Jay Kuten: Obligation outweighs belief

AT MY last reporting, Pope Francis had had a mostly successful US trip, having generated lots of goodwill with his pleas for tolerance and recommendation of the Golden Rule in application.

While he mentioned controversial issues - global warming, support for life at all stages, capital punishment - he delicately steered clear of reigniting the culture wars. That is, until he left.

At that point a report emerged that Francis had held an exclusive audience, in secret, for Kim Davis. He had, it was claimed, hugged her, told her to "stay strong," admired her courage and presented her with two rosaries. So said Mrs Davis' lawyer, who had not, however, been present.

A little slowly, the Vatican began to distance the Pope from Kim Davis. Initially, they refused comment on the Pope's meeting, then acknowledged it happened but disclaimed it was private - rather an audience of several dozen - and most recently the Vatican has issued a statement saying that any invitation to her was from the papal nuncio. Finally a Vatican spokesman said that the Pope does not endorse Kim Davis' stance.

Kim Davis is the Kentucky County Clerk, a government official, who had refused to issue marriage licences to gay couples, citing her faith as a member of a fundamentalist Protestant church. Her refusal in contempt of court earned her four days in jail as well as making her a hero to the mostly Protestant religious conservatives who are the base of the Republican party.

The issue that unnerved the Vatican is not gay marriage. The Church is already on record in opposition. It is rather the fact that Davis, a public official, refused to carry out her prescribed duties under law, citing her faith as a higher binding principal.

Civil disobedience as a matter of conscience is, in fact, one of the Pope's concerns. He was asked in general about the issue on his airborne news conference, but before the Davis claims had surfaced. Francis began with what, in hindsight, seems like a curious disclaimer: "I can't have in mind all cases that can exist about conscientious objection."

He added: "Conscientious objection must enter into every juridical structure because it is a right, a human right. Otherwise, we would end up in a situation where we select what is a right, saying, 'This right, that has merit; this one does not.' "

Conscientious objection on the part of an individual or a group may be admirable. It may also carry obligations, such as alternate service for conscientious pacifists in time of war. What is much more unsettling in this new controversy is that Kim Davis is a public official.

Representing government, her refusal to follow the application of law to a special class on grounds of faith is, if left unchallenged, a threat to secular democratic government. To be able to pick and choose which laws are to be administered or to which individuals, groups, or classes the laws will apply is anarchy at best or bigotry at worst.

Ironies abound here as the Protestant fundamentalist religious conservatives would hope for common cause with the Pope on the supremacy of religious demand over the Constitutional law. In the 1960 presidential campaign, candidate John F Kennedy, a Catholic, felt obliged, in light of anti-Catholic prejudice among the electorate, to meet with a group of Southern fundamentalist Protestant ministers.

Fearful of "papist" influence, the ministers questioned him as to whether his loyalty to his church could compromise his neutrality and his obligations under the Constitution. Kennedy allayed the fears of many when he declared that the separation of church and state was absolute. Elected officials cannot use the engine of government to impose their religion on others. He would resign if his conscience were in conflict with his duties. Government must be neutral towards religion.

It's that wall of separation of church and state that modern fundamentalist Protestants would seek to breach with their disputed allegations of the Pope's endorsement of Kim Davis.

-Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.