Class, discuss.
The Catholic Catechism (2246) advises we are not bound to obey unjust laws.
It does suggest passive resistance.
I am not so inclined, to wait until the last minute, wherein, that is the only option.
Fight NOW, not after it is too late!
Four Things
Posted by Ann Barnhardt - March 11, AD 2012 7:22 PM MST
Miss Barnhardt kicks ass in that essay.
Whether ‘tis nobler to suffer the prisons and fines or accept the Mark of the Beast, that is the question. ObamaCare may not be the actual Mark but the principle is the same, do we serve God or do we serve Mammon? If any Church is to be true to God, they must have principles and stick to them. Don’t compromise. Don’t pay the fine. Make them shut the doors. There has to be a line. let them cross it.
Brava!!! I could not agree more. The only option is refusal—refusal to comply, refusal to pay the fine.
Our frail humanity may fret about our temporal misfortune. But what the heck country are we leaving to our Catholic kids? One where they lick the boot that presses on their neck?
This is theater, that's all it is. It's the Timothy Dolan show.
Wow...
I fancy myself a fine judge of prose, and as I read this I asked myself “Who’s this cardinal with the ponderous stones?” Or perhaps a bishop? Or Ann Barnhardt.
So good it substitutes for coffee, this beautiful morning. Many thanks for posting a splendid product!
I’m afraid our bishops have read the wrong books and watched the wrong movies. If they had read “Last of the Breed” or seen 189 episodes of “Stargate: SG-1,” they would understand that it’s just more fun to go down fighting, while making slightly rude jokes. You don’t get any good lines if you’re the cringing and compromising character - just contempt from the rest of the cast and the audience.
“Who wants to live forever, anyway?” “Brave up, my brothers - this is a good day to die!” “I am Breitbart!” “Your mother was a gerbil and your father smelt of elderberries!” “Bite me, you (redacted)!”
I already have what most people are freepin terrified of: ten children. (Chorus of omg omg, and the little running-around-in-circles guy.) I’m supposed to be scared of Darth Sebelius and that little homosexual twink who calls himself President? Sorry, not happening.
Do they really think the National Guard - my neighbors - are going to shoot down old people and babies and the youth group, in order to shut down our homeless mission over “free” contraceptives? Zero and his possessed minions probably do, because they’re that nuts, but if our “leaders” - I’ll take the scare quotes off when they demonstrate leadership - also believe it, they’re blithering fools.
(No, I’m not intoxicated at nine in the morning - I just don’t get enough sleep. I’m attempting BlackElk-quality vociferous verbiage, but I just don’t have his gift for alliteration.)
I agree. Too bad that it has taken a crisis to see the Light, but so be it. It is not the first time in history that the church has gotten so taken up by the world and lost its way (almost), but in the past, persecution grew the church, strengthened the flock, and purified the Gospel. Maybe, should the Supremes uphold ObamaCare, we will get an opportunity to live our faith in a meaningful way once again and restore the church’s glory. After all, Revelation does say that the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. It may look like death for a while, but God will preserve her.
Inspired, Mrs. Don-o. I woke this morning with thoughts about this Holy Week and how far I am from my Lord.
I live with the fear of loss, fear of pain, fear of rejection, fear of abandonment that removes me from active participation in carrying the Cross to being merely one of the bystanders shedding tears as Christ passes.
Everyone does.
It’s that choice that comes down to the Will, trust and whatever little courage we are granted. I hope I don’t fail.
Our shepherds have been exercising a little courage. We have to pray that they become lions because another Obama term will have America resembling the bifurcated church in China. The PRC have started arresting the Mongolian bishops and priests and the Church there has had to go underground.
The left can move very fast. They have no restraints to bridle them.
Your opening statement observing government's assuming a role that "forbids what God requires" and "requires what God forbids" describes a role inconsistent with the Founders' ideas and of those the sources and minds from which they drew their ideas.
Perhaps this is illustrated by the "Natural Law" concept described in the following essay, which is reprinted with permission.
"Man ... must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator.. This will of his Maker is called the law of nature.... This law of nature...is of course superior to any other.... No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this: and such of them as are valid derive all their force...from this original." - Sir William Blackstone (Eminent English Jurist)
The Founders DID NOT establish the Constitution for the purpose of granting rights. Rather, they established this government of laws (not a government of men) in order to secure each person's Creator endowed rights to life, liberty, and property.
Only in America, did a nation's founders recognize that rights, though endowed by the Creator as unalienable prerogatives, would not be sustained in society unless they were protected under a code of law which was itself in harmony with a higher law. They called it "natural law," or "Nature's law." Such law is the ultimate source and established limit for all of man's laws and is intended to protect each of these natural rights for all of mankind. The Declaration of Independence of 1776 established the premise that in America a people might assume the station "to which the laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them.."
Herein lay the security for men's individual rights - an immutable code of law, sanctioned by the Creator of man's rights, and designed to promote, preserve, and protect him and his fellows in the enjoyment of their rights. They believed that such natural law, revealed to man through his reason, was capable of being understood by both the ploughman and the professor. Sir William Blackstone, whose writings trained American's lawyers for its first century, capsulized such reasoning:
"For as God, when he created matter, and endued it with a principle of mobility, established certain rules for the...direction of that motion; so, when he created man, and endued him with freewill to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that freewill is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty of reason to discover the purport of those laws."
What are those natural laws? Blackstone continued:
"Such among others are these principles: that we should live honestly, should hurt nobody, and should render to every one his due.."
The Founders saw these as moral duties between individuals. Thomas Jefferson wrote:
"Man has been subjected by his Creator to the moral law, of which his feelings, or conscience as it is sometimes called, are the evidence with which his Creator has furnished him .... The moral duties which exist between individual and individual in a state of nature, accompany them into a state of society . their Maker not having released them from those duties on their forming themselves into a nation."
Americas leaders of 1787 had studied Cicero, Polybius, Coke, Locke, Montesquieu, and Blackstone, among others, as well as the history of the rise and fall of governments, and they recognized these underlying principles of law as those of the Decalogue, the Golden Rule, and the deepest thought of the ages.
An example of the harmony of natural law and natural rights is Blackstone's "that we should live honestly" - otherwise known as "thou shalt not steal" - whose corresponding natural right is that of individual freedom to acquire and own, through honest initiative, private property. In the Founders' view, this law and this right were inalterable and of a higher order than any written law of man. Thus, the Constitution confirmed the law and secured the right and bound both individuals and their representatives in government to a moral code which did not permit either to take the earnings of another without his consent. Under this code, individuals could not band together and do, through government's coercive power, that which was not lawful between individuals.
America's Constitution is the culmination of the best reasoning of men of all time and is based on the most profound and beneficial values mankind has been able to fathom. It is, as William E. Gladstone observed, "The Most Wonderful Work Ever Struck Off At A Given Time By he Brain And Purpose Of Man."
We should dedicate ourselves to rediscovering and preserving an understanding of our Constitution's basis in natural law for the protection of natural rights - principles which have provided American citizens with more protection for individual rights, while guaranteeing more freedom, than any people on earth.
"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom." -John Locke
Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5
here
(End of quoted material)
Mrs. Don-O, hope this contributes to the discussion you have begun here. Easter Blessings!
Well, I don’t know if it will involve going to prison with the bishops or not.
But I do know that active cooperation with evil is not an option. This is not a prudential choice. This is a matter of complicity with killing babies. And complicity with attacking and attempting to destroy the Roman Catholic Church.
Incidentally, this is one reason why I can never vote for Romney, either. Because he is responsible for exactly the same evils in the state of Massachusetts. He was the pioneer, and Obama is following in his footsteps. Not that either one of them ever saw a baby he didn’t want to kill—and make Catholics pay for it.
I would like to think I would be given the grace.
But now, of course, not paying the fines is not an option. They’ll just take then unless I convert everything to gold and bury the gold.
Very nice!
I particularly like this line:
“We cannot win this battle if we merely find some plausible way to finesse an inherently unjust situation.”
This finessing is exactly what the church in the US has gotten into the habit of doing; instead of standing against injustice we are generally told “obey authority” regardless of the justness (or legitimacy) of that authority’s commands.
And you are SO right about the missed Teachable Moments. There is so much material for good homilies, but I think too many priests are afraid of offending contracepting couples, or making college aged kids mad. Too bad; it's the perfect opportunity to show the problems in society caused by sexual sins.