by David Kertzer
Posted on 11/10/2009 11:55:00 AM PST by B-Chan
The passage of sweeping national health care legislation by the U.S. House of Representatives has set the stage for the greatest intrusion of the State into the everyday lives of the American people in the nation's history. Across the Web, the groans and cries of the free-marketers, capitalists, and libertarians have begun to echo in response. Surprisingly, many of these voices condemn the Catholic Church for its "socialist" commitment to feeding the poor, caring for the sick, and doing the other things Jesus Christ commanded of us. "Without the support of you bleeding-heart Catholics," the refrain goes, "this socialist nightmare could never have passed."
An element of truth exists behind this complaint. A pious Catholic's heart does bleed for the sick, the aged, the destitute, the lame, and the suffering; in this, it mimics the Sacred Heart of our Lord Himself, who gave all He had, including His life, for the sake of the suffering.
But is the Catholic Church "socialist"? Impossible. Socialism is a materialist doctrine with a dialectical and teleological basis that is utterly incompatible with the word and example or our Lord. As such, it has been repudiated specifically in the teaching of the Church, most notably in the encyclical Rerum novarum (1891) of Pope Leo XIII, which states
the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property.1But if the Church is not socialist, neither is it capitalist. Capitalism, like socialism, is both philosophically materialist and ethically libertarian -- and libertarian thought (which is just Liberal thought with a different name) is completely in opposition to the teaching of Jesus Christ. Our Lord is not a free marketer, a capitalist, an entrepreneur, or a salesman. As the ultimate altruist and counter-example of rational sef-interest, He stands at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum from Rand's Nietzschean superman John Galt. Jesus Christ is a King, not a CEO*, and He commands His servant Church to uphold the Natural Law, which proclaims that every human being is a Child of God -- and as such, is deserving of food, medical care, and the other basic hallmarks of human dignity.
The Church is called upon to provide these social services. The State has no just role in pubic life except to keep the peace, protect the borders, establish justice, and preserve the national patrimony. In a Christian social order, the State officially recognizes the Church's special role in the life of the nation, and protects and support the Church in its provision of social services. This was the pattern of social organization throughout Christendom until the advent of the Lutheran heresy, which proclaimed the cult of individual Liberty and its separation of Church and State.
By destroying the proper relationship between Church and State, the "libertarian" movement invited the State to overstep its ordained bounds and intrude into areas of life within which it has no just business. In a post-Reformation representative republic such as our own, which pretends neutrality in matters of faith, the State cannot fulfill the role of Protector of the Church given to it by God; as a result, over time, popular demand forces the State to assume the provision of social services which in a Christian social order would be provided by the Church.
Human beings have the positive and Divine right to daily bread, health care, and other aspects of human dignity. In his Luciferian quest for individual Liberty, however, Western man has destroyed the Divinely-ordained social order under which the Church provided these goods. As a result, the heavy hand of the State will now intrude into every aspect of public life in its futile attempt to build a just society. Ironically, the worship of individual liberty instigated by the "reformers" of the Church and the secular counterparts of the "enlightenment" has destroyed the liberty under God that individuals once enjoyed as organic parts of the Catholic and medieval social order.
Nationalized health care is a fact. Soon, the power of life and death will rest entirely in the hands of the State. And as the smothering blanket of socialism settles slowly across our land, I invite libertarians to quit their whining. In their quest for freedom from the Church, they destroyed the institutions that kept the State in its proper place. Libertarians made this bed; we are now all going to be forced to sleep in it.
*That was L. Ron Hubbard's gig.
And I did.
It's called post #140 on this thread, but yes, "game," "deceit," "sneaky maneuver" are all accurate enough. "Desperate whingeing" also works to describe #140.
Sad Rome has to look outside the word of God for the truth of Christ risen.
What's relevant is that Edgar was well taken care of and obviously loved -Our Blessed Lord must have wanted him to become a Franciscan sense he lived a holy life even as a child.He was blessed and our Lord works in mysterious ways as I said before,dear friend
I would be more concerned about the Children's aid society of the 1800’s founded by a sinister man and what was done to Irish catholic children in america- some were indoctrinated into believing the calvinst heresy that poverty was a result of their sinfulness.
Here is an excerpt of what was going on...
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/the-irish-orphan-abduction/Content?oid=1087070
“The nuns had reason to fear for the kids’ souls. For decades, do-gooder Protestant social workers in New York had virtually kidnapped Irish Catholic urchins off the streets—some of them orphans, some of them not—and shipped them out West.
As historian Maureen Fitzgerald recounts in Habits of Compassion: Irish Catholic Nuns and the Origins of New York's Welfare System, 1830-1920, Irish kids swarmed the sidewalks of New York. These “ulcers of society,” as The New York Times called them, did what they could to put crumbs on the family table, begging, working, rag-picking, stealing.
The best remedy for this plague of disorderly young Papists, Protestant leaders agreed, was to transfer them “into Protestant homes outside the city.”
The legal mechanism for snatching kids away was a truancy law, which permitted any child not in school during school hours to be arrested and brought to a private mission, invariably Protestant. Fitzgerald writes that mission workers had no legal obligation even to contact the parents. If the impoverished mothers and fathers—many of them immigrants, not savvy to the ways of the city—never found them, the children could be legally committed for their entire childhood to the jurisdiction of the agency.
Which is where the notorious orphan trains come in.
A Methodist minister by the name of Charles Loring Brace, founder of the Children's Aid Society, conceived of the trains as an ingenious—and inexpensive—alternative to orphanages for the wretched Irish refuse. Families in the fabled American countryside would take in the street urchins and put them to work in the wholesome outdoors.”
Apropos of nothing, lying about the Pope (and his father) tends to create some ill will too.
Thank God you're not talking about the Catholic Church.
That is deceitful and certainly seems against the rules of any written forum.
No surprise there!
from the words of GK Chesterton...
"A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things."-Gilbert K. Chesterton
Nope.
But you claim that.
Oh, by the way, I can't help but wonder why you ping the Religion Moderator to the Bloggers & Personal forum.
Dontcha just love a Roman Catholic telling Jews what a pogrom is?
Nobody’s lying about your pope.
lolol. I'll donate all the Euros I can find.
Bless you and yours.shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiachTheir testimony is deafening.
Not in this thread, as far as I’ve seen.
Because last week you did this exact same thing to me and my posts on the religion forum that you're now doing to Uriel's posts.
You realize if this kind of deceitful maneuvering is permitted, there is nothing to prevent me from doing the following...
I have rethought me position and I was wrong to believe in the rituals of the RCC and I have now joined the Presbyterian church where I serve the Lord's Supper every firsy Sunday.
Good for you, Petronski!
Nope.
Oh, by the way, I don’t believe in any rituals of any RCC.
I’m a Catholic.
Ping to 157
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.