Posted on 12/12/2004 8:54:32 AM PST by Land of the Irish
Cardinal Ratzinger
Discovers America
John Rao, Ph.D.
REMNANT COLUMNIST, New York
Cardinal Ratzinger has discovered America. Troubled by the total secularization of European life—reflected, most recently, in the battles over European unification and the continental chorus of criticism accompanying Professor Rocco Buttiglione’s reiteration of the Church’s teaching on homosexuality—the cardinal now suggests that the United States may perhaps offer the better model of Church-State relations for a desacralized world. According to a November 25, 2004, report on Zenit.com, the Cardinal, responding to the secularization of Europe, made the following comments on Vatican Radio:
I think that from many points of view the American model is the better one. Europe has remained bogged down. People who did not want to belong to a state church, went to the United States and intentionally constituted a state that does not impose a church and which simply is not perceived as religiously neutral, but as a space within which religions can move and also enjoy organizational freedom without being simply relegated to the private sphere… One can undoubtedly learn from the United States [and this] process by which the state makes room for religion, which is not imposed, but which, thanks to the state, lives, exists and has a public creative force. It certainly is a positive way.
This, of course, was the position of the Americanists of the 1890’s, who argued that things spiritual thrived in the United States to a degree that Europeans, passive and obedient to their manipulative governments, could never match. Cardinal Ratzinger has apparently arrived at a similar judgment in typical contemporary Catholic fashion: much later than everybody else, and naively uncritical.
It seems to be the fate of the post-conciliar Church to take up the banner of erroneous causes just as their poisons are beginning to become somewhat clearer to the rest of the outside world. I hope that His Eminence has been misquoted. If not, I pray that a deeper study of the system in the United States will reveal to him just how much the so-called religious character of America is, at best, heretical, and, at worst, a “spiritualized” secularism emerging from errors inherent in Protestant thought.
One still hears the argument that the threat of Americanism was exaggerated at the time of Leo XIII’s encyclicals against it, and that, in any case, it disappeared shortly thereafter. Certainly many people in Rome as well as the United States wanted to make believe this was the case, using the Modernist crisis, and undoubted American loyalty to the Papacy throughout it, as proof positive of the country’s orthodoxy. But the crises warned against by St. Pius X’s pontificate precisely involve the sort of philosophical, theological, and exegetical issues that Americanism sweeps aside as a horrendous waste of time and energy. Modernism’s intellectual character stood in the way of the Yankee pragmatism that simply wanted “to get the job done” without worrying about anything as fruitlessly divisive as unpaid thought. It was part and parcel of all that pretentious European cultural hoo-ha responsible for the Old World’s ideologies, revolutions, wars, and bad plumbing. Americans could recite the Creed and memorize catechisms better and in larger numbers than anywhere else. Confident in their orthodoxy and the Catholic-friendly character of their political and social system, they could “move on” to devote themselves to the practical realities of daily life. Criticisms of what the “practical life” might actually mean in the long run could be disregarded as unpatriotic, communist, and useless for short or long-term fund raising.
America, with Catholic Americans in lock-step, thus marched forward to nurture what St. Cyril of Alexandria called “dypsychia”: a two-spirited existence. On the one hand, it loudly proclaimed outward commitment to many traditional doctrines and “moral values” making it look spiritually healthy. On the other, it allowed “the practical life”, to which it was really devoted, to be defined by whatever the strongest and most successful men considered to be most important, silencing discussion of the gross contradiction by laughing such fruitless intellectual quibbles out of the parlors of a polite, common-sense guided society. It marched this approach into Europe in 1945, ironically linking up with one strain of Modernism that itself encouraged Catholic abandonment to the direction of anti-intellectual “vital energies” and “mystique”. Vitalism and Americanism in tandem then gave us Vatican II which, concerned only with “getting the practical pastoral job done”, has destroyed Catholic doctrine infinitely more effectively than any mere straightforward heretic like Arius could have done. Under the less parochial sounding name of Pluralism, it is the very force which Cardinal Ratzinger is criticizing inside the European Union, and which is now spreading high-minded “moral values”, “freedom”, and “democracy” around the globe through the work of well-paid mercenaries and five hundred pound bombs.
If, heaven forbid, Cardinal Ratzinger honestly believes that true religion prospers under our system better than under any other, he is urging upon Catholics that spiritual and intellectual euthanasia which Americanism-Vitalism-Pluralism infallibly guarantees. The fate of many conservative Catholic enthusiasts for this false God, in their response to the war in Iraq, should be one among an endless number of warnings to him. No one is more publicly committed to orthodoxy than they are. No one praises the name and authority of the Pope more than they do. And yet never have I heard so many sophistic arguments reducing to total emptiness both profound Catholic teachings regarding the innocence of human life, as well as the value of the intellect in understanding how to apply those teachings to practical circumstances, as I have heard coming from their circles.
May God save His Eminence from adulation of a system that waves the flag of moral righteousness and then tells us that we are simply not permitted to use our faith and reason to recognize a wicked, fraudulent war for the anti-Catholic disaster that it is; an evil that a number of Catholics are some day legitimately going to have to apologize for having helped to justify. May God save His Eminence from a religiosity which will eventually line “fundamentalist” Catholic “terrorists” against the wall along with other “divisive” enemies of the system who cannot live or die under a regime of dypsychia.
"Your lack of patriotism and disloyalty to our constitution is, frankly, disgusting. It is creepy. You all are like a bunch of latter-day Father Coughlins, deriding our constitution. Father Coughlin hated our constitution too, and looked fondly on his beloved Hitler and the Nazis."
I wonder how sinful it is to trash the reputation of a dead man? Is this a nack of the NeoCons?
Engage in the arguments as presented. Dr. Rao is right on. Does a Catholic have to hold "de Fide" that the American constitution is the best form of government? How can you not see our society disintegrating before your very eyes? Have you ever read Church teaching (a la Leo XIII0) condemning freedom of religion and freedom of the press? That IS Catholic teaching--NOT the Masonic U.S. constitution.
Grey Ghost II has not been praising the Catholic monarchies of Belgium and Spain. You are confusing him with other posters. He simply doubts that American democracy is as great as its defenders claim.
Contemporary Belgium and Spain are obviously not everything that traditional monarchists such as myself would like them to be. I said in my first post on this thread that the last significant example of the kind of monarchy we are advocating was the Austro-Hungarian empire, which fell in 1918. So it is not fair to attack traditional monarchists on the basis of contemporary examples when our ideas have been ignored for 86 years. Belgium in fact was founded as a liberal constitutional monarchy in 1831, so has never been a Catholic Monarchy in the medieval, pre-Revolutionary sense. Spain has had many upheavals, with a long history of vicious left-wing anti-clericalism tied to anti-monarchism, that have led to things being the way they are today.
Countries such as Belgium and Spain have legalized abortion etc. because they are essentially democracies and a majority of the people want to do so, not because they are constitutional monarchies. As I already pointed out, in Belgium this was done against the King's wishes, though you are correct that King Albert II is apparently not as conservative as his late brother.
However, it should be noted that Luxembourg and Liechtenstein are contemporary Catholic monarchies which are still more conservative than many other European countries.
Why are you buying into Protestant and secular myths about the Spanish Inquisition? Most historians no longer do.
A New Look at the Spanish Inquisition
As a person of partially Jewish descent myself I am not entirely comfortable with the expulsion of the Jews either. However we have to look at this in the context of the times, when as you say the Catholic monarchs had just fought a war to reclaim Spain from the Muslims, and at least some Jews had been in league with the Muslims. People in 1492 did not regard "anti-Semitism" and "racism" with the horror that we do today; we should not judge them by 21st-century standards. I don't think any of the supporters of the canonization of Queen Isabella would advocate expelling Jews from Spain today.
The Emperor Joseph was one of your beloved Hapsburgs, and he went about closing monasteries nearly as ruthlessly as Henry VIII. He believed in regulating the Catholic Church in accordance with his "enlightened philosophe" ideas (and the leader of the philosophes, Voltaire, by the way had lovely things to say about the Church, such as "Ecrasez l'Infame". The problem with the French Revolution was that it, unlike the American Revolution, did not give full freedom to the Catholic Church. The Church is best when independent of the state, and two great English saints and martyrs named Thomas both died in the great cause of independence of the Church from the state. I would also say about the Hapsburgs that they often intervened in papal elections, and indeed claimed a right to veto. And the Hapsburgs certainly did not fight to the finish to return the Protestantized north of the Holy Roman Empire from returning to the Catholic fold, but compromised after the Thirty Years' War, so they didn't do the best job of preserving the Church in the Reformation either.
"The Church is best when independent of the state, and two great English saints and martyrs named Thomas both died in the great cause of independence of the Church from the state."
This is in fact a condemned heresy. Have you ever read the Syllabus of Errors, Pope Leo XIII's encylicals, and Pius XI's encyclicals on the Kingship of Christ? Evidently not. The statement you cite above is heretical.
The constitution is a piece of paper - get over it. It is that constitution which has allowed nearly 40 million children to be aborted in the US. I never said junk the constitution. I just don't worship it as you do.
Father Coughlin hated our constitution too, and looked fondly on his beloved Hitler and the Nazis.
Typical neo-con argument...when your argument lacks any merit, bring up the Nazis.
Dear Grey Ghost II,
"It is that constitution which has allowed nearly 40 million children to be aborted in the US."
That's a stretch. In fact, that's part of the problem. The Consitution doesn't require a legal regime of abortion on demand. Seven black-robed idiots required it.
Even many pro-aborts privately admit that Roe is bad constitutional law.
sitetest
I never said they did.
How can you not see our society disintegrating before your very eyes?
The United States is probably the most religion-friendly country in Western civilization in the present day. Europe and Canada are much further gone down the path of secularism and indeed persecution of the Church and Christianity. Current day Europe is utterly dechristianized and is morally corrupt and decadent. The United States has nothing to learn from present day Europe. We should hold to our Constitution and defend the freedom of religious exercise that has allowed the Church to prosper here for two hundred yearss
Have you ever read Church teaching (a la Leo XIII0) condemning freedom of religion and freedom of the press? That IS Catholic teaching--NOT the Masonic U.S. constitution.
Dignitatis Humanae is also magisterial teaching. Leo XIII has to be understood in the context of the times, and his teachings to some extent are not universal but apply to the society of the times. He was up against liberal regimes that as a matter of policy were persecuting the Church, and the alternative of legitimate Catholic monarchies was readily available still, at least in southern Europe (not really anywhere else, though). This is a different time. As a confessional Catholic state is not going to protect the Church or Church doctrine in the modern world, it is impractical to hold that up as anything other than an abstract ideal. The Church is best protected in the current religion-unfriendly society by strong guarantees of freedom of religion. Also, the essence of the teaching of Leo XIII was that one does not have a moral right to embrace error. However, it is longstanding Church teaching (the father Lactantius wrote of it) that one should not be coerced in matters of conscience. As for the Constitution being "Masonic", I can only roll my eyes and ask you not to pass me any of the kool-aid you are drinking. I'm glad to know that you are disloyal to our constitution and duly established legitimate government.
Emperor Joseph II was influenced by the ideas of the "Enlightenment," which also contributed to the American revolution. You are painting yourself into a corner of contradiction when you denounce the effects of the Enlightenment in Europe but simultaneously reject any criticism of the American constitution.
In a long line of Habsburg rulers, Joseph II, who only ruled for ten years, was the ONLY ONE who could possibly be considered anti-clerical. The Habsburg dynasty also produced great defenders of the Church such as Emperor Charles V, King Philip II of Spain, Empress Maria Theresa, and the recently beatified Emperor Karl. Charles V's illegitimate son Don Juan of Austria led the Catholic forces to victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571. For centuries, the Habsburgs acted as guardians of Western Catholic Civilization against the Muslims. They deserve better than to be trashed by ungrateful Americanist Catholics.
In 1648 Europe had been devastated by three decades of religious warfare. It is hardly surprising that at that point the Habsburgs felt that thirty years of war was enough.
The Habsburg involvement in papal elections was a decisive factor in the election of Pope St. Pius X in 1903, one of the greatest popes in Church history.
But the Constitution did not prevent them from doing so, did it? Certainly the Founders never imagined that one day the Supreme Court would legislate abortion on demand. But the fact that the Constitution does not provide any mechanism for restraining the power of ambitious judges must be considered a flaw.
You can argue all you want, correctly, that Roe vs. Wade is a perversion of the Constitution. But that won't change the fact that it happened under the Constitution, which remains the law of the land.
Dear royalcello,
"Emperor Joseph II was influenced by the ideas of the 'Enlightenment,' which also contributed to the American revolution. You are painting yourself into a corner of contradiction when you denounce the effects of the Enlightenment in Europe but simultaneously reject any criticism of the American constitution."
Ah, but I don't think that anyone here is requiring that we believe that constitutional republics are ordained by God as the only or the divinely-annointed form of government. At least I'm not. I gave up on that notion before I was 20.
The examples of Joseph II or Henry VIII show that a bad Catholic monarch can do a lot of damage in a hurry to the Church and Her children, in a short period of time, without the need for revolution or overturning the entire social order.
Thus, France, with her Revolution, brought egregious harm to the Church and Her children, but that revolution was pretty darned thorough-going. On the other hand, Henry was able to steal millions of Catholics from their Church without enduring war, revolution, and complete social disintegration.
That is part of the weakness of Catholic monarchy. As you've seen, I agree that Catholic monarchy has strengths, but this is a real weakness - when the Catholic monarch goes bad.
Civil government is humanly-derived, whether republic, monarchy, or totalitarian dictatorship. Thus, civil government is prone to the effects of original sin. The American Constitution is pretty good. For the efforts of men. It's done a pretty good job for a while, and I think it will likely continue to do a better job than most for at least a little while longer. And if God should bless us with a profound repentance in our nation, it could do a pretty good job for quite a while longer.
Civil government can only be as good as the citizens represented by it. It can be worse than that, but it can't be better. There are forms of government that "underperform" their citizenries (Iraq under Saddam), but none that outperform them.
sitetest
I don't contradict myself in any way at all. There is a world of difference between the Enlightenment in the Anglo-Saxon world, including the American Revolution, and the French Voltairian and Rousellian influenced one. As I said, the key difference is that the American Revolution truly instituted freedom of religion for all, whereas the French instituted freedom of religion for everyone except the Catholics, who were in fact persecuted. That is an argument in favor of the American constitution, not against it. I don't trash the Hapsburgs, nor am I an "Americanist" as you want to trash me as. I just don't see them as a panacea for everything, and particularly not in the present day. In the present day, democratic elections are a much more rational means of legitimizing and changing government than hereditary monarchy. I simply do not think the world of Metternich is applicable today. Having always been a traditionalist at heart, I grew up with a profound attachment to European history and customs and the tradition and pageantry of the British monarchy. However, the behavior of the House of Windsor over the past couple of decades has made a confirmed republican of me. These are not people that I would choose to look up to or put on a pedastal. I don't really like them as persons. And I think that historically there must be something seriously wrong with European culture since it produced fascism, communism, and the secular dechristianized society that exists there today. As for monarchical symbols, we have the imperial presidency. I'm sure our presidents could cure scrofula if they touched its victims. I've always thought myself conservative and have recently read Russell Kirk's oeuvre, and was surprised by the anti-democratic strain in American conservative thought. While I can understand it at the beginning, I just don't buy it in more recent thinkers. None of the horrible consequences of democracy that were forecasted have panned out in the US. There has not been "mob rule". There has not been legal robbery or outlawing of private property (I don't subscribe to the Randian hypothesis that mere taxes are theft). Our democracy is a conservative element in the constitution, that has often corrected the elites' errors. Neither Reagan nor Bush would have been elected if elites ruled. Elites came up with communism and other evils. I'm sorry, I would rather trust the common people over time than some unelected king or elite-driven aristocrat any day. I also think the country benefits in the long run from the alternation of parties in power.
Dear royalcello,
"But the Constitution did not prevent them from doing so, did it?"
Hmmm... at no point have I suggested that the Constitution was a divinely-ordained document, perfect, given by Heaven. I only answered Grey Ghost II that it is not the Constitution that required the legal regime of abortion on demand. In fact, the Consitution actually permits that the states regulate abortion law, which they did for all of our history prior to 1973. Murder is usually a concern of state law, not of federal law.
Nonetheless, there are plenty of folks who would argue that pre-Roe, the argument could have been made that actually the Constitution does generally forbid abortion on demand. I'm not sure in the current environment the argument would go far, but at the very least, abortion on demand seems to violate at least the Fourteenth Amendment.
"But that won't change the fact that it happened under the Constitution, which remains the law of the land."
I would argue that Roe happened outside of the Constitution. And the Constitution does provide remedies for judicial overreach. Judges and justices may be removed from office, and entire legal questions may be removed from the jurisdiction of courts.
The problem isn't with the Constitution, the problem is with the men and women who serve in government, and their collective failure to do what is right. And that problem traces back to a citizenry that does not require its representatives to do what is right, and often applauds them when they do what is wrong.
sitetest
ME: Does a Catholic have to hold "de Fide" that the American constitution is the best form of government?
Unam: I never said they did.
ME: So the answer is "No." Catholics are not bound to believe your assertion that America is the ideal. That is good since Leo XIII condemns this "Americanist" idea in his encyclical. You just happen to believe it is "historically conditioned." So are your opinions. It is just that anyone who does not believe the U.S. to be the BEST, you subjectively label as "disloyal," "unpatriotic" and anything else that comes to your mind. Or should I say, sentiments?
ME: Have you ever read Church teaching (a la Leo XIII0) condemning freedom of religion and freedom of the press? That IS Catholic teaching--NOT the Masonic U.S. constitution.
Unam: Dignitatis Humanae is also magisterial teaching.
ME: Which must be read "in light of Tradition," not vice versa, per the Pope and Cardinal Ratzinger. It is also the lowest level of magisterial teaching authority.
Unam: Leo XIII has to be understood in the context of the times,
ME: Condemned proposition. This is called "historicism." Through and through.
Unam: ...and his teachings to some extent are not universal but apply to the society of the times.
ME: Sort of like... Dignitatis Humanae, huh? Only the 1960s are over, and the "times" that were being read THEN are quite different NOW, aren't they. I would say the "signs of the times" tell us something different than the utopian prognosticators in the 1960s.
Unam: He was up against liberal regimes that as a matter of policy were persecuting the Church, and the alternative of legitimate Catholic monarchies was readily available still, at least in southern Europe (not really anywhere else, though). This is a different time.
ME: With the same condemned principles as found in your assertions. When exactly do "the signs of the times" change? When do we know to be prognosticating for a different reading?
You have done NOTHING to rebut one iota of Dr. Rao's essay. Not one.
Let me let you in on something: Dignitatis Humanae was not UNIVERSAL, and is historically conitioned. It also reaffirms the "traditional teaching of the Church", directly the opposite of how you would have us read it.
The Contitution allows the 7 black-robed idots to make that decision....or maybe the supreme court acted illegally and the executive branch doesn't have the stomach to enforce the laws.
The "difference" is a matter of circumstance not idealogy.
The uprising of 1776, so the explanation goes, was a gesture of conservatism, in that with the help of "Nature's God" (by which could be meant only the God of the Christians), the "Founding Fathers" responded to tyrannical deviations from English constitutional tradition on the part of King George III and his sycophant Parliament; after their success at attaining independence, they gave us "a Republic, if you can keep it" (Benjamin Franklin). By contrast, continues the explanation, the French Revolution of 1789 was the demonic work of "Illuminated" Jacobins who, full of Voltaire, Rousseau, and the other "enlightened" thinkers whose theories were not worth the paper on which they were written, staged a murderous coup to replace Christianity with the "Goddess Reason," laying waste to people by the thousands before the dictator Napoleon restored "order" — his kind, of course. Usually, in these explanations, the accounts of the French Revolution are reliable: it was a murderous, power-grabbing, anti-Christian affair led by conspirators within the inner circles of Freemasonry, and the political theories it sought to enshrine are essentially worthless heaps of despotic egalitarian humanism.
The problem comes, however, in the claim that the American Revolution has no affinity with the events of 1789. One would never know that from reading American conservatives' accounts of this country's revolution, but that is because of facts that they do not either mention or even consider. In special regard to American Catholics, the myth of 1776-1789 dissimilarity is particularly pertinacious, on account of the fact that they have relied upon it through the generations to escape the stinging condemnations of the liberal ethic that thundered from Papal Encyclicals from about 1832 to 1950. Passing by such superficial likenesses as the fact that republics resulted from both revolutions, we shall concentrate here on the similitude of the guiding principles, which do much to account for the fact that today's America bears a much closer resemblance to 1789 France than it does to the America of 1776.
There is indeed a substantial similarity in the principles behind the two revolutions — both were motivated by the spirit of modern science and "fought and won for freedom and equality," observed the late Allan Bloom, a liberal scholar who supported traditional civic Americanist theory. His explanation makes the obnoxiously anti-Catholic spirit they share in common unmistakably clear.
Modernity is constituted by the political regimes founded on freedom and equality, hence on the consent of the governed, and made possible by a new science of nature that masters and conquers nature, providing prosperity and health. This was a self-conscious philosophical project, the greatest transformation of man's relations with his fellows and with nature ever affected.... [The French Revolution] was fought and won for freedom and equality, as were the English and American revolutions. It would seem to have completed the irresistible triumph of modern philosophy's project and to give a final proof of the theodicy of liberty and equality. (27)
... This project was a conspiracy, as d'Alembert said in the Preliminary Discourse of l'Encyclopédie, the premier document of the Enlightenment. It had to be, for, in order to have rulers who are reasonable, many of the old rulers had to be replaced, in particular all those whose authority rested upon revelation. The priests were the enemies, for they rejected the claim of reason and based politics and morals on sacred text and ecclesiastical authorities. The philosophers appeared to deny the very existence of God, or at least of the Christian God. The old order was founded on Christianity, and free use of reason simply could not be permitted within it, since reason accepts no authority above itself and is necessarily subversive. There was a public struggle for the right to rule; for, in spite of the modest demeanor of the philosophers, they at the very least require rulers who are favorable to them, who have chosen reason. The right to freedom of thought is a political right, and for it to exist, there must be a political order that accepts that right. (28)
... There is practically no contemporary regime that is not somehow a result of Enlightenment, and the best of the modern regimes — liberal democracy — is entirely its product. And throughout the world all men and all regimes are dependent on and recognize the science popularized by the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment inexorably defeated all opponents it targeted at the outset, particularly the priests and all that depends on them, by a long process of education that taught men, as Machiavelli put it, about "the things of this world." One need only read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Book V, on education, to see how the reform of universities, particularly the overcoming of the theological influence, was essential to the emergence of modern political economy and the regime founded on it.... The regime of equality and liberty, of the rights of man, is the regime of reason. (29) The "reason" to which Bloom referred is the defied "Reason," divorced from God, enthroned as its own master. Although Bloom wrote nothing about the role of the Masonic Lodges, these were the apostles of "Reason."
The similarity in 1776's and 1789's principles is traceable to their common philosophical ancestor, John Locke: he had a direct impact on the American revolutionaries, and a once-removed effect on the French Revolution via Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theories. Building upon a bogus idea invented by 16th century English theorist Thomas Hobbes, Locke taught that in a "state of nature," men were autonomous and free, a concept fully adopted by Rousseau — and which hardly has a place for God. Bloom explained:
These Columbuses of the mind [Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau] explored the newly discovered territory called the state of nature, where our forefathers all once dwelled, and brought the important news that by nature all men are free and equal, and they have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. This is the kind of information that causes revolutions because it pulls the magic carpet out from under the feet of kings and nobles. Locke and Rousseau agreed on these basics, which became the firm foundation of modern politics. Where they disagreed, the major conflicts within modernity were to occur. Locke was the great practical success; the new English and American regimes founded themselves according to his instructions. (30)
... Hobbes discovered an isolated individual whose life was "mean, nasty, brutish, and short".... Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau all found that one way or another nature led men to war, and that civil society's purpose was not to cooperate with a natural tendency in man toward perfection but to make peace where nature's imperfection causes war. The reports from the state of nature mixed bad news and good news. Perhaps the most important discovery was that there was no Garden of Eden [i.e. no such thing as Original Sin].... Man was not provided for at the beginning, and his current state is not a result of his sin, but of nature's miserliness. He is on his own. God neither looks after him nor punishes him. Nature's indifference to justice is a terrible bereavement for man.... but it is also a great liberation — from God's tutelage, from the claims of kings, nobles and priests, and from guilt or bad conscience.... And now, possessing the truth, [man] can be even freer to be himself and improve his situation. He can freely make governments that, untrammeled by mythical duties and titles to rule, serve his interests. (31)
"Enlightened" political science pushed God completely aside and declared a new first principle: Reason (and of course, Man who possessed it). Reason was said to be the province of everyone, equally. It was to cut through all the "myths" and concern itself with what "really" concerned man: self-preservation. Nature's notorious stinginess (which is a consequence of Original Sin) tended to impel men to war, but the "Enlightened" philosophers, most especially Locke, claimed to have a better solution: instead of "ganging up" on each other, men should unite to conquer the natural world, and thanks to Modern Science, they actually can. Those who made the greater efforts in this regard would reap the larger rewards — certainly not an un-Catholic idea of itself, but in this context of a supremacist individualism and naked materialism, it becomes one. The anti-Catholic spirit of industrial capitalism is unmasked by Bloom — despite his sympathies in its favor — with these comments:
The old commandment that we love our brothers made impossible demands on us, demands against nature, while doing nothing to provide for real needs. What is required is not brotherly love or faith, hope and charity, but self-interested rational labor.... From the point of view of man's well-being and security, what is needed is not men who practice the Christian virtues or those of Aristotle, but rational (capable of calculating their interest) and industrious men. Their opposite numbers are not the vicious, wicked or sinful, but the quarrelsome and the idle. This may include priests and nobles as well as those who most obviously spring to mind. (32) We see therein a portrait of American cultural "values" induced by capitalism. The "sinners" according to this new standard: those who upset the status quo, especially by questioning its basic principles; those who do not produce material things. Priests, nobles, intellectuals — worthless. That's the American Way.
This capitalistic vision of life, in turn, is the basis of politics. "Government exists," said Bloom in explaining Locke, "to protect the product of men's labor, their property, and therewith life and liberty." This is the origin of the idea of individualistic and natural "rights" which are allegedly antecedent to civil society and the defense of which is said to be the very raison d'être of civil society. We could not have made the point any better than did the late scholar of Chicago: this whole view of rights "is an invention of modern philosophy," (33) that ultimate basis of all self-invented "realities." Furthermore, this notion of rights "is our only principle of justice. From our knowledge of our rights flows our acceptance of the duties to the community that protects them" (34) — the exact reverse of the Catholic idea that rights depend on duties (as was explained earlier). Yet this is the Lockean idea of looking after the common good. Instead of promoting virtue, it is government's place to promote an "enlightened" self-interest that benefits everyone, or at least, most everyone — individually.
Thus far were Rousseau and Locke agreed; (35) they also shared the idea that when men gave up their individual sovereignties in the "social contract," they were subsumed into the community's legislative function (which acted in the name of the people), an act that was irrevocable once done. This was an idea that was adopted by the French revolutionaries but rejected by the Americans, who were not only concerned with regal tyranny but all kinds, including that of legislatures and mobs. Likewise, the Americans were far keener on the Lockean capitalist ethic than were the French, who transferred their centralized, bureaucratic ways from the King to the Assembly (and eventually, the Directory and Napoleon); collectivist "socialism" found a receptive audience in France much sooner than it did over here. Surely, Locke was not the only influence in either revolution — both 1776 and 1789 have other ancestors as well. English constitutionalism and Puritan "covenant theology" seen through Lockean eyes largely account for our uprising, whereas in addition to Locke-Rousseau, the French revolutionaries were inspired by a virulent hatred of Altar and Throne, those twin pillars of Christian society.
We see in the previous lines some clues as to what really made the two revolutions differ, to the extent that there is a difference. The Americans cared for principles only insofar as they had seemingly beneficial practical consequences: thus, they went fully for Locke's capitalism and were slow to realize the full implications of a rhetoric of individual "rights" and "equality." The relative ease of the American Revolution (vis-a-vis the French) is owed simply to the fact that Americans were far more predisposed to a regime based upon "liberty" and "equality" — two concepts that people here were ready for thanks to Protestant individualism. There were no major institutional obstacles to such a regime. Up until the early years of the Revolution, the issue was not so much opposition to "the Crown" as it was against its current occupant --he was seen as an anomaly among English kings in his unusually heavy involvement in colonial affairs. Even when the American attitude turned against monarchy in principle, though, the impact therefrom was blunted by the fact that this was a case of a colony severing its allegiance to a king several thousand miles away.
More significantly, there was no Altar to overthrow in America — established Protestant religions are comparatively lightweight affairs, since any of them truly are just as "good" as any of the others, and also since the only hope for American national consensus lay in religious liberty. But do not think that the dispositions against the Altar were not there — they most certainly were. Any number of quotations of John Adams (the "Atlas of Independence") or Thomas Jefferson can be used to support this point. Furthermore, any good history of the American Revolution will explain that one reason why the Quebec Act of 1774 was considered one of the "Intolerable Acts" was that it granted to Catholics in Canada an exemption from the Penal Laws — which drove the already rabble-rousing New Englanders to fury. Official letters of the First Continental Congress to George III and to "the People of England," written by John Jay on October 21, 1774, openly deplored this provision. (Curiously, when this Act was cited as one of the grievances against George III in the Declaration of Independence, this aspect of it was not mentioned.) The reason why American rhetoric against Catholics cooled down after 1776 was that the revolutionaries were desperate for aid and had hopes of getting it from France's King Louis XVI, which they did. (For which service, he was "rewarded" with his own deposition and execution.)
On the part of the French revolutionaries, they had to completely destroy and reinvent the social order if they were to establish a liberal egalitarian regime in hitherto-Catholic France: hence the all-out war against Altar, Throne, and the nobility. Indeed, the "ease" of 1776 compared to the torture of 1789 is itself a telling sign of what kind of culture, Catholic or Protestant, best disposes for a liberal social order. Not only did the devils of 1789 have to totally reinvent society, their French penchant for the rigorous following-through of principles to their logical consequences made sure that they would lose no time in carrying their new ideas to extremes. Their view of individual liberty, while not perfectly following the Lockean-American model, was nevertheless truly radical in that the 1789 revolt was not just against Throne and Altar, but explicitly against God Himself, the Source and quintessence of authority. "Equality," too, was most rigorously applied: by 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville could observe that in Europe (where all revolutions followed the 1789 model), there were already people who were advocating the extreme kind of feminism that only in the last generation has become prominent in this country. (36) (The third buzzword of the French Revolution, "Fraternity," though, is an interesting anachronism, in that it reflects a uniquely Christian concept while denying the common Fatherhood of God.)
About the French Revolution, though, the central point to remember is this: because of the logical rigor of the French, little time was necessary to enable a true perspective on a society run under liberal principles. In all their ugly squalor, the fruits of liberalism were visible: mob anarchy, cutthroat competition, and a murderous suppression of the truth. Extreme individualism gave way to Robespierre and Napoleon. It is a picture of what has admittedly taken some time for America to become — but become it has: even in America, logic has to win out sometime. Nobody knows about English common law or Puritan "covenant theology" anymore. Hardly anyone believes nowadays that "separation of Church and State" merely refers to the lack of a formal State alliance with a religious group. The young generation of today understands "liberty" as "the freedom to do as I damn $#!@ing please," period — the "rights" of others simply don't enter into the equation. And people are rapidly losing belief that "equality" has its limitations, given the acceptance of women in the military, "househusbands," professed sodomites with their TV comedy programs, and — lest we forget — "the People's Princess," Disco Di, the only royalty Americans (and other moderns) can really relate to.
So the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789 are much more closely kin than American conservatives, especially the Catholics among them, are given to believe. Whatever their other influences, they share the same dubious ancestry of John Locke's political philosophy, which is a most significant factor in the mentality of both revolutions. Particular circumstances differed between the two, but behind each one was the same assumption about the "state of nature," in which men were free, equal, and only interested in earthly survival (all else being myth). To improve the prospects of comfortable living, men form governments that exist to protect antecedent individual "rights" and promote their concept of the "common good" through "enlightened" self-interest. The Catholics, Puritans, and other religiously-minded American Revolutionaries did not share in the Locke theory's godlessness, but there were enough of his ideas with which they did agree to get them to sign onto a revolution that sang the same tune of "liberty," "equality," and the "rights of man," that was taken up by the bloodthirsty Jacobin-led mobs in France in 1789 and, after some 200 years, has produced like results.
A Catholic Response to Certain Myths of Civic Americanism You've been suckered by revisionist history.
There is a difference between the ordinary and universal magisterium and the ordinary magisterium. To the extent the Pope is not making an infallible dogmatic definition, but teaching in an encyclical, then the teaching is infallible and part of the deposit of faith only if it is teaching a concept that has been taught implicitly or explicitly always and everywhere in the Church (the Vincentian canon). The mere ordinary magisterium is not irreformable, and it very well may apply to specific circumstances, but not others. I agree with your general statement on interpreting Vatican II documents in light of tradition, but I don't think that Leo XIII's statements trump or negate the teaching on a human right to be free of coercion, nor do I think Leo XIII was speaking for all time, except to the extent that he is saying that no one has a moral right to embrace error nor does any state have the right to interfere in the freedom of the Church. Leo XIII did not tell American Catholics that they should subvert the US Constitution, and I think American should be loyal to that Constitution, as a Catholic confessional state is simply not possible here, given our traditions and our political system. In the current climate, when Catholic confessional states are simply not a practical option, the Church gains the most from a regime of religious freedom. The examples of contemporary Europe and Canada show than any marriage of Church and state in this day and age will only be to the detriment of the Church, its teaching and its practice. The elites that will ultimately run your autocratic governments will not look kindly on a Church that condemns abortion and homosexual activity and marriage.
Dear Grey Ghost II,
"...or maybe the supreme court acted illegally and the executive branch doesn't have the stomach to enforce the laws."
To me, that is how it seems. And not just the executive, but the legislature, as well. The Constitution explicitly prescribes mechanisms to remedy an overreaching judiciary.
But no one has had the guts to do it.
That's not a failure of the Constitution.
sitetest
Your language is explicitly Jacobin, and you don't even know it. That's sad.
Thank you for the aritcle, which I will have to read later. However, the Enlightenment was not entirely bad. It brought many benefits in terms of human and civil rights and freedoms. I'm sorry if you think those things in general to be bad things. And obviously one can see from the effects that the American and French Revolutions were completely different. The first did not result in the persecutions of Catholics and was relatively non-violent, whereas the latter did and was violent. The former established a stable and flourishing constitutional republic that has lasted to this day. France had an unstable series of regimes throughout the 19th Century and still to this day, while finally having settled down to a stable democratic constitution, has a troublesome history of state involvement and management of the Church in a fairly anti-Catholic way. I've always held against Jefferson that he was so enthusiastic about the French Revolution, sharing my fellow New Englander John Adams' dismay at the violence and immorality thereof. But Jefferson did not entirely have his way, and he was more moderate in power than out. I think it is incontrovertible that there were fundamental differences between the two revolutions, and I certainly would not condemn our glorious constitution because of the evils of the French. I just cannot believe the fact that sane Americans, having witnessed in the last century the evils of fascism and communism and having enjoyed the benefits of our peaceful, free and prosperous society, reject the United States constitution and the American Revolution. Frankly, I would have to say that such is not a conservative position in the American context, but rather an extreme radical position.
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