![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/John-ONeill.jpg\")
John O’Neill<\/p>\nThis past Tuesday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans heard arguments regarding the display of the Ten Commandments in the classrooms of the public schools in Texas. The decision is pending. My guess is that the case will eventually make\u00a0its\u00a0way before the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
Ken Paxton, the right-wing state attorney general of Texas, has defended the display, asserting \u201cAmerica is a Christian nation.\u201d Of course, we are a majority Christian nation. But being a majority Christian nation does not make us an officially Christian nation. The state is barred from favoring any religion over another.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, a public display of the Ten Commandments is not an overt endorsement of Christianity over other religions. Indeed, the Ten Commandments are central to Judaism and revered in Islam, as well as a Christian tenet. To this, secularists no doubt counter that religion itself is inadmissible to government facilities.<\/p>\n
John O’Neill<\/p>\n
The argument takes me back to my years as a young writer making the case that Catholicism was very much a part of Quebec nationalism. Part of my case was based on the fact that behind the speaker\u2019s platform in the Quebec provincial assembly building was a Crucifix to make explicit the French speaking province\u2019s Catholic identity. (The Crucifix, first displayed in 1938, was removed in 2019.)<\/p>\n
My closest friend, attorney James Schlaff, embraced the conventional wisdom that Catholicism was no longer relevant to Quebec nationalism. And he minimized the fact of the Crucifix on government display in Quebec by noting that our own U.S. Supreme Court has a display of the Ten Commandments. But in response to my point, he admitted that a display of the Ten Commandments wasn\u2019t analogous to a display of a Crucifix.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the Ten Commandments aren\u2019t analogous to a Crucifix. Whereas the Crucifix is specific to Catholicism, the Ten Commandments possess humanistic guidelines as much secular as spiritual. Though a product of the Old Testament and cherished by Jews and Christians alike, the Ten Commandments transcend religion to make up universal guidelines of law. Not just a Charleton Heston movie, the Ten Commandments are embraced as much by earthly values as religious values.<\/p>\n
Attorney General Paxton is off-base when he emphasizes we are a Christian nation to defend the Ten Commandments in public schools. It\u2019s a case in which, though his conclusion is the right one, he fails in the development of his argument. Paxton is wrong to lend credence to the notion that a display of the Ten Commandments in public schools infringes on secular principles.<\/p>\n
But more important in this case is the conclusion: The Ten Commandments have a place in public schools. Anti-religious bigotry, like that espoused by the ACLU, will weigh in against this reasoning. Still the universal message of the Ten Commandments cannot be denied.<\/p>\n
As for Quebec nationalism, it\u2019s still my position that Catholicism plays an important role and with the French speaking province poised to elect later this year a separatist government, you\u2019ll be hearing more from me on this subject.<\/p>\n
John O\u2019Neill is an Allen Park freelance writer and a graduate of Wayne State University. He attends St. Mary Magdalen in Melvindale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This past Tuesday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans heard arguments regarding the display of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,3116,1631,58379],"class_list":["post-137773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-michigan","tag-opinion","tag-wayne-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}