Chaput is one of the few who seems to actually see what's happening all around us.
Ping!
Respect, yes, obey - no. The government that violates the natural law is no longer a legitimate government.
When people blocked the doors of abortion clinics, and the State mandated that the police make themselves accomplices to abortions by removing the people, NOT ONE BISHOP in the United States issued a statement instructing the police that arresting those people was a crime.
Removing an obstacle that one knows is preventing a crime is to be an accomplice to that crime. That’s both civil law and moral theology.
When will the Catholic bishops, as body, apologize for killing the Rescue Movement by their silence?
(Auxiliary bishop, Austin Vaughan, of New York, got arrested. He was praised by Cardinal O’Connor. But no pastoral letter, from any bishop, ever.)
“To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so.
To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.
It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored.
That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.”
P.J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, trans. John Beverley Robinson. London: Freedom Press, 1923, p. 294