Category Archives: Church and State

Tolerance and Moral Neutrality

November 2, 2024American Founding, Catholic Social Teaching, Church and State, Culture, Moralilty, Natural Law, Sexual EthicsAquinas, Chesterton, Law, Pornography, Tolerancetwowingstogod@gmail.com

A recent campaign ad that Democrats have been running shows a Republican congressman interrupting a man in his bedroom watching porn threatening to make it illegal. I would not suggest that you subject yourself to the ad because it is disgusting, but it is at least worth mentioning it because it is a sign of just how decadent our culture has become. The problem isn’t just that the Democrats are unfaltering promoters of perversion, but also the fact that Republicans’ response was a denial that they wanted to restrict access to pornography to adults.

If there is one thing that both sides agree on, it is the fact that tolerance is a positive good rather than a necessary evil. In order to live in society and get along with everyone, we need to tolerate certain things. True enough, provided that it doesn’t become a masquerade for neutrality. And in truth, it has become just that. Some of the more Scholastically minded among us will even say that St Thomas supports this position. It is useful to go directly to the Angelic Doctor to shine some light on the issue of tolerance especially because it touches close to the issue at hand.

St. Thomas on Tolerance

In ST II-II q. 10, a. 11, St Thomas says “…those who are in authority, rightly tolerate certain evils, lest certain goods be lost, or certain greater evils be incurred: thus Augustine says (De Ordine ii.4): ‘If you do away with harlots, the world will be convulsed with lust.’” His point is that the governing authority will tolerate certain things because outlawing them will create more disorder than the order that will come about by leaving them in place. Citing Augustine’s tract on order, he says that some societies will tolerate prostitutes because it will lead to greater evils than outlawing it altogether.

In his Treatise on Law, Aquinas explains further that “The purpose of human law is to lead men to virtue, not suddenly, but gradually. Wherefore it does not lay upon the multitude of imperfect men the burdens of those who are already virtuous, that they should abstain from all evil. Otherwise these imperfect ones, being unable to bear such precepts, would break out into yet greater evils…” Laws in a certain sense then ought to be catered to the character of the populace and bear a certain proportionality. To demand too high a level of virtue creates a certain impossibility of living up to it and increases criminality.

It would seem then that St. Thomas would look at our sexual libertine culture and advocate for tolerating pornography because outlawing it would go far beyond our collective virtue. The problem with this is that it is only reading half of what he said. You don’t just look at the level of virtue, but also “the greater evils” that will come about when you make demands beyond the average virtue level. It wasn’t too long ago in the “Wild West” that greed, rage and a lust for revenge led to murder rates that were more than twice the most violent cities of today. Does that mean they should not have had laws against murder because it was beyond the virtue of the average person? Because law is an ordinance of reason for the common good of the society, tolerance must always refer back to the common good.

The Primary Question for Tolerance

The question of virtue of the citizenry is secondary. What is primary is enumerating the “greater evils” that are to be brought about by choosing to outlaw a given evil. There are a plethora of evils attached to it: related to the common good there is the harm done to marriage and the family, and the fact that it is linked to sexual aggression . It also constitutes a growing public health crisis because of its addictive nature and its neuroplastic effects on the brain. There is a great paper summarizing all the scientific findings of the damage porn does to society and individuals here. What exactly are the evils that we are avoiding in tolerating it and how do they pass the proportionality test?

Tolerating evil never works for very long. Social evils always move from tolerance to acceptance to promotion. It is far easier to head it off while it is in the tolerance stage than to wait until it gets to the later stages. God has baked this principle into our social reality so that we must make a stand on our convictions. That is why tolerance, according to Chesteron, “ is the virtue of the man without convictions.” If we are convicted that pornography is wrong, then we cannot merely tolerate it but must take a stand both personally and politically. Abusing the principles of St Thomas will only lead to more self-abuse. We must lobby to outlaw it.

Out of Voting Options?

October 23, 2024Abortion, American Founding, Catholic Social Teaching, Church and State, Conscience, Contraception, Culture of LifeCommon Good, Election, IVFtwowingstogod@gmail.com

With the usual turmoil that comes with a Presidential election it is easy to miss an overall cultural movement that has occurred: it has become increasingly harder for Christians to participate in the political process without compromising their principles. It seems that during this Presidential election cycle we are out of options. The candidate on the Left is radically pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ “rights”, and has been part of an administration that has repeatedly used lawfare, especially against Catholics. The candidate on the Right during his last administration did much to help the pro-life cause, favors the rule of law, and, as his record shows, favors peace both home and abroad. The choice seems rather easy, except the latter also has recently Donned himself “the Father of IVF” and promises, through his party’s platform, “to promote policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments).” Can a Catholic, in good conscience, still vote for the Republican candidate?

Voting and the Common Good

As with any moral examination, it is important to begin by looking at the act in question and to frame it in its context. Since voting is a social action, its moral evaluation must always be in relation to the common good. Admittedly in our atomistic, “are you better off than four years ago?” culture this is a very un-American way of looking at it. Still, voting is a duty because we each have a duty to contribute to the common good. Voting is the means by which the individual chooses a representative whom he thinks will best protect and promote the common good (which is the overarching purpose of the State).

In an ideal world (and assuming our two-party system), any harm done to the common good by a chosen representative would be merely accidental in the sense that the implementation of a policy failed or had unintended consequences. In other words, the ends would be good even if the means were not; a failure in political prudence. Put another way, neither candidate would support what is intrinsically evil and any evil that does arise would be accidental. In that setting, an honest, non-partisan evaluation can occur in which the voter essentially comes up with a pros and cons list for each candidate.

This is why the Church has often spoken as if support for an intrinsic evil is an automatic disqualification. To that end the CDF, under the guidance of Cardinal Ratzinger in 2002, said:

A well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program or an individual law which contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals… When political activity comes up against moral principles that do not admit of exception, compromise or derogation, the Catholic commitment becomes more evident and laden with responsibility… This is the case with laws concerning abortion and euthanasia… Such laws must defend the basic right to life from conception to natural death. In the same way, it is necessary to recall the duty to respect and protect the rights of the human embryo. Analogously, the family needs to be safeguarded and promoted, based on monogamous marriage between a man and a woman.

Because the candidate is openly advocating for a policy that can never be ordered towards advancing the common good, he or she is eliminated as an option. As an important aside, it is necessary to note that there is a distinction between toleration and active promotion. Sometimes the common good dictates that some evils be tolerated because of the moral condition of the polity. You cannot make laws that will eradicate every evil and sometimes the best you can do is contain it or limit it (e.g. John Paul II’s “Art of the Possible” in Evangelium Vitae) .

But what can we do when both candidates are advocating for policies that promote intrinsic evils? “Birth control” and IVF may be of a different moral quality than abortion, nevertheless they cannot be ordered to the common good. The Republican has moved from merely tolerating these things to actively promoting them. It could certainly be argued that because of the sheer number of children killed by both IVF and the Pill (because of its abortifacient properties) that it represents a greater threat to justice in our society than abortion. While it is impossible to quantify the effects, the movement in this direction is certainly a betrayal of those social conservatives who rightly place a premium on the foundations of society in life and the family. It is noteworthy that, in an attempt to avoid being outdone in evil, the Democratic candidate also promises unfettered access to both birth control and IVF as detailed in her party’s platform.

Voting and the Catch-22

There seems to be then a moral justification for not voting for either candidate or, at least, writing in some other worthy candidate. This would be in hopes of sending a message to President Trump that he has lost pro-lifers and he will reverse course. Edward Feser, among others has made a compelling case for that here. The problem with that approach is that, while it may be a political solution, it does not fulfill one’s duty to the common good which is relative to the here and now. The potential harm to the common good should Vice-President Harris win far outweighs the harm President Trump will do to it (this is a point Feser concedes). You must vote to limit the evil as it presents itself here and now; “Sufficient for a day is its own evil” (Mt 6:34). Cardinal Burke made a similar point when he was Archbishop of St. Louis in 2004:

A Catholic may vote for a candidate who, while he supports an evil action, also supports the limitation of the evil involved, if there is no better candidate. For example, a candidate may support procured abortion in a limited number of cases but be opposed to it otherwise. In such a case, the Catholic who recognizes the immorality of all procured abortions may rightly vote for this candidate over another, more unsuitable candidate in an effort to limit the circumstances in which procured abortions would be considered legal. Here the intention of the Catholic voter, unable to find a viable candidate who would stop the evil of procured abortion by making it illegal, is to reduce the number of abortions by limiting the circumstances in which it is legal. This is not a question of choosing the lesser evil, but of limiting all the evil one is able to limit at the time.

Despite the seemingly desperate situation, the only way forward morally is to vote for former President Trump. His policies in many ways advance the common good and he seems protective of the Church. He also seems committed to limiting abortion, although not as strongly as he once was. His pro-IVF and pro-contraception stance is unacceptable, but may actually be limited relative to the Democratic position. Because you cannot remain neutral with respect to your obligation towards the common good, it would be wrong to not cast a vote or to write-in another candidate even if it sends an important political message. That political message needs to be sent more directly and more vociferously by directly and clearly stating our objections to his stances on IVF and contraception.

Fulfillment of the Law

February 12, 2023Bible, Church, Church and State, Natural Law, The Life of JesusLaw, Life of Christ, Sermon on the Mounttwowingstogod@gmail.com

As Moses departed from the people of Israel, he promised that God would send another prophet just like him (Dt 18:15). This prophet would not only lead them into the True Promised Land, but would give them a new law. So the Jews were constantly on the lookout for this “new Moses” and the early Church repeatedly preached Jesus as the Mosaic prophet they were looking for (c.f. Acts 3:22, 7:37). It is no surprise then that Our Lord, just after beginning His public ministry in Matthew’s gospel (addressed to the Jews), climbs a mountain and delivers the Sermon on the Mount. For just like Moses who had to climb Mount Sinai to bring the law from God down to the people, the new Moses, God Himself, speaks directly from the mountain about the Law.

Chronologically and culturally removed from the Sermon on the Mount, it is often confusing for us when the Bible speaks of “the Law”. What exactly does that mean and, more specifically, what does it mean when Our Lord tells those gathered that “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Mt 5:17)?

The Old Law

In his treatise on Law in the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas enumerates three kinds of precepts of the Old Law: moral, ceremonial, and judicial. By placing all of the Old Law within these three broad categories, we are able to better understand both our relationship to the law and the manner in which Christ can say that He did not abolish it but came to fulfill.

When most people think of the “Old Law” the Ten Commandments immediately come to mind. It serves as the foundation for all the moral precepts contained within the Old Law. The Decalogue is in a certain sense superimposed upon the Natural Law, making the precepts of the Natural Law specific. Some of the precepts are easily discernible based on the natural law—“thou shall not kill…thou shall not bear false witness”. Other precepts require wisdom and reflection such as “thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife.” Still others, especially those of the first tablet require Divine instruction. Nevertheless, they do all relate to what can be known from the natural law.

Second, there are the ceremonial precepts of the Old Law. These pertain to Divine Worship. This would include things like sacrifices, sacred things such as the tabernacle, Old Testament “sacraments” such as Seder Meals and circumcision, and observances that distinguished them as worshippers of the True God (not eating pork, etc.).

Finally, there is judicial law. Judicial law is similar to civil law in that it determines the way that a People is governed. It maintains the sovereignty of the People, it governs relations within the People, and governs how citizens interact with non-citizens. Much of the book of Leviticus lays out in detail how Israel is to govern itself in these areas. Israel was to be a “light to the Gentiles” but must remain a distinct People because “salvation comes from the Jews.”

Fulfillment of the Law

With three types or precepts of the Old Law, there are also three ways in which Christ fulfilled them. When we speak of “fulfillment” we must first grasp intention. The moral precepts, reflected in the Ten Commandments, are the direct intention of God with respect to how we are to relate to Him (1^st-3^rd Commandment) and to each other (4^th-10^th Commandment). As St. Thomas says, there can only be dispensation of the law when the letter of the law frustrates the intention of the Lawgiver. Therefore, there is no abrogation of the moral precepts of the Old Law.

Christ, nevertheless, fulfills the moral precepts in Himself. He perfectly follows the moral law. In so doing, He wins graces for His followers such that they are empowered to do the same thing. It is as if He gives us the power to “re-read” the Decalogue not in terms of rules but as a prophecy. “in Christ you shall not make false idols…in Christ you shall not covet your neighbor’s goods” etc.

Christ likewise fulfilled all the ceremonial precepts. The purpose of the ceremonial precepts was to prefigure and act as a foreshadowing of the mystery of Christ. All of the sacrifices find their meaning and fulfillment in His sacrifice on the Cross. He is the true tabernacle. Baptism becomes the “new” circumcision. All dietary laws are abrogated because the Bread of Life has become man’s true food.

The judicial precepts had as their purpose setting apart the Jews for the sake of the Messiah. In Christ there is no distinction between Gentile and Jew so that the judicial precepts are no longer binding (Heb 7:12). The catholicity of the New Israel means that the theodicy of the Old Israel has ended and the principles of the New Covenant can guide men in civil life, regardless of the form of government they take. Church and State work together, each within its respective sphere, to bring men to salvation, rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and God what is God’s” (Mk 12:17).

We see then how Christ came not to abolish but to fulfill the Law. He fulfills the moral, ceremonial, and judicial precepts of the Law, but each in a unique way. The moral by empowering men to live according to God’s law. The ceremonial by giving us Himself on the Cross and through the Sacraments. And the judicial precepts through the Church.

Vaccines and the Common Good

November 3, 2021Catholic Social Teaching, Church and State, Church AuthorityCommon Good, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Churc, CST, Vaccinestwowingstogod@gmail.com

The past 150 years has seen the greatest flurry of social change in the history of mankind. From the end of all monarchies to the full acceptance of democracy and the rise of Marxist regimes, the world is very different than it was a century and half ago. Not surprisingly, the Church has struggled to keep up with the massive changes, especially in her articulation and application of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Her principles are often misunderstood and misapplied, furthering the plunge into chaos that seems to be the inevitable conclusion. This is especially true when it comes to one of the “Four Pillars of Catholic Social Though”, the Principle of the Common Good.

It is admitted at the outset that the notion of the Common Good remains elusive because it can be rather complicated, compounded by the fact that the Church has largely abandoned the Scholastic language that lends itself to explaining the nature of various things. Nevertheless, this has not stopped many Churchmen from using the term in a sloppy manner because of its innate power. For once a man enters a society, he has an obligation to contribute to the Common Good. This means it can be used as a coercive term and leads some people astray when it is not used properly. It is with this in mind that I intend to shine some light on the Common Good.

Defining the Common Good

To begin, the Church provides two definitions of the Common Good, both of which are given in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church in paragraph 164:

“…the common good indicates ‘the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily’. The common good does not consist in the simple sum of the particular goods of each subject of a social entity. Belonging to everyone and to each person, it is and remains ‘common’, because it is indivisible and because only together is it possible to attain it, increase it and safeguard its effectiveness, with regard also to the future. Just as the moral actions of an individual are accomplished in doing what is good, so too the actions of a society attain their full stature when they bring about the common good. The common good, in fact, can be understood as the social and community dimension of the moral good.”

Notice first that the definitions are difficult to reconcile. The first speaks of the utility of the Common Good and makes it seem as it is a collection of parts (“the sum total”). The second speaks of the Common Good not being a sum but an indivisible whole. We need not do the theological gymnastics necessary to reconcile the two to understand the Common Good, just look to Tradition to find a good working definition.

Once we do that, we find that the second definition is the most useful. For it speaks of the Common Good as both being common and a good. This bears further explanation. First a good is something that man desires in order to fulfill his nature. Second, there are two types of goods private and common. Private goods are those of one person alone. A common good on the other hand is one in which the good diffuses itself to many people, and in its diffusion, it is equally shared among members and is not diminished in any way when it is shared.

An illustration might help. Food is a necessary good for each man. I can speak of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But the minute I speak of our peanut butter and jelly sandwich, there is a problem. We cannot both have the whole sandwich. The minute I share that sandwich, there is a diminishment of the sandwich such that me taking a piece of it diminishes the amount you can have. There is only so much to go around. Properly speaking we might call the sandwich a public good because I shared it, but this does not make it a common good. Public goods are really just private goods that are shared.

This distinction is important as well for another reason. In a certain sense, by me eating my half of the sandwich, I have done harm to my neighbor by depriving him of it. What makes a common good a common good is that by doing the good, I am also willing the good of my neighbor for his own sake. By contributing to the common good, even though I benefit, I still am also benefiting my neighbor equally. This is why the image of the Common Good as being the good that flows over each member of society equally is helpful. I might have to forgo certain private goods for the benefit of the Common Good. But in doing so, I too share equally in the good. A police officer forgoes the private good of personal safety for the sake of a just ordering of society. The good of justice flows back over the police officer as well and thus he shares equally in it with every other member of his society.

The Common Good is “better” than a private good, or even a collection of private goods, because it is diffused to each member of that society. This extension of the good makes it a more noble good than merely a private good, no matter how many we are speaking. A good is higher based upon its diffusion so that St. Thomas calls the common good “divine” and says that God Himself is the ultimate Common Good. It also shows the primacy of the spiritual over the material. The material always diminishes in its diffusion while the spiritual does not.

Abusing the Common Good

Once we grasp this definition, we see the danger of only adhering to the first definition in the Compendium (which is the only one the Catechism has in #1906). It makes it appear as if the Common Good simply exists for the private good of individuals and not for the sake of the whole. This is characteristic of our time in which the good of the individual is seen to trump the good of all and how they are often seen to conflict. When we speak of the good of all we really mean all and not just some.

This misunderstanding is especially problematic in the recent CDF statement regarding vaccination: “the morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one’s own health, but also on the duty to pursue the common good.”

The former, namely that one has an obligation to protect one’s health is undoubtedly true. But health can only be and can only ever be a private good. Public health is not part of the Common Good, but a private good, even though it may extend to many people. It can never be shared equally among the members of society. It also, because it depends upon material conditions, is diminished when shared.

The danger of linking it to the Common Good is that it appears to take on an obligatory nature, despite the fact “that vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary.” You cannot have it both ways and by connecting it to the Common Good you have muddied the waters (at best). The fact of the matter is that justice, which is intrinsic to the Common Good, is not maintained when vaccination is forced, even if it is through the soft coercion of ambiguity and the flurry of non-authoritative Magisterial prodding. Decisions regarding one’s health falls under prudential judgment and can never be imposed without doing great harm to the Common Good.

Following the Science of Roe v Wade

October 20, 2021Abortion, American Founding, Bioethics, Catholic Social Teaching, Church and StateAbortion on Demand, Aristotle, Roe v Wade, SCOTUS, St. Thomas Aquinastwowingstogod@gmail.com

In a previous post, it was mentioned that emerging tyrants greatly rely upon sophistry in order to manipulate people into giving away their freedom. That particular post was focused on pointing out the manner in which “experts” use science to serve their own tyrannical aspirations. It is tempting to think that this is the first time that science has been abused on such a massive scale in our country, but we would be wrong. Before there was Covid, there was Roe v. Wade.

We have all heard the arguments for abortion from the Pro-Choice peanut gallery. Some are better than others, but all of them have been refuted. That is why it is surprising that the Supreme Court so readily caved in allowing abortion on demand. Surprising, that is, until you realize that it was the Supreme Court itself (or at least 7 of the justices) that decided they would pull the “follow the science” card and tyrannically impose their will, condemning 60 million (and counting) children to death.

The Summary of the Argument

Somehow the Justices were able to find a right to privacy implicitly within the Constitution, but no “prenatal protection” of personhood to the fetus. They decided to arbitrarily draw a line between postnatal persons and prenatal. Without first defining personhood, there is no way other than arbitrarily to decide whether the location and level of development of the child has any bearing on their rights. They simply declared that “we need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins” despite the fact that “(If the) suggestion of personhood [of the preborn] is established, the [abortion rights] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment.” It would seem that no decision could be made until that question was answered.

It is instructive then to see how they arrived at such radical skepticism regarding the personhood of the unborn. Justice Blackmum took his readers on a historical review of the examination of personhood through philosophy, theology and empirical science. His analysis goes on for 18 pages but can be summarized (like most of modern philosophy) by examining the parts with Aristotle and St. Thomas. Blackmum began with Aristotle and his theory of delayed hominization. This theory essentially says that the conceptus went through three changes before finally becoming a person with a rational soul around day 40 (or 80 for females). St. Thomas Aquinas picked up on this theory and expounded upon it by saying that the body that was first formed was vegetative in nature and later underwent a substantial change with a new body in which it was animated by an animal soul. Then another substantial change occurred, and the now-human body was infused with an intellectual soul.

Note that both supported the idea that once a human body was present, the rational soul was also present. They simply did not have the embryological knowledge of the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th Centuries which concluded that human life began at conception because a human body was present at Conception. Science discovered three things:

the conceptus is biologically distinct from either parent. Sperm and Egg (2 things) come together and make a single biological entity that is:
a unified self-integrating human organism with its own DNA such that
nothing is added to the organism from the outside such that the only thing necessary for growth and development is the same thing we all need—water, food, oxygen and a healthy interaction with its natural environment

The Science of the Court

The Court was well aware of these “well-known facts of fetal development” but instead chose to treat them as a “theory” of an otherwise open question. The question was still open because of the science of Galen (200 AD) and “new embryological data that purport to indicate that conception is a ‘process’ over time.” In other words, the “substantial problems for the precise definition of when life begins” are based upon the work of a third century biologist and the “science” of 5 law review articles and 2 “scientists” (see footnote 62).

Even the “process” argument is specious. The term is extremely vague and makes it seem like we can never be sure. But in truth when sperm and egg meet, a zygote is formed that is neither sperm nor egg. It is a new thing. Does this happen instantaneously or through some process? Yes to both. The moment of conception is when during the process of the sperm penetrating the egg a new thing is formed. There is most certainly a single instant when this happens (or else it would never actually happen) even if we cannot say precisely when that instant is. Even if you accept that it is a process, then that is not an argument for abortion on demand; only for abortion during the “process”.

As an aside, this would still be wrong as it would constitute a contraceptive act, although the moral gravity would be lessened. The point in mentioning it though is that it is really just a smokescreen for sneaking in abortion on demand. Exceptions only apply to the exceptions and can never be the basis for the rule.

The point is that the Court completely glossed over the established science and instead feigned a skeptical view in order to impose abortion upon America. But there can be no skeptical view—to allow abortion is to take the position that the child is not a person. There can be no neutrality on this question and the fact that they are “following the science” should alert us to the fact that they desire to set up a tyranny in which the unborn are only persons if someone says so.

On Politicians and Receiving Communion

May 26, 2021Abortion, American Founding, Bioethics, Catholic Social Teaching, Church, Church and State, Church Authority, EucharistAmericanism, Arian Heresy, Arianism, Art of the Possible, Catholic Church in America, Catholic Politicians, Heresy, NARAL, Senator Tim Kaine, Separation of Church and Statetwowingstogod@gmail.com

Last week, Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia wrote an Opinion piece in the National Catholic Reporter weighing in on the debate over Catholic politicians who openly support abortion and the reception of Holy Communion. The Senator clearly articulates the challenges faced by politicians who attempt to adhere to the Catholic faith when Christendom has eroded. Although he does not frame it using the same terms, he speaks of applying the principle of the Art of the Possible when fighting against the Culture of Death. Despite the good beginning, ultimately Senator Kaine’s opinion reveals him not to be Catholic, but an Americanist.

Americanism was first condemned as a heresy in the Church by Pope Leo XIII in a letter to the American Bishops in 1899. The Pope condemned the infection of Catholicism by the American “spirit of independence which passed too easily from the political to the religious sphere.” It attempts to replace the Holy Spirit with the Spirit of `76 and to focus only on areas of agreement with other Americans.

Revealing the Americanist Heresy

Only an Americanist would say that “bishops demanding that Catholics in public life not only live according to church doctrine but additionally shape the law, even to include the threat of criminal prosecution and punishment, to enshrine church doctrine on sexuality as mandatory for all Americans is contrary to our basic liberty.” And only an Americanist would ask, “Why would government require that Catholic sexuality doctrine, or Sharia law, or Orthodox Jewish rules about Sabbath observance, be followed by all?”

A Catholic would never need to ask that question because the answer is simple: Catholicism is true and the others are false. At the very least we can say that “Catholic sexuality doctrine” is binding upon all because it is based on the natural law. He has committed the fallacy of equivocation. As a Catholic he should know and believe that the only protection of our “basic liberty” comes through following the truth, both as revealed in nature and directly by God.

The law most certainly should be shaped according to the truth and not according to the whims of the masses. His job is not “representing a pluralistic society” but of representing God (Romans 13:1) from whom his authority comes. The Americanist always believes there is a separation in Church and State, but the Catholic knows that just as separation of body and soul leads to death, so too a “wall of separation” between Church and State leads to death of a society (and its members).

Americanism Leads to Arianism

Furthermore, the Senator attempts to put up a wall of separation between the man Jesus and the Word adding Arianism to his list of heresies. He says that “a decision by U.S. bishops to elevate issues of human sexuality, however important, above all others seems contrary to the Gospel. No reading of the life of Jesus would suggest these issues as his primary, or even secondary, concern. His towering message is about love of neighbor as oneself with a special focus on the poor, sick, hungry, marginalized.”

First of all, there is a reading “of the life of Jesus” that suggests these issues are of significant concern. That reading would include three mentions of human sexuality in the Sermon on the Mount regarding purity (5:8), lust (5:27) and divorce (5:31-32). Likewise in Chapter 19 of Matthew he speaks of marriage being restored to how is was in the beginning. Given how deeply sexuality concerns human beings, we would be surprised to find the Word becoming Flesh and ignoring those things as the Senator suggests.

Senator Kaine also makes the Arian mistake of not grasping that the Word of God as revealed throughout Scripture is the same Word of God Who took flesh. This is why we must look upon the Scriptures as a whole and not just focus on the “life of Jesus”.

The Senator also treats abortion as an “issue of human sexuality.” Certainly, the child being conceived has something to do with human sexuality, but the fact that they are legally killed is a matter of social justice. His rhetorical bait and switch allows him to speak of Jesus’ “towering message about love of neighbor…with a special focus on the poor…marginalized” and then support legislation that takes the most vulnerable, the most marginalized in the womb and sentences them to death.

Americanism and the Reception of Communion

Animated by the Americanist spirit, we should not be surprised to find the Senator taking exception to the practice withholding Communion from Catholic politicians who obstinately remain in support of grave sins such as abortion and gay marriage. The “wall of separation” between Church and State likewise divides the Americanist’s heart from his political action. It is impossible, according to the Senator, that a bishop or a priest should judge the heart of politician by his action.

A moment’s reflection upon this position shows its absurdity. Saying you are “personally opposed” to something while simultaneously supporting it by voting for and enacting legislation that leads to its spread is a lie. Personal opposition always manifests itself through public opposition. For a politician like Senator Kaine to have a 100% NARAL rating and to claim personal opposition is impossible.

The point is that someone may be in favor of abortion, but not let anyone else know. That is, in a certain sense, a “private” sin and nearly impossible for a bishop or a priest to judge. Therefore, you would not expect them to withhold Communion from that person. However once someone’s view has become public, that is, once they have made their will known, their sin likewise becomes public. Now, there is no longer a question of judging the interior disposition, but the exterior revelation of the interior disposition. In that case, the bishop or priest has an obligation to withhold Communion for the good of the person’s soul (more on this in a moment). Likewise, the bishop or priest would be contributing to the scandal attached to the public sin by not publicly correcting it. Notice that this would apply not just to politicians but to anyone and any public sin.

It might be contended that the politician might be in a state of ignorance regarding the seriousness of their sin. This of course allows for a private discussion in which the bishop or priest lets the person know that they are in an objective state of grave sin so as to remove any ignorance that might be present. This would give the person the opportunity to repent publicly without the appearance of having been chastised.

The Eucharist should be withheld for the person’s own good because to receive unworthily, that is, in a state of mortal sin, is to draw condemnation upon oneself (1 Cor 11:29). That is, they sin further by desecrating the Eucharist and do further harm to themselves. It is analogous to cutting a drug addict off from access to more drugs so they do no further harm to themselves. This is not being “judgmental” but instead is a pastoral act of love.

Before closing, it is worth responding to the concluding statement by Senator Kaine because it is a popular “go to” for people in his situation. “The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.” Medicine is not for the dead, but for those who are sick and weak. Those in a state of mortal sin are spiritually dead and incapable of eating—it is St Thomas who says a dead man cannot consume food; he first needs to be spiritually resurrected from the dead through Confession. Instead, the nourishment is for those who are in a state of grace but battling the weakness of concupiscence. The Church has always taught that the Eucharist is a Sacrament of the living and cannot be given to those who are spiritually dead without first going to Confession. Senator Kaine seems to be omitting this important detail from his argument.

Confronting the Mass Identity Crisis

February 10, 2021Angels, Church and State, Creation, Culture, DevilsIdentity Politics, Intersectionality, Lucifer, Sanctifying Grace, Satan, Technocracy, Technologytwowingstogod@gmail.com

When Our Lord and His Apostles came to the great rock of Caesarea Philippi, He asked a poignant question about His personality: “Who do you say that I am?”. Only Simon, enlightened by Divine grace, saw Our Lord for Who He really was: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16). Once Peter identified Our Lord, Our Lord in turn gave him his true identity as the Great Rock upon which the Church herself would be identified. Peter was not alone in this regard. Our Lord came to bestow our identity upon each one of us. He identified with us in order that we might come to share in His identity as “sons in the Son.” Modern man, perhaps more than any other ailment, suffers from a great identity crisis that makes this moment in Our Lord’s Life particularly important.

The First Identity Crisis

Lucifer had the greatest natural endowment of all creatures. In this way he was entirely unique and, created in a state of grace, he was the most like God. This was his true identity. Rather than receive this identity as a gift, he instead chose to create his own. Lucifer became Satan and lost his true identity forever. He became, in the words of then-Cardinal Ratzinger an “Un-person”, corrupted beyond any personal recognition. Out of envy, Scripture says, Satan then became an Identity Thief attempting to steal everyone else’s identity. He began by coaxing a third of the angels to follow him in asserting their own identity.

Misery loves company and so Satan set his sights upon mankind. Ultimately his temptation of Eve amounts to questioning her true identity as a beloved daughter of God. He tells her that she will become like God. The problem, of course, is that she already was like God. God had gifted her with sanctifying grace which already made her “like God”. Satan tempts her to see her identity as something she must grasp, rather than receive and so simultaneously attacks her femininity. Likewise, with Adam, both his identity as being like God and being a man. It was the man who was commanded to protect and till the Garden.

Our identity crisis has its roots in the Fall then. Original Sin removed sanctifying grace, which forms our true identity, our God-likeness if you will. But it also wounded us in our sexual identity, the manner in which we individually image God. Not only does the distinctly feminine power of childbirth become labor for the woman, but, because man will be tempted to lord over her, she will be tempted to seize masculinity. Likewise, for man, the uniquely masculine way of working also becomes labor and he will be tempted to seize the feminine. Not only was God-likeness lost, both forgot what it meant to image God in their masculinity and femininity.

The crisis would grow until the New Adam and his suitable helpmate, the New Eve came. Satan could not steal either of their identities. He tried to steal Our Lord’s when He went into the desert. The enmity between him and Our Lady made her immune to Satan’s wiles. Our Lord and Our Lady then, each in their proper way, cooperated in restoring us not just as children of God, but sons and daughters.

Our Identity Crisis

Satan may have lost the war, but he is still engaging in the Battle across the centuries, trying to keep us from our true identity. He has had varying degrees of success but has been particularly successful in our own age. His battle plan remains the same as always by destroying the image and suppressing our desire for the true likeness of God that lies at the root of our real identity.

Rather than accepting God-likeness as a free gift that comes only through Baptism, we chase immortality through technology. The Covid crisis has been particularly eye-opening in this regard in that we are all expecting a technocratic Messiah to save us. Technology can make us like gods.

The Church has not been immune to this attack either, putting bodily health before spiritual health. One soul, dying in a state of grace, is far greater than 1000 people “safely” locked in their houses without any access to the gift of true God-likeness in the Sacraments. Christ instituted the Church, so that, throughout all-time, His unique power to bestow our true identity might be made available to all. When the Church forgets her true identity, then a mass identity crisis is sure to follow.

While technology is the weapon of choice to suppress our desire for true God-likeness, intersectionality, rooted in identity politics, is the weapon of choice to suppress our identity as being made in the image of God. Intersectionality attempts to root our identity in victimhood. Christ became a victim so that we could overcome this temptation and clear the way for our real identity. Sex, masquerading as gender, rather than being a way in which we individually image God, is simply a social construct made malleable (through technology) according to personal whims. This Great Lie destroys our identity rather than restoring it. It sits at the heart of today’s mass identity crisis and is nothing more than a ploy of the Evil One.

Genesis tells us that the Serpent, in attacking Adam and Eve’s identity was the most subtle of all the wild animals (Gn 3:1). What makes our age unique is that he has thrown subtlety out the window and has chosen to unmask himself. That is why we must be prepared to fight the identity crisis by refusing to be a party to any of the lies that have enabled the crisis to become so deep. Too often we simply go along to get along. The Devil has been hard at work stealing people’s identities, we need to be equally hard at work helping them find their true one.

Masking and the New Religion

December 9, 2020Apologetics, Church and State, Church Authority, Conscience, Culture, Human Dignity, Magisterium, Marxism, Moralilty, Natural Law, New Age, Paganism, Politics, Sacramentals, Sacraments, VirtueCoronavirus, Covid19, Mask Mandate, Religion of Humanity, Virtue Signalingtwowingstogod@gmail.com

We have been hearing for decades that we are living in a post-Christian society. This has mostly been a way to describe the fact that Christian values have been in decline. But Christianity has still been the dominant religion; dominant, that is, until the Covid-19 crisis hit. The arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in our society marked the official changing of the guard. While we have been hearing about the emergence of a post-Christian society for decades, Christianity was still the dominant religion. No longer is this true, however. Christianity has been toppled and replaced by a new Gnosticism that we call Science.

To be clear, the issue is not against science per se, but what is more accurately described as religion masquerading as science. After all, as Aquinas says “He who neglects the experimental order in natural science falls into error” in all aspects of knowledge. To solve the Covid-19 crisis, natural science plays a necessary, although not sufficient, role. The peddlers of the new religion, would have us believe that it is sufficient because all we need to do is “trust the science.” We are saved by faith, not in Christ, but in Science.

The New Priesthood

Nor should we be quick to dismiss expert opinion. But expert opinion is not fact, it still must be based on solid reasoning. The problem is that expert opinion is often treated like dogmatic truth because the Scientific Elite are the new priests. Based on their secret knowledge that only “experts” such as themselves can understand, they dictate religious dogma. Spoken word becomes fact. Thus says the Scientist—“Masks don’t work” and it is so. Thus says the Scientist two months later—“Masks do work” and it is so. The Shepherds have spoken and the Sheeple must follow suit. Laws are made to punish heretics who dare to question the spoken word.

This, by the way, is why masks have elicited such a strong response. The High Priest initially said that they don’t work. Then he spoke again saying they did and that the Priests lied because they were worried about a shortage. But if a person unapologetically lies once, how do you know they are telling the truth now? Actually, a leading Priest at Johns Hopkins says, it wasn’t lying but that “[A]t first, researchers and scientists did not know how necessary mask wearing would be among the general public. Now we are aware that wearing masks is an effective way to help prevent spread of this coronavirus” (Emphasis added). Given the timeframe and the rather dramatic shift from no-mask to mask, where did this awareness come from? Changing your mind is fine. But changing your mind without a change in the data is based not on science, but fiat. If you search prior to the dogmatic declaration, scientific opinion for the most part deemed them ineffective. The fact is that the Priests exercised their hidden knowledge (because there was no new data) and declared them so. I would probably be clothed in a scarlet mask for this statement alone, but let me go a little further as a statistician and speak about what a reasonable approach to this question would look like.

The Statistician Speaks

First, proving a negative is extremely difficult. To conclusively say “masks don’t work” is a practical impossibility. Having said that, there is little data to suggest that they do work (a complete summary that is thoroughly documented can be found here). There have been studies in the last few months that have suggested they might, but these are inconclusive at best. They are all very poorly done because they are being done in the midst of the crisis. To study the problem properly you need to set up what would be something akin to a clinical trial in which you had a placebo group to compare it to. But you also have the problem that mask usage is almost certainly confounded with social distancing. Is social distancing the thing that helps, or is it masks, or is it both? You’d have to set up a study to separate them. Secondly, not all masks are created the same or are equally effective.

Carnegie Mellon tracks (among many other things) mask compliance here. Notice that many places are in the high 80ish% for compliance and yet “cases” continue to increase in all of those areas. If any intervention works, then you should expect the slope of the line of increase to decrease (“flatten the curve”). But the data suggests that the lines are actually steeper. For example, see the plot below of my home state of North Carolina which instituted a Mask Mandate on June 26^th and has had above an 85% mask compliance rate (currently 91%). North Carolina is far from unique in this regard and you can find similar data for all your favorite states.

If we were true to “Science” we would look at this medical intervention and determine that it does not work. A drug company running a clinical trial (where they are using their own money) would stop the trial and might even decide that the intervention is actually making it worse.

This might mean that…wait for it…masks are making it worse. You would again need to study this, but it is a reasonable supposition given the data. It also makes sense in that it could easily be creating a false sense of security or become a petri dish of germs just waiting to be deposited on someone else or an aritficial barrier suppresses the body’s natural barrier of the immune system. To be sure though, if we were testing a drug and the data looked like this, we would stop giving it to people.

This tangent was necessary because it speaks to the reasonableness of mask mandates. Law, according to St. Thomas, is “an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community and is promulgated.” Any law that does not fulfill those four requirements—reasonable, aimed at the common good, proper authority, and made known—is not, properly speaking, a law. Therefore, because they are not reasonable (or at least can not be proven to be at this point reasonable) we have no obligation to obey them. As true Shepherds of the Flock, Bishops and Priests need to stop being so deferential to mask mandates precisely for this reason.

The New Sacrament

The revolt against masks then is really a revulsion to what they symbolize. They have been made into sacraments through the words of the New Priests. They are said to protect and so therefore they do. Those who do not want to subscribe to this religion therefore will not want to wear them. It seems like a small thing to do, but it plays a key role in the overall narrative that Science can save us. As a sacrament it symbolizes the fact that the Coronavirus is a serious threat to our overall well-being. If you are tempted to think “well 99.99% of people that get this will survive”, then you only have to look around at everyone wearing a mask to tell you that you should be scared anyway. The smiling face of your neighbor, which would normally comfort you, is now hidden from your sight. The masks will permanently disfigure us because when the next virus comes along, and it will, they will tell us “this is more serious than the Coronavirus (which it likely will be) you must put the mask back on.”

By blessing the mask, the Priest also makes it into a Secular Scapular. Through the words of Mary to St. Simon Stock, we know that the Brown Scapular helps to save you eternally. Through the words of the Scientist, the mask saves us from Covidoom. The Brown Scapular is an aid to our growth in virtue, the Covid Scapular signals that we have virtue.

One of the things that the totalitarian regimes of the 20^th Century was their exaltation of Science as the new religion. Lenin, Stalin, Chiang Kai-Shek, and Hitler all committed their atrocities using “Science” as their justification. Had someone stood up to them early on, one has to wonder whether things would have been different.

The Religion of the Antichrist

November 11, 2020Abortion, Church, Church and State, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, Devils, End Times, Marxism, Spiritual WarfareAntichrist, Communism, Devil, First Saturday Devotion, Intersectionality, Karl Marx, Our Lady of Fatima, Pro-Choice, Sexual Revolution, Vatican IItwowingstogod@gmail.com

When the wall separating east from west in Berlin fell, millions of people were freed from the shackles of Communism in Eastern Europe and Russia. The man who was instrumental in this happening, St. John Paul II, saw it as part of his divine mandate to facilitate this monumental event. But as a Catholic who had a great devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, he knew that was not the end of the story. Russia had spread her errors practically unabated for 75 years; reaching even into our own country. These errors were not Communism itself, but instead the ideology that underlies it—Marxism. Marxism is alive and well and is poised to become a global religion through the likes of not just China’s hegemonic aspirations, but the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, WHO’s universal healthcare plan (led by Marxist Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus), Black Lives Matter and a whole host of other organizations.

A Global Religion?

To call Marxism a global religion, may, at first glance, seem to be an exaggeration. Of course, properly speaking, it is not a religion at all. Religion is always ordered to God which means that there can be only one true global religion. It is the one founded by God Himself in the Catholic Church. But the Devil is always on the prowl to ape Christ including by forming his own global religion. Marxism is the “religion” of choice and should properly be seen as the religion of the Antichrist.

That Marx himself was under demonic influence can hardly be disputed. Several of his biographers, many of whom are sympathetic to his cause, have mentioned this. Paul Kengor, in his new book The Devil and Karl Marx, does a thorough job of compiling the case for Marx’s diabolical connections. Viewed in this way, it also helps to understand the beguiling effect that Marxism has on a lot of people because of its inherent power of mass Demonic Oppression. The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council were aware of this as they included several schemas on “The Care of Souls with Regard to Christians Infected with Communism” in their preparatory documents. Unfortunately, these schemas never saw the light of day and would have been a great aid in fighting an “invention so full of errors and delusions.”

The Great Imitation

Besides the global aspirations of Marxism, there are other, more insidious ways in which it will imitate the true religion. In taking on human flesh in the Incarnation, Christ sought to both repair and elevate human nature making it capable of sharing in the Divine Nature. In simplest terms, Marxism is an attempt to fundamentally transform human nature through the instruments of politics and culture. It may have failed to control economics, but that was not the end of it. Using the Sexual Revolution, Cultural Marxists have been wildly successful in “transforming” human nature in the sexual realm. No longer does human nature thrive through monogamous marriage, the family, and private property. Parents are not uniquely suited to mold their children according to their nature, but instead human nature is malleable and should be molded into the image deemed useful by the State. Free will, the mark of the Divine image in man (c.f. CCC 1704-1705), is an illusion and replaced through conditioning according to their social structure (or through the correction of “Unconscious Bias” as the remains from obsolete social structures and implemented through “Corporate Training”).

Christianity worships Christ Who made Himself a victim for our sins (c.f. 2 Cor 5:21) while Marxism worships the Victim Class. Man’s nature is not social and marked by complementarity but instead is competitive. It is to be informed by the narrative of oppressor versus oppressed. There is a never-ending search of the new victim class in order to keep the worship going. Virtuous men and women, those who are most like God are scorned and those who have been intersected by the most “axes of oppression” are exalted.

Finally, just as Catholics offer the blood of the Innocent Lamb of God to the Father, Marxists offer the blood of innocent children through abortion to the Devil. Marxism and abortion are always a package deal because Marxism, like all religions, needs to offer sacrifice. The Devil throughout history has always demanded the blood of the innocent in sacrifice. Marxism in all its instantiations always includes abortion. It was Russia that became the first country to legalize abortion in 1920 and thanks to the Marxist feminists of the 1960s, the United States followed suit. You can often identify a Marxist by how insistent they are that abortion is a “right”.

The Spirit of Christ animates the Christian religion and so the spirit of the antichrist animates the religion of Marxism. The globalists who seek a One World Order are Marxists at heart. Once a critical mass is met, then the world will be ready for the antichrist. This is not an inevitability however and so Catholics must fight against Marxism in all its manifestations. The Church was once instrumental in fighting Communism, but now it too has been infected with Marxists. We need to pray that Christ will once again cleanse the Temple by setting his sights not on the money changers but the Marxists. We have Our Lady of Fatima on our side and we can fight its spread through the First Saturday Devotion. We can also zealously combat the errors where we see them and educate ourselves on this most pernicious enemy because there is one other thing the religion of the antichrist does—seeks to wipe out the believers of the True Faith.

Border Control and Moral Equivalency

October 21, 2020Abortion, Catholic Social Teaching, Church and State, Conscience, Natural Law, PoliticsConsequentialism, Immigration, Pro-Choice, pro-life, Prudence, Votingtwowingstogod@gmail.com

In a previous post, the effects of Consequentialism on our moral thinking was examined. One of the effects that was briefly mentioned pertains to how consequentialism clouds are political thinking making it difficult to decipher between intrinsically evil actions and those which are not. The example that was put forward was the widespread habit of equating abortion with immigration policies because, well, in both cases, “people die.” In this essay I would like to show why this type of thinking is wrong.

First of all, if we accept the consequentialist mindset, then more immigrants die via abortion in the United States than via even the most draconian immigration policy. Nearly a million people, immigrants included, were killed by abortionists last year. The number of immigrants who died in US custody pales in comparison. Even if we limit the numbers to immigrants alone and conceding that those numbers are difficult to pinpoint, there is no comparison. Planned Parenthood claims that at least 450 minors sought to obtain abortions while in US custody at the border and were able to after a judge blocked the current administration from saving those lives in 2017. Either way, there is no comparison.

Conceding to the consequentialist viewpoint is helpful because it acts as a filter for those who attempt to use immigration as an excuse for abortion on demand. There can be no doubt that if the goal is really to save lives at the border then you would seek to eliminate abortion first. But the person who remains unconvinced really has no interest in saving lives at the border but instead seeks to create a smokescreen in which they support abortion. Apparently temporarily separating children from parents is far worse than permanently separating them. Arguing with someone who is disingenuous is fruitless, especially when they simply are looking to rationalize what they find politically expedient. This approach at least keeps us from wasting our time to be able to identify it and call it out.

Assuming the person is being genuine, then we can set out to show why something that is intrinsically evil must never be tolerated while bad policy might. Abortion and control of the borders can never be placed on the same moral plane. Governmental control of the borders is a positive and necessary component of the common good as relates to security. Abortion is always an evil because it is the direct and intentional taking of an innocent human life.

Policy and Political Prudence

There was a time when what was just said would require no further explanation, but in an age in which patriotism is dead and global nationhood is the (oxy)moronic goal, more explanation is necessary. Nations are necessary both by nature and divine decree (c.f. Deut 32:8). Governments exist for the sake of the common good, but the common good, or at least the means for achieving it, will always differ according to peoples, place, and culture. Nations and the borders that delineate them are the consequence of this natural truth. To secure the common good for the citizens of a country then, it is necessary to control those borders and who is allowed to enter. As Ronald Reagan once famously said, “A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.”

Governments therefore would be guilty of a grave evil if they simply allowed anyone to enter. The obligation to secure borders is absolute, but the means by which this can be carried out can be a matter of political prudence. Some policies will be objectively better than others, but there is no one best means that can be applied. How that is carried out will depend upon the current circumstances of the country in question. Do they have the additional resources necessary to allow the new citizens to flourish without, at the same time, harming those who are already citizens? If so, then what would be the best way to ensure that the new citizens will contribute to the common good? What policies would best prepare them for this? With each of these questions, there are obvious tradeoffs and people of good will may come to various conclusions as to the best policy. The point however is that there can be no debate that border security is necessary even if there is debate in how to justly set policy.

An Illuminating Example

Perhaps an example will help to bring all of this together. Suppose you had an immigration policy in which each person, upon approaching the border, was deemed wanted or unwanted by the country. Those who were wanted would be allowed to enter and those who were not were slaughtered. We would all have an obligation to oppose any politician who put this forth as his policy, regardless of where he stood on any other issue. We would in essence become single issue voters. This, unfortunately, is no mere hypothetical, but reflects what is currently happening. The border is the womb of a woman and the migrant is an innocent child trying to cross over the birth canal. We have an obligation to fight anyone who is in favor of such a policy and to vote against it. No matter how bad the immigration policy, there is no possible way these two things can be put on the same level.

Consequentialism and the Dropping of the Bomb

October 10, 2020Abortion, American Founding, Catholic Social Teaching, Church and State, Just War, Moralilty, Natural LawAtomic Bomb, Consequentialism, Evil, Good, Intrinsic Evil, John Paul II, Providence, World War IItwowingstogod@gmail.com

The Venerable Bishop Fulton Sheen thought that the demise of Western Culture, specifically American culture, began on the morning of August 6,^,1945. That was when the United States dropped the first of two nuclear bombs on Japan at Hiroshima. It was the moment that “blotted out boundaries. There was no longer a boundary between the military and the civilian, between the helper and the helped, between the wounded and the nurse and the doctor, and the living and the dead. For even the living who escaped the bomb were already half dead. So, we broke down boundaries and limits and from that time on the world has said we want no one limiting me! We want no limits, no boundaries.” As usual, the first televangelist was also a prophet. Since that fateful day, the boundaries between right and wrong, natural and unnatural, good and evil have all broken down. This is because, lost amidst the rubble of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was traditional morality and a firm belief in God’s Providence.

By all accounts even down to our own day, dropping the atomic bomb was the only viable option. Continuing to fire-bomb cities like Tokyo was going to kill far more Japanese citizens than the Bomb would ever do and, even more likely, would harden Japanese resolve, leading to a long drawn out war. A full ground assault would lead to thousands, if not millions, of deaths on both sides. In order to save American lives then it was necessary to drop the Bomb as both a show of force and a deterrence to any further Japanese aggression. Many Americans, including the one writing this article would likely never have been born had the Bomb not been dropped. Thousands of men were headed to Japan with the sure knowledge that they would not return. To most of them, Harry Truman is a hero who made the best possible decision.

Another man whose existence is linked to “Truman’s Terrible Choice” is George Weigel. In a web article for First Things last week, he defended Truman saying that he “it was the correct choice” given the options. Weigel’s logic is paradigmatic for many Catholics and follows from the loss of a traditional morality in favor of, what St. John Paul II condemned in Veritas Splendor –Consequentialism. In Weigel’s defense, he mentions that consequentialism is wrong in the article, but he still goes on to employ its logic. Nevertheless, he is defending the indefensible.

The Two Moral Camps

The tradition understanding of morality has always included the notion that there are intrinsically evil acts. These acts, no matter the circumstances or the intention of the person, can never be ordered towards the good. Some examples would be the deliberate killing of an innocent person, lying, and adultery. Among these acts would be the direct targeting and indiscriminate bombing of civilians during a war. This would include the aforementioned “fire-bombing” of German and Japanese cities as well as the dropping of the Bomb on the two Japanese cities. When no distinction is made between military and civilian targets then the dropping of any powerful bomb, atomic or otherwise, is always an intrinsically evil act and is akin to mass murder or terrorism. One can clearly see under this moral paradigm that there could never be any justification for dropping the two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Consequentialism, on the other hand, evaluates all moral actions based upon the consequences. It requires a form a moral calculus in which you decide that if there is more good than evil in the consequences of an act then the act is morally permissible. Consequentialism, as St. John Paul II puts it, “draw[s] the criteria of the rightness of a given way of acting solely from a calculation of foreseeable consequences deriving from a given choice…[and] maintain[s] that it is never possible to formulate an absolute prohibition of particular kinds of behavior” (Veritatis Splendor, 75). It is, in essence a form of moral relativism, in that leaves all our actions relative to circumstances and the moral calculations of the individual. With Consequentialism as the guide, the decision to drop the Bomb would depend upon a moral calculation in which the good of American and Japanese lives are weighed against the loss of innocent Japanese lives.

Consequentialism and Providence

Embedded within Consequentialism is a rejection of Providence. Not only does the person assume divine status in thinking they can foresee the actual consequences of their actions, but it also assumes that God could ever leave us in a situation when the Good could not be done. This is the flaw in Weigel’s logic when he says that Truman chose the best option. No situation falls outside of God’s Providence and therefore no situation leaves us without an option to choose good. Truman could have chosen otherwise, and his choice could have been in accord with the good. Perhaps the decision would have been to send the troops in on the ground and allow the men to courageously fight for goodness and truth even to the giving up of their lives. Giving your life in noble defense of other people is always a good. Or perhaps it was to accept the non-absolute terms for Japanese surrender. The point though is that God had allowed the circumstances to be as they were and, incapable of causing us to sin, would always include a way to choose the Good.

Bishop Sheen thought August 6,1945 was the turning point for America because it created a new moral environment. Large swaths of the population owe their existence to the consequentialist logic of Truman and others. America herself, in order to avoid facing the music for such a heinous action, adopted Consequentialism as the new moral order. Gone, thanks to the Freemasonic court-packing of Roosevelt and Truman, was legal reasoning based on natural law. Gone too is the idea of intrinsically evil acts. Try explaining to someone about abortion being intrinsically evil and they will get caught up in the consequences of brining an unwanted child into the world. Or, relevant to today’s political climate, tell them why they cannot support a candidate who promotes and defends intrinsically evil actions. You will instead get some moral ledger that pits immigration against abortion.

When Truman decided to drop the Bomb he opened a moral Pandora’s Box in which true moral reasoning was shed in favor of Consequentialism. Now people with no sense of morality are the ones performing the moral calculus leading to all kinds of evils that have put our society in jeopardy of collapse. The only way forward is to reconnect Americans to the moral tradition of the Founders.

War and Peace

August 5, 2020American Founding, Catholic Social Teaching, Church and State, Crusades, Culture of Life, MoraliltyForce, Just War, Letter to the Romans, Non-violence, Pacifism, Pearl Harbor, St. Augustine, St. Paul, St. Thomas, United States History, Violence, World War IItwowingstogod@gmail.com

There are certain oxymorons in life that are almost universally dismissed. One such example is “war is an instrument of peace.” Even Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying “War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.” He may have believed that until it came time to address the great evils being committed upon Americans by the Barbary Pirates when he declared war for the first time in United States history. It seems that when push comes to shove, even the most ardent Pacifist must lay down his intellectual arms and pick up his physical ones and admit that the oxymoron is perhaps true.

In order to see how the oxymoron that war can be an instrument of peace could be true, we must first ask exactly what we mean by peace. Peace, according to St. Augustine, is the “tranquility of order.” He goes further and says that “order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal, each to its own place” (City of God, Book XIX, Ch. 13). In short, peace is a side effect, or a consequence of the just ordering of relations between people and nations. It is not, as many pacifists would maintain, a lack of conflict but a byproduct of justice. War then can only be an instrument of peace when it is entered into for just reasons and fought in a just manner. The Church has always been so insistent upon maintaining its Just War Doctrine for this reason.

War as an Instrument of Justice

War, if it is to be an instrument of peace then, can only do so when it is an instrument of justice. Some would argue however that the use of violence is never a just response. But, to characterize war as violence stacks the deck against it and is a subtle form of question begging. In We Hold These Truths, Fr. John Courtney Murray makes a useful distinction between force and violence that enables us to avoid being trapped by a mere turn of phrase. “Force,” he says, “is the measure of power necessary and sufficient to uphold…law and politics…As an instrument force is morally neutral in itself.” Force can be applied in a violent manner that is intended to hurt, maim or kill. But force can also be justified (e.g. applied justly), mainly of four principal grounds: (1) to protect the innocent (2) to recover something unjustly taken (3) to defend against a wrongful attack and (4) to punish evil. A moral obligation exists then to use force only to the extent necessary to accomplish these four aims. Not to act against the will of an evildoer is to “nourish and strengthen them” according to Augustine. History bears out far too many examples of the traps of appeasement to ignore the fact that force is sometimes necessary to avoid the multiplication of evils and injustices.

All of what has been said seems to coincide with reality as we experience it. Doing the good for a person or persons means that you must stop those who intend harm to those persons, even to the point of using physical force against the aggressor. There can be no doubt that in a world of fallen men and women, force is necessary to redress wrongs. Pacifism then can only be based on some utopic vision of reality in which evils do not really happen. This utopia usually finds it supposed justification in the teachings of Jesus so that no discussion of pacifism would be complete without examining the teachings of Our Lord.

Christian Pacifism

The Christian Pacifist usually turns to the Sermon on the Mount to justify their position. Our Lord famously told His disciples, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on [your] right cheek, turn the other one to him as well” (Mt 5:38-39). The pacifist would have us believe that this call to non-violence is absolute and applies to all men in all circumstances. The problem with this stance however is that when Our Lord Himself was struck on the cheek, rather than turning the other cheek, questioned why He was struck (c.f. John 18:22).

Our Lord’s response does not include physical force and so we must also examine His insistence that “All that take the sword shall perish with the sword” (Matthew 26:52). To “take the sword,” according to the Angelic Doctor is “to arm oneself in order to take the life of anyone, without the command or permission of superior or lawful authority.’ On the other hand, to have recourse to the sword (as a private person) by the authority of the sovereign or judge, or (as a public person) through zeal for justice, and by the authority, so to speak, of God, is not to ‘take the sword,’ but to use it as commissioned by another, wherefore it does not deserve punishment” (ST II-II, q.40 a.1 ad.1).

To grasp the full meaning of Our Lord’s words we can turn to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans where he says:

“Beloved, do not look for revenge but leave room for the wrath; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ Rather, ‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head.’ Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good. Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority opposes what God has appointed, and those who oppose it will bring judgment upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear to good conduct, but to evil.Do you wish to have no fear of authority? Then do what is good and you will receive approval from it, for it is a servant of God for your good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword without purpose; it is the servant of God to inflict wrath on the evildoer.”
Romans 12:19-13:3

The Apostle to the Gentiles is showing exactly how Our Lord’s words are to be applied. Individuals have no authority to use the sword as an instrument of justice (except in self-defense). The Civil Authority, as God’s instrument (c.f. John 19:11), however, is tasked with maintaining justice, even by the sword “for it does not bear the sword without purpose.” The Lord then counsels us not to respond with force when the injustice is committed against ourselves (and only ourselves), but by no means lifts the obligation to forcefully oppose aggressors when the injustice involves others.

Pacifism then finds no justification either in the moral sense or the evangelical counsels. Civil authority must act against aggressors and evildoers both at home and abroad even to the point of using force. Pacifists rarely, if ever, oppose the application of police force. Because of this contradiction, CS Lewis in his essay Why I am Not a Pacifist called into question whether the motivations of the Pacifist might be due “to the secret influence of any passion.” Not that he thinks Pacifists cowards but that he thinks they are blinded by fear.

For let us make no mistake. All that we fear from all the kinds of adversity, severally, is collected together in the life of a soldier on active service. Like sickness, it threatens pain and death. Like poverty, it threatens ill lodging, cold, heat, thirst, and hunger. Like slavery, it threatens toil, humiliation, injustice, and arbitrary rule. Like exile, it separates you from all you love. Like the gallies, it imprisons you at close quarters with uncongenial companions. It threatens every temporal evil—every evil except dishonor and final perdition, and those who bear it like it no better than you would like it. On the other side, though it may not be your fault, it is certainly a fact that Pacifism threatens you with almost nothing.

Socialism Hidden in Plain Sight

June 24, 2020Catholic Social Teaching, Church and State, Economics, MoraliltyCity of God, Democracy, Karl Marx, Paul VI, Pius XI, Socialism, St. Augustine, Totalitarianismtwowingstogod@gmail.com

Albert Einstein once quipped that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. While Einstein may not have been considering the political realm when he said this, modern day Socialists would be wise to heed his proverb. Despite destroying millions of lives, Marx’s disciples single-mindedly insist that the problem is not in the principle, but in the application. The latest attempt is through a more moderate version that is commonly referred to as Democratic Socialism. By wedding it to the widely accepted principle of democracy, the Socialists hope to soften the blow. To this point, even in highly capitalistic countries they have been very successful hiding it in plain sight. It is therefore imperative that we recognize it and work to combat its harmful effects.

In its first go-round, Socialism was wedded to totalitarianism. Whether it be Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Castro’s Cuba, or Kim’s North Korea, Socialists dictators made an offer that their people could not refuse. Millions of deaths later, Socialists knew that they must adopt a gentler and more gradual approach. This approach, still motivated by an exaggerated egalitarianism, would only slowly abolish private property and create economic parody and solidarity among citizens.

A Softer Approach?

Rather than controlling the means of production directly, the new socialists instead control the income from these private means of production, gathering it together through taxes. Men no longer get to keep the fruit of their labor, but instead are allowed to only keep some percentage of it. That percentage is completely at the discretion of the State. In a very real sense, it is the State that owns 100% of the man’s labor but gives him only a certain amount. Skipping the step of controlling the means of production this form of “Democratic Socialism” takes advantage of capitalism as a means of maximizing State income.

Once the taxes are collected, the money is then transferred from the haves to the have-nots, usually filtered through the pockets of some of the have-mores, in the form of various state sponsored welfare programs. So accustomed to this form of wealth redistribution, we do not even recognize it for what it is. The State has a right to collect taxes to cover the costs of operations like military defense, police powers and certain public utilities. What the State does not have a right to do is a form of “legalized” stealing in which it takes from the rich and gives to the poor. Stealing is still stealing whether a plumber or a governor does it. It is this type of regime that Augustine had in mind in City of God when he said:

“Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity.”

Socialism and Well-Meaning Christians

The Church has long opposed Socialism in any form precisely because it is state-sanctioned thievery. In his Encyclical on Socialism, Quod Apostolici Muneris, Pope Pius XI condemned it in these terms. “The Church, with much greater wisdom and good sense, recognizes the inequality among men, who are born with different powers of body and mind, inequality in actual possession, also, and holds that the right of property and of ownership, which springs from nature itself, must not be touched and stands inviolate. For she knows that stealing and robbery were forbidden in so special a manner by God…that He would not allow man even to desire what belonged to another” (QAM, 9). Later in his pontificate he spoke more directly about the evil of Socialism when he condemned it using no uncertain terms:

“We make this pronouncement: Whether considered as a doctrine, or an historical fact, or a movement, Socialism, if it remains truly Socialism, even after it has yielded to truth and justice on the points which we have mentioned, cannot be reconciled with the teachings of the Catholic Church because its concept of society itself is utterly foreign to Christian truth…no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true Socialist.”
Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 117, 120

Despite the repeated condemnations of Pius XI’s successors, many Catholics still support Socialism. Such support usually stems from a soft heart, but it also tends to reveal a soft head. Lifting up the poor while simultaneously keeping them, or even making them less self-reliant is not good for them. A handout should always be a last resort and even then only in a case of emergency. “Man does not live on bread alone” but he will tend to choke on bread, at least spiritually, that is merely given to him. Instead it is good for him to work for the bread he earns because it increases his virtue and thus makes him more free. All things being equal, a man is always better off for having worked for his bread than for having received it for nothing.

This is the why the Church also rejects Socialism as contrary to the dignity of man. Socialism in all its forms always labors under an incentive problem. By forcing income equality the productive men lose their incentive to work which causes shortages and great harm to the common good. Men become equal in misery, rather than moving towards equality in character, one of the only ways in which men can actually be equal.

What the well-meaning Catholic socialist is actually looking for is solidarity with the poor. This cannot be done on a political level but must be implemented on a personal level. The person in material need also is in need, perhaps even more so, of receiving personal love. By removing that personal element and putting everyone under the care (and control) of Big Daddy solidarity can never be achieved. Often this is what calls them to fall in love with the idea of socialism and neglecting to see how it fails in practice. Pope Paul VI cautioned Catholics against being enraptured by the ideological lure of Socialism when he remarked that “[T]oo often Christians attracted by Socialism tend to idealize it in terms which, apart from anything else, are very general: a will for justice, solidarity and equality. They refuse to recognize the limitations of the historical socialist movements, which remain conditioned by the ideologies from which they originated” (Octogesima Adveniens, 31).

If they are truly wanting to help the poor, then as Catholics they already have the Church, the same Church that does “not neglect the care of the poor or omit to provide for their necessities; but, rather, drawing them to her with a mother’s embrace, and knowing that they bear the person of Christ Himself, who regards the smallest gift to the poor as a benefit conferred on Himself, holds them in great honor. She does all she can to help them; she provides homes and hospitals where they may be received, nourished, and cared for all the world over and watches over these. She is constantly pressing on the rich that most grave precept to give what remains to the poor; and she holds over their heads the divine sentence that unless they succor the needy they will be repaid by eternal torments” (Pope Pius XI, Quod Apostolici Muneris, 9). All that is good in Socialism is already in the Church without all the evil side-effects. “Those who work solely toward such ends have, therefore, no reason to become socialists” (Pope Pius XII, Quadragesimo Anno, 115).

What’s Mine is Yours?

June 20, 2020Catholic Social Teaching, Church and State, Economics, PoliticsCapitalism, Catholic Social Doctrine, John Paul II, Leo XII, Poverty, Socialism, Universal Destination of Goodstwowingstogod@gmail.com

One of the sure signs that the Catholic Church has access to the fullness of truth in her teachings on faith and morals is that she is consistently attacked from both sides. This is especially true when it comes to the basis of her economic teachings, private property. The capitalists call her too socialistic and the socialists too capitalistic. Because of this, snippets of her teachings are either mocked and co-opted, but mostly misunderstood. As a foundation for justice, it is important then that we be able to understand and articulate her teachings.

The Primacy of the Universal Destination of Goods

When God made the earth, He gave mankind dominion over all its goods. Everything in the material order is meant to be used by man. These goods are meant for all men—each and every one—and thus each man has the right to secure for himself and his family what he needs to both survive and to thrive. This principle, dubbed the Universal Destination of Goods, is part of the natural law and is prior to any right to private property. As Pope St. John Paul II put it in an address in 1981 to the 21^st Session of the FAO Conference, “The primary destination of the resources of the earth to the common good demands that the necessities of life be provided for all human beings before individuals or groups appropriate for themselves the riches of nature or the products of human skill.”

Before linking this teaching to private property, it is important to point out that there is a corresponding duty attached to the Universal Destination of Goods. No one can claim any superfluous property, that is more than he needs, until the existential needs of his neighbor are taken care of. This imposes an obligation to provide for the extreme necessity of others because you are truly returning to them what is rightfully theirs.

The socialist might be tempted to agree and applaud the Church’s teaching until he reads the fine print. The obligation rests in giving (or even offering no resistance if they take) those things that constitute an existential need. In short, the obligation is to give to those who are in a condition of absolute poverty. Poverty, in the Christian worldview is a virtue. But when the Church speaks of it in her social teaching, she usually attaches a modifier, such as absolute to it. Absolute poverty is “a condition in which life is so limited by lack of food, malnutrition, illiteracy, high infant mortality, and low life expectancy as to be beneath any rational definition of human decency. The persistence of such degrading poverty, and especially the lack of the absolutely basic minimum of food, is a scandal of the modern world, in which one finds enormous contrasts of income and standards of living between rich countries and countries that are materially poor” (Pope St. John Paul II, Address to the 21^st Session of the FAO Conference, 1981).

The ”scandal of the modern world” is not so much that we have rich and poor or even that there is an inequality, but that the wealth of the world is concentrated in the hands of so few when there are so many who do not have what they need. The poor have a prior claim on those goods they need for their survival and thus the rich have an obligation to give those goods to the materially poor.

Private Property in Context

Only after the most basic needs are met can we begin to discuss property, but the Right to Private Property, even if it is subordinate to the Universal Destination of Goods, is no less important. Private property is integral to protecting the freedom of men. When a man owns his own property, he does not depend upon others (usually in power) for his own well-being. Not only that, but it also is a means of personal development. When he is responsible for his own well-being and is free to exercise that responsibility on his own property, he also grows in virtue. In short the man who owns his own property develops not just materially but also spiritually. Summarizing the Church’s teaching, John Paul II said:

“in Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII strongly affirmed the natural character of the right to private property, using various arguments against the socialism of his time. This right, which is fundamental for the autonomy and development of the person, has always been defended by the Church up to our own day. At the same time, the Church teaches that the possession of material goods is not an absolute right, and that its limits are inscribed in its very nature as a human right. While the Pope proclaimed the right to private ownership, he affirmed with equal clarity that the “use” of goods, while marked by freedom, is subordinated to their original common destination as created goods, as well as to the will of Jesus Christ as expressed in the Gospel.”
Pope St. John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 30

In affirming the right to private property then, the Church teaches that this right is not absolute. Property also has a social function that is not only governed by the Universal Destination of Goods, but also the moral law. This means that a man is not free to use his property however he sees fit. Not only can he not infringe on another’s right to private property but also must not impede another’s moral freedom.

Connection with the Just Wage

All that being said, increasing wealth is a good thing provided that it be done “in a just and lawful manner” (Pius XII, Quadragesimo Anno). Those who through their wealth, provide wealth for others provide a service to the common good. And thus “it is only fair that he who renders service to the community and makes it richer should also, through the increased wealth of the community, be made richer himself according to his position, provided that all these things be sought with due respect for the laws of God and without impairing the rights of others and that they be employed in accordance with faith and right reason” (ibid).

But the Universal Destination of Goods also applies here as to how one governs their business. Provided that an owner’s necessities are being taken care of, before taking more of the wealth created for himself, he must make sure that all of his workers too have enough to provide for themselves and their families. A just wage then is not determined solely by supply and demand, but on the demands of the Universal Destination of Goods.

The point is that, while the law of supply and demand might apply to material goods, it cannot be a means of determining wages. The just wage is a recognition of the moral primacy of labor over capital. Labor is indispensable to production and because it is done by human beings, must always respect the Universal Destination of Goods. It is also not an argument for a minimum wage, but instead an argument for what is called a living wage. This wage is individualized and thus employees doing the same job could actually get paid different amounts based upon their needs. So antithetical to the modern mindset is this principle that Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum went to great lengths to explain it:

“Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice…If a workman’s wages be sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income. Nature itself would urge him to this.”
Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 45-46

It becomes clear then why socialists and unbridled captialists both claim the Church’s teaching as their own and yet at the same time loathe it. But the Church is always both/and and not either/or and this is no less true than in the field of economics.

Eliminating the Other Police Force

June 10, 2020American Founding, Church and State, Church Authority, Culture, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, Ecumenism, FreedomFirst Amendment, Freedom of Speech, Libertytwowingstogod@gmail.com

While we are about the project of reforming the civil police force, we are allowing the Thought Police to run amok. The Thinkpol are slowly rendering certain ideas unutterable simply because they do not conform to the Ochlocratic Orthodoxy. Not only do they have ritual humiliation at hand, they have co-opted corporations so that private views now have become fireable offenses. The mob silences dissenters by threatening livelihood and so most people simply conform. Free speech has come under attack in America in ways that would make even Woodrow Wilson blush. Like the previously discussed freedom of conscience, freedom of speech also needs defending. And like freedom of conscience, only Catholics who have a proper understanding of it, are in a position to lead the charge.

On the one hand, it is not wholly unexpected that free speech in our country has taken such a sharp left turn into a ditch. The Founders had an absolute faith in the power of the popular mind. Individuals might err, but the entire society could not. Free speech, coupled with democracy, serves as a recipe for finding the truth. All debate, they thought, would eventually lead to the truth. All ideas, even bad ones, then must be protected in order to keep the debate moving. In Gertz vs Welch, the Supreme Court declared that “”Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea … (it) requires that we protect some falsehood in order to protect speech that matters.”

Captivity to the Mob

Any freedom that is directly linked to democracy is always susceptible to becoming captive to the mob. If debate over an issue ceases then it is assumed that the truth has been reached. Now those who do not accept the orthodoxy become a threat to the well-being of society and need to be shut up. Thus we have things such as “hate speech” becoming punishable offenses.

A vicious circle is formed so that truth as a democratic matter always ends in an assault upon true liberty including free speech. It is as if they must saw off the limb they are sitting on. Liberty can only be connected to purpose and the purpose of speech is to utter truth. Therefore, there is such thing as liberty to speak falsehood. Freedom of speech is not unlimited but instead is not then a justification to say anything.

Truth is not democratic but is strictly governed by the dictatorship of reality. Truth, that is, the accordance of mind with reality, is necessary for liberty. Summarizing, Leo XIII says that the right to free speech “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” (Libertas, 23).

This abuse of free speech eventually leads to its destruction as ironic as that seems. The problem is that there is no set of public truths that are immune to criticism, no intellectual foundation upon which debate may be carried out. Leaving everything open to debate actually closes it, a situation that Leo XIII anticipated when he said “The excesses of an unbridled intellect, which unfailingly end in the oppression of the untutored multitude, are no less rightly controlled by the authority of the law than are the injuries inflicted by violence upon the weak. And this all the more surely, because by far the greater part of the community is either absolutely unable, or able only with great difficulty, to escape from illusions and deceitful subtleties, especially such as flatter the passions” (ibid).

Americanism and the Fallout

Eventually, “nothing will remain sacred and inviolate; even the highest and truest mandates of natures, justly held to be the common and noblest heritage of the human race, will not be spared. Thus, truth being gradually obscured by darkness, pernicious and manifold error, as too often happens, will easily prevail. Thus, too, license will gain what liberty loses; for liberty will ever be more free and secure in proportion as license is kept in fuller restraint” (ibid). This is exactly where we find ourselves.

Because many prelates in the Church in the United States are infected with the Americanist heresy, they often confuse the authentic Catholic (i.e. true) understanding of free speech with the American model. The former leads to peace and justice while the latter leads to further division. One prelate recently said that our religious principles demand that we “defend the rights of all people even those with whom we might disagree.” Such a statement is misleading at best. What we are disagreeing about absolutely matters. Some topics are still open to debate, or as Leo XIII said, “In regard, however, to all matter of opinion which God leaves to man’s free discussion, full liberty of thought and of speech is naturally within the right of everyone; for such liberty never leads men to suppress the truth, but often to discover it and make it known” (ibid). Others, such as the right to religious liberty and the immorality of racism God has not “left to man’s free discussion”. Both sins against God cry out for justice. Therefore, it is neither “baffling nor reprehensible” that a Catholic institution, faced with playing a role in rectifying either, would seize the opportunity; unless, that is, you think the Thinkpol, rather than God, has closed the discussion.

On Liberty of Conscience

May 23, 2020American Founding, Church and State, Church Authority, Faith and Reason, God's Will, Magisterium, Martyrdom, Politics, SaintsApostles, Blood of Martyrs is the Seed of the Church, Conscience, John Henry Newman, Leo XIII, Liberty, Liberty of Conscience, Religious Libertytwowingstogod@gmail.com

The character of evil, in imitation of its greatest champion, is such that it is ever on the prowl looking to devour the freedom of each man. One of the means by which such freedom is protected is liberty of conscience. This natural right of conscience protects each man from having to act in such a way that he is forced to participate in something that he knows to be evil. As the prevailing culture moves further and further from its Christian roots, the protection by law of the rights of conscience becomes increasingly important. Therefore, it is worth examining more thoroughly in order bring into relief why it is so vital.

The Character of Conscience

First, we must clear up some of the popular misconceptions about conscience. It is not a thing like the proverbial angel on the shoulder, but a mode of judgement. More specifically it is a judgment of practical reason that is linked to the power of man to do what is right and shun what is evil within the concrete circumstances of human life. Since it is a power of practical reason, it depends upon a knowledge of the principles that lead to genuine human thriving even if it is only concerned with applying those principles. It is then the power of man to link truth with goodness.

Conscience, even if it issues commands to the will, is not an act of the will. Therefore, we must always keep conscience from becoming synonymous with self-will. Most people treat conscience as if it were freedom to do whatever they want rather than being beholden to the truth. It carries about with it a certain obstinacy of “sticking to your guns” no matter what. Therefore, authority is quick to use its power to command actions in conformity with cultural norms. This is nothing more than Power attempting to replace conscience.

Conscience protection is the Catholic’s last line of defense against the growing power of the State. The next step is to cross over into the field of martyrdom. So we must fight vehemently to keep it in place. The necessary principles for this defense were laid out quite articulately over a century ago by St. John Henry Newman. In a letter to the Duke of Norfolk, the saint gives us a defense of the Supremacy of Conscience that fits with a true and Catholic understanding of conscience and its inviolability.

Conscience and Character

Newman notes that all men are by nature bound to observe the natural law. Our apprehension of this Divine Law occurs within the realm of conscience. Even “though it may suffer refraction in passing into the intellectual medium of each, it is not therefore so affected as to lose its character of being the Divine Law, but still has, as such, the prerogative of commanding obedience.” Steeped within Catholic tradition, Newman views conscience as the voice of God and not merely the creation of man. It may be more or less heard correctly by each man, but it still remains what he calls the “aboriginal Vicar of Christ.”

Based upon the fact that conscience is properly viewed as the voice of God, the Fourth Lateran Council said: “He who acts against his conscience loses his soul.” To act against conscience is to act against God. Despite the fact that God has implanted this voice of conscience commanding us to do good and avoid evil, the ear of the intellect needs to be trained and given its “due formation.” This formation must come through reason enlightened by Divine Faith because the latter was given to purify the former. To fail to form the conscience properly constitutes a great evil, perhaps one of the greatest because it chooses to deny conscience its rightful dignity.

A man has a right to something because he has a corresponding duty. The right of conscience flows from his obligation to obey it. But this obligation does not flow from a need to be true to oneself, but to obey God. As Newman puts it, if conscience is the voice of the Moral Governor then the rights of conscience are really the rights of the Creator and the duties toward Him. “Conscience,” Newman says, “has rights because it has duties”. This ultimately is what makes freedom of conscience so important and why we must protect it at all costs. St. Thomas More is the model in this regard. He was a martyr because he obeyed the dictates of God mediated through His conscience.

As religious liberty goes into decline, conscience protection becomes more and more important. Pope Leo XIII called it true liberty, the liberty of the sons of God that shows that “the dignity of man and is stronger than all violence or wrong.” (Libertas, 30). When all the power of the State bears down upon a single man and he still refuses to join in evil, it shows that man is bigger than the State and shows that he is made for God. Leo XIII calls it “the kind of liberty the Apostles claimed for themselves with intrepid constancy, which the apologists of Christianity confirmed by their writings, and which the martyrs in vast numbers consecrated by their blood. And deservedly so; for this Christian liberty bears witness to the absolute and most just dominion of God over man, and to the chief and supreme duty of man toward God” (Libertas, 30).

On Waging War

May 6, 2020Catholic Social Teaching, Church and State, IslamAquinas, Atomic Bomb, Augustine, Jus ad Bellum, Jus in Bello, Just War, Militarism, Pacifism, Utopiatwowingstogod@gmail.com

This Friday will mark the 75^th Anniversary of the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany’s surrender. Certainly, it was a day of great celebration as it put an end, at least on one front, massive carnage that saw nearly 3% of the total population of the Earth slaughtered in 6 short years. What made it particularly destructive is that nearly twice as many civilians as soldiers died thanks to the “total war” tactics of things like genocide, fire bombing and atomic weapons. Despite these great losses, many defend these actions even today under the ruse that “all is fair in love and war.” This attitude was what allowed the great evils to occur and, if we are not careful, they will happen again. Doomed to be repeated, that is, unless we are well schooled in Just War Doctrine.

Putting war within its proper context goes a long way in protecting us from committing evil. To think that we can eliminate all war is nothing short of a utopic delusion. The peace that the patron of Arcadia is seeking can only be brought about when there is justice. As Augustine says, civil peace is the “tranquility of order.” Order cannot be brought about without justice. And justice requires at certain times the use of force. In short, war can be a means of bringing about peace.

This connection between justice and peace is the foundation of the Just War Doctrine. War can only be an instrument of peace when it is entered into for just reasons and when it is carried out in a just manner. Based upon the need for and maintenance of justice, the Church has adopted the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, who himself borrowed heavily from Ss Ambrose and Augustine. In essence, the doctrine consists of two groups of criteria to assess whether a country may go to war (jus ad bellum) and then how to act justly within war (jus in bello).

Jus ad Bellum

In his defense of Just War Doctrine, Aquinas first asks whether it is always a sin to go to war. He answers in the negative but says it is only licit when the war itself is just based upon three core criteria, “First, the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged…Secondly, a just cause is required, namely that those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault…Thirdly, it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil” (ST II-II q.40 art.1).

Because the civil authority has the obligation of securing peace any war must be called by the proper authority. This seems rather common-sensical especially when we frame things in the context of peace. Peace can only be brought about by the proper ordering of society, which includes the respect for the custodian of the Common Good. When a nation as a whole is harmed, those tasked with its defense must seek recompense by going to those who have wronged them and demanding that justice be restored. We shall return shortly to exactly how this recompense may be sought, but for the time being we must allow that war is a moral option.

Secondly, there must be a just cause. There must be some gross violation of the law of nations on the part of the aggressor that merits a response using force. As Augustine says, “ A just war is wont to be described as one that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects, or to restore what it has seized unjustly.”

Finally, in order to be a just war, the country must engage in the war with the right intention. The only right intention is peace, that is, the restoration of a just ordering of relations between nations. There must be a desire merely to stop the aggressor and not necessarily to kill them, even though it may be necessary to do the latter in order to achieve the former. This is why terms that require unconditional surrender are almost always unjust. It goes beyond the desire for justice and vengeance creeps in. In addition to vengeance, territorial expansion, the lust for power, etc. are all bad intentions.

Jus in Bello

It is not enough to merely enter into a war for just reasons, but it is also necessary to conduct the military campaign in a just manner. With this in mind, the Tradition adds two criteria—proportionality and noncombatant immunity. For any punishment to be just, there must always be a proportionality between the punishment and the offense. This moral principle carries over into the Just War Doctrine and demands that any response that uses force must always be proportional to the wrong that has been done. Likewise, there must always be a sharp line of distinction between combatants and non-combatants. It is always unjust to target civilians as well as wounded soldiers and prisoners. The moral prohibition against taking innocent life remains binding even in war.

Prudential Criterion

In addition to the two groups of criteria, the Church also has proposed what might be considered as “prudential criteria.” Summarizing the principles, the Catechism says:

“The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
– the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
– all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
-there must be serious prospects of success;
-the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
CCC 2309

For the sake of clarity, each of these criteria bears a further comment.

War must be Last Resort. What this means is that all reasonable efforts to avoid the use of force have been exhausted. This does not mean that each of the nonmilitary alternatives have been tried (diplomatic, economic, political), but that the military option is the last one considered. It is obviously unreasonable to continually apply different economic sanctions when there is no reasonable expectation of success. It might also be that some grave humanitarian crisis emerges that requires an immediate response.

Military intervention must also have a reasonable chance of success. To enter into a military conflict or to continue in one when it is hopeless would only serve to multiply the evils already present. Many Just War theorists also add the need to formally declar war because it opens the way for the opponent’s surrender and keeps war from being a private affair. In this way it may actually keep war from happening.

While the jus ad bellum criterion only apply to offensive wars, that is, they represent the questions that must be answered before a country chooses to go to war. This step obviously is skipped when they are fighting a defensive war. What often happens though is that when a war is defensive, the jus in bello are ignored because there is a perceived justification (rationalization) to respond with vengeance. That the Allies were justified in declaring war on the Axis powers during World War II is quite clear, but this does not mean that everything the Allies did was just. In particular, the practice of “fire bombing” entire German cities lacked both proportionality and discrimination. We will visit this question another time, but likewise the use of the Atomic Bomb was a gross violation of Just War behavior.

On Wasting Moral Capital

May 2, 2020Catholic Social Teaching, Church and State, Church Authority, Culture, Culture of Life, Economics, WorkBishop Gomez, Cardinal Sarah, Common Good, Democratic Party, Immigration, Just Wage, Redistribution, Republican Party, USCCBtwowingstogod@gmail.com

In response to the President’s order temporarily halting all immigration into the United States, several US Bishops issued a statement condemning his decision. This is not the first time that the Bishops have come to loggerheads with the President over his immigration policies, and rightfully so at times, but this particular statement leaves Catholics wondering whether the shepherds might be moonlighting as lobbyists for the Democratic Party.

To be clear, the problem is not that they are aligning themselves with the Democratic Party’s position regarding immigration, but that they so closely aligning themselves with a political party at all. Trapped in what has been called the “left-right fallacy”, American political parties have succumbed to either/or thinking. The Church on the other hand, is animated by both/and type thinking, especially with respect to her social doctrine. When a group of prelates comes out with a statement that sounds like it was drawn up by a Party member, you can almost always be sure that they are failing to embrace and teach the full Catholic understanding of the issue.

The Church on Immigration

With respect to immigration, the Church’s teaching is quite clear that there is a right to emigrate “when there are just reasons in favor of it” (Pacem in Terris, 25). The right is not absolute, conditioned not only to just reasons on the part of the emigrant, but also depending upon the Common Good of the nation they seek to enter. A State must accept immigrants “so far as the good of their own community, rightly understood, permits” (ibid, 106). As custodian of the “good of the community” or the Common Good, the State must exercise its office by enacting policies that first and foremost look to the Common Good and only then to the good of the individual immigrants.

This precedence of the Common Good over the right of the individual is not merely evidence of, as the Bishops insist, “the indifference of a throw-away mentality” but instead flows from the right to emigrate. The immigrant has an obligation to contribute to the Common Good if he is to become a member of the society in which he seeks to emigrate. From this responsibility flows the right to emigrate. If he does harm to the Common Good, then the right disappears.

There is a flip side to this as well, one that is not often discussed, but his highlighted by Cardinal Robert Sarah in his book The Night is Far Spent. The Cardinal says that “without a precise plan for their integration, it is criminal to offer hospitality to migrants.” The Cardinal speaks of the necessity of a welcoming State to have a “precise plan for giving them all the guarantees of dignified life.” This “dignified life” means not just that they have food and housing, but that they have the means for securing these things themselves. To come to another country and live off of the host is not dignified at all, but instead actually does great harm to both the individual person and the Common Good.

Democratic Party Talking Points?

It seems that the US Bishops have ignored the convergence of these very important principles and instead decided to regurgitate Democratic Party talking points. With 30 million Americans currently unemployed, it would be contrary to the Common Good to allow more people into the country and create additional competition for work. The Bishops obviously have fallen into the “immigrants do jobs Americans won’t do” fallacy. Immigrants don’t do jobs Americans won’t do, they do jobs at far lower wages than Americans will do them. They drive down wages for lower-skilled jobs by flooding the market with more workers. In a 2016 article in Politico, George J. Borjas, Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, reported that,

[W]hen the supply of workers goes up, the price that firms have to pay to hire workers goes down. Wage trends over the past half-century suggest that a 10 percent increase in the number of workers with a particular set of skills probably lowers the wage of that group by at least 3 percent. Even after the economy has fully adjusted, those skill groups that received the most immigrants will still offer lower pay relative to those that received fewer immigrants.
Both low- and high-skilled natives are affected by the influx of immigrants. But because a disproportionate percentage of immigrants have few skills, it is low-skilled American workers, including many blacks and Hispanics, who have suffered most from this wage dip. The monetary loss is sizable. The typical high school dropout earns about $25,000 annually. According to census data, immigrants admitted in the past two decades lacking a high school diploma have increased the size of the low-skilled workforce by roughly 25 percent. As a result, the earnings of this particularly vulnerable group dropped by between $800 and $1,500 each year.

Contrary to the Bishops’ insistence that “There is little evidence that immigrants take away jobs from citizens,” it is clear Americans do lose jobs as a result of the influx of immigrants. This Democratic Party taking point, on the lips of Catholic Bishops ought to concern all of us, especially because there are two especially relevant Catholic principles upon which they are silent.

If you search “just wage” “immigration” on the USCCB website, you will find a single mention of just wage in the context of immigration (and that is a 2003 document quoting John Paul II). Why are the Bishops not defending this clear abuse of immigrant workers? The Church has long insisted that the dignity of the human person demands that he receive a just wage that is “sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children” (Rerum Novarum, 46). Of course, neither the Democrats or the Republicans ever speak of just wage either (and no “minimum wage” is not the same thing as a just wage).

The reason that politicians never speak of it is because immigration is a hidden way in which a redistribution of wealth occurs. Thus, the Bishops make the unsubstantiated claim that “Immigrants and citizens together are partners in reviving the nation’s economy.” A closer examination however reveals the exact opposite to be the case. Returning to Professor Borjas’ article, he pointed out that

somebody’s lower wage is always somebody else’s higher profit. In this case, immigration redistributes wealth from those who compete with immigrants to those who use immigrants—from the employee to the employer…I estimate the current “immigration surplus”—the net increase in the total wealth of the native population—to be about$50 billion annually. But behind that calculation is a much larger shift from one group of Americans to another: The total wealth redistribution from the native losers to the native winners is enormous, roughly a half-trillion dollars a year.

Thus we can see how indiscriminately allowing immigrants into the country, even to fill jobs supposedly “Americans won’t do” can do great harm to the Common Good.

There is nothing in the President’s order that is contrary to the Church’s teaching on immigration and thus they have nothing to add to the conversation as Catholic prelates. Their personal opinions, even when stamped with an imprimatur, only serve to damage their credibility as teachers of the truth. Given the great moral crisis we are facing, especially in the United States, it would be great if Catholic Bishops would not waste their moral capital taking what are clearly political positions.

Embracing Inequality

April 25, 2020American Founding, Catholic Social Teaching, Church and State, Culture of LifeEquality, Justice, Leo XIII, Lord Acton, Pius XII, Politics, Tocquevilletwowingstogod@gmail.com

Among all of the social phenomena that Alexis de Tocqueville noted during his stay in America, he found what he called “equality of conditions” to be the most striking. Everywhere he looked he found Americans who were literally obsessed with equality, fueled by the sacred truth that “all men are created equal.” Tocqueville was removed enough from American society however to see how dangerous an exaggerated insistence on equality could be. In fact, he thought that this insistence was really rooted not in justice, but in envy, explicitly saying so in a letter to a friend: “equality is a slogan based on envy. It signifies in the heart of every Republican ‘Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.’”

A simple glance at those around us will be sufficient for us to recognize that the tent of equality can only be stretched so far. So vastly different are the members of humanity in looks, physical prowess, intellectual skills, material wealth, personal character, spiritual gifts to name just a few, making only the most incredulous question whether personal equality is a real thing. That is because man is both naturally equal and naturally unequal. All men and women have a natural equality regarding their origin and destination. Having come from the hand of the Creator, made in His image, men and women are equal in their destiny to share in His likeness forever. It is from this natural equality that they derive their right to life and the liberty to pursue of happiness.

Natural Inequality

Equally each man will stand before God and be judged. But He will be judged according to how he used his talents (c.f. Matthew 25:14–30). This implies that man is not only naturally equal, but also naturally unequal. Echoing the sentiments of Our Lord, the Church has repeatedly affirmed this natural inequality. In his Encyclical Humanum Genus, Pope Leo XIII reminded the Faithful that inequality is natural and willed by God:

In like manner, no one doubts that all men are equal one to another, so far as regards their common origin and nature, or the last end which each one has to attain, or the rights and duties which are thence derived. But, as the abilities of all are not equal, as one differs from another in the powers of mind or body, and as there are very many dissimilarities of manner, disposition, and character, it is most repugnant to reason to endeavor to confine all within the same measure, and to extend complete equality to the institutions of civic life. Just as a perfect condition of the body results from the conjunction and composition of its various members, which, though differing in form and purpose, make, by their union and the distribution of each one to its proper place, a combination beautiful to behold, firm in strength, and necessary for use; so, in the commonwealth, there is an almost infinite dissimilarity of men, as parts of the whole. If they are to be all equal, and each is to follow his own will, the State will appear most deformed; but if, with a distinction of degrees of dignity, of pursuits and employments, all aptly conspire for the common good, they will present the image of a State both well constituted and conformable to nature.
Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, 26

The analogy (as opposed to a metaphor) of the body is particularly appropriate because it does away with Tocqueville’s concern of envy. Parts of the body always have a complementarity. It is only when the body is riddled with disease that they become competitive. This struggle between complementarity and competition is the battle that goes straight through the heart of each man’s fallen social nature. The devil, the diabolical one (literal meaning is the one who tears apart), wants to split mankind through envy. God is the Symbolon, the One Who Brings Mankind together in Christ. It is in this spirit that the Church has always sought to lead men and women to find their vocation and fulfillment through their station in life.

We call it the body politic then because it is like a living organism with a hierarchical nature. But this carries with it a serious temptation—to use politics to create equality where there naturally isn’t any. Democracy is the tool of choice for doing this because it rests upon an assumption of political equality among the citizenry. Whether or not this is a reasonable assumption we can visit another time, but that it is used to enforce equality where there is inequality is a great threat to freedom. This was the great flaw in the French Revolution as Lord Acton pointed out in his lectures on the French Revolution: “[T]he deepest cause which made the French Revolution so disastrous to liberty was its theory of equality. Liberty was the watchword of the middle class, equality of the lower.”

Equality as a Threat to Liberty

When we attempt to manufacture equality it is always at the cost of liberty. Recall that liberty an external condition by which we are unhampered in our use of our internal freedom. Equality can only be created from the crumbling fragments of liberty. In order to keep inequality in check the higher privileged must have their liberty taken away. Unable to raise the underprivileged up to the level of the privileged, the privileged must be taken down a few notches. It is animated by a mob mentality that is only possible from within a democratic mindset.

Some might object to the use of the term “privileged” to describe those who occupy the higher rungs of the social hierarchy. That is because of the poisoning of our minds through a democratic paradigm causes us to recoil at even the faintest whiff inequality. But there is such thing as just privilege that comes from natural inequality. All unjust privilege should be rooted out, but not all privilege is unjust.

Indiscriminately attacking inequality is harmful to the common good because, in leveling society out, it leads to a form of stagnation in which the mob exerts a gravitational force that orbits the lowest common denominator. But is also does great harm to the underprivileged, possibly more than the privileged, in that by bestowing certain rights on them, it demands responsibilities that are above the abilities. The democratic planners then must readjust not just the responsibilities of the underprivileged but lower those of the privileged as well.

This is not a condemnation of democracy per se, but instead a refusal to allow it to be exploited as a tool of creating equality. Instead, the Church looks to the protection of a “sound democracy” that is “based on the immutable principles of the natural law and revealed truth, will resolutely turn its back on such corruption as gives to the state legislature in unchecked and unlimited power, and moreover, makes of the democratic regime, notwithstanding an outward show to the contrary, purely and simply a form of absolutism” (Pope Pius XII, Democracy and a Lasting Peace).

Protecting Liberty

April 22, 2020American Founding, Catholic Social Teaching, Church and State, Faith and Reason, MoraliltyFreedom, Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Speech, Leo XIII, Liberty, Morality, Natural Lawtwowingstogod@gmail.com

America, GK Chesterton once said, is the only country that was founded upon a creed. This founding creed, while uniquely American in its articulation, was based, not on anything unique about America, but on what was common to all mankind. Jefferson captured this creed succinctly when he demanded of King George III that he recognize certain self-evident truths, namely, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Ever since then liberty has become an American buzzword, often cited but hardly ever defined and so making it prone to abuse. Such a foundation must be firm however or else the house that has been built upon it will collapse under its own weight. The Church has long recognized that a proper understanding of liberty was vital for the life of any society. It was in this spirit that Pope Leo XIII devoted an entire Encyclical, aptly entitled Libertas to explaining it.

In order to properly grasp the notion of liberty we must first discuss some related terms, the first of which is freedom. The modern idea of freedom is that it means a man can do what he wants. This makes freedom into an end rather than a means since the emphasis is merely on willing and not on the thing that is willed. So, while we may have the physical power to choose what we want, freedom is only truly itself when it is treated as the means of choosing what is good. Freedom is therefore a moral power.

Liberty and Ought

As soon as we enter the moral realm, we enter the world of ought. Freedom is related then to responsibility. This is a second important factor, especially in an age cluttered by rights language. We only have rights because we have responsibilities. We only have responsibilities because we have freedom that is oriented towards choosing those responsibilities. And we only have responsibilities because there are objectively good things that we must choose. Freedom is necessarily wedded to law as well.

Leo XIII summarizes the connection between freedom, responsibility and law in the already mentioned encyclical, Libertas (7)

“In man’s free will, therefore, or in the moral necessity of our voluntary acts being in accordance with reason, lies the very root of the necessity of law. Nothing more foolish can be uttered or conceived than the notion that, because man is free by nature, he is therefore exempt from law. Were this the case, it would follow that to become free we must be deprived of reason; whereas the truth is that we are bound to submit to law precisely because we are free by our very nature. For, law is the guide of man’s actions; it turns him toward good by its rewards, and deters him from evil by its punishments.”

Summarizing we can say that although a man is master of his own actions because he has the power to choose between many alternatives, he is only free when he chooses what is good. If freedom has to do with our internal power, then liberty has to do with the external conditions related to the exercise of that internal power. Liberty clears the way for each man to fulfill his responsibility. Because liberty is connected to freedom which is connected to responsibility which is connected to what is truly good, “liberty is to be regarded as legitimate in so far only as it affords a greater facility for doing good, but no farther” (Leo XIII, Libertas 42).

Liberty should be limited only to that which is necessary for one to fulfill his responsibility. To go any further than that cause liberty to evolve into license. Those who go beyond responsibility “substitute for true liberty what is sheer and most foolish license” and therefore “follow in the footsteps of Lucifer, and adopt as their own his rebellious cry: ‘I will not serve’.” The devil is the author of license and he uses it to drag people into hell.

A Few Examples

A couple of examples that Leo XIII uses will help illustrate the point. Liberty of conscience must always be protected and promoted because each man has a responsibility to follow the will of God. He must have every obstacle removed from his path in fulfilling this duty. A man can never be forced to do what is evil. Liberty of conscience then must always and everywhere be protected to the point where it is treated as the supreme individual liberty. This liberty becomes especially important in our own day and age when there is a progressive movement towards State absolutism. Man must always have the liberty to disobey evil precepts. This liberty is usually the first one that is removed in the progression towards a regime that suppresses all true liberty.

A second liberty that he discusses is free speech. Although often treated in an absolute manner, it cannot be indifferent to truth and falsehood. Man has a responsibility to both know the truth and communicate only what is true. Therefore there must a liberty that protects this responsibility. As Leo puts it, “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” (Libertas, 23). There is no right to speak falsehood nor to speak (or display) that which corrupts morals. If this were better understood then we would not have the pornography problem that is protected by free speech.

Two Wings to God

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth"Pope St. John Paul II

Category Archives: Church and State

Fulfillment of the Law

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