Notes: Tuesday, May 26-Monday, August 10, 2015 (part 1 of 2)

1. Some items connected with the 2015 Australian Federal Budget

1.1 Mr. Morrison on workforce participation as the whole, or at least the principal, purpose for Federal subsidies of childcare

See the transcript of Mr. Neil Mitchell's interview of The Hon. Scott Morrison M.P. (Federal Minister for Social Services) on May 1, 2015, downloaded from Mr. Morrison's Ministerial website:

http://scottmorrison.dss.gov.au/transcripts/3aw-with-neil-mitchell-1may2015

(Mr. Morrison's statements came to my attention via the article "More help for more work as childcare subsidies tightened" by Mr. David Crowe, dated May 2, 2015, downloaded from The Australian's website:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/more-help-for-more-work-as-childcare-subsidies-tightened/story-fntfa2d0-1227330846433

or the version printed under the headline "More help for more work", by Mr. David Crowe and Ms Tessa Akerman, on p. 2 in "THE NATION" section of The Weekend Australian, May 2-3, 2015, Second Edition, No. 15718, ISSN 1038-8761, published by Nationwide News Pty. Limited.)

Labels: childcare, economics, family, tax, work

1.2 "Tony Abbott’s families package is not child-friendly. The government will punish mothers financially if they can’t find a job, don’t have time to study or prefer to care for their own kids while they are young."

The quotation in that headline comes from the opinion piece "Budget 2015: Families package punishes children", by Ms Natasha Bita, dated May 13, 2015, downloaded from (behind the paywall at) The Australian's website:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/budget-2015/budget-2015-families-package-punishes-children/story-fntfbo7f-1227352625754

Labels: childcare, economics, family, tax, work

1.3 "Big families at present qualify for a supplement for their fourth and subsequent children, but from July 1, 2016, will lose $321 a year for their fourth child and every subsequent child."

The quotation in that headline comes from the article "Federal budget 2015: Large families to lose out amid big boost to childcare funding", by Ms Judith Ireland, dated May 12, 2015, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/federal-budget-2015-large-families-to-lose-out-amid-big-boost-to-childcare-funding-20150512-1mzhke.html?skin=text-only

Labels: family, tax

1.4 "The Australian Government will also establish a $50 million competitive gender equality fund to strengthen gender equality and women's economic empowerment in our region."

The quotation in that headline comes from the media release "2015 Foreign Affairs Budget", dated May 12, 2015, downloaded from the Ministerial website of The Hon. Julie Bishop M.P. (Minister for Foreign Affairs):

http://foreignminister.gov.au/releases/Pages/2015/jb_mr_150512.aspx

(The gender equality fund came to my attention via an opinion piece by Ms Miranda Devine.) See also the following webpages at H.M.A. Government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade website:

• "Gender equality and empowering women and girls":
  http://dfat.gov.au/aid/topics/investment-priorities/gender-equality-empowering-women-girls/Pages/gender-equality-empowering-women-girls.aspx

• "Australia's assistance for gender equality":
  http://dfat.gov.au/aid/topics/investment-priorities/gender-equality-empowering-women-girls/gender-equality/Pages/australias-assistance-for-gender-equality.aspx

• "Gender initiatives":
  http://dfat.gov.au/aid/topics/investment-priorities/gender-equality-empowering-women-girls/gender-equality/Pages/gender-initiatives.aspx

Note the reference at the second of those webpages to the Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development programme; more information on that programme can be found at the third of those webpages and in item 1 of this "Notes" post.

Note also that, according to Ms Bishop recorded in Hansard (Tuesday, June 16, 2015, 1328-1333 hours), "initiatives supported under the gender equality fund will complement gender activities currently funded through country and regional programs"—complement rather than replace, I take it. (And see the rest of that portion of Hansard for further information on Australia's overseas Feminist propaganda.)

Labels: feminism, foreign affairs

1.5 The Jobs for Families childcare package is "going to be financed by cuts to the only govern-ment support for single income families, and that’s FTB"; (Family Tax Benefit part B "is currently paid until a family’s youngest child turns 16" but is "set to cease when the youngest child turns six; substantive-ly dismantling the Howard government’s support for single-income households")

The quotations, including the dashes where a word spanned two lines, in that headline come from the article "Budget move on child care ‘punishes those who look after kids at home’", by Mr. Robert Hiini, on p. 5 of the Sydney Catholic Weekly, May 17, 2015, Vol. 73, No. 4775, published by The Catholic Press Newspaper Company Pty. Ltd., apparently not available online; the first quotation was attributed to Ms Terri Kelleher of the Australian Family Association.

Labels: childcare, economics, family, tax

1.6 "Shorten backs plans to abolish tax break for non-working spouses"

The quotation in that headline is the headline of an article by Ms Katherine Towers, dated June 9, 2015, downloaded from The Australian's website:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/shorten-backs-plans-to-abolish-tax-break-for-non-working-spouses/story-fn59niix-1227389648458

See also the article "Labor cuts deal with Coalition to end tax break for spouses", by Mr. Phillip Coorey, dated June 8, 2015 (updated June 9, 2015), downloaded from The Australian Financial Review's website:

http://www.afr.com/news/policy/tax/labor-cuts-deal-with-coalition-to-end-tax-break-for-spouses-20150609-ghiqfm

A transcript of the interview in which The Hon. Bill Shorten M.P. (Leader of H.M.A. Opposition) confirmed Labor's support for the policy in question is available under the headline "Doorstop: Melbourne – Retirement of Chris Judd; Tony Abbott’s cuts to Family Tax Benefit payments Dependent Spouse Offset", provided by Mr. Kieran Barns-Jenkins, dated Tuesday, June 9, 2015, at Mr. Shorten's website:

http://billshorten.com.au/doorstop-melbourne-retirement-of-chris-judd-tony-abbotts-cuts-to-family-tax-benefit-payments-dependent-spouse-offset

Labels: family, marriage, tax

2. Some recent Gay-related data

2.1 Some recent data on the Queer proportion of the population

2.1.1 "In 2014, over half a million people or 3.0% of the adult population identified as gay, lesbian or 'other'. This includes 268,000 people who identified as gay or lesbian and 255,000 people who identified as having an 'other' sexual orientation."

The quotation in that headline comes from the webpage "General Social Survey: Summary Results, Australia, 2014" (catalogue no. 4159.0), dated June 29, 2015, downloaded from the Australian Bureau of Statistics's website:

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/4159.0

Labels: demography, G.L.B.T.

2.1.2 Judging by the latest version of the HILDA Statistical Report, between 1.8 and 4.8% of men are Gay and between 1 and 4.7% of women are Lesbian.

See p. 85 of The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey: Selected Findings from Waves 1 to 12, by Associate Prof. Roger Wilkins, released on Wednesday, July 15, 2015, ISSN 2205-0566 (Online), © Commonwealth of Australia 2015, downloaded from the HILDA Survey webpage:

https://www.melbourneinstitute.com/hilda/

or go straight hither:

https://www.melbourneinstitute.com/downloads/hilda/Stat_Report/statreport_2015.pdf

Labels: demography, G.L.B.T.

2.2 "International research has shown that compared with the general population, HIV-negative Gay and Bisexual men are up to 20 times more likely to be diagnosed with anal cancer"

The quotation in that headline comes from the article "Anal Cancer Webinar Reduces Stigma Around Overlooked Disease", dated July 1, 2015, downloaded from acon's website:

http://www.acon.org.au/about-acon/latest-news/#anal-cancer-webinar

Labels: G.L.B.T., health

3. Australia refused to support a recent U.N. Human Rights Commission resolution "because it ascribed rights to the family as a unit instead of to individuals and failed to recognise the diversity of families, including same-sex families."

See the article "Julie Bishop makes stand for same-sex families", by Mr. Dennis Shanahan, dated July 18, 2015, downloaded from The Australian's website:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/julie-bishop-makes-stand-for-same-sex-families/story-fn59niix-1227446546090

(That article came to my attention via the version printed on pp. 1 f., under the headlines "Bishop’s stand for same-sex families" for the first part and "Bishop in same-sex stand at UN" for the second, by the same author, in "THE NATION" pages of The Weekend Australian, July 18-19, 2015, Second Edition, No. 15784, ISSN 1038-8761, published by Nationwide News Pty. Limited.)

Labels: family, feminism, foreign affairs, G.L.B.T., human rights, U.N.O.

4. "Archbishop [Stephen ]Langton whole­heartedly embraced the scriptural thesis that civil government is not God’s original plan for humankind but rather a result of original sin."

The quotation, excluding my square-bracketed interpolation, in that headline comes from the article "MAGNA CARTA AT 800 Magna Carta understood as its drafter intended it to be", by Dr. Augusto Zimmermann, dated August 1, 2015, downloaded from News Weekly's website:

http://newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=57014

Labels: law, morals, States

5. A couple of recent items regarding H.H. The Pope

5.1 One of the official presenters of Laudato si' at the press conference for that Encyclical's presentation was "Professor John[ or Hans Joachim] Schellnhuber, founder and director of the Institute for Climate Impact in Potsdam, Federal Republic of Germany, representing the field of natural sciences, with which the encyclical enters into profound dialogue, and who was recently appointed as an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences".

The quotation, excluding my square-bracketed interpolation, in that headline comes from the item "Press conference for the presentation of the Encyclical Laudato si'", dated June 18, 2015, in the Holy See Press Office's Vatican Information Service's daily e-mail bulletin of June 18, 2015, Year XXII, No. 114; that item is also available under the same headline, with the same date, at NEWS.VA:

http://www.news.va/en/news/press-conference-for-the-presentation-of-the-encyc

H.H. The Pope's appointment of Prof. Schellnhuber as an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of (the) Sciences was reported in the item "Other Pontifical Acts", dated June 17, 2015, in the Holy See Press Office's Vatican Information Service's daily e-mail bulletin of June 17, 2015, Year XXII, No. 113; that item is also available under the headline "Pontifical Acts - 17 June", with the same date, at NEWS.VA:

http://www.news.va/en/news/other-pontifical-acts-677

Labels: Francis Bergoglio

5.2 "The Pope receives B'nai B'rith International and recalls the work of St. John XXIII and St. John Paul II to promote friendship between Jews and Christians"

The quotation in that headline is the headline of an item dated June 25, 2015 in the Holy See Press Office's Vatican Information Service's daily e-mail bulletin of June 25, 2015, Year XXII, No. 119; that item is also available under the same headline, with the same date, at NEWS.VA:

http://www.news.va/en/news/the-pope-receives-bnai-brith-international-and-rec

Labels: B'nai B'rith, Francis Bergoglio, Freemasons, Jews

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Lawrence, Martyr, A.D. 2015

Mr. Muehlenberg on the State: Its origin, powers, and form of government

http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2010/06/15/christians-and-the-state/

Mr. Muehlenberg begins by asking several questions about the State, and then writes in his second paragraph that

But there are some basic biblical principles that can be drawn upon here as we seek to address these concerns. The first and most basic principle is that God in fact created the institution of the state. It was his idea of restraining sinful humans in a fallen world.

Mr. Muehlenberg is quite right to say that God created the institution of the State--which (creation) can be known not just from the relevant Scriptural passages but also from unaided reason--but he is wrong to say that God created the State in order to restrain sinful humans in the Fallen world, which would imply that, had the Fall not occured, there would have been no States. As St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church, teaches, with accompanying proofs, in Chapter 7 of his magnificent De Laicis, or, The Treatise on Civil Government,

even if servile subjection began after the sin of Adam, nevertheless there would have been political government even while man was in the state of innocence.
[http://catholicism.org/de-laicis.html/7]

Mr. Muehlenberg invokes Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:13-17 and says that "[t]hese passages tell us that the state is from God to maintain justice and punish evil", which is true, but the State is not only for the maintenance of justice and punishment of evil; indeed, those passages speak respectively of (the prince as) "God's minister to you, for good" (source) and of "governors as sent by [the king] for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of the good" (source). The State's purpose is the common good, not merely "a modicum of peace, order and justice, and the protection of basic human rights"/"a degree of order, justice and civility in a fallen world", as one might infer from Mr. Muehlenberg's post. To be fair, Mr. Muehlenberg notes in his conclusion that "[i]n this very brief and sketchy outline [he] ha[s] only scratched the surface of what is a rather complex discussion", but the common good is such an elementary thing to mention in any discussion of the basic theory of the State that I do not think that this is a good enough excuse.

And when Mr. Muehlenberg writes that

In a fallen world all we can hope for is a modicum of peace, order and justice, and the protection of basic human rights. We certainly should not expect secular utopian ideologies to be of any use.

he is proposing a false dilemma. It is not as though there is a binary choice between a nightwatchman State on the one hand and a Nazi/Communist-type state on the other; between the two extremes of the Social Reign of Pilate and the Social Reign of Barabbas there is the Social Reign of Christ.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
16.VI.2010

Fr. Flader on the morality of tyrannicide

http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/article.php?classID=3&subclassID=59&articleID=5789&class=Features&subclass=Question%20Time

In his weekly Question Time column in the Sydney Catholic Weekly yesterday, The Rev. Fr. John Flader dealt with the conditions under which tyrannicide is ethical. Although the first 90% or so of the article seemed to deal with the topic quite well, his concluding remarks contained something rather strange:

Significantly, [the Dominican moral theologian Fr. Germain] Grisez, in giving the criterion to be followed when one is unsure of the morality of a particular course of action, gives the example of Germans “uncertain about the moral permissibility of killing a tyrant, yet convinced that if such killing is permissible, they had an obligation to participate in a plot to assassinate Hitler” (Ibid, p. 287).

Grisez concludes that if such people, although in doubt, thought it more likely to be true that killing Hitler was permissible, they could proceed. All in all, it seems that Hitler’s regime was one where a good case could be made for armed resistance to authority.
[my emphasis]

But isn’t this the error of probablism? Surely one needs to have ascertained beyond reasonable doubt, not merely on the balance of probability, that tyrannicade is the right thing to do before one embarks on that course of action?

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, Apostles, A.D. 2009

The long shadow of Prof. Maritain

http://www.smh.com.au/national/obituaries/the-model-of-a-multiculturalist-20090524-bjf4.html?page=-1

In last Sunday’s Sydney Catholic Weekly I read an obituary, which appeared originally in The Sydney Morning Herald, of the late Prof. Jerzy Zubrzycki. The obituary contained the following interesting tidbit:

Karol Wojtyla, later John Paul II, and Zubrzycki attended a students' summer camp together in 1938, seeking solutions for a world on the brink of war. They were influenced by Jacques Maritain, a leftish French philosopher who tried to apply the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas to modern problems, leaving room at the apex of the sciences for Christian theology.

The late Mr. Michael Davies had a trenchant exposition of the socio-political errors of Maritainism in his excellent The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty. For Maritainists, the State is not a juridical and moral person; it is just a specialised portion of society which is entrusted with the care of the public peace, and possibly also of natural morality (but not of truths of Faith knowable only by supernatural Revelation), while leaving the populace directly responsible for the elements (the spiritual elements, at least) of the common good not contained in what Dignitatis Humanæ called the ‘just public order’. Maritainism was influential for Paul VI and Dignitatis Humanæ itself has a strongly Maritainist flavour. Yet Maritainism is a utopian philosophy which is at odds with the Traditional body of doctrine on socio-political matters.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Columba, Abbot, A.D. 2009

Mr. Muehlenberg on the origin of the State

http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2009/04/21/the-new-british-totalitarians/

Unlike many Catholics, Mr. Bill Muehlenberg, a Protestant, is under no illusion as to the origin of the State, as is clear from this excerpt from a comment that he made at his blog:

Biblical Christians cannot argue for no government because God created the institution of the state.
(my emphasis)

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen, Martyr, A.D. 2009

On the socio-political Magisterium of Leo XIII: in summary

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_01111885_immortale-dei_en.html
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_20061888_libertas_en.html
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_06011895_longinqua_en.html

1.0 The State can recognise that God exists, that Christ is God and that the Catholic Church is His Church (Immortale Dei §6, Libertas §21)

1.1 Recognising that the State derives its blessings, its authority and its very existence from Christ, the State must, in justice, do Him homage (Immortale Dei §6, Libertas §21)

2.0 The State must not only not hinder the Church in her mission, but also positively assist her (Immortale Dei §6, Libertas §21)

2.1 This is because the highest good of the State’s subjects is their salvation (Immortale Dei §6, Libertas §21) and also because of the temporal blessings that follow from promoting the Church’s mission (Immortale Dei §1, 19)

2.2 There is a differentiation of the powers of the Church and of the State (Immortale Dei §10, 13, 14) (though the State’s purpose, the common good, is indirectly subordinate to the Church’s purpose, the salvation of souls—Immortale Dei §6, Libertas §21) and the Church has exclusive competence in sacred matters (Immortale Dei §11).

2.3 But ideally there should not be a separation of powers (Immortale Dei §14, 21, 22, Libertas §18, 38, Longinqua Oceani §6).

2.4 The union of Church and State is like the union between body and soul (Immortale Dei §14, Libertas §18, 38)

2.5 The Church should be separated from the State neither collectively nor in her members (Libertas §39) and the State cannot content itself only with abiding by natural truths while ignoring readily-accessible supernatural truths (Libertas §38).

2.6 The union of Church and State is ideally one in which there is “between these two powers a certain orderly connection, which may be compared to the union of the soul and body in man (Immortale Dei §14)”, that Church and State should be “happily united in concord and friendly interchange of good offices (Immortale Dei §21)”, that between the two there should be “complete harmony” (Immortale Dei §35).

2.7 Successful Church-State relations during the Middle Ages exemplify this ideal (Immortale Dei §21, 22)

2.8 Union of Church and State is desirable for the individual good of the State’s subjects (Immortale Dei §6, Libertas §21), for the common good (Immortale Dei §6, Libertas §21, though with limitations to be described in §4.0 of this post), and because of the frequent overlap between civil and sacred matters (Immortale Dei §14, §35, Libertas §18)

3 Leo reiterated the teaching of Bl. Pius IX in condemning the principles of democracy and liberalism (Immortale Dei §24, 25, 26 and 32), particularly the false liberties of worship (Libertas §20, 21), speech (Libertas §23) and conscience (Libertas §30).

4.0 Leo teaches that ideally whatever “is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law” (Libertas §32) but that, although the State is free to repress error simply because it is erroneous, the State’s higher purpose is not repression of error, but the common good, so it may permit the activity of false religions if it expects by this permission to procure a greater benefit to the common good or avert a greater damage to the common good (Immortale Dei §36, Libertas §33).

4.1 Nonetheless, “to judge aright, we must acknowledge that, the more a State is driven to tolerate evil, the further is it from perfection; and that the tolerance of evil which is dictated by political prudence should be strictly confined to the limits which its justifying cause, the public welfare, requires.” (Libertas §34, cf. Longinqua Oceani §6)

5 And the summary of the summary: the State can and must confess Christ, it must unite itself to and co-operate with His Church, and it can repress false religions, though the norm of repressing error is, for the State, subordinate to the norm of building up the common good.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Eusebius, Bishop, Martyr, 2008 A.D.

On the socio-political Magisterium of Leo XIII

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_01111885_immortale-dei_en.html
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_20061888_libertas_en.html
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_06011895_longinqua_en.html

At his blog Sentire cum Ecclesia Mr. David Schütz has said that

Some might say the great watershed in Catholic Social teaching came with Vatican II, but it is undeniable that in fact Leo XIII marked the real turning point. I would contend that the turning point was not a change in the faith and morals of the Church, but a readiness on the part of the Church to address her faith and morals, for the first time, to that society which today we would call "modern". In fact, Leo is usually accredited with inventing the idea of a "social encyclical".

For my part, I find that Leo XIII, in Immortale Dei (1885) goes a very long way to providing the positive teaching with regard to the State which "connects the dots" between the condemnations of Pius IX in Quanta Cura and the seemingly opposite affirmations of the Second Vatican Council and the modern popes. Even Immortale Dei requires reading within its context, but it at least gives a measured foothold on which to carry out the dialogue between what goes before and what comes after.
(http://cumecclesia.blogspot.com/2008/12/social-agenda.html)

So is the notion that the socio-political Magisterium of Leo XIII is some kind of ‘missing link’ between post-Concilar Vatican policy and the consistent teaching and practice of the previous sixteen hundred years supported by the key texts, such as Libertas, Immortale Dei and Longinqua Oceani? No, not at all, and what follows is a confutation of this notion:

In must firstly be noted that it was Leo XIII while still Cardinal Pecci who, it seems likely, proposed the very idea of a collection, or Syllabus, of contemporary errors, so we can say a priori that any 'break' between Bl. Pius IX and Leo XIII is unlikely. (Mr. Michael Davies says in The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty that it was Cardinal Pecci who conceived of the idea of the Syllabus , while the Catholic Encyclopedia says that it was "probably" moved by Cardinal Pecci: http://newadvent.org/cathen/14368b.htm) And I will go on to show that there is indeed perfect continuity and congruity between the teachings of Bl. Pius IX and his illustrious successor, evident in Immortale Dei, Libertas and Longinqua Oceani. The first of these three texts, and probably the most important one, is the Encyclical Immortale Dei of 1885. The following quotations come from it unless otherwise specified. Libertas draws heavily from it, so much so that Libertas’s §21 is a veritable summary of much of the teaching of Immortale Dei on the proper relations between the State and Christ the King and the State and the Church. In Immortale Dei, Leo XIII teaches that the State is a creature of God (§3, Libertas §21):

every body politic must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and has, consequently, God for its Author. Hence, it follows that all public power must proceed from God.
(§3)

and that it must confess Christ and honour Him according to the forms of the true religion, Catholicism, which it may recognise as the true religion by its clear marks (§6, Libertas §21):

the State, constituted as it is, is clearly bound to act up to the manifold and weighty duties linking it to God, by the public profession of religion. … [M]en living together in society are under the power of God no less than individuals are, and society, no less than individuals, owes gratitude to God who gave it being and maintains it and whose ever-bounteous goodness enriches it with countless blessings. Since, then, no one is allowed to be remiss in the service due to God, and since the chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in both its reaching and practice-not such religion as they may have a preference for, but the religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show to be the only one true religion -it is a public crime to act as though there were no God. [also §7: “Now, it cannot be difficult to find out which is the true religion, if only it be sought with an earnest and unbiased mind; for proofs are abundant and striking.”] So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have care for religion as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will. All who rule, therefore, would hold in honour the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favour religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety. (§6)

So here Leo teaches that the State must not only avoid impeding the mission of the Church, but must positively assist it in this mission—favouring it, protecting it and establishing it in law (Libertas §21 as well). The State must not only favour Christ’s Church out of its duty to God and the common good, but also for the highest good of each individual, namely, his salvation:

civil society, established for the common welfare, should not only safeguard the well-being of the community, but have also at heart the interests of its individual members, in such mode as not in any way to hinder, but in every manner to render as easy as may be, the possession of that highest and unchangeable good for which all should seek. (§6, Libertas §21 as well)

But the imperative of promoting the Church follows not only from the eternal welfare, so to speak, of the State’s subjects, but also from their temporal welfare (§1, 19):

in regard to things temporal, she is the source of benefits as manifold and great as if the chief end of her existence were to ensure the prospering of our earthly life. (§1)

the abundant benefits with which the Christian religion, of its very nature, endows even the mortal life of man are acquired for the community and civil society. (19)

Naturally, Pope Leo teaches that there is a differentiation of the powers of Church and State (§10, 13, 14):

Whatever, therefore in things human is of a sacred character, whatever belongs either of its own nature or by reason of the end to which it is referred, to the salvation of souls, or to the worship of God, is subject to the power and judgment of the Church. Whatever is to be ranged under the civil and political order is rightly subject to the civil authority (§14).

and that the Church has exclusive competence in sacred matters (11):

In very truth, Jesus Christ gave to His Apostles unrestrained authority in regard to things sacred

but that ideally there should not be a separation of powers (§14, 21, 22):

But it would be most repugnant to them to think thus of the wisdom and goodness of God. Even in physical things, albeit of a lower order, the Almighty has so combined the forces and springs of nature with tempered action and wondrous harmony that no one of them clashes with any other, and all of them most fitly and aptly work together for the great purpose of the universe. There must, accordingly, exist between these two powers a certain orderly connection, which may be compared to the union of the soul and body in man. (14)

Note the powerful comparison to the union of body and soul, which Leo repeats in Libertas as well (§18):

This harmony has been not inaptly compared to that which exists between the body and the soul for the well-being of both one and the other, the separation of which brings irremediable harm to the body, since it extinguishes its very life.

Death is, of course, the separation of the soul from body, so Leo is not exaggerating when he speaks of the separation of Church and State as that “fatal theory” (Libertas §18), that “fatal principle” (Libertas §38). And as if all this were not explicit enough, he says quite clearly in the Encyclical of 1895 to the American Hierarchy Longinqua Oceani that

it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. (§6)

Some Catholics, then and now, sought to distinguish between the separation of the Church taken collectively/corporately from the State and the separation of the Church taken in her individual members from the State, but in Libertas Leo rejects both these errors together:

Many wish the State to be separated from the Church wholly and entirely, so that with regard to every right of human society, in institutions, customs, and laws, the offices of State, and the education of youth, they would pay no more regard to the Church than if she did not exist; and, at most, would allow the citizens individually to attend to their religion in private if so minded. Against such as these, all the arguments by which We disprove the principle of separation of Church and State are conclusive; with this super-added, that it is absurd the citizen should respect the Church, while the State may hold her in contempt. (§39)

The source of these two errors, writes the Holy Pontiff in the same Encyclical, is an error that has become quite current among Catholics in the present day: the idea that the State ought to legislate according to the Divine natural law but abstain from legislating in favour of the Divine positive law—the notion of abiding by natural truths while turning a blind eye to the question of supernatural truths. But Leo rejects this too:

Libertas §38. Next comes the system of those who admit indeed the duty of submitting to God, the Creator and Ruler of the world, inasmuch as all nature is dependent on His will, but who boldly reject all laws of faith and morals which are above natural reason, but are revealed by the authority of God; or who at least impudently assert that there is no reason why regard should be paid to these laws, at any rate publicly, by the State. How mistaken these men also are, and how inconsistent, we have seen above.

Related to this is the error of Catholics who want to abide by Catholic morality themselves but not see it ‘imposed’ on the State or non-Catholics:

Libertas §18. There are others, somewhat more moderate though not more consistent, who affirm that the morality of individuals is to be guided by the divine law, but not the morality of the State, for that in public affairs the commands of God may be passed over, and may be entirely disregarded in the framing of laws. Hence follows the fatal theory of the need of separation between Church and State. But the absurdity of such a position is manifest. Nature herself proclaims the necessity of the State providing means and opportunities whereby the community may be enabled to live properly, that is to say, according to the laws of God. For, since God is the source of all goodness and justice, it is absolutely ridiculous that the State should pay no attention to these laws or render them abortive by contrary enact menu. Besides, those who are in authority owe it to the commonwealth not only to provide for its external well-being and the conveniences of life, but still more to consult the welfare of men's souls in the wisdom of their legislation.

So the Sovereign Pontiff taught that while Church and State are differentiated in their respective powers, they should by no means be separated, but rather united. The ideal is that there should be “between these two powers a certain orderly connection, which may be compared to the union of the soul and body in man (§14)”, that Church and State should be “happily united in concord and friendly interchange of good offices (§21)”, that between the two there should be “complete harmony” (§35). This unity is demanded for the reasons already adduced and for the reason that, although the respective spheres of Church and State are differentiated, they frequently overlap (§14, §35, Libertas §18):

Even in physical things, albeit of a lower order, the Almighty has so combined the forces and springs of nature with tempered action and wondrous harmony that no one of them clashes with any other, and all of them most fitly and aptly work together for the great purpose of the universe. There must, accordingly, exist between these two powers a certain orderly connection, which may be compared to the union of the soul and body in man.(§14)

In matters, however, of mixed jurisdiction, it is in the highest degree consonant to nature, as also to the designs of God, that so far from one of the powers separating itself from the other, or still less coming into conflict with it, complete harmony, such as is suited to the end for which each power exists, should be preserved between them. (§35)

And, what is still more important, and what We have more than once pointed out, although the civil authority has not the same proximate end as the spiritual, nor proceeds on the same lines, nevertheless in the exercise of their separate powers they must occasionally meet. For their subjects are the same, and not infrequently they deal with the same objects, though in different ways. Whenever this occurs, since a state of conflict is absurd and manifestly repugnant to the most wise ordinance of God, there must necessarily exist some order or mode of procedure to remove the occasions of difference and contention, and to secure harmony in all things. This harmony has been not inaptly compared to that which exists between the body and the soul for the well-being of both one and the other, the separation of which brings irremediable harm to the body, since it extinguishes its very life. (Libertas §18)

And if anyone might imagine that the Holy Pontiff might have had in mind a kind of unity other than that which prevailed during the fifteen hundred year era of Christendom, listens to how he speaks lyrically of those times and identifies religion as the source of its achievements, and that it could have continued if not for the Protestant Revolution:

21. There was once a time when States were governed by the philosophy of the Gospel. Then it was that the power and divine virtue of Christian wisdom had diffused itself throughout the laws, institutions, and morals of the people, permeating all ranks and relations of civil society. Then, too, the religion instituted by Jesus Christ, established firmly in befitting dignity, flourished everywhere, by the favour of princes and the legitimate protection of magistrates; and Church and State were happily united in concord and friendly interchange of good offices. The State, constituted in this wise, bore fruits important beyond all expectation, whose remembrance is still, and always will be, in renown, witnessed to as they are by countless proofs which can never be blotted out or ever obscured by any craft of any enemies. Christian Europe has subdued barbarous nations, and changed them from a savage to a civilized condition, from superstition to true worship. It victoriously rolled back the tide of Mohammedan conquest; retained the headship of civilization; stood forth in the front rank as the leader and teacher of all, in every branch of national culture; bestowed on the world the gift of true and many-sided liberty; and most wisely founded very numerous institutions for the solace of human suffering. And if we inquire how it was able to bring about so altered a condition of things, the answer is-beyond all question, in large measure, through religion, under whose auspices so many great undertakings were set on foot, through whose aid they were brought to completion.

22. A similar state of things would certainly have continued had the agreement of the two powers been lasting. More important results even might have been justly looked for, had obedience waited upon the authority, teaching, and counsels of the Church, and had this submission been specially marked by greater and more unswerving loyalty.

As well as expounding on the principles of the ideal relations between the State and Christ the King and between the State and the Church, Leo identifies the principles that work to undermine the moral development of society, namely the evils of democracy (when taken as a principle, not just a form, of government) and liberalism (meaning freely choosing to believe, say and do as one pleases). The former is so pernicious because it means that the populace, not God, is the principle of State authority, and so “it follows that the State does not consider itself bound by any kind of duty toward God” (§25), while the latter implies that the individual obeys no authority in religion but his own. These are condemned, not as mere slogans or buzzwords, but as principles, in sections 24, 25 and 26 (and the latter in 32 as well); in these sections we see how these principles harm the State and the individual, while in §27 the Holy Pontiff shows how they harm the Church (and we see this damage done even in the supposedly benign secularism of today):

27. Now, when the State rests on foundations like those just named - and for the time being they are greatly in favor - it readily appears into what and how unrightful a position the Church is driven. For, when the management of public business is in harmony with doctrines of such a kind, the Catholic religion is allowed a standing in civil society equal only, or inferior, to societies alien from it … They claim jurisdiction over the marriages of Catholics, even over the bond as well as the unity and the indissolubility of matrimony.

Leo is perfectly clear about how the State ought to regard false liberties: whatever “is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law” (§32) and

Again, that it is not lawful for the State, any more than for the individual, either to disregard all religious duties or to hold in equal favour different kinds of religion; that the unrestrained freedom of thinking and of openly making known one's thoughts is not inherent in the rights of citizens, and is by no means to be reckoned worthy of favour and support (§35)

The condemnations of all these sections are reinforced in Libertas, where he identifies them as the false liberties of worship, speech and conscience. Again, these are not mere slogans or buzzwords, but concrete principles whose respective meanings he explains:

Against liberty of worship, at the individual and then at the State level:

§20. But, assuredly, of all the duties which man has to fulfill, that, without doubt, is the chiefest and holiest which commands him to worship God with devotion and piety. This follows of necessity from the truth that we are ever in the power of God, are ever guided by His will and providence, and, having come forth from Him, must return to Him. … And if it be asked which of the many conflicting religions it is necessary to adopt, reason and the natural law unhesitatingly tell us to practice that one which God enjoins, and which men can easily recognize by certain exterior notes, whereby Divine Providence has willed that it should be distinguished

§21. This kind of liberty, if considered in relation to the State, clearly implies that there is no reason why the State should offer any homage to God, or should desire any public recognition of Him; that no one form of worship is to be preferred to another, but that all stand on an equal footing, no account being taken of the religion of the people, even if they profess the Catholic faith. But, to justify this, it must needs be taken as true that the State has no duties toward God, or that such duties, if they exist, can be abandoned with impunity, both of which assertions are manifestly false. For it cannot be doubted but that, by the will of God, men are united in civil society; whether its component parts be considered; or its form, which implies authority; or the object of its existence; or the abundance of the vast services which it renders to man. God it is who has made man for society, and has placed him in the company of others like himself, so that what was wanting to his nature, and beyond his attainment if left to his own resources, he might obtain by association with others. Wherefore, civil society must acknowledge God as its Founder and Parent, and must obey and reverence His power and authority. Justice therefore forbids, and reason itself forbids, the State to be godless; or to adopt a line of action which would end in godlessness-namely, to treat the various religions (as they call them) alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously equal rights and privileges. Since, then, the profession of one religion is necessary in the State, that religion must be professed which alone is true, and which can be recognized without difficulty, especially in Catholic States, because the marks of truth are, as it were, engravers upon it. This religion, therefore, the rulers of the State must preserve and protect, if they would provide - as they should do - with prudence and usefulness for the good of the community. For public authority exists for the welfare of those whom it governs; and, although its proximate end is to lead men to the prosperity found in this life, yet, in so doing, it ought not to diminish, but rather to increase, man's capability of attaining to the supreme good in which his everlasting happiness consists: which never can be attained if religion be disregarded.

Against free speech:

§23. We must now consider briefly liberty of speech, and liberty of the press. It is hardly necessary to say that there can be no such right as this, if it be not used in moderation, and if it pass beyond the bounds and end of all true liberty. For right is a moral power which - as We have before said and must again and again repeat - it is absurd to suppose that nature has accorded indifferently to truth and falsehood, to justice and injustice. Men have a right freely and prudently to propagate throughout the State what things soever are true and honorable, so that as many as possible may possess them; but lying opinions, than which no mental plague is greater, and vices which corrupt the heart and moral life should be diligently repressed by public authority, lest they insidiously work the ruin of the State.

Against liberty of conscience:

§30. Another liberty is widely advocated, namely, liberty of conscience. If by this is meant that everyone may, as he chooses, worship God or not, it is sufficiently refuted by the arguments already adduced.

So given that Pope Leo upheld the imperatives of the State’s profession of Christ and union with his Church, what was his teaching on the State’s relations with the false religions? The State is free to repress them simply because they are false. But the State’s higher purpose is not repression of error, but the common good, so it may permit the activity of false religions if it expects by this permission to procure a greater benefit to the common good or avert a greater damage to the common good: hence the Church does not

condemn those rulers who, for the sake of securing some great good or of hindering some great evil, allow patiently custom or usage to be a kind of sanction for each kind of religion having its place in the State (§36)

And again in Libertas:

§33. Yet, with the discernment of a true mother, the Church weighs the great burden of human weakness, and well knows the course down which the minds and actions of men are in this our age being borne. For this reason, while not conceding any right to anything save what is true and honest, she does not forbid public authority to tolerate what is at variance with truth and justice, for the sake of avoiding some greater evil, or of obtaining or preserving some greater good.

Presciently, the Holy Pontiff noted in the latter document that

to judge aright, we must acknowledge that, the more a State is driven to tolerate evil, the further is it from perfection; and that the tolerance of evil which is dictated by political prudence should be strictly confined to the limits which its justifying cause, the public welfare, requires. (§34)

So pluralism is something to be tolerated, not celebrated; the unity of the populace in the true religion is the ideal. Unfortunately many in the American Hierarchy failed to understand these truths; hence the necessity of Longinqua Oceani. And unfortunately, this error, the keystone of what is called Americanism, has resumed its popularity in the wake Vatican II.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Eusebius, Bishop, Martyr, 2008 A.D.

H.H. The Pope on liberalism and multiculturalism

http://zenit.org/article-24450?l=english

Via today’s CathNews I found a Zenit news article containing some interesting thoughts from H.H. The Pope on what he considers to be the foundations of liberalism and the internal contradiction of multiculturalism. The source for these thoughts was a letter from His Holiness to an Italian philosopher regarding a book published by the latter on these topics. Here are the key parts:

At the heart of liberalism is the Christian image of God, and rediscovering that is the key to overcoming the current crisis of ethics in Europe and the world, says Benedict XVI.

[…] [The book’s author shows] that rooted in the heart of liberalism is the Christian image of God [said His Holiness].

“With irreproachable logic, you show how liberalism loses its base and destroys itself if it abandons this foundation," [His Holiness] added.

The Pope also expressed his admiration for Pera's analysis of liberty, and the concept of multiculturalism, in which he "shows the internal contradiction of this concept and, therefore, its political and cultural impossibility."

[…] "You show that liberalism, without failing to be liberalism -- rather, to be faithful to itself -- can refer to a doctrine of the good, in particular the Christian, which is familiar to it, thus truly offering a contribution to overcome the crisis," he continued.

[…]If one opts for anti-Christianity, what the Pope calls "the apostasy of Christianity," added Pera [the book’s author], "we lose the very virtues, the very foundations of those liberties and rights on which are liberal States are founded."

His Holiness’s apparent endorsement of the book’s ideas on liberalism seems rather curious. Usually one would conceive of liberalism as an individualistic way of organising society and one based on the idea of society as a contract (an idea condemned by the Church) rather than the traditional understanding of it as being a creature of God because it arises from man’s God-given social nature. Another important feature of liberalism is the ‘harm principle’, the notion that the State should regulate its subjects’ behaviour only to the extent that it infringes on other subjects’ behaviour. Thus liberalism also departs from Catholic social teaching by changing the purpose of the State from the building-up of the common good to the mere maintenance of public order. So liberalism tends to violate the Catholic social doctrine principles of solidarity and the common good, and accordingly it is hard to see how it can be reconciled with Social Reign of Christ.

As for multiculturalism, I can readily agree that it is internally contradictory, and I regard it as being detrimental to the Social Reign of Christ. For one thing, culture means that which surrounds the cult, and so the natural tendency of an authentically Christian society ought to be towards monoculturalism. Surely a nation should strive to cultivate as noble and excellent a culture as it can, rather than merely ‘celebrating diversity’ as though it were an end in itself? Speaking of which, one of the other problems with multiculturalism is that one’s tastes or preferences are an important factor in one’s support for or opposition to it. Some people have a taste for diversity. Fair enough. But I have a taste for homogeneity. Why is my preference any less valid than the other?

As for the relationship between liberalism and multiculturalism, there is at least one apparent tension between the two. One of the fundamental principles of the art of politics is that the more diverse the base from which the compound (the nation) is to be moulded, the greater the weight of authority that must be applied, all else equal. Hence a State that pursues the slogan of ‘many different cultures, one community’ is going to have be less liberal, all else equal, than a monocultural one. But what really tends to happen is that there end up being as many communities as there are cultures. This is what has happened in Australia’s capital cities, and it shows just how unworkable, just how self-defeating and internally contradictory, the policy of multiculturalism is.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Peter Chrysologus, Bishop, Confessor, 2008 A.D.

A comment on restorative justice

http://cardinalpole.blogspot.com/2008/10/more-on-restorative-justice.html

Here is a comment that a made in my “More on 'restorative justice'” post:

***

Mr. Redekop and Mr. Wright,

Thank you both for your comments.

Firstly, to address your points, Mr. Redekop:

1) When I said that justice is essentially about getting what one is owed, that was not just ‘my argument’—that’s what justice is! The first problem with restorative justice is that it tries to include something in the meaning of justice that is really external to it. Given that, strictly speaking, justice is a matter of reward and punishment, it is clear that to withhold either a due reward or due punishment would be an injustice in itself. Such an injustice would be permissible according to the criterion I mentioned in the original post, namely, the injustice may be permitted if, by doing so, one expects to avert a greater evil or bring forth a greater good.

2) As to the relationship between offender and offence, the only relationship that is directly relevant is whether or not the offender was morally responsible for the offence. If the (alleged) offender were “confused, disturbed, or mistaken”, then these are clearly circumstances that excuse from culpability.

3) As to the case of murder, the amount of time that the victim might have had left to live is totally irrelevant; what matters is that his life was taken, not the quality or quantity of his life remaining. This is a most curious objection for you to raise.

4) The different circumstances that you enumerate for consideration in sentencing—whether the offender is a hardened criminal, or how wealthy he is if the penalty is to be financial—merely show that sentencing is difficult. But difficulty is no reason to abandon justice.

5) The case of a young offender is a case where I would not necessarily have a problem with imprisonment being commuted to some lesser sentence, for the reason I have mentioned already—namely, that a greater good could be procured. All I am asking is that people recognise that withholding the due punishment is, by definition, an injustice in itself.

6) You appear to hold to the ‘integral humanist’ view of the State, in which the State has a very limited role. I, however, adhere to the traditional view of the State as having the common good as its proper end, and is therefore entitled to investigate into what you call “the true virtue and happiness of all the other persons involved”.

7) This point is really the most important one: “how can a second harm make up for the first?” If one adheres to the restorative justice ideology, than retribution clearly makes no sense in itself. But justice is a metaphysical concept, not at all a utilitarian, pragmatic one. It is undeniable that, metaphysically, a second harm balances a first harm, just as a just wage metaphysically balances an hour’s work. Your example of the broken arm is completely inappropriate, since it deals with an accident, and with two harms being inflicted on the same victim.

8) Your charge that “it is clear that efforts to define the right to punish in moral terms fail to identify clearly the criteria for this right” is completely unfounded; the criterion is simply the due relation between crime and punishment.

9) Powerlessness, poverty, class structure and so on are quite secondary circumstances. The poor and powerless are still responsible moral persons, and moral responsibility is the key criterion for determining culpability.

Now Mr. Wright,

1) You say that “In restorative justice it is reparation, not rehabilitation, that trumps punishment, altough many offenders have themselves been victims”. But I have to ask then: what is your idea of reparation? Reparation means satisfaction, expiation, atonement, and so on. Punishment is an excellent form of reparation.

2) You ask: “can the state be justified in causing deliberate harm to one of its members, even a wrongdoer”? The answer is yes, of course, since this harm is due to the offender because of his transgression.

***

Reginaldvs Cantvar
All Souls’ Day, 2008 A.D.

The State as a mirror

I was reading the transcript of the debate on Victoria’s new abortion laws in the Upper House (downloaded via Mr. Schütz’s Sentire cum Ecclesia) when I came across this revealing little thought from pro-abortion Member Mr. Shaun Leane M.L.C.:

I think some people who want to maintain these provisions in the Crimes Act want to say to women who want to have an abortion or are thinking of having an abortion, ‘Thou shalt not’. That is what they want to say. It is not the state’s role to do that. The state’s job is to reflect modern-day conditions and to reflect what real people are actually doing and what is acceptable for the majority.

Now in the traditional Catholic theory of the State, the State is the juridical and moral person that exercises God-given temporal authority over a given populace in a given territory. The State’s proper end is the building-up of the common good, and with it the upholding of justice—it must legislate in accordance with the eternal moral law, discernible by the light of natural reason. ‘Thou shalt not’ is exactly what the State should be saying sometimes, perhaps even most of the time. But for Mr. Leane, the State wields not a sword, as St. Paul put it, but a mirror—it simply serves the populace directly rather than serving God or serving the common good directly, and the populace only indirectly. Thus the very meaning of the State’s authority is subverted. What Mr. Leane is advocating here is a naked positivism whereby the State simply indulges the populace in whatever debauchery takes its fancy, so long as a majority can agree on it.

One can hardly be surprised at this sort of madness taking root in the corridors of power, though, when many of Mr. Leane’s electors no doubt would agree with him. One suspects that this sort of positivism and utilitarianism is rampant among Westerners, and one wonders, then, whether universal suffrage is really the best way to choose a government. Look at the recent comment of MgS when I begged her to give me some clue as to what she understands by justice:

justice is largely a part of the broader social contract that is the society in which one lives.
(http://cardinalpole.blogspot.com/2008/10/on-revenge-and-retribution-plus-request.html)

So justice, far from being a virtue on which all other goods hinge (hence its status as a cardinal virtue), itself hinges on the whim of society. Justice becomes whatever the majority (or whatever decision rule is used) wants it to be; there is no longer any question of trying to discern unchanging moral standards against which to evaluate right and wrong. Positivism, utilitarianism and relativism are the order of the day, even to the extent of forcing people to disobey their consciences. This is what we are up against.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Callistus, Pope, Martyr, 2008 A.D.

Fr. Zuhlsdorf, human rights and the State

Rev. Fr. John T. Zuhlsdorf has posted some interesting remarks regarding human rights and the State on his blog. I reproduce them here in full:

I am irritated by something I have heard over the last couple days.

The pols and newsies keep talking about the anniversary of "giving women the right to vote" in the USA.

No!

Women always had the right to vote.

Their right to vote was finally recognized.

We must avoid, in discussing human rights and government, falling into the trap of thinking that the state grants rights.

We have rights because our Creator made us in His image and likeness.

They are written into our being.

We grant the state its rights and obligations.
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2008/08/irritated-by-something-i-hear-repeated/#comment-82821

The subsequent discussion abounded with confusion; I even saw Fr. Maritain and the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights being cited. In any discussion on rights and the State we need to keep the following principles in mind:

1) All authority is from God (Romans 13:1, Douay-Rheims version: “Let every soul be subject to higher powers. For there is no power but from God: and those that are ordained of God.”)

2) The State is the juridical and moral person that exercises God-given civil authority over a given populace in a given territory.

3) The State’s proper end is the common good. (This end is indirectly subordinate to the Church’s end, the salvation of souls.)

4) The State’s laws shall conform to God’s Laws; when they contradict God’s Laws they are not binding on the citizen.

5) A natural right is the moral liberty justifiably to claim some entitlement. Therefore the object of a natural right can only ever be that which is true and good. And for every right there is a corresponding duty.

So with these principles in mind, it is clear that no-one has a natural right to vote, though it might be the case that, in certain historical circumstances, it might be conducive to the common good for the State to grant a civil right to its subjects to vote, i.e., to grant universal or partial suffrage. This will depend on things like the moral and intellectual development of the populace, the sophistication of the means of disseminating information, and so on. And man's ontological dignity (his orientation towards a higher end, namely God) is no basis for a supposed 'right to vote'; this is clear from the fact that the State can deprive convicts and the insane of their right to vote, while those same individuals can never be deprived of their ontological dignity by the State.

Note that I spoke of ‘universal suffrage’ rather than democracy. Universal suffrage is just a means for choosing a government, whereas democracy is a principle of government according to which authority is held to originate in the people (from the Greek demos, or ‘the people’, and kratia, or ‘power, rule’). According to this principle, as Leo XIII put it in Immortale Dei (though without naming it as democracy), the populace delegates to the government “not the right so much as the business of governing, to be exercised, however, in its name.” This is incompatible with a Catholic sensibility, since the State is, whether it likes it or not, a delegate of Christ the King, not a delegate of the populace.

A theme running through the discussion at Fr. Zuhlsdorf’s blog is the notion of some kind of requirement for popular consent, whether expressed through a vote or not. But it is not clear to me that the people’s consent really has any part to play in the matter. So long as the State acknowledges Christ as the source of its authority, so long as it upholds the common good, and so long as it translates God’s Laws into civil laws and never defies them, it rules justly.

As for the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights, when it states, as someone quoted it, that “[t]he will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government”, this is clearly un-Catholic when compared with Romans 13:1, and in fact it has much in common with the principles of the French Revolution. And as for Fr. Maritain, Mr. Michael Davies showed quite clearly in The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty that Fr. Maritain’s theory of the State as merely a specialised portion of society concerned with upholding public order (the theory underpinning his ‘Integral Humanism’) rather than as a juridical and moral person upholding the common good (a broader category than mere public order) is erroneous.

Reginaldvs Cantvar

How long till the C.D.F. issues a Notification on neo-Americanism?

Also in yesterday’s Catholic Weekly were some extracts from the ‘Acton Lecture’ delivered by Rev. Fr. Robert A. Sirico at the Centre for Independent Studies. The report is not online yet, so I direct you to the speech itself:
http://www.cis.org.au/events/cis_lectures/acton_2008_sirico.pdf

Fr. Sirico is from the dreadful Acton Institute; I will not post a link here but you can find one at Fr. Zuhlsdorf’s blog. This Institute appears to advocate what I would call neo-Americanism, an updated form of Americanism that extends beyond the religious libertarianism of the original and attempts to incorporate economic libertarianism into Church social teaching.

The lecture begins fairly inoffensively, with “an assertion of two distinct realms: the temporal and the ecclesiastical. In this concept, both the law and the civil magistrate are to be respected, even prayed for.” ‘Distinct’ is the key word, and perfectly appropriate, though of course we must not go as far as to advocate the desirability of their separation as a principle:

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error.
(St. Pius X, Vehementer Nos)

That is, the ideal is that the State as a person confesses Christ, and every person under the State confesses Christ, and therefore, since the two ‘perfect societies’ of Church and State overlap in their membership, they ought to be united in mutual concord and unanimity of action.

Fr. Sirico notes perceptively that “[w]hat is really at issue here is the problem of authority”, and identifies that “Christianity did not, however, see the origin of authority as lying in the state, and it did not see the state as the source of law, much less of morality”. Clearly God is the origin of authority and of law, and the State must acknowledge this authority, do God the homage that He is owed for delegating His authority, and makes its civil laws correspond to the Divine Law.

Indeed, the reliable Rev. Fr. Francis J. Connell C.SS.R. makes very clear that Church-State relations are actually a secondary issue:

In other words, the real point at issue is not the relation between the State and the Catholic Church but rather the relation between the State and Christ the King.

That is, union of Church and State follows from submission of State to its King, Christ.

So far, so good. And one could forgive Father’s rather strange, utilitarian notion of a Christian vision of

a society in which people leave old professions and adopt new ones,take on vocations as priests or nuns, become educated and advance within the culture, become merchants and capitalists who produce wealth

(my emphasis)

or his fanciful depiction of the Dark Ages as a some kind of proto-capitalist utopia:

The so-called Dark Ages saw the origins of the water mill and the windmill, used for capitalistic production. Monastic estates were used for the domestication and production of fish, and for cloth-making. Monasteries were the first modern institutions of complex capitalistic production.

But eventually he makes his errors quite plain:

[Constantine] and his successors certainly went too far in making the Christian faith the official religion and using public resources for the construction of churches. But when one looks at this history, we need to carefully distinguish between unjust practices of the present day and the roots of what would eventually lead to what we now know as modern-day freedom. It was Christianity itself, and not atheism, secularism or materialism, that first advanced the idea that the state and the Church were distinct and separate entities. The concept that institutions could flourish in the absence of civic approval is what led to the creation of the university, the monastery, the hospital, the rule of law in courts, and the flourishing of science and institutional and international charity.

(my emphasis)

So Fr. Sirico is really just offering what I call crypto-secularism: he turns his back on 1 500 years of Church practice and 150 years of permanently-valid doctrine (which only needed to be written down in response to challenges from the revolutionaries of 1789 and 1848). Preposterously, he argues that

Indeed, it is Christianity that lies at the root of the body of ideas we know today as classical liberalism, which can be summed up in four essential claims: all people have rights that cannot be abrogated; society flourishes most when the state is a resource of last resort; economic advance is desirable and made possible through free exchange; and the social peace is best maintained when religion and the state are separated.

Let’s take a closer look at these ‘four claims’:

1) “all people have rights that cannot be abrogated”: yes, but the object of any right can only ever be what is true and good.

2) “society flourishes most when the state is a resource of last resort”: this is just one of the assumptions of economic rationalism; it has no place in Christian doctrine.

3) “economic advance is desirable”: not in itself.

4) “the social peace is best maintained when religion and the state are separated”: false in principle, possibly true in certain circumstances.

When Fr. Sirico speaks of “the authentic Christian liberalism of the nineteenth century, which in turn connects backwards in time to the Middle Ages, to Augustine, to the Church Fathers, and finally to the words of Jesus”, one wonders whether the Anglicans are the only ones prone to ‘ecclesial amnesia’: does he not know that the ‘Liberal Catholic’ political movement was condemned unequivocally by the Popes of the time? Indeed, Fr. Sirico analysis of currents in nineteenth-century Catholic political thought is far too simplistic: he says that

In the mid- to late nineteenth century, at a time when democracy was rising, the Papal States were under serious strain, and radical political movements were on the move, two general camps emerged within the Catholic Church. On one side, there were the ultramontanists, who favoured the temporal power and regarded the idea of religious liberty as a fateful surrender to secularism and modernism. On the other side were the liberals, who embraced religious liberty and argued that papal infallibility should be embraced only in the strictly defined terms related to its own competency of faith and morals, but not to politics or economics.

Concessions to false religions can only ever be a toleration based on circumstances, and a concession in principle is indeed a “fateful surrender to secularism and modernism”. And his reading of the Syllabus of Errors is simply not supported by the text:

Even Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors could be read as compatible with an embrace of liberty if we recognise that while it condemned the view that the Church must be universally separated from the state (understood as the state confining religion to the purely private sphere—the goal of today’s radical secularists), it tolerated the view that the Church can be made prudently and advantageously distinct from the state.

Here we see confusion in his argument: that “the view that the Church can be made prudently and advantageously distinct from the state” is tolerable is not in question (and ‘distinct’ is the wrong word anyway, since Church and State are distinct), while in fact it is Fr. Sirico’s views on Church-States relations at the level of principles that Bl. Pius IX was condemning.

When Fr. Sirico describes ‘liberation theology’ as “essentially a baptised form of Marxism” it is hard to ignore the savage irony that what he and the Acton Institute advocate is really just a ‘baptised form’ of libertarianism and economic rationalism. How can they not see this? Indeed, Marxism and economic rationalism aren’t fundamentally all that different: they share the same foundation, namely materialistic determinism, though while Marxism focuses on the social level, at which circumstances in the factors of production determine the course of history (historical materialism), economic rationalism focuses on the individual, with man conceived of as homo economicus, with a utility function into which ones plugs the numbers and determines his behaviour.

We see this materialism crop up again when Fr. Sirico writes off the era of Christendom as being one in which the fact that

the tyrant professed Christianity was an incidental fact: he was merely using the culturally dominant religion as a cover for his true ambition

and it is an insult to the likes of Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, St. Edward the Confessor and St. Louis IX.



What is it with people trying to graft onto Tradition that which can never organically be a part of it? Why the constant conformity to the spirit of the age? Why can they not be content simply ‘to hand on what they have received’?

What is perhaps most telling about Fr. Sirico’s position is the complete absence of any reference in this lecture to one of the fundamental principles of Catholic social teaching, namely the common good. Search for keywords like ‘common good’ or ‘public good’ or public welfare or common welfare and you will find nothing. Indeed, one must ask of Fr. Sirico: does he agree that the common good is the proper end of the State? Does he agree that the common good is the relevant criterion for determining when to restrict liberty (an important question given that his lecture was, after all, on the topic of ‘Must Religion be a Threat to Liberty?’)? Does he agree that the State is a juridical and moral person that is capable of acknowledging God as the source of its authority, of the blessings that it enjoys and of its very existence, i.e., that the State really can be confessional? Just what is this man’s theory of the State?

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Rev. Fr. John Courtenay Murray S.J.: R.I.P.

I note that two days ago, August 16, was the forty-first anniversary of the death of Rev. Fr. John Courtenay Murray S.J. His misconceived theory of the State, his Americanism, his belief in a right for false religions to air their lies, and his highly suspect opinions on contraception (all documented in Mr. Michael Davies’s excellent The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty) notwithstanding, may he rest in peace.

Reginaldvs Cantvar