One wonders if there’d be a war or an ethics scandal if the U.S. Constitution had provided for an alternative to secular humanism in public life. It does not, effectively causing freedom from other religions, rather than freedom of religion, as originally intended.

This has been a growing crisis since before the American Revolution, and it so alarmed the 19th-century Catholic church about similar trends in Europe that Vatican I proclaimed papal infallibility in a vain attempt to reassert the primacy of the sacred in public life.

In consequence, we have seen terrible wars and growing social injustice, conflict and chaos in the West. In Muslim countries, Islam has the final say. There is no such authority in Western nations, and the crisis is worse here because the United States is the only superpower.

If this drift toward war, injustice and chaos is to be stemmed, shouldn’t secular humanism-atheistic materialism – truly religion – also be excluded from public life, in accordance with the First Amendment?

Alternatively, it may be time for a second constitutional convention, this time with suitable international input to reflect the world’s growing oneness.

We will restore the sacred to our national life and, with it, the integrity of the republic, or we will perish as a nation.

Paul Corrao, Auburn