Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts

Monday, November 30, 2015

Notes: Wednesday, September 30-Monday, November 30, 2015 (part 1 of 2)

1. Some recent announcements by H.M.A. Government concerning foreign affairs

1.1 Australia will "provide $7 million over three years to support the United Nations’ Joint Programme for Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health in the Pacific."

The quotation in that headline comes from the media release "Promoting Economic Growth in the Pacific", dated September 29, 2015, downloaded from the website of the Minister for Foreign Affairs (currently The Hon. Julie Bishop M.P.):

http://foreignminister.gov.au/releases/Pages/2015/jb_mr_150929a.aspx?w=tb1CaGpkPX%2FlS0K%2Bg9ZKEg%3D%3D

(That iniative came to my attention via this article at The Australian's website.) According to a press release issued jointly by the United Nations Children's Fund (U.N.I.C.E.F.), the United Nations Population Fund (U.N.F.P.A.), and the World Health Organisation, Ms Bishop "noted that the AU$7 million investment will support the UN Secretary General’s Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health". That Strategy can be downloaded from its official website here:

http://globalstrategy.everywomaneverychild.org/

Or go straight hither:

http://globalstrategy.everywomaneverychild.org/pdf/EWEC_globalstrategyreport_200915_FINAL_WEB.pdf

(And the aforementioned press release is available under the headline "Joint Media Release: Australian commitment to UN joint programme for Pacific mother, child and adolescent health kicks off investment in Global Goals for Sustainable Development", dated September 30, 2015, at U.N.I.C.E.F.'s website:

http://www.unicef.org/pacificislands/1852_24727.html

and under the headline "A JOINT PRESS RELEASE: Australian commitment to UN joint programme for Pacific mother, child and adolescent health kicks off investment in Global Goals for Sustainable Development", same date, at the U.N.F.P.A.'s website:

http://countryoffice.unfpa.org/pacific/2015/09/30/12827/a_joint_press_release_australian_commitment_to_un_joint_programme_for_pacific_mother_child_and_adolescent_health_kicks_off_investment_in_global_goals_for_sustainable_development/)

Labels: abortion, contraception, feminism, foreign affairs

1.2 Were it to be elected to "the United Nations Human Rights Council for the 2018-2020 term", Australia's "focus would be on empowering women and girls, strengthening governance and democratic institutions, promoting freedom, freedom of expression, and advancing human rights for all", and it "would be unrelenting in [its] efforts to secure abolition of the death penalty."

The quotations, excluding my square-bracketed replacement of the word "our", in that headline come from the text prepared for the spoken national statement by Australia's Minister for Foreign Affairs (The Hon. Julie Bishop M.P.) in the United Nations General Assembly (seventieth session), dated September 29, 2015, downloaded from the official Minister for Foreign Affairs website:

http://foreignminister.gov.au/speeches/Pages/2015/jb_sp_150929a.aspx?w=tb1CaGpkPX%2FlS0K%2Bg9ZKEg%3D%3D

See also the media release "United Nations Security Council & Human Rights Council", dated September 29, 2015, downloaded from the same website, in which Ms Bishop says similarly that
We are an international leader in advancing the rights of women and girls, strengthening governance and democratic institutions, and promoting freedom of expression.

As a member of the Human Rights Council, Australia would bring a clear focus on addressing human rights violations and holding perpetrators to account. Australia would also be a leading advocate for global abolition of the death penalty.
[http://foreignminister.gov.au/releases/Pages/2015/jb_mr_150929.aspx]
Labels: death penalty, democracy, feminism, foreign affairs, human rights, liberalism

2. "The tensions for parents, educators and children in building a sustainable culture of ethical and respectful relationships early in life" is the project title of taxpayer-funded (to the tune of $198992) research which "hopes to move the debate around sexuality and sexual relationships away from being viewed as problematic for young people to that of building a culture of ethical and respectful relationships in early life."

The quotations in that headline come from the Western Sydney University (W.S.U.) "RESEARCH DIRECTIONS" flyer "Building Children’s Ethical Relationship Skills with Parents and Educators", dated December 2011, presumably published by W.S.U.'s Office of Research Services, downloaded from W.S.U.'s website:

https://www.uws.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/248057/071211_KidsEthicalRelationships_Robinson.pdf

(That project came to my attention via the print version of the article "Let's talk about sex, knowledge, health and well-being, baby", by Fran Molloy, dated October 12, 2015, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/tertiary-education/lets-talk-about-sex-knowledge-health-and-wellbeing-baby-20151008-gk44ht.html?skin=text-only)

See also Prof. Robinson's staff profile here or here.

Labels: feminism, G.L.B.T., morals, sex ed

3. On the second day of the recently-concluded Synod, H.H. The Pope made His Holiness's "first direct intervention at the Synod in the course of the past two years"; in that intervention, The Pope said "that thus far the only official Synod documents which enjoy full ecclesiastical approval are the two discourses he himself delivered at the opening and closing of the Extraordinary Synod last October, as well as the "Relatio Synodi" or final document of the Extraordinary Synod which he approved."

The quotations in that headline come from the article "Pope Francis makes first direct intervention; was Cardinal Erdö undermined?", by The Rev. Fr. Nicholas Gregoris, dated October 6, 2015, downloaded from The Catholic World Report's website:

http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/4239/pope_francis_makes_first_direct_intervention_was_cardinal_erd_undermined.aspx

(That article came to my attention via this blog post by Fr. Zuhlsdorf.) Interestingly, the Vatican revoked Fr. Gregoris's press credentials the next day; see the article "Vatican revokes Catholic priest’s press credentials after he challenged archbishop", by Mr. Patrick B. Craine, dated Monday, October 12, 2015, downloaded from LifeSiteNews.com:

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-vatican-revokes-catholic-priests-press-credentials-after-he-challe

Labels: Francis Bergoglio

4. "ultimately, the package is about trying to devise ways to increase female workforce participation amongst mums, single mothers, mothers in couple families. Historically, we know that that is occurring, we would like to keep it occurring, it can and should be a great engine room of the Australian economy and it’s great way to increase family wealth and prosperity."

The quotation in that headline comes from the transcript of an interview of The Hon. Christian Porter M.P. (Federal Minister for Social Services) on Sky News on October 22, 2015, downloaded from Mr. Porter's Ministerial website:

http://christianporter.dss.gov.au/transcripts/sky-news-pvo-newsday

(That transcript is also available here, at Mr. Porter's electorate website.) See also
  • the official webpage of the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry into the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Family Payments Structural Reform and Participation Measures) Bill 2015

    http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/Family_Payments

    whence you can download, among other things, the inquiry report and the official submission of the Australian Catholic Council for Employment Relations (the latter is especially worth reading for the historical perspective which it provides).
Labels: economic rationalism, economics, family, tax, work

Reginaldvs Cantvar
St. Andrew's Day, A.D. 2015
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Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Notes: Tuesday-Wednesday, October 5-6, 2010

Unintentionally hilarious critique of a pro-Lesbian movie which is not pro-Lesbian enough for the critic!

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/its-not-all-right/story-e6frg8n6-1225930639218

Long, but worth reading if you have five minutes to spare and need a good laugh. (It occured to me that the article might really have been satirical, but, looking at the article overall, I think that it's supposed to be a genuine critique.) A sample:

Despite, or perhaps because of, the present energetic push towards normalising homosexuality (let's all get married, have babies and not rock the Judaeo-Christian boat), gays remain a menace. Heterosexual men and the society over which they have power are threatened every which way by homosexuality. Lesbians, and lesbian couples in particular, limit male sexual access. Men don't like that.

Dr. Gray on euthanasia

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/choosing-ones-time-of-death-is-a-basic-human-right/story-e6frg6zo-1225934570662

Here's another article from The Australian which had me wondering at several points whether it was really a satire. Points like this:

If we take away the labels such as euthanasia, kill, murder, suicide, we can look at the issues.

The people who join the Dying with Dignity movement simply want to die with dignity. ...

So one euphemism (euthanasia) is replaced with another euphemism--'dying with dignity'. But euthanasia isn't just any old kind of dying; it really is killing (a term to which Dr. Gray objects), either of oneself, or assisting someone else to do it.

And also at this point (Dr. Gray's conclusion):

The reason for wanting choice is that this is one's own business, no one else's. We should not have to give reasons. It may indeed be a terminal disease and one may have consulted a doctor, or one may have gone bankrupt, or the wrong team may have won the grand final, but these are not relevant to anyone else. A personal decision, which is made as a human right, is all that is required. The necessary legislation should be simple enough.

What a disconcerting thing it is to live in a world in which one can no longer be quite sure whether a text is serious or satirical.

Remnant opinion piece on monarchy and democracy

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=382178#382178

This article looks interesting (though off-topic for the AQ thread in which it was posted), but unfortunately its author thinks that "the will of the people ... should determine the shape of any political order", which is too much like one of the condemned errors in Quanta cura for my liking. Nevertheless, the article might be interesting to read in full, which I'll do if I have time.

Book(let?) on the evidence that St. Peter was in Rome ...

After posting yesterday's edition of Notes, in which I mentioned the testimony of Caius to the death of St. Peter (and St. Paul) in Rome, it occured to me that the book which that Catholic Encyclopedia article cited (St. Peter in Rome) might be available on-line. So I searched for it using the N.L.A.'s Trove search service, and though it is apparently not available on-line (though the search results show that there are copies of it, or of books very much like it, to be found in several Australian libraries, including The University of Sydney's one), I found the following booklet, published in 1874 by one John Stewart M'Corry:

http://www.archive.org/details/a591190500mcoruoft

It looks very interesting, though I haven't read it all yet (though it's not too long).

... and a very old letter-to-the-editor citing Protestant affirmation of that Tradition

Found while doing that Trove search:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/25656734?searchTerm=St. Peter in Rome&searchLimits=

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Bruno, Confessor, A.D. 2010
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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Notes: Saturday-Tuesday, July 24-27, 2010

"U. of IL Says Catholic Prof 'Not Fired' - Just Can't Teach"

Apparently Dr. Howell's employment was not terminated; he was just barred from teaching (same effect, of course):

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32699

Blog comments by me

At Mr. Schütz's blog:

Cardinal Pole
July 27, 2010 at 4:06 am

“But oddly, Your Eminence, according to Gleeson, the prevailing secular ideology DOES consider it possible to harm others and rejects any act that might result in such harm.”

Mr. Schütz, did you mean to say “DOES NOT“? Otherwise there seems to be an internal contradiction there.

“[You are] sure that in some circumstances a person can be (and should be) criminally charged for abuse even if (at the time of the abuse) the victim “consented”.”

I agree, and presumably so would most, perhaps all, secular (Godless) ethicists, but my point is that the Godless ethicist cannot prove, in the light of his first principles, that it is morally wrong–as in transgressing a moral obligation–to harm others, even against their will.
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/how-useful-would-a-secular-catechism-be/#comment-16060]

At Terra's blog:

(Response to Wolsey)

"A state that compels participation in liberal democracy is not acting in furtherance of the common good as liberal democracy does not further the common good."

Interesting that you say that, York; it had occurred to me that Australia's liberalism was a factor to consider in this discussion, though no-one had raised it explicitly until your comment. I see it this way: Democracy is a legitimate form of government. Liberalism, however, is evil, false, absurd, and condemned irrevocably by the Church. Liberalism, then, is like a cancer in the body politic. Now we know that the common good is to the State what health and well-being is to a human person. So if a person had a cancer, even a self-inflicted one, would that mean that we were forbidden to help that person with other aspects of his health and well-being? No, not necessarily, so long as we weren't co-operating formally in the carcinogenic behaviour. Hence I don't see why the natural law would necessarily forbid us to participate in the political life of a liberal democracy.

(Response to Anon.)

Anon., I don't dispute that Australian governments have sometimes, perhaps often, acted against the common good; I dispute that Australian governments have ceased to be legimitate governments or that they are legitimate but that their laws are to be regarded as invalid until proven otherwise.

(Response to Salvatore)

"Surely the AEC represents a reasonable source of information in such a discussion?"

A few problem with that information come to mind:

1. It only applies to Queensland.
2. Were government members the only M.P.s to vote for the relevant Bill (remember, a government doesn't legislate--Parliament legislates)?
3. Even supposing that that Act was invalid at the time, subsequent governments, including Labor governments presumably, didn't repeal it.

And as you concede, the law still wasn't necessarily invalid just because it might have been badly motivated.

"Consequently, if the Australian Government’s imposition of this duty is to be just, there must be some characteristic(s) of our nation or its system of government which requires it. What might this (these) be?"

I don't know, and I don't need to know in order for the Act to bind my conscience, just as I don't need to know that, say, a given industry and its influence on the common good require a certain piece of industrial legislation in order for it to bind my conscience. I can only regard legislation as valid until proven invalid, and nobody has proven the Act, or the relevant parts, invalid.

July 27, 2010 3:53 AM
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Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Pantaleon, Martyr, A.D. 2010
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Friday, July 23, 2010

Notes: Friday, July 23, 2010

Just some blog comments by me:

At Mr. Schütz's blog:

Cardinal Pole
July 23, 2010 at 4:37 am

“It is true that we don’t have a collection of secular doctrines neatly arranged as a sort of “Secular Catechism” – but wouldn’t it be helpful if we did?”

We do. Read The Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Syllabus of Errors, Quanta cura, things like that.
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/how-useful-would-a-secular-catechism-be/#comment-15995]

Cardinal Pole
July 23, 2010 at 4:53 am

“does secular ethics ever say it is possible to do harm to yourself, even if your action does no harm to anyone else?”

If by secular ethics we mean Godless ethics, and if without God there is no such thing as true and proper moral obligation, and if the absence of moral obligation is moral liberty, then secular ethics tells us that we not only have the moral liberty to harm ourselves, but also unrestricted moral liberty to harm others, indeed, to do anything we please. That’s why, as Fr. Fahey mentions in The Kingship of Christ according to the Principles of St. Thomas Aquinas, in the secularist ethics axiom which can be stated as ‘do whatever you want, however self- or mutually-destructive, so long as everyone involved consents’, the ‘so long as everyone else involved consents’ bit is baseless. Secular ethics’s first and only principle is: Do whatever you want, full stop. And if you don’t like the sound of that, then, as Professor Dawkins might say, tough!
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/how-useful-would-a-secular-catechism-be/#comment-15996]

At Terra's blog:

Cardinal Pole said...

"compulsory voting was introduced in this country by (various) Governments solely because they believed it would be an advantage to them in an upcoming election."

Prove it. (Not that it would matter; a bad motive on the part of a legislator doesn't necessarily invalidate his legislation.)

"Compulsory Voting unjustly vitiates [your] ‘Right to Participate’ by depriving [you] of [your] ‘Right to Not Participate’."

Absurd. People in a democracy have no more 'right not to participate' than the king in a monarchy has a 'right not to participate'.

Another way to look at it is this: Rights are either natural or acquired. Obviously your supposed 'right not to participate' is not an acquired right, so it must be a natural right. So you need to show how the natural law gives you this 'right'.

"Given that ‘right’ and ‘duty’ are antithetical, the statement is
meaningless."

So you deny that someone with a right can conceivably have, on occasions, a duty to exercise that right?

July 23, 2010 2:54 AM
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Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Apollinaris, Bishop, Martyr, and of St. Liborius, Bishop, Confessor, A.D. 2010
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Thursday, July 22, 2010

Notes: Thursday, July 22, 2010

"Russian Orthodox patriarch praises Pope, rips Protestant compromises with secularism"

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32655

An interesting Herald letter with a proposal for reform of Australia's preferential voting system

In today's edition of The Sydney Morning Herald:

Preferential system is not half what it could be

The primary vote of minor parties has increased in recent elections, but the preferential system distorts the result.

A candidate who is an elector's third choice receives the same ''vote value'' as if he or she was the first choice - hardly what the voter intended. Not only does it not reflect the wishes of the voter, it distorts the level of support candidates have garnered.

A more equitable structure would be to discount the value of preferences by 50 per cent each time they are distributed, to more accurately reflect the voter's choice. Thus 100 votes cast as a first preference would become 50 votes when passed to the next preferred candidate and 25 votes when passed to the third choice. This concept takes on increased relevance with the recent arrangement of the Greens and Labor to exchange preferences in the lower house.

There is much to commend the concept of preferential voting, but in its current format it fails the test of being truly representative of the electorate's wishes. By amending the system to incorporate a 50 per cent reduction as each preference is passed down, it makes the system truly representative.

Alan Plumb Milsons Point
[http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/democracy-hijacked-by-people-who-dont-care-20100721-10l0v.html?skin=text-only]

Blog comments by me

At Mr. Schütz's blog:

Cardinal Pole
July 22, 2010 at 4:40 am

There was a good discussion on that communique at the Angelqueen forum:

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32500
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/vatican-announces-that-2011-world-day-of-peace-will-be-dedicated-to-religious-freedom/#comment-15950]

At Terra's blog:

Cardinal Pole said...

Terra's comment of July 22, 2010 1:23 AM answers the previous comments quite well, but I'll still offer, if I may, the following thoughts:

(Response to Salvatore)
"[You] suppose ultimately it depends on whether one regards voting as a duty or a right."

No, it depends ultimately on whether the natural law commands, forbids, or permits compulsory voting, not on whether a private citizen 'regards' voting as this or that (sorry if that sounds curt; I don't mean it to be).

"If it’s a duty then there’s no problem with the State coercing its subjects to vote."

It isn't necessarily a duty, but it will be in polities in which the competent authority commands its subjects to vote (though even where voting is voluntary the natural law can sometimes command, on pain of sin, voters to exercise that right--see Fr. Jone in Moral Theology).

"A right, on the other hand, represents a freedom to act (or not) and, as such, cannot of its nature be the subject of compulsion."

Nevertheless, the natural law can, whether remotely (that is, through a lawful superior) or proximately, command one to exercise a right in certain instances.

"As [you]’ve never been convinced by the ‘duty’ arguments for voting, [you] maintain that the compulsion to vote vitiates [your] democratic rights."

There are a number of schools of thought on how to know whether an obligation does or does not exist. Of the schools of thought which the Church tolerates, the least strict is probabilism (sp?), according to which there is no obligation if there exists a solid probability of non-obligation. Your reasoning here wouldn't be valid even for a probabilist; you have demonstrated neither an intrinsic probability--all you can say is that you aren't convinced by arguments for compulsory voting, therefore you aren't bound to do so, which would be like someone saying that he isn't convinced by the arguments for compulsory Mass attendance on Sunday, therefore he isn't bound to do so--nor an extrinsic probability--you haven't referred us to any respected authors who hold your opinion.

(Response to Anne Nonny Mouse)
"Huh? Cardinal Pole asserts without any justification "The onus is on whoever says that it is unjust to prove the alleged injustice.""

In my first, longer draft of that comment I gave the two reasons why, but I ended up deciding to submit as short a comment as possible. Anyway, here are the two reasons:

1. The general truth that 'he who affirms must prove'.
2. Lawful superiors enjoy the benefit of the doubt about their commands.

"Since the claim is for the state to compel people to act surely it is for the state to demonstrate that it has the authority to do so and that what it compels is just."

No it isn't; the State, like any lawful superior, enjoys the benefit of the doubt. What you're advocating here is a sort of 'presumption of guilt' when in fact lawful superiors enjoy a 'presumption of innocence', a presumption that their commandsare valid until demonstrated not to be.

Someone has to demonstrate that the natural law forbids compulsory voting if we are to reject the relevant sections of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 as invalid commands. (I say that to both Salvatore and Anne Nonny Mouse, as well as to anyone who disputes the validity of all or parts of the Act.)

July 22, 2010 3:20 AM
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Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Mary Magdalen, Penitent, A.D. 2010
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Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Notes: Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Greens-Labor preference deal:

[T]he Greens will receive Labor Senate preferences in every state and territory, and Labor will receive Greens preferences in more than 50 marginal seats.
[http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/fear-mongering-over-greens-deal-20100720-10jjw.html?skin=text-only]

Mr. Muehlenberg contra Mr. Hinch on so-called gay marriage

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/heterosexual-marriage-is-societys-bedrock/story-e6frg6zo-1225894778178

I seem to recall that Mr. Muehlenberg had a response to Mr. Rodney Croome's recent piece on 'gay marriage' rejected by Fairfax, so I was glad to see this piece published in The Australian today. It is a mostly good summary of the arguments against this curious thing.

Mr. Winders's father was a Freemason

Occasionally one sees letters or comments in the papers or on-line by Mr. Lewis Winders; some of you might be familiar with these. Here is a revealing recent comment by him which I wish to keep for future reference:

Lewis Winders of Tasmania Posted at 3:28 PM July 20, 2010

Glad you mentioned the Freemasons, Henk (a group which, at the last tally, had a record of sexual assaults, infant rapes, violent crusades, tortures and burnings at the stake totalling absolutely zero). My late father was instrumental in introducing women to some of the formerly male-only ceremonies in the Lodge at which he was GM. It certainly rocked a few people's boats at the time but they soon noticed that the world continued to revolve on its axis, so the Great Architect was obviously not too enraged at the idea. Many of the members even grew to appreciate the ladies' company. Just imagine: a group of men enjoying the presence and contribution of women! How misguided is that?
Comment 14 of 14
[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/mindless-misogyny/comments-fn558imw-1225894270061]

(Wow, so no Freeemasons in the history of Freemasonry have ever individually or corporately committed sexual assault, or infant rape, or been involved in, to coin a term, compassades (e.g. rebellion leading to the usurpation of sovereignty over the Papal States; readers might be able to furnish other examples), or torture or killing (whatever happened to William Morgan, anyhow?)? Impressive!)

Mind you, I don't want to read too much into the younger Mr. Winders's Masonic connections; our society is so thoroughly liberal, naturalistic, and anti-Catholic that Mr. Winders could just as easily have picked up his tenets from extra-domestic/extra-parental influences.

Blog comments by me

At Mr. Schütz's blog:

Cardinal Pole
July 21, 2010 at 5:18 am

“precisely because Latin doesn’t have articles, if the sense of “one god, but not the one God” was intended, the text would need to include something to point to this.”

Which simply tells us that the sense of “one god, but not the one God” was presumably not intended.

” [I]Nobiscum Deum adorant unicum[/I] means that they adore the unique God along with us”

As would all monotheists (at least those who hold that God can and ought to be adored, of course), yet as we agree, the fact that two persons or sets of persons are monotheists does not mean that their respective monotheisms have the same God.

“the preceding sentence, which [I] don’t quote ”

Because I’m interested here in Islam in particular rather than monotheism in general; indeed, that first sentence reinforces my case to the extent that it reminds us that not everyone who holds that one god is the creator adores the same god.

“You can’t have [I]a[/I] unique God”

Why not? Each of us has, for instance, a unique Tax File Number.

“If the author wanted to say that Muslims and Christian each worship a god which they conceive to be unique, he would need to say that.”

Assuming, of course, that that was indeed what he wanted to say! If he just wanted to say that Muslims are monotheists and to list some of the features of their monotheism, which is presumably all the author in fact wanted to do, then he can do that by saying what was indeed said.

“In short, the [I]Deus unicus[/I] adored by Muslims is the [I]Creator[/I].”

As is the unique god adored by any monotheist who adores a god as creator.
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/bill-muehlenberg-takes-issue-with-my-post-on-cadburys-chocolate/#comment-15902]

Cardinal Pole
July 21, 2010 at 6:16 am

Just to clarify the sentence taking up text lines 4-5 of the body of that comment: What I mean there is that the author presumably just wanted to say that Muslims worship one God, while neither affirming nor denying that that one God is the one God, i.e., the same God we Christians worship.
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/bill-muehlenberg-takes-issue-with-my-post-on-[cadburys-chocolate/#comment-15904]

At Terra's blog:

Cardinal Pole said...

"Is it just for the State to compel [you] to vote in elections"

The onus is on whoever says that it is unjust to prove the alleged injustice.

July 21, 2010 5:01 AM
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Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Confessor, Doctor of the Church, A.D. 2010
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Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Notes: Saturday-Tuesday, July 17-20, 2010

D.I.C.I. article on the new President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32557

D.I.C.I. commentary accompanying the article:

The statement by the new official responsible for ecumenism at Rome should be noted: “Benedict XVI does not want in any way to go backwards,” in other words, to what was taught before the Second Vatican Council—in the encyclical Mortalium animos (by Pius XI), for example. One should also remark that, according to the Swiss prelate, the pope desires a reformatio, a reform allowing the Church to “rediscover its authentic shape, as the Second Vatican Council has already effected/accomplished [réalisé(e)]”. Reading the excerpts from the latest work by Msgr. Gherardini (see our Documents) shows that such a reformatio is more than compromised because, according to the director of the review Divinitas, this council is in conflict with Tradition on at least 9 points which are not insignificant. In passing, one might also ask whether this reformatio, presented as “already effected/accomplished by Vatican II” still needs to be done. And if it has already been effected/accomplished, what are its fruits? The creation of a new Pontifical Council for the evangelization of the countries which “are experiencing the progressive secularization of society and a sort of ‘eclipse of the sense of God’” provides a significant answer to that question.

See also the first comment at that thread for an editorial by Fr. Lorans on the possible tension between the respective aims of that Pontifical Council and of the new Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation.

Blog comments by me

At Mr. Schütz's blog:

Cardinal Pole
July 20, 2010 at 3:57 am

Mr. Schütz, neither of the two Conciliar/Catechism texts you adduced said that Muslims worship the same deity as Christians, or that what they adore is the God of Abraham:

“In the first place amongst these there are the Mohamedans, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind.”

“The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, [Cf St. Gregory VII, letter XXI to Anzir (Nacir), King of Mauritania (Pl. 148, col. 450f.) ] who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God.”

Given that Latin doesn’t have articles, I would expect that things like “the one and merciful God” and “the one God” could be translated respectively as ‘a single, merciful god’, ‘a single god’ (with capital ‘g’s if you prefer). Note also those two texts’ purely subjective linking of the Muslim God to the God of Abraham–”professing to hold the faith of Abraham”, “Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself”.

So in fact it would seem that the one and only Magisterial pronouncement which supports the identity of the Lord and the Muslim God is when John Paul II. said that “[w]e believe in the same God”. But given that His late Holiness made that statement “to a rally of Muslim youth” can it even be considered Magisterial? (And I don’t ask that rhetorically–can someone tell me whether that is to be classified as a Magisterial pronouncement? Mr. Schütz says that it was an Act of the Ordinary Magisterium, but the criteria for that are that the pronouncement be on a matter of Faith–the Catholic Faith, not the faith of any other religion–or morals and in the Pope or Bishop’s teaching capacity. John Paul II.’s statement that we (Christians and Muslims) believe in the same God seems to me to fail the first criterion, and possibly the second one too.

Now of course Muslims profess much about God which is knowable by unaided reason. But they also profess much about which unaided reason can give no answer, thus exceeding the proper scope of philosophy. If you ask the hypothetical ‘virtuous pagan’ (to whom the Gospel has not been announced but who knows, loves and serves God as far as right reason dictates) how many Persons are God and he answers ‘I don’t know’, then he worships the same God as Christians. But he who answers ‘God is not personal’ or ‘only one person is God’ does not. (Furthermore, if I’m not mistaken, Muslims are also in error on some points of natural theology–a commenter at this blog recently mentioned how she said to a Muslim colleague that God is love, which he denied).

So do Christians and Muslims believe in the same God? Mr. Schütz was right to point out that it is a non sequitur to say that “Muslims profess to be monotheists and therefore the God they worship must logically be the God we worship”. But if the fact that both Christians and Muslims profess monotheism does not imply that we believe in the same God, then why would the fact that both Christians and Muslims profess ‘Abrahamism’, to coin a term, imply that we believe in the same God (given that we disagree as to the content of ‘Abrahamism’)? It seems to me that there is no logical or Magisterial reason to conclude that the respective objects of Christian and Muslim adoration are one and the same.
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/bill-muehlenberg-takes-issue-with-my-post-on-cadburys-chocolate/#comment-15868]

At Terra's blog:

Cardinal Pole said...

"since Australia has secret ballots the requirement is to attend a polling station. One can then voting informally."

That is incorrect. Section 245(1) of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 gives the following command:

"It shall be the duty of every elector to vote at each election."
[http://www.comlaw.gov.au/ComLaw/Legislation/ActCompilation1.nsf/0/14E2E2F9F0662775CA2576080017348A/$file/CwlthElectoral1918_WD02.pdf]

(The same Act (Section 101) also commands us to apply "forthwith" to become electors if not electors already. Also, Sections 239 and 240 prescribe the manner of voting for Senate and Lower House elections, respectively, thus ruling out the possibility that an informal vote could satisfy the obligation to vote.)

So given that the requirements imposed in the Act are, as far as I know, just, possible, and properly promulgated, the Act is a valid law and thus its commands are binding in conscience (I have no reason to think that they are purely penal) and it would therefore be a sin not to vote (properly).

To sum up:

1. Australian law commands non-electors to become electors.
2. Australian law commands electors to vote (and not merely informally).
3. A lawful command by a competent authority (which is what the preceding commands are) binds on pain of sin, so informal voting is sinful, as is obstinate non-enrolment.
(Obviously there are also exceptions.)

And of course in addition to these intrinsic reasons there are also, as Terra indicated, extrinsic reasons to vote properly--one way or another, one of the candidates is going to win whichever office is being contested, so it seems to me that we might as well do our part to make sure that the least-worst one wins.

July 20, 2010 1:17 AM
Your comment has been saved and will be visible after blog owner approval.
[http://australiaincognita.blogspot.com/2010/07/and-it-is-on-australia-goes-to-polls-on.html]

At Coo-ees:

Cardinal Pole said...

Check out the conference photos which Mr. Coyne has helpfully provided--can anyone spot any Roman collars (I don't want to be too droll and ask whether anyone can spot any cassocks)?

July 20, 2010 2:25 AM
Your comment has been saved and will be visible after blog owner approval.
[http://coo-eesfromthecloister.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-bother-going.html]

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Jerome Emiliani, Confessor, A.D. 2010
Posted by at No comments:
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Monday, May 31, 2010

Notes: Saturday-Tuesday, May 29-June 1, 2010

On this year's production of the Oberammergau Passion Play

An article posted at AQ contained the following paragraph:

Somewhat more removed from Church control is the Oberammergau Passion Play,the famous Bavarian portrayal of Christ’s Passion which is by now a huge commercial institution. This year, for the first time, the play is designed to emphasize that Jesus was a reform-minded rabbi who was unalterably opposed to institutions and hierarchy. Thus the new play demonstrates once again the dangers of interpreting Revelation without a guiding authority. Suddenly the Meaning of Life is determined by our own (or, more likely, some elitist director’s) vibes.
[http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31858
and that whole article is worth reading for its point about a teaching authority being necessary for the faithful transmission of any body of revealed truth]

There's also more on this silliness here("Jesus was against hierarchy and against institutions") and in the comments here.

Death of Mr. Geoffrey Chapman

From an obituary in Saturday's edition of The Sydney Morning Herald:

Geoffrey Chapman, 1930 - 2010

Sydney seminarians were Geoffrey Chapman's best customers in the Commonwealth when he began publishing Catholic books in the late 1950s.

Their support enabled him to build a small suburban press into the leading English language purveyor of the ideas that led to Vatican II.

When the council concluded, its documents, translated into English, aptly bore the imprint of Geoffrey Chapman. By then, he was the publisher of choice to the Vatican II generation of Catholics.

[...] At university, [Mr. Chapman and his wife] had been part of the vibrant Catholic subculture energising the Newman Society of Victoria. They had resisted B. A. Santamaria's attempts to take over the society. In London they made contact with like-minded Catholics in the church's main youth movement and offered to see through the press two collections of vanguard writings. Thus they discovered a vocation to be publishers.

On borrowed money Chapman travelled to the US, where Fides Publishers took him in and taught him the trade. ''They fed him, lodged him, encouraged and gave help, ideas, information and friendship,'' his wife later said. ...

[...] Soon, however, he and Sue were seeking authors of their own. An outstanding editor, Sue scoured the Catholic world to find writers who could explore the new territories opening up in church life. Many of her authors were French and all of them looked forward to a better church. Among these early books were essays by the Melbourne group gathered around the poet Vincent Buckley and lectures given in Sydney by an English scholar, Alexander Jones.

[...] The opening of the Second Vatican Council, in 1962, took Chapman to Rome, where he got to know and assess bishops and the experts brought to the council. Never overawed by bishops, he yet found lifelong friends in the hierarchy. One was the Archbishop of Durban, Denis Hurley, a courageous opponent of apartheid. Others were the Archbishop of Hobart, Guilford Young, star of the Australian bishops, and Cardinal Augustin Bea, the Vatican's point man on ecumenism.

When the Herald's Rome correspondent Desmond O'Grady alerted Chapman to the publication of a diary kept by the late Pope John XXIII, he rushed to Rome and sealed a deal giving him exclusive world rights to an English translation. Competitors were kept at bay, making its publication, in 1965, a coup for the Chapman firm. By request, first copies went to Buckingham Palace and to Pope Paul VI's personal library.

By then, Geoffrey Chapman publishing was well known throughout the English-reading world. Needing recapitalisation, in 1969, the firm was sold to a US conglomerate. A few years later, both Chapmans joined the William Collins firm as the nucleus of a liturgical publishing enterprise. Their task was to mass produce missals and service books in English in line with the Vatican II reforms of Catholic worship. Later they would do a broad ecumenical hymnbook for Australia and a multilingual prayerbook for South African Anglicans.

[...] His place in history is assured by the fact that no one can tell the story of Vatican II without reading the books he published.

[... Obituary by] Edmund Campion
[http://www.smh.com.au/national/obituaries/reformed-catholics-publisher-of-choice-20100528-wlb4.html?skin=text-only]

See also here and here. His enthusiastic involvement in the diffusion of the Spirit of Vatican II notwithstanding, may he rest in peace.

Prof. Ormerod on Vatican II

An article at CathNews mentioned the following about its author:

Neil Ormerod is Professor of Theology at Australian Catholic University. He contributed to the volume of essays, Vatican II: Did anything happen? He also has an article soon to appear in Theological Studies (Sept 2010), on the debate on continuity and discontinuity at Vatican II.
[http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=21520]

I would be interested to read both works.

More from Joshua on the Carthusian Rite

"The Modern Carthusian Mass":
http://psallitesapienter.blogspot.com/2010/05/modern-carthusian-mass.html

The Sybil on how The Diocese of Wollongong might report to Rome on its post-Summorum-Pontificum experiences

http://wollongongensis.blogspot.com/2010/05/time-to-get-that-report-ready-my-lord.html

The original Sodomites: The first recorded to complain about people being 'judgemental'!

Here's a comment which was posted at Fr. Zuhlsdorf's blog:

The first people in Scripture to cry “judgmental” were the Sodomites, who

surrounded the house; 5 and they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.” 6 Lot went out of the door to the men, shut the door after him, 7 and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. 8 Behold, I have two daughters who have not known man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.” 9 But they said, “Stand back!” And they said, “This fellow came to sojourn, and he would play the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them” (Gen. 19:4-9 RSV-CE).

Plus ça change...

Comment by Hieronymus Illinensis — 30 May 2010 @ 2:44 am
[bold and italics in the original,
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/05/being-judgmental-fr-finigan-hits-for-six/#comment-207277]

Vynette on Tradition

Here's a comment by Vynette, whom you might recall from her visit to Mr. Schütz's blog last year, in a thread at Catholica:

Roch,

You are assuming that the late "oral transmission" theory championed by so many biblical scholars is the correct one.

In fact, the New Testament is so full of Semitic syntax, vocabulary, idioms, and thought patterns that these intricacies and peculiarities could not possibly have survived years of oral transmission, particularly in a foreign environment and language [Greek], and then been written down in a foreign [Greek] language.

Some of the New Testament's apparently difficult passages can only be understood by studying the underlying Hebrew text.

In reality, the gospels we have now were written originally in Hebrew, or compiled from Hebrew notes, before the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.
["by vynette, Brisbane, Australia, Friday, May 28, 2010, 08:37 (4 days ago)",
http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?id=48884]

But if the New Testament "can only be understood by studying the underlying Hebrew text" (which Hebrew text we don't even have), then what good is it to those who aren't experts in Classical Hebrew and its literature and culture? We can't all be expected to attain that kind of expertise, so wouldn't some kind of teaching authority be necessary? With a Divine promise of indefectibility, such a teaching authority would be secure against the pitfalls from which oral Tradition would otherwise suffer.

An index fund aimed at Catholics

Here's a story from page 2 of yesterday's Sydney Daily Telegraph's Your Money supplement:

Many of us look for divine intervention when it comes to investing, so the answer may be upon us.
The Stoxx Europe Christian Index has been launched and the index fund has been Vatican-approved.
The fund is a compilation of 533 European companies that adhere to Catholic values, which means no profits from porn, gambling, weapons, tobacco or birth control.
Faith funds have been around for a long time. In fact, back in the 18th century the Quakers refused to invest in tobacco and the slave trade.
There are kosher funds in Israel and Sharia compliant funds operate through the Muslim world.
In Australia, we have ethically and socially responsible investment funds. Returns from these types of funds have been around the average.
H.H. The Pope on freedom of religion and its relation to democracy and development

BENIN: JUSTICE ALWAYS ACCOMPANIES FRATERNITY

VATICAN CITY, 28 MAY 2010 (VIS) - ...

[...] "I also wish to express my appreciation", [His Holiness] concluded, "for the efforts being made by everyone, especially the authorities, to strengthen relations of respect and esteem among the country's religious groups. Freedom of religion helps to enrich democracy and promote development".
CD/ VIS 20100528 (540)

Disappointing to see that kind of unqualified endorsement of 'freedom of religion', which, understood as a civil liberty, is evil in itself and is only conducive to the common good when it is the lesser of the two evils of, on the one hand, offences against the Catholic religion and, on the other hand, the disruptions which would result from repression of offences against the Catholic religion when there are many such offenders.

Blog/DB comments by me

At AQ:

"We were troubled with equating a living Catholic prayer for the conversion of Jews, newly endorsed by the Pope, with several obscure references from the Talmud that have no practical role in Jewish life today."

Really, "no practical role in Jewish life today"? Not according to Prof. Shahak:

"Of particular note, however, is the fact that the daily "blessings" of Judaism contain a curse against Christians. As Professor Israel Shahak of Hebrew University tells us, "in the most important section of the weekday prayer--the 'eighteen blessings'--there is a special curse, originally directed against Christians, Jewish converts to Christianity and other Jewish heretics: 'And may the apostates have no hope, and all the Christians perish instantly.' (20)" "
[http://mauricepinay.blogspot.com/2007/03/talmudic-touch-real-story-of-offertorys.html]

Furthermore, if someone says to you 'I will give you something which you would value greatly if you give me something which you value little' then you'd accept the offer, wouldn't you? So if a Catholic prelate says to Mr. Foxman 'We will given you something which you would value greatly--namely, the removal of liturgical references to the conversion of the Jews--if you give us something which you value little--namely, "several obscure references from the Talmud that have no practical role in Jewish life today"', then he should eagerly accept the offer, shouldn't he? Or is the Talmud more valuable to him than he is letting on?
[http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31844]

At Terra's blog:

Your comment has been saved and will be visible after blog owner approval.
[http://australiaincognita.blogspot.com/2010/05/church-and-mission-2-importance-of.html]

Cardinal Pole said...

There's a good comment at Fr. Zuhlsdorf's post on the topic--unsurprisingly, it turns out that the Sodomites (note the capital s) are the first people recorded as complaining about people being 'judgemental'!

June 1, 2010 4:26 AM
Your comment has been saved and will be visible after blog owner approval.
[http://australiaincognita.blogspot.com/2010/05/on-judging.html]

At Mr. Schütz's blog:

Cardinal Pole
June 1, 2010 at 5:30 am

In other words, it forbids the Social Reign of Christ and imposes the Social Reign of Pilate.
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/simon-shama-on-the-snares-of-history-for-the-secular-humanist/#comment-15040]

Cardinal Pole
June 1, 2010 at 5:32 am

I’ve been interested in the Australian experience of Vatican II for some time now, and so I checked out this programme’s website last week (the Compass website didn’t have a transcript). I suspected that the website’s “Talent profiles” page told me all I needed to know about its agenda: Not one of the priests interviewed could be bothered wearing conspicuously clerical attire, and the rest of the interviewees seemed pretty ‘Spirit of Vatican II’. If I understand correctly, did they not interview anyone who opposed the illicit marriage of Revelation and Revolution and the bastard rites which issued therefrom? Didn’t the producers think to visit an S.S.P.X. chapel and interview one of the older members of the congregation? They had a token Aborigine (despite the fact that, by the look of her, she wasn’t even old enough to remember the early post-Vatican-II period, though corrrect me if I’m wrong), but they couldn’t find a token Traditionalist? I suppose that that wouldn’t have ‘woven seamlessly’ into their ‘narrative’.
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/challenge-change-faith-catholic-australia-and-the-second-vatican-council/#comment-15041]

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Angela of Merici, Virgin, A.D. 2010
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Friday, January 29, 2010

Why we need (hereditary) Monarchy and (all-male) Hierarchy

The following comment by Mrs. Judith Bond at Mr. Muehlenburg’s blog (in the context of the media reaction to recent remarks by The Hon. Tony Abbott M.P. on pre-marital sexual activity, and Mr. Muehlenberg’s whole post on the topic is worth reading) resonated with me:

Judith Bond
28.1.10 / 6am
Our country needs a father figure who freely gives sound, solid moral advice.

Another word for virginity is abstinence.

Judith Bond
[my emphasis,
http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2010/01/27/tony-abbott-and-the-usual-frenzied-reaction-to-common-sense/#comments]
The part which I put in bold is the part which interests me here. Every country needs such a father-(or, when a woman reigns, mother-)figure, and that’s one reason why an hereditary monarchy is a desirable form of civic rulership. Perhaps paradoxically, no elected ruler, even if his powers are those of a king, can be this kind of father-figure, because the father-figure needs to be, like a biological father, someone with whom one is ‘stuck’, whom the populace cannot simply dismiss from office when it pleases it. And it is fitting that such a temporal father-figure have, and be united officially with, a spiritual counterpart, and one with spiritual jurisdiction at the same level as the temporal jurisdiction of the civil sovereign—that is, at the level of the whole populace. And better yet, another spiritual father at the level of the whole human race too, so that, with a Universal Primate above him, the national primate will not find himself without the moral support of a superior when Church-State frictions arise. Our country needs, and our world needs, a father-figure who freely gives sound, solid moral advice. And if Mrs. Bond, Mr. Muehlenberg and their co-religionists would abjure themselves of their heresies then they would find such a father-figure in the Roman Pontiff.

(Oh, and one of my favourite comments so far on Mr. Abbott’s remarks is this one, in today’s edition of The Australian:

Will the Rudd government set up a ministry of promiscuity to counter Tony Abbott’s pernicious message on virginity ?

F. W. Anning, Ascot, Qld
[bold type in the original,
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/letters/index.php/theaustralian/comments/last_post_january_29])
Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Francis de Sales, Bishop, Confessor, Doctor of the Church, A.D. 2010
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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

An interesting AQ post on Hilaire Belloc, the French Revolution and political science

With a comment from me there as well:

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26901

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Confessor, Doctor of the Church, A.D. 2009
Posted by at 2 comments:
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Monday, October 13, 2008

Secular liberal democracy vs. the confessional State: which is the better defender of conscience?

[Updated, October 17, 2008, approx. 1600 hrs.: I have corrected the paragraph beginning "Now it was not" in order to make clear that one cannot force anyone to disobey his conscience, but that if someone is going to disobey it, then others must not co-operate with this disobedience except under the conditions that I mention.]
So the Victorian Upper House has passed its monstrous abortion liberalisation laws, and they now await Vice-Regal assent. (If only the Governor could exercise a ‘conscience vote’ like everyone else at the other stages of the passage of the laws.) But of course a law that contravenes the eternal moral law is no law at all. It is a mere piece of human scribbling, worthy of nothing but our defiance and contempt; the pages on which these laws are written would be more suitable as a lining for one’s spittoon than as an addition to the statute books.

Obviously, any freeing-up of access to the means to the wanton destruction of unborn human life is repugnant enough in itself. But what makes these laws uniquely odious (as far as I know) among the various pieces of anti-baby legislation floating around the unflushed toilet bowl of present-day Western ‘civilisation’ is their provision, or rather non-provision, for conscientious objectors. It is these non-provisions that elevate Her Majesty’s Government into the annals of infamy occupied by régimes, like those in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, that thought that they could trample on individual conscience at will. Fr. Brennan reported on these conscience non-provisions recently, and the Sydney Catholic Weekly reminded us of them at the weekend:
Under the legislation doctors with a conscientious objection to abortion would be required to refer a woman to doctor [sic] who didn’t. They would also be obliged to perform abortions in an emergency if necessary to protect the woman’s life.
It is a basic truth of Catholic moral theology that it is a sin to disobey one’s conscience, and that sin is a free act—no-one is forced to sin. Yet these laws attempt to do just that. Furthermore, it is wrong to co-operate in someone else’s wrongdoing, except under very restricted conditions. His late Grace Msgr. Lefebvre reminds us of these conditions in his excellent Religious Liberty Questioned. He writes that
To act against one’s honestly erroneous conscience is to sin. Thus, to force someone to act against such conscience is to cooperate in his sin; but again, we need to further distinguish between two different cases:

To formally cooperate in someone else’s sin is never permissible (in this case, willing precisely to extort from someone an act against his wishes); it is a sin against charity.

It is, however, permissible to cooperate materially in someone else’s sin (desiring that someone do willingly what at first he did not want to do without opposing the eventuality of a forced act) provided that this cooperation be remote and that there is a grievous proportional cause for such a course of action.
(emphasis in the original)
So the conditions are that the co-operation be: purely material, remote, and that it is involves a grievous proportional cause. So let’s see, then, if the Bill’s conscience clauses satisfy these criteria, examining firstly the requirement to perform an abortion in the case of an emergency:

The co-operation is indeed material—the authors of the law (presumably) do not desire to elicit disobedience of conscience as an end in itself.

The co-operation involves a grievous proportional cause—they think that the baby is just a ‘clump of cells’, a human non-person, while the mother is indeed a human person. (This is wrong, of course, since if we are to adopt a radically materialist outlook then the mother is just a ‘clump of cells’ too, and in any case, an organism is never a mere ‘clump of cells’—it is a united whole; perhaps the ‘clump of cells’ folk need to consult an elementary biology textbook.)

But I cannot see how the co-operation is remote, since it requires a direct order to perform an abortion.

Now for the requirement for conscientious objectors to refer infanticidal mothers to a neutral second doctor. Could a conscientious objector make such a referral with a clear conscience? By making the referral his co-operation would clearly be purely material, and possibly remote too, but there can be no possibility of a grievous proportional cause, since what ‘proportion’ can there possibly be between mere financial livelihood and the very destruction of human life? So the laws are morally wrong on both counts, even when evaluated on the pro-abortion crowd’s own terms (assuming, of course, that they agree that it is wrong to force someone to disobey his conscience except under limited conditions—one hopes desperately that they are not so far gone as to disagree on that point).

Now it was not for no reason that I chose Religious Liberty Questioned as my source for the conditions necessary for co-operation in evil. Respect for honestly-erroneous conscience would be one of the basic principles of a Catholic confessional State. It is licit, of course, to restrain someone from acting to obey his conscience, but one cannot force him actively to disobey his conscience, and one may only co-operate in such disobedience under the most limited of circumstances. So examination of these horrendous laws produces the remarkable result that a Catholic confessional State would be a better defender of conscience than the secularist abortocratic brutopia.

This conclusion raises two important questions, one for secularists and one for Catholics. For the secularists, how do you feel about the fact that your cherished liberal democracy is less sympathetic to individual conscience than the supposedly ‘mediæval’, ‘fundamentalist’ confessional State? It is not so long ago that you would no doubt have been scoffing at then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s warning of the rise of a ‘dictatorship of relativism’, yet now you have passed laws that encapsulate perfectly the paradox of a régime that is simultaneously relativistic and dictatorial.

And for Catholics who are opposed to the doctrine of the confessional State, how can you continue in your opposition when this vile legislation gives the decisive proof of H.H. The Pope’s words during WYD08:

There are many today who claim that God should be left on the sidelines, and that religion and faith, while fine for individuals, should either be excluded from the public forum altogether or included only in the pursuit of limited pragmatic goals. This secularist vision seeks to explain human life and shape society with little or no reference to the Creator. It presents itself as neutral, impartial and inclusive of everyone. But in reality, like every ideology, secularism imposes a world-view. If God is irrelevant to public life, then society will be shaped in a godless image. When God is eclipsed, our ability to recognize the natural order, purpose, and the “good” begins to wane. What was ostensibly promoted as human ingenuity soon manifests itself as folly, greed and selfish exploitation. And so we have become more and more aware of our need for humility before the delicate complexity of God’s world.
(http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2008/july/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080717_barangaroo_en.html)
(my emphasis)
Given that no régime is truly neutral, why continue to defend one whose agnosticism towards faith and morals constitutes a veritable Social Reign of Pontius Pilate, washing its hands of guilt while permitting injustice to fester? All States are confessional, it’s just a matter of whether they confess Christ or Belial. The ‘integral humanism’ advanced by Fr. Maritain and influential even at the highest levels of the Hierarchy has been shown to be a pipe dream; the benign phase of secular liberal democracy has now well and truly passed.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Edward, Confessor, 2008 A.D.
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Monday, September 1, 2008

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
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