Controversy erupted in June when Louisiana’s Catholic governor signed legislation requiring that the Ten Commandments, along with other historical documents bearing on the foundations and development of our nation’s Constitution, laws, and jurisprudence, be posted in the state’s public schools.

Predictably, the American Civil Liberties Union sued to block the new law’s implementation, claiming it violates the First Amendment.

Of course, as Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told Catholic News Agency, “It seems the ACLU only selectively cares about the First Amendment — it doesn’t care when the Biden administration censors speech or arrests pro-life protesters, but apparently it will fight to prevent posters that discuss our own legal history.”

That context is key.

“Displaying the Ten Commandments for educational purposes, as well as cultural memory, does not violate the First Amendment,” Chad Pecknold, a professor of systematic theology and theological politics at the Catholic University of America told CNA. “The Mosaic law has profoundly influenced the Western legal tradition, the Declaration of Independence, and not without import for this recent challenge, the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement itself.”

That said, I understand the concerns of even some faithful Catholics I know, that while some of the commandments express universally held standards of right and wrong — Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness — others are expressly Judeo-Christian religious commands: keeping holy the sabbath, not taking the Lord’s name in vain, not having “strange gods before me.”

In an increasingly pluralistic and secularized nation, posting these in public schools can be seen as imposing one particular set of religious standards on students whose families do not share them. After all, the Catholic school system in America grew out of Catholic children being subjected to Protestant prayers and religious instruction in the public schools of the late 19^th century.

On the other hand, this has to be considered in the current context of cultural intolerance toward religious expression. Today’s secularists pretend to assume a benign “live-and-let-live” posture of tolerance for the beliefs of others, and contrast that with what they portray as an aggressive effort by people and institutions of faith to impose narrowly sectarian religious beliefs on a helpless nation.

But that portrayal is false. While banging the drum for “freedom of choice,” on issue after issue advocates have demonstrated that it was never about “choice,” but about imposing their values on the rest of us.

Regardless of moral objections to abortion, secularists strive to force all of us to facilitate the killing of pre-born children with our tax dollars.

The ACLU has taken the lead in trying to force Catholic health care institutions to either violate their moral teachings by performing sterilizations, abortions, and now gender-altering treatments — including surgical mutilations — or close down, depriving many communities of vital health care services.

Pro-life pregnancy resource centers are under siege, with everything from unpunished vandalism, even firebombings, to government harassment designed to drive them out of existence unless they provide abortion referrals.

Small business owners that cater to weddings — photographers, bakers, flower shops — are constantly besieged by lawsuits for declining to take part in same-sex weddings that violate their religious beliefs.

Just publicly expressing a religious teaching against homosexuality or transgender ideology can get one charged with hate speech, labeled a bigot, fired from a job, or tossed out of many colleges.

Parents find themselves excluded from even knowing about their minor child’s “decision” — often prompted by the meddling of intrusive professional educators — to “transition” from their God-given sexuality. And the current Department of Justice labels such parents “terrorists” when they speak out at school board meetings to protect their children.

The contempt of the secularist cultural elite for religious believers was on full display at the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Paris last week, with the vile drag queen parody of DaVinci’s “Last Supper” — a “gross, flippant mockery” of Christianity, in the words of Bishop Robert Barron.

Clearly, we are in a cultural battle not over whether our society will be guided by a certain set of values, but over which set of values will prevail.

“This deeply secularist, post-modern society knows who its enemy is,” Bishop Barron recognizes. “They’re naming it and we should believe them, they are telling us who it is.”

If we do not stand firm for Judeo-Christian principles, we will be overwhelmed by the virulent anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, anti-religious secularism that is not about freedom of choice, not about respecting the beliefs of others, but about bringing religious believers and institutions to heel, forcing us to acquiesce in the anti-religious secularization of our culture.

Given that choice, I will stand with those who invoke a timeless set of commandments that upholds respect for human life and for the rights of others; loving fidelity to family; honesty, restraint of passions, and rejection of envy and covetousness in our dealings with others; and, yes, a humble recognition that these laws come from a God whose justice and benevolence have guided and inspired America from its founding, through its painful struggles and exhilarating growth, to the daunting challenges and exciting opportunities before us today.

Unlike the secularist elite, we do not seek to impose this faith perspective on anyone. But we must not allow them to expunge it, from our history or from the public square.

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