parish, that number goes up, but when you consider a huge number of Catholics who never register in a parish, that number goes down.
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I would be interested to know the reason why Catholics go to Mass (when they go), if they don’t believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist? I would also challenge the accuracy of that 52% belief number in light of the low weekly Mass attendance. If people really believed in the Real Presence, they would go to Mass at least weekly. How is it they see the importance of Christ in the Eucharist, but fail to see the importance of going to meet Him?? And what, to them, is more important?? This is a problem within the Church, when people become accustomed and conditioned to thinking that going to Mass is just something we do and there’s no reflection on how this might affect my life spiritually. Not to mention how the dismal confession numbers indicate that the vast majority of people presenting themselves for communion are not properly disposed to receive it.
I applaud the comments of Fathers Dan and Peter Morello. I hope more and more priests will adopt their manner of thinking.
Jesus Christ must be treated with all dignity, respect, reverence and solemnity. Unfortunately, since Vatican II and the Novus Ordo Mass many of the above characteristics were taken out of the Mass and the structure of Churches. The altar became a supper table and Communion became a communal meal. Many priests and lay people adopted a casual, nonchalant attitude toward the Eucharist which diminishes the importance of the Eucharist. The concept that The Holy Mass is a sacrifice was forgotten. I’ve talked to some priests that actually said that the Eucharist distracts from the Mass. The congregation was there to worship God in one another.
Protestant concepts were introduced into the NO Mass which helped to undermine the belief that the Eucharist is God. Churches lost their beauty and became very ordinary. The tabernacle was move from an elevated position in the front of the church to a “Eucharistic Chapel” which essentially was a walk-in closet. No wonder people lost the belief of the Real Presence.
Fortunately, the TLM and conservative NO Masses are being said more often and with growing attendance. God will eventually give us back our churches and our true Mass.
One more item: A number of people dress very casually for Mass. One should at least wear dress clothes to Mass and not t-shirts and shorts. Imagine, if a lawyer showed up in a courtroom to litigate a case, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts. What do you think the judge would do to that lawyer? Doesn’t Jesus Christ deserve even more respect than a civil judge?