... the Church does have some problems with the constitution because of it’s too open ended and speaks of freedom and liberty with defining liberty and freedom in a complete Christian sense.... There are certain things in the constitution that have an outward Catholic shell which is ingrained in america’s founding fathers whether they realized it or not because even the forerunners of the reformation did not lose all Catholic tradition because it’s impassible to be a Christian and shed many of Catholic teaching.Thank you for this insight. But what does this have to do with the U.S. Constitution?
Thank you for the magnificent meditation from Pope Leo XVIII — a world-class thinker in addition to his central importance as fearless defender of the Magisterium, a man of peerless impeccability in the transmission of the Holy Faith, a man deeply imbued in Truth in and by the Spirit of our Lord.
But Pope Leo didn't have a single word to say about the U.S. Constitution in these passages. Nor arguably, about anything having to do with specifically American culture....
Most Americans who know American history — Catholic or otherwise — know that the Constitution is not a prescription for how a man should live — in stark contradistinction to the moral law conveyed by the Magisterium of the Church.
The Constitution does not in any way establish the rights and duties of citizens. Rather, its sole purpose is to establish limits on the State, such that it cannot invade, violate, or abridge the God-given rights and duties of human individuals. The idea here is that it is not the State — the government, that is, at whatever level — that establishes what the revolutionary French (and later Karl Marx) declared to be "the rights of man." (We all know how that turned out.) Rather, the so-called "rights of man" are natural, innate liberties, preceding any form of government — because they are imbued in man by his Creator. That being so, no human institution can touch them. These unalienable rights are three in number: Life, Liberty, and the "pursuit of happiness" (e.g., private property sufficient to set a man free from basic want, so to pursue the "higher ends" of life in this world, presumably with a view to his life beyond it. At least I believe that is how the Framers of the Constitution looked at the problem.).
So since the Constitution is a negative constraint on overweening state power, and since it does not in any way suggest how an individual person ought to conduct his life, why blame the Constitution for the current moral degradation of modern American society? Pope Leo doesn't do that, in the admonition you quote, dear brother in Christ. Rather it seems to me, he is admonishing his bishops and the churches for their "compromise" with the Spirit of the Age, so to restock the church pews....
It is not a government's job to make people moral. That is the job of the churches. If the churches are failing in that duty, then we are stuck with a very ancient problem, IIRC first articulated by Plato: Any human society is only as good as the "human capital" (not his word) that composes it. If the people are disordered, then the State will be disordered. No positive law enacted by the State can cure that condition, nor make a society "good" in the absence of "good" people. Though an overweening State will always find a pretext to sell its plan to do just that. And any State is as it were "naturally" disposed to love Power more than Truth.
Which eternally threatens God-given human liberty, and even reason itself. God demands the essential condition of liberty for men, that they may freely choose Him. Or not as the case may be. No legitimate State can interfere with, constrain, or abridge this essential God–man relation, this ultimate choice that men make in their lives — a/k/a the right of exercise of free conscience.
Certainly I agree with you, dear stfassisi, that the American moral order has become quite degraded by now; and the "fruits" of the Enlightenment as they are now understood "by your average American" are probably partially to blame.
By that I mean the Enlightenment established the so-called "scientific method" as the sine qua non of human rationality. The only problem with the scientific method, it seems to me, is that it deals almost exclusively with direct observables. And yet, the things that are most important, most valuable, to humankind do not involve direct observables at all. Arguably, all such pertain to "unseen things"....
Today's verdict in the Casey Anthony trial illustrates the point I'm trying to make. I was quite surprised that Ms. Anthony had been exonerated by this jury of any category of homicide. Which I found puzzling; because IIRC, Judge Belvin Perry gave highly detailed jury instructions regarding the homicide charge: How the jury "justly" could find for first-degree murder "beyond a reasonable doubt"; or second-degree murder; or aggravated homicide involving a child, and one other I now forget. Judge "beautiful wine" further instructed the jury to find the "highest" offense proved by the State to either convict Ms. Anthony, or set her free.
My big surprise was not that, on the first count, the jury absolved Ms. Anthony of first-degree murder. What amazed me was their entire silence on the other three first-count potential charges. Didn't Judge Belvin Perry's jury instructrions require them to speak to these other potential charges? P-Marlowe, trusted counselor, what did I miss?
Anyhoot, the jury has spoken. Now I wonder what justice was served today — for either Casey Anthony, or for her dead child, Caylee — who assuredly did not murder herself?
But then again, reflecting on the poisonous state of American moral understanding these days, with a public that tolerates the wanton murder of a million American pre-borns a year, maybe what this case finally tells us is that the worth and natural rights of a pre-born child are not only null and void under American "jurisprudence"; but also that our society will not protect the the rights and life of an already-born child somewhere between the age of two and three....
Along this course of reasoning, it's not difficult to imagine that the unalienable right to life of any person of any age could be annulled by a contemporary American jury, if their "reasonable doubt" is sufficiently well-invoked. A most sickening thought....
What this case boiled down to was contending "expert evidence" that an uninformed and mildly educated jury was put into the position of having to evaluate. Reliable sources describe this jury — imported from Pinellas County — as "low-to-moderate" wage earners, mainly high school graduates, although one jury member didn't complete high school, and one other had a masters degree. My guess is these these jurors were so daunted by the expert evidence that there was absolutely no way they could have had anything but a "reasonable doubt" pertaining to it.
Which isn't to say that juries are stupid. It's just to say that the so-called "scientific method" has become such an idol in these days, that this jury ritually bowed their knee to it, suppressing absolutely everything they know from their own life experience and simple common sense.
My dear brother in Christ, this is not a "government problem." This is a cultural problem, finally a citizen problem.
Don't blame the U.S. Constitution for failings of the human spirit. Don't blame the courts for the peoples' ignorance.
If such exist, to me is seems the blame falls squarely on the institutions who are appointed by God to deal with issues of the human spirit and its Truth.
Thank you so very much for writing, my dear brother in Christ! I'm sorry my reply is so belated....
The constitution is a product of enlightenment thinking and has certain protestant influence of nothing definitive when it speaks of liberty. Pluralism and pragmatism only leads to confusion of souls. As I said ,there are certain elements that are borrowed from Catholicism but they are not defined and concrete,but at least we can be grateful that these certain elements have been placed there by God
Liberty is definitive in Catholicism and it DEFINES sins that "liberates" a person to be free from sin by following dogmatic laws given by God to His Church
The constitution says we have "Unalienable Rights From God" which means nothing without being defined what these rights are in relation to sin against God being defined.
This is why pornography , abortion, gay marriage etc.. can be allowed as pursuit of happiness, freedom and liberty in this system that will eventually collapse it from within.
But Pope Leo didn't have a single word to say about the U.S. Constitution in these passages. Nor arguably, about anything having to do with specifically American culture.
His encyclical on Americanism does not have to mention the Constitution because it's pretty clear he understood that it embodies a NEW form of liberty that is NOT Divinely inspired.
What do you suppose Pope Leo is speaking of when he says the following statement on Americanism in his encyclical?
""These dangers, viz., the confounding of license with liberty, the passion for discussing and pouring contempt upon any possible subject, the assumed right to hold whatever opinions one pleases upon any subject and to set them forth in print to the world, have so wrapped minds in darkness that there is now a greater need of the Church's teaching office than ever before, lest people become unmindful both of conscience and of duty.""
Most Americans who know American history — Catholic or otherwise — know that the Constitution is not a prescription for how a man should live
Are you suggesting a Catholic should follow a document with many protestant enlightenment inspired idea's rather than what the Church actually teaches as if God usurped Church teaching and made the US a new sort of church founded by him?
The reason why the American Catholic church has faltered at times is because it made this mistake,dear sister!
Hi, Betty, I think the state proved that the young girl had met a foul end, but I don’t think it succeeded at proving who had done it, how it had been done, and to what end.
It’s mistake was insisting that this be a capital murder case, given they hadn’t really created an air-tight case ahead of time.
They were hoping the jury would see it their way.
Even now, I can’t tell myself in a short sentence how this woman murdered her daughter or even if this woman murdered here daughter in the capital sense.
I believe she neglected her to death, and the state should have gone after such a conviction.