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.
Well, after all, he DID write the Bible...or was that the Boible?
It has been striking in my experience to witness how pervasive the problem of Arrested Development is among the adherents of Romanism.
It’s like watching children who say, “I know I am but what are you”.
Can't help you there. I've never met one.
“SINGLE ACTS OF TYRANNY MAY BE ASCRIBED TO THE ACCIDENTAL OPINION OF A DAY; BUT A SERIES OF OPPRESSIONS, BEGUN AT A DISTINGUISHED PERIOD, AND PURSUED UNALTERABLY THROUGH EVERY CHANGE OF MINISTERS (ADMINISTRATIONS) TOO PLAINLY PROVES A DELIBERATE, SYSTEMATIC PLAN OF REDUCING US TO SLAVERY.” -Thomas Jefferson.
If you check carefully, you'll see that I don't advocate monarchy for the United States.
And don't worry -- I don't insist that my friends share my opinions!
I’ll take you at your word. :-)
No, not Elvis.
I used [The Last Crusade by Warren Carroll] as a textbook for my history class this last year (I wrote this in 2006) and one of my students asked me the most important (and most obvious) question: "Why haven't we heard about Franco and the murders of all these bishops, priests, and religious?"Well obviously, because America didn't baptize this baby. America, led by such "luminaries" as Hemingway (who wrote his For Whom the Bell Tolls during this time period) showed that they would rather line up with the Commies than the dirty Catholics.
Before you damn Franco and his Spain, I suggest you read Warren G. Carroll's history of the war mentioned above. It'll open your eyes -- not only to the truths of the Natonalist cause in Spain, but to how heavily we Americans have been propagandized in favor of the WASP worldview.
The idea of rights is by and large an enlightenment concept.
???
That’s a trio of question marks—which one is most important?
Read the book and learn something.
You might use HTML to cross through the original words and follow them with your own.
Or you might show what you believe it ought to have said in brackets or parans, e.g. "Ratzinger [Pope Benedict] ..."
Thank you.
No one cares what Chesterton had to say about anything. Certainly not about men and women who possessed more grace than he ever exhibited.
Chesterton was a pseudo-intellectual who went from dabbling in the occult to Roman Catholicism -- a short journey.
Chesterton wrote...
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."
It's that kind of moral equivocation we've come to expect from papists. We certainly see enough of it on threads like this.
I'm sure that was part of it. Imperial overextension in Europe and the "brain drain" to the New World colonies didn't help, either.
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 believe you are mistaken. From what I've read, Edgar Mortara entered the Augustinian, not the Franciscan, order.
Once again, your response to the Mortara case puzzles me. You appear to be arguing that the end -- little Edgar becomes a RC and a priest -- justifies the means -- the kidnapping of Edgar by officers of the state at the behest of Piux IX. I had thought that ends/means rationality was a big no-no in RC moral teachings. Am I wrong to think this?
I wasn't aware of the abduction and resettlement of Irish orphans/vagrants in 19th century NYC, but from what you posted it seems perfectly awful. If the account is accurate, the participants in this scheme -- along with the child-snatching mobs in Arizona -- should have been ashamed of themselves.
However, given that I have not been advocating individual Methodist ministers, NYC bureacrats, or racist mobs from the 19th century as moral examplars, I fail to see the relevance of these shameful occurrences in US history to the issue we've been discussing: namely, the Holy Office-sponsored kidnapping of a Jewish child from his family so that he would be raised as a RC.
Another book for the “to-be-read” stack!
Roman Catholic being the biggest.
The religious community often referred to as the Eastern Orthodox also call themselves the Catholic Church, this despite the fact that they vehemently deny "papal" claims to universal jurisdiction (they believe that the true head of all the Churches is Christ, not the Bishop of Rome). Or so I've read.
The Eastern Orthodox also used to refer to themselves as ρομανοι, but I don't know if that is the case these days.
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