Posted on 02/23/2005 8:49:27 AM PST by Pyro7480
OK good then we agree - America is a democracy. The system you describe ended in 1860 or thereabouts. If you are for federalism then we have even more on which we agree since federalism is based on the Catholic idea of subsidiarity - or decentralization of power.
The momentum of statist philosophy from the Protestant revolt forward has been a return to the centralization of power. This is accelerated by democratic idealogy since it is fundamentally identitarian that is it seeks conformity.
The misconceptions, moreover, about the Russian class structure that prevail in the Western world are so manifold and so deeply rooted that they seem ineradicable. The three brilliant volumes by Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu on late nineteenth-century Russia, L'Empire des tsars et les Russes, give a glimpse of a totally mixed society based neither on birth nor on money. Needless to say, the same impression is conveyed by the great Russian novelists of that period. Actually, before Red October Russia was Europe's "Eastern America," a country where social mobility was greater than elsewhere, where titles had none of the nimbus they had in the West, where fortunes could be made overnight by intelligent and thrifty people regardless of their social background. Skilled European workers and specialists in many fields emigrated to Russia rather than to the United States. And, even before 1905, knowing how to speak and to write gave total liberty.
[...]
Serfdom? It did exist until 1861, but it was no more and no less characteristic of Russia than slavery was of the United States. It was, moreover, incomparably milder than slavery and did not exist at all in the majority of the empire. Some serfs were rich -- with fortunes amounting to from 30 to 60 million dollars (present purchasing power) -- and they paid only a microscopic head tax.
[...]
Imagine a very popular, intelligent, conscientious, good-looking and responsible young man, obviously destined for a highly successful life. One day, having had a few drinks too many, he runs his car into a tree and ends up a paraplegic. Accidents happen not only in the lives of persons, but also in the lives of nations.
[...]
In Russia, the fall of the monarchy in March 1917 destroyed the center and object of all loyalty.
[...]
[T]he brilliant, scintillating, amiable intelligentsiya were the guiltiest of all. For generations they had undermined the fabric of Holy Mother Russia, either by siding with the Social Revolutionaries, the Narodnaya Volya, the Social Democrats, or by being "open-minded," by deriding the national heritage, by spreading polite doubt, by stupidly imitating Western patterns, ideas, and institutions that would never do for Russia.
The late master tells of his meetings with Alexander Kerenski in the notes:
I met the man twice in the United States. He was "nice" but, listening to his views, I could only pity him. George Katkov was absolutely right when he said that the Russian "liberals" who destroyed the old regime had no idea of the crime perpetrated, nor the least capacity to steer the ship of state on an even keel.
Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu's Russia, L'Empire des tsars et les Russes has been published in English as Empire of the Tsars and the Russians.
See also Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson's The Third Rome: Holy Russia, Tsarism and Orthodoxy.
Surly you jest sir. The Catholic ideal was one of centralization of power, or rather in two centers. The Emperor and the Pope. All power flowed from those two, and after Urban all power flowed from the Pope.
That doesn't mean the kings and emperors played along very well. Many a ruler tried to influence the papacy (Avingon for example), and more than a few popes let themselves be influenced. But to say that Catholicism is about decentralized power is disingenuous at best.
Perhaps you confuse power and authority. Authority is the right to say what should happen power is the ability to make it happen.
Viscount Bryce
has always been the guiding principle thought of Catholic political theory. While the authority of the Emporer and the Pope was very broad, their power was strictly limited. Your average King could hardly enforce his will outside the boundaries of his castle, he had to rely on the voluntary submission to his authority. The Emporer himself was tightly bound by the law as to what he could and could not do, the various kingdoms that made up the H.R.E. would not countance interference in their local affairs.
Rerum Novarum [1-15, Man and Property]
Rerum Novarum [16-30, The Church, the Rich, and the Poor]
Rerum Novarum [31-47, The State]
Rerum Novarum [48 - End, The Civil Society]
The Pope's spiritual power is limited by tradition: he cannot change anything that has already been established as an article of faith. His temporal power reached no farther than the Papal States, and today hardly exists at all other than the 108 acres of the Vatican.
The Holy Roman Emperor was more limited in his powers still. He had power only over the areas of defense and foreign relations for the empire, and even in these areas he was often ignored by the various member states that made up the empire.
When Louis XIV of France was centralizing power, his greatest enemy was Pope Innocent XI. When the Italian states were centralizing power under the Savoys, it was Pope Pius IX who opposed them. When Bismarck was centralizing power in Germany under Prussia, it was the same Pope who opposed him then as well. In Catholic Spain for example, each province had its own seperate government with which the king had to deal with seperately, and the traditional Spanish oath of allegiance to the king contained the condition that their faith and allegiance depended on the king obeying they laws.
On the other hand, the Protestant states were much more centralized, to begin with simply because the church was ruled by the state rather than being independent.
The whole reason England became Protestant was the self-aggrandizement of the British throne. Every absolute monarch had to get over the principled opposition of Rome before he could consolidate power. The notion of nation-state, accountable, in its better moments, to one political mechanism or another but never to a universal moral law, is antithetical to Catholicism.
You need to read more carefully. "It is lawful to refuse obedience to legitimate princes, and even to rebel against them." Error 63 only applies when the prince is a legitimate ruler. It says nothing enjoining anybody against the resistence of an illegitimate ruler. In most valid cases of rebellion, it occurs because the prince has done something that breached his legitimacy to rule. The remainder of the Syllabus is actually a very conservative and positive document, containing condemnations of communism, socialism, and attempts by the secular humanist left to purge all religion from the public sphere and seize the schools for anti-christian indoctrination.
John Paul II has made this call before, specifically mentioning (dare I mention it?) France as one of the chief wellsprings of a satanic spirit of "too cool for school". He specifically mentioned a couple of cities as being the most particular fonts of this rot -- Lyons, France, I think was one of them.
He was very specific in naming these places. I don't recall whether it was a book or an encyclical, I think the latter; but reflecting on that old memory the other day while watching some of the solemnities during the pope's vigil, the penny suddenly dropped that it may not be a complete coincidence that France is suddenly overrun with millions of violent, bloodyminded Arabs bent on persecuting Jews (for now). Now, whose fault is that?
The very people John Paul II pointed his crozier at.
Would you identify this politics with Hillary's "politics of identity"?
Identarianism has to do with dividing people into racial (in the European sense ie Polish or French or German etc.), nationalistic, sexist or other such groups and playing on feelings of exceptionalism or persecution in order to consolidate and hold power. This is, of course, the standard MO in democracies - pit one group against another.
I don't know anything about Ms. Clinton's "politics of identity". My guess, based on both the name given what I know about her, is yes its part of it.
If you catch flak, you must be over the target.
Your tag line, btw, reminds me of one of the Laws of the Twelve Tables:
Adversus hostem aeterna auctoritas esto.
Your tag line, btw, reminds me of one of the Laws of the Twelve Tables
PS 42:1 :
Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy
Used in the beginning of the Traditional Latin Mass.
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