Category Archives: Church and State

Religious Liberty and the Coronavirus Quarantine

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One of the more closely related issues to the Coronavirus Quarantine is Religious Liberty.  Some have argued that the State demanding the shutdown of Church’s infringes upon the right to religious freedom.  Arguments have but put forth, at least from a Constitutional perspective, that in general the demand that churches be shut down is not unconstitutional.  We will set the constitutional question aside for the time being and examine it from the Church’s traditional teaching on religious freedom.

From the outset it must be admitted that examining religious freedom from the standpoint of traditional teaching is not without controversy.  Ever since the Second Vatican Council this teaching has been contested thanks to what amounts to a document plagued by ambiguity.  This despite the fact that the Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, makes it clear that “it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ” (DH 1).  This “traditional Catholic doctrine” can be summarized as follows.

The Traditional Teaching on Religious Liberty

Man has an obligation to worship God, not just in any manner that he wishes, but according to the religion that God has revealed.  More to the point, man has an obligation to be a member of the Catholic Church.  This membership however must be voluntary.  No one can be forced to embrace the True Faith against his will.  Two corollaries follow from this.  First, no one may be forced from acting against his religious conviction in private or in public.  Vatican II affirms this teaching when it says that religious “freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.” 

In a discourse in 1953, Pope Pius XII said ‘That which does not correspond to truth or to the norm of morality has objectively no right to exist, to be spread or to be activated.”  Because “error has no rights”, the public exercise of religion is another issue.  Only the true religion has a right public expression and thus a person may be kept from publicly acting upon their religious convictions.  To summarize, a man can’t be forced to act against his conscience but can be kept from acting on it.  The second corollary then is that the State, because it is the custodian of the Common Good may prohibit public expression of false religions.

In Catholic countries the State may tolerate some public expression of false religions only for proportionate reasons in order to protect the Common Good.  St. Thomas gives two reasons in general—to avoid civil unrest or avoid prejudicing non-Catholics toward the Church.  What is clear is that this must be viewed merely as tolerance and not a right.  No one has right to be tolerated.  Either way a non-Catholic religion must not be given the space to flourish and propagate itself. 

In non-Catholic States the obligation to protect and promote the true religion still remains in place, but the level of tolerance of false religions obviously increases because of the Common Good and the threat of civil unrest.  This is where Dignitatis Humanae seems to veer from the traditional teaching of the Church saying both that “religious communities…have the right not to be hindered in their public teaching and witness to their faith, whether by the spoken or by the written word”(DH 4).  It seems to confuse true rights from mere tolerance.  How this can be reconciled with the traditional teaching remains to be seen.

The traditional understanding then differs from the American Model.  The American Model treats all religions as equal.  This is contrary to justice however.  As Leo XIII put it:

“Justice therefore forbids, and reason itself forbids, the State to be godless; or to adopt a line of action which would end in godlessness-namely, to treat the various religions (as they call them) alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously equal rights and privileges. Since, then, the profession of one religion is necessary in the State, that religion must be professed which alone is true, and which can be recognized without difficulty, especially in Catholic States, because the marks of truth are, as it were, engravers upon it.” 

Pope Leo XIII, Libertas 21

This also means that the Church cannot be treated as merely one other social organization.  This means that the constitutionality defense, namely that religious congregations have not been singled out, of the religious quarantine does not fly.  The Church not only should be treated differently than other religious groups, but also from all social groups.  Lumping it in with other “large gatherings” is unjust and does great harm to the Common Good.

Religious Liberty and the Power of the Church

The confusion regarding religious liberty has led to a grave misstep when it comes to the quarantining of the Church’s public worship and Sacraments.  To be clear, the issue isn’t about whether Bishops should comply with the order of the State regarding not gathering.  That question is best left up to the prudential judgment of the Bishops and their charism as Shepherds.  But any compliance must be shown to be voluntary.  It must be “we will comply” and not “we must comply”.  Very few Bishops (if any) have made it clear that this is a voluntary cooperation, “signal proof of her motherly love by showing the greatest possible kindliness and indulgence” (Leo XIII, Immortale Dei 15) in cooperating with the State.

The Church has an obligation to repeatedly tell the State to stay in its lane and this situation is no different.  Leo XIII, always aware of State encroachment upon the Church, said “Whatever, therefore in things human is of a sacred character, whatever belongs either of its own nature or by reason of the end to which it is referred, to the salvation of souls, or to the worship of God, is subject to the power and judgment of the Church. Whatever is to be ranged under the civil and political order is rightly subject to the civil authority” (ibid).  This is because the spiritual common good always has precedent over the temporal common good.

When the transition back to normal life happens, the question is who decides when the Church may resume Masses?  Is it the State or is it the Church?  The way this has played out so far it appears that it will be the State which sets a dangerous precedent and gives the Church’s enemies great leeway in performing a “soft persecution” in the name of public health.  The Shepherds of the Church must defend religious freedom and not cede any power over to the State.

God’s Authority and the Modern State

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Pope St. Pius X once said that all errors in the practical and social realm were founded upon theological errors.  The Saintly Pontiff’s maxim seems almost common-sensical, so much so that, we can easily overlook it.  Ideas have consequences and bad ideas, especially bad ideas about Who God is and who man is, have bad consequences.  As a corollary then we might say that it is impossible to fix the bad consequences without rectifying the bad thinking.  One such bad idea, namely that all authority in the political realm comes from the people, has had the devastating consequence of erecting a “wall of separation between Church and State” leading to the loss of many souls.

The Source of Secular Authority

The properly Christian understanding about the source of secular authority is that it comes from God Himself.  This is made clear by Our Lord during His trial in which He tells Pilate that “You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above” (John 19:11).   In his usually blunt manner, St. Paul echoes the same principle when he reminds the Christians in Rome to “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” (Romans 13:1).  God as Creator and Sustainer of all Creation is also its supreme authority.  All authority is exercised in His name and flows from Him.  Kings, emperors and presidents all derive their power to rule from Him and it is only for that reason that they also have the power to bind consciences for just laws. 

Summarizing the Church’s understanding of secular authority, Pope Leo XIII instructs the faithful that “all public power must proceed from God. For God alone is the true and supreme Lord of the world. Everything, without exception, must be subject to Him, and must serve him, so that whosoever holds the right to govern holds it from one sole and single source, namely, God, the sovereign Ruler of all. ‘There is no power but from God’” (Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, 3).

This view of authority flies in the face of countries such as the United States.  Rather than authority from above, it is based on authority from below.  Known as popular sovereignty, this founding principle is first articulated in the Declaration of Independence where Jefferson told the King that legitimate governments are those ‘‘deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.’’ 

Luther’s Error and Its Modern Consequences

So ingrained in the modern mind, we might not even realize that it is opposed to the correct understanding of the source of secular authority.  It would be easy to blame this on the Enlightenment, but the error pre-dates even the Enlightenment and Social Contract Theory.  Instead the error is rooted in Luther’s revolution in which he rejected the authority of the Church.  Leo XIII points this out in his encyclical Diuturnum  by drawing a line from the so-called Reformation to Communism and nihilism: “…sudden uprisings and the boldest rebellions immediately followed in Germany the so-called Reformation, the authors and leaders of which, by their new doctrines, attacked at the very foundation religious and civil authority; and this with so fearful an outburst of civil war and with such slaughter that there was scarcely any place free from tumult and bloodshed. From this heresy there arose in the last century a false philosophy – a new right as it is called, and a popular authority, together with an unbridled license which many regard as the only true liberty. Hence we have reached the limit of horrors, to wit, communism, socialism, nihilism, hideous deformities of the civil society of men and almost its ruin” (Leo XIII, Diuturnum, 23).

If we follow the logic we will see why this is a necessary consequence.  Animated by a Protestant mentality, each person treats directly with God without any intermediary.  Each person becomes an authority in himself and therefore any authority that is to found in a social body is by his consent.  In essence then it eliminates the Kingship of Christ in the temporal realm and completely privatizes religion. 

This helps to explain why most Protestants see no problem in the current belief in a “Wall of Separation” between Church and State. It was Luther himself that was the intellectual predecessor: “[B]etween the Christian and the ruler, a profound separation must be made. Assuredly, a prince can be a Christian, but it is not as a Christian that he ought to govern. As a ruler, he is not called a Christian but a prince. The man is a Christian, but his function does not concern his religion. Though they are found in the same man, the two states or functions are perfectly marked off one from the other, and really opposed.”  Both the Christian Prince and the Christian citizen were to live their lives in two separate realms and, ironically enough, not submitting to God in either since they also rejected His Kingship in the Catholic Church.  Once the divorce is complete, all types of political errors begin to take hold.  Luther’s insistence on individual and private judgement leads directly to Locke, Rousseau, and Marx.  One theological error leads to many political errors. 

The Church then will always find conflict with the modern state until this error is corrected.  The modern State hates the Catholic Church because it is an existential threat because it seeks, or at least ought to seek, to acknowledge God’s authority in the temporal realm.  It is also the reason that Catholics ought to make the best citizens.  They see no conflict between Church and State because both have their authority rooted in God Himself and to obey either is to obey God.

On the Necessity of Government

American Founding, Angels, Anthropology, Church and State, Culture, Moralilty, Natural Law, , , , ,

Our country was founded upon a rather strange amalgamation of principles.  A perusal of the writings of the Founders will uncover both references to Catholic Natural Law and principles of the Enlightenments. One can imagine that there are some pretty stark contradictions.  One such contradiction is found in the question of why we need government at all.  In the midst of defending the need for a government that includes checks and balances in  Federalist Paper no. 51, James Madison makes what seems like at first to be a very Catholic statement saying that government is “the greatest of all reflections on human nature.”  Rather than remaining on that train of thought, Madison diverts to another track claiming that “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”  Understanding both of his statements will help us go a long way in understanding why our country seems to be plagued by moral decay.

If Men Were Angels…

Obviously one of the important questions that the Founders sought to address was how authority was to be exercised by the State.  Trying to emerge from the shadow of Divine Right Theory, the Founders thought authority came from the individual.  Men would form a society like the State by bartering freedom for security.  The individuals would bestow authority upon a Governor in order to ensure that his rights would be secured against encroachments from other men who had all entered the society via a social contract.

When Madison says that government is the “greatest reflection upon human nature”, he has this view of human nature in mind—man as the individual who enters society via the social contract.  This principle of the Enlightenment treats government then as a necessary evil that must be tolerated because man is fallen.  In his own words, “anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger.”  If men were not fallen, like the angels, then government would not be necessary.  So commonplace is this idea today, that hardly anyone questions whether Madison has greatly misunderstood human nature.

Madison’s anthropological error comes into relief if we challenge his theological assertion that “if men were angels, no government would be necessary.”  Angels do, in fact, live within a hierarchy, a hierarchical structure that includes authority.  Scripture provides us with an example in Chapter 10 of the Book of Daniel.  Daniel calls upon the help of Gabriel, but the angel does not immediately respond because the Guardian Angel of the Kingdom of Persia would not allow him to act.  After Michael intervenes, the lower angel is allowed to help Daniel (Dn 10:11-21).  What this reveals is that angels, even unfallen ones, do have a government, one that is based upon a clear authoritative structure.

The Greatest of All Reflections on Human Nature

So, if men were angels then government might be necessary rather than being a necessary evil.  Contra Locke, Rousseau and their intellectual progeny, including the Founders, man is not a solitary being, but is naturally a social creature.  In order to fulfill his nature, man has need of other men.  This is not just a matter of convenience but part of his natural instinct.  There are two natural societies in which man’s needs are supplied, the Family and the State.

Because men naturally form these two societies, they must have an authoritative structure.  As Pope Leo XIII put it, “no society can hold together unless some one be over all, directing all to strive earnestly for the common good, every body politic must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and has, consequently, God for its Author. Hence, it follows that all public power must proceed from God. For God alone is the true and supreme Lord of the world. Everything, without exception, must be subject to Him, and must serve him, so that whosoever holds the right to govern holds it from one sole and single source, namely, God, the sovereign Ruler of all. ‘There is no power but from God.’” (Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, 3).

St. Thomas says that the act of authority would be applied in four ways.  First, the ruler must direct the members of society towards what they should do to contribute to and achieve the common good.  Second, the ruler should supply for difficulties such as protection against an enemy.  Third, the ruler should correct morals via punishment and (four) he should coerce the members to virtuous acts.

Now it becomes obvious that the first two would apply whether or not men were fallen or not.  Virtuous men might agree about some common good, but because it is possible to achieve a good in multiple ways, they disagree as to means.  Without a ruler, that is one without authority, there would be no one to make the final decision.  Because men, even in a state of innocence would not be equal with respect to virtue, it is the most virtuous who would govern.

St. Thomas describes this virtuous ruler in the Summa:

“But a man is the master of a free subject, by directing him either towards his proper welfare, or to the common good. Such a kind of mastership would have existed in the state of innocence between man and man, for two reasons.  First, because man is naturally a social being, and so in the state of innocence he would have led a social life. Now a social life cannot exist among a number of people unless under the presidency of one to look after the common good; for many, as such, seek many things, whereas one attends only to one…Secondly, if one man surpassed another in knowledge and virtue, this would not have been fitting unless these gifts conduced to the benefit of others…Wherefore Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xix, 14): ‘Just men command not by the love of domineering, but by the service of counsel”: and (De Civ. Dei xix, 15): ‘The natural order of things requires this; and thus did God make man.’”

(ST I q.96, a.4)

Madison, because he thinks government a necessary evil, would have us tolerate evil in our rulers.  But when we see the State as something natural, we begin to identify its purpose of making men better.  It is necessary for men to fulfill their nature by becoming more virtuous.  The virtuous ruler will create virtuous subjects.  St. Thomas thinks we can, and must, do better.  The transition may be rocky, but if our society is to turn around and become morally sound, we must not settle for moral degenerates in our leaders.  With Primary Season upon us, especially with a total lack of emphasis on the character of our leaders, this is an important message. 

The Social Construct Myth

Anthropology, Church and State, Church Authority, marriage, , , , , ,

Marriage, according to conventional wisdom, is a social construct.  Governed by cultural norms and expectations, the institution of marriage is completely malleable.  This view of marriage was front and center in the debate over same-sex marriage, but the battle against traditional marriage was won long before that when divorce, especially in its no-fault variety, became an acceptable norm.  Divorce, or at least its cultural acceptance, is what changed marriage making it a social construct.  To say divorce made marriage a social construct is to suggest that things once were otherwise so that if we are to grasp how we got here, we might simultaneously find a remedy. 

Anthropological Roots of Divorce

Deeply imbedded within the Western mind is the notion of man as a rugged individual.  Naturally solitary and free, man forms a social contract either to escape the anarchy of the state of nature (Hobbes) or its noble savagery (Rousseau).  All social institutions become “social constructs” in which men and women freely enter and freely leave according to their own will.  From within this paradigm of liberalism, marriage like all other social institutions are “social constructs” in which men and women freely associate and equally as freely disassociate.  Only the State remains a permanent fixture so as to protect the individual from other individuals infringing upon their rights, even if it too is ultimately a social construct.

Civil divorce grew out of the soil of 18th Century liberalism because it, like all other private contracts, was completely voluntary and always in danger of one of the contracting parties dissolving the contract.  In order to protect this freedom, the State adopts the stance of arbiter and enforcer and is empowered to dissolve what was previously thought indissoluble.  Given the power to dissolve, the State must also then have the power to define and decide what marriage is and who should be married.

There is a certain irony surrounding the fact that marriage was not always thought to be a social construct.  The “social construct” viewpoint replaced the natural view of marriage.  For millennia, marriage was considered to be a natural institution that formed the foundation of the family which was the building block of society as a whole.  It is the natural view of marriage that would preclude either divorce or gay marriage.  By combining them into a single issue it avoids reducing the argument to mere biology.

It is not any mere external circumstances that draws man into society, but his nature.  Man is by nature a social animal.  In order to fulfill his nature, he must have a society of other men to do that.  Because they are absolutely vital for fulfillment, the family and the State are natural societies.

In order to grasp this truth, we must also see that men and women fulfill their nature by becoming virtuous.  Virtue is what perfects all our natural powers.  Marriage is the bedrock of virtue.  Only within the framework of the family are both the spouses and children perfected in their gift of self and unity.  It is where the children are educated in the cardinal virtues as they prepare to give themselves in service to society as a whole.  It is where siblings learn how to live as a community of equals.  It is where parents learn to shed ego.   As statistics repeatedly show, those who divorce or are victims of divorce severely handicap their chances at fulfilling their nature.

It is the Author of human nature, and not the State, that is the Author of marriage.  Marriage, because it is a complete union of persons in all their dimensions—bodily, spiritual and temporal—and thus naturally indissoluble.  The State does not make marriage but only provides an occasion for consent and works to protect and promote it.    The State in its role as guardian of the common good, may act to protect and promote marriage, even by dissolving legal bonds between spouses, but is powerless to dissolve the marriage itself.  In truth a civil divorce is worth no more than the paper upon which it is printed.

Marriage, because of its indispensable and irreplaceable role in fulfilling human nature, is a natural institution and not a social construct.  Understanding the roots of the errors that led to its demise helps us to go back and correct them. 

The Church and the Question of Slavery

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History, it is said, is written by the victors.  Whether this dictum is absolutely true or not can be debated.  What cannot be debated is that history is always rewritten by those seeking victory.  Historical rationalization allows the combatants to demonize their enemies, therefore justifying the annihilation of the culture.  Who can doubt that this has been a weapon in the arsenal of the Church’s enemies throughout the last few centuries?  As of late the enemies of the Church have attempted to rewrite the annals of history in order to paint the Church as indifferent, if not positively in favor of slavery.  In order to show this to be a lie, we must arm ourselves with the truth.

We must first set the stage by examining the world into which Our Lord took flesh.  Christianity arose.  Approximately 1/3 of the population of Ancient Rome were slaves.  All manual labor was performed by them.  In the fiefdom of the paterfamilias they were viewed as human property, essentially chattel, and held no rights.  In this regard Rome was no different from any culture prior to the arrival of Christ, including those encountered by the Jews (more on this in a moment).  Slavery was always viewed as acceptable and absolutely no one questioned the institution.  The only places it wasn’t practiced were those places that could not support it economically because the cost of maintaining the slaves was greater than their output.  This is an often overlooked, but nevertheless very important, point for two reasons.

Ending Slavery as a Practical Problem

First, given that slavery was ubiquitous, ending it as an institution would take power—either physical or moral.  This is why when Moses gives the Law to ancient Israel it says nothing condemning slavery but only how slaves were to be treated (c.f. Exodus 21:26-27, Deut 23:15-16).  And how they were to be treated was far greater than any other ancient culture.  This does not make it right or whitewash the immorality of it, but it does see how God was setting the stage for a moral revolution that would eventually topple slavery in the Christian world.  To condemn it would have been to shout into the wind.  He chose not an ethic, but to form an ethos.  And some of the different Jewish sects like the Essenes caught the ethos sooner than others and refused to practice slavery. 

Those who often try to change history forget that Christianity is a historical religion.  What this means is that God acts within specific cultures and in specific times.  Without understanding the cultural context, we will fail to miss the principles upon which His commandments are founded.  Any criticism of St. Paul for example must first include the cultural context in which he wrote.  To label his household codes (c.f. Col 3:18—4:1; Eph 5:21—6:9) as anything other than revolutionary is to trivialize what he is saying.  He demands that the slaves be treated justly (implying they are people with rights and not property) and that they will have to answer for how they treat their slaves.  While it might be implied that just treatment would include freeing them, he does not explicitly call for this.  This may insult our modern sensibilities towards anything other than absolute freedom, but it is because if the slaves were treated well by their masters, especially in the harsh Roman culture, then they might actually be better off remaining with their masters.  Many of them would have had nowhere else to go.

There is one particular case in which St. Paul did call for the release of a slave because he did have a better place to go (see Philemon 8-14).  Onesimus was a slave who stole money from his master, Philemon, and escaped to Rome.  When he ran into hard times in Rome, he found Paul whom he met at his master’s home in Colossae.  They developed a friendship and Onesimus was baptized.  At this point, Paul tells him he must return to his master and gives him a letter to present to his master.  This is the point where we must read the letter carefully to see what St. Paul was saying.  He tells Philemon that “although I have the full right in Christ to order you to do what is proper, I rather urge you out of love”.  Paul is saying that he could order Philemon to release Onesimus because it is “proper” (i.e. slavery is wrong).  But instead he wants him to release him out of love for his Christian brother.  The only reason he sends him back is so that “good you do might not be forced but voluntary.”  He wants to give him the opportunity to do the right thing for the right reason based upon a fully Christian ethos.

And based upon the history of the Church, Philemon responded just as St. Paul had hoped.  First, because the letter was saved for posteriority, that is, Philemon would not have saved a letter and distributed it if he did not comply with it.  Secondly because we find in the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles that Onesimus was ordained by St. Paul as the bishop of Macedonia.  Onesimus is the first beneficiary of the revolutionary view of mankind set in motion by the God made man.

The Impossibility of Judging Christianity by Its Own Principles

The second reason why we cannot overlook the fact that slavery was ubiquitous in the ancient world is that, in truth, without Christianity slavery would never end.  If we flash forward 1000 years to the end of the first Christian millennium we find that slavery is non-existent in the Christian world.  This condition continued through the Middle Ages so that by the 15th Century all of Europe is slavery free except for the fringes in the Iberian peninsula (under Islamic control) and in certain areas of Russia.  The Muslims were indiscriminate as to who they enslaved—black or white it did not matter.  Once they were run out of Spain and Portugal they went to Africa and joined in the already indigenous slave trade, that is, Africans enslaving and selling into slavery other Africans.  Again, another often overlooked fact that the African slave trade was already an institution long before the Europeans arrived in the late 15th Century. 

With slavery practically eradicated in Christendom, then how did slaves end up in the New World?  The Spanish and Portuguese Christians, living under an Islamic regime for nearly 700 years, had grown accustomed to it.  So when labor proved itself both lacking and necessary in the New World, the Spanish, Portuguese and eventually English turned to chattel slavery once again.  They did this against the very clear and repeated condemnations from the Church.  Beginning in 1435 with a bull Sicut Dudum, Pope Eugenius IV demanded that Christians free all enslaved natives of the Canary Islands within fifteen days or face automatic excommunication.  Over the next 450 years, the Popes unequivocally prohibited the enslavement of any peoples (see this link for a complete list).  With fists full of mammon covering their ears, many of the so-called Catholics simply ignored the Church’s teachings, especially because there was no real way of enforcement.

And herein lies the reason why the facts cannot be overlooked.  The Church’s teaching on slavery as intrinsically evil has been and always will be unchanging.  St. Paul’s Magna Charta of Christian brotherhood in Col 3:26 is forever established.  In this regard Christianity cannot be judged because to judge it, is to judge it based on its own principles.  Put another way, only Christianity taught the evil of slavery and so you cannot judge the principle by the principle itself.  What you can judge and absolutely should judge is Christians themselves for failing to live up to these principles.  For that, many Christians themselves have failed miserably to protect the dignity of their fellow men.  Parents sometimes are blamed for the actions of their children when there is a bad upbringing, but the clarity and insistence of the Church on this issue makes it clear that it was the children themselves who went astray.  What must be absolutely clear is that without the Catholic Church, millions, if not billions of people, would be in physical chains today.  No matter how the usurpers of our post-Christian society may try to paint the issue of slavery, that is a truth they must ultimately contend with.

Going to the Chapel

Church and State, Ecumenism, marriage, Moralilty, Sacraments

Living in what is a predominantly non-Catholic culture, one of the most common questions that faithful Catholics are confronted with is whether they should attend a non-Catholic wedding or not.  One can certainly appreciate the moral difficulty of such a decision especially when there is a question as to the validity of the marriage and the chance that such a decision could permanently alter their relationship with the bride and bridegroom.  Complicating the issue is that the Church has not spoken definitively but instead has left the Faithful to exercise their own prudence in coming to a decision. Prudence requires knowledge of the principles involved so it is instructive to examine the principles involved.

The Scandal to Evangelization Ratio

For most people there is a certain moral calculus that comes into play.  They attempt to discern what might be called “a scandal to evangelization ratio”. They may intuit that their attendance at the wedding has the opportunity to create scandal but attempt to balance that with the opportunity to show them the love of God (i.e. evangelize).  This type of calculation however is fraught with problems.

First, it represents an equivocation of the theological understanding of scandal with the worldly version of it.  Scandal in the worldly sense means some behavior that causes public outrage.  Scandal in the theological sense is much broader than this and can occur even when there is no “public outrage”.  St. Thomas says that scandal really has two dimensions to it—what he calls active and passive scandal.  Active scandal is when 
a “man either intends, by his evil word or deed, to lead another man into sin, or, if he does not so intend, when his deed is of such a nature as to lead another into sin… something less rightly done or said, that occasions another’s spiritual downfall ”  Passive scandal on the other hand, is the reception of “another man’s word or deed actions such that it disposes him to spiritual downfall”  (ST II-II, q.43). 

For the sake of the discussion at hand, the focus is on active scandal.  Before we set aside passive scandal though a further distinction needs to be made.  A man may be guilty of active scandal even if the person who witnesses the word or deed is not actually led into sin. This is why St. Thomas calls it a “deed of such a nature as to lead another into sin.”  It is the type of the action and not its consequences that determine whether someone has committed a sin of active scandal.  A scandalous action may still be scandalous even if there is no “public outrage.”  The reason why this matters is that even if no one else knows about it (except the bride and groom of course), because a wedding is a public act it would still be the type of act that causes scandal and thus a scandalous act.  

Returning to our scandal/evangelization calculator we see why this approach would not work.  Negative precepts like “thou shall not commit active scandal” are binding at all times.  Positive precepts like “preach the Gospel” are still an obligation, but their fulfilment depend on the circumstances.  Setting aside the inherent contradiction that we could somehow preach the Gospel while at the same time sinning personally, there still would be no proportionality between the two.  Avoiding sin is one of the circumstances in which the positive precept of evangelization is set aside. Even if we label this quantitative tradeoff  as “discernment” it is still not possible.  Nor, as an aside, could we appeal to the principle of double effect because of the same lack of proportionality.

St. John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio warned about confusing the “law of gradualness,” that is the gradual way in which the ethos of the Gospel takes hold in a man’s heart, with the “gradualness of the law.”  There are not different degrees or forms of God’s law that apply for different individuals in different situations.  But in an effort to be “pastoral” or “charitable” people will try to lighten the load of the law by issuing personal abrogations instead of working with the person openly so that they may make their life conform with the life-giving ethos of the Gospel.  Sometimes the most loving and just thing to do is to tell a person the truth and then to continue working with them (even if virtually through prayer) to help them conform their lives with that truth.  You might not see immediate conformity, but you must always (hopefully gently) spur them on to living out the truth.  Otherwise you rob the Cross of its power by trying to make it easier on them.  This might also require some redemptive suffering on your part as you are scorned by them because you spoke truthfully. 

Other Moral Reasons

Scandal is not the only thing at play here, and, in fact, may not be the largest issue.  Weddings by nature are public events precisely so that the community can witness to the union. Practically speaking a witness is not just someone who attends a wedding, but someone who consents to it. Traditionally speaking this explains the tradition of asking whether anyone objects.  Just as St. Paul, bywitnessing to St. Stephen’s stoning was complicit in it (c.f. Acts 7:58, 8:1),witnesses at a wedding are cooperating formally in the exchange of vows.  That is, their attendance (and forever holding their peace) implies consent.  Based upon everything you know about the bride and groom, you will that they should be married.  To not align your will with the spouses and still attend the wedding would be a lie.  This goes for any other moral “short-cuts”like only going to the reception, not going and sending a gift, or even saying “congratulations.”  All of these, using the language of the body, tell the couple and everyone else that the marriage as something to be celebrated is a good thing.   

All that having been said, can we come up with a rule by which we can operate?  I think a general rule of thumb would be that it is morally permissible to attend a wedding in which there is a reasonable presumption of validity.  This can include marriages of Catholics, so-called mixed marriages, marriages between non-Catholic Christians, and non-Christians. The first two are governed by Canon Law and relatively easy to discern(canon 11-08-1133).  It is not like you have to form your own pre-Cana Tribunal to determine whether the wedding will be valid, but that you have good reason to believe that it is.  A wedding involving, for example, a couple who were previously married to other people, would be a clear-cut example of one that we would have to avoid.

What About Gay Weddings?

We have a great deal of freedom to exercise good judgment with only a few obvious exceptions.  There is one other exception that bears some closer examination and that is same-sex weddings.  All that we have said so far including scandal and formal cooperation would disqualify a Catholic from attending.  But those are not the only reasons.  Same-sex marriages are an intrinsic evil because they can never be ordered to the good, regardless of the intention or circumstances.  To witness and explicitly or implicitly imply consent to such a union is itself an evil. 

One might question the designation of it as an intrinsic evil, but in truth it attempts to “solemnize” a sacrilege.  From the beginning, marriage was meant to be a sacred union that reveals Christ’s nuptial relationship with the Church (c.f. Ephesians 5:21-33).  Even non-Sacramental marriages bear this mark and in this way marriage as a sign is considered to be the “primordial sacrament” (c.f. JPII Theology of the Body, 06 October 1982).  Same-sex marriage is a sacrilege because it attempts to falsify the sign.   Therefore a Catholic knowing this would participate in the sacrilege by attending a gay wedding.

Before closing it is worth revisiting something said above about having the hard discussion.  It can be extremely difficult to disappoint other people, especially people you love.  There is a real risk of damaging relationships.  That is why it is important keep an eternal perspective on these types of things.  When we generously strive to avoid disappointing God first, He always outdoes us in generosity by blessing both us and the other people involved.  While it may strain the relationship here, it paves the way for the only real relationship in the Communion of Saints.  Bearing this in mind, can help to ease some of the difficulty here and now.

Christ the King and Theocracy

Church and State, Church Authority, Defending the Faith, Politics, ,

In the opening lines of his letter to the Roman Christians, St. Paul reveals to them how the wrath of God is being revealed in the decadent Roman society in which they are immersed.  It is not through powerful astronomical events, famines or plagues (although it could be) but instead God “gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error…They were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.  Though they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them “(Romans 1:26-32).  Sometimes the punishment for sin is, put simply, the sin itself.

Only the man who willingly choses to wear blinders would miss the obvious parallels to our own day.  The punishments listed by St. Paul match up perfectly with the primary social ills that plague us today.  The fact that these act as punishment for sin might explain why so many are enslaved and very little headway is made towards eradicating their widespread practice through moral reasoning.  These are the grounds upon which the so-called “culture wars” are fought.  Thus it is especially important to pay attention to the root sin that causes it all.  St. Paul says that the Gentiles were being punished “since they did not see fit to acknowledge God” (Romans 1:28).

At the heart of culture, is cult.  Liturgy both forms and redeems culture.  This seems to have been forgotten, but it was something that Pope Pius XI was keenly aware of.  In his 1925 encyclical Quas Primas, the Pope acknowledged that “the chief causes of the difficulties under which mankind was laboring and the manifold evils in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics: and we said further, that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations” (Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas, 1).  By instituting a solemn feast, the Pope was calling down from heaven particular graces upon the Church in order to help her fulfill her mission in today’s world.

Christ the King and the Mission of the Church

And what exactly is that mission?  To keep clear the path for the reign of Christ.  But this mission is often eclipsed by an irrational fear of creating a “theocracy”.  A theocracy is exactly what must be created.  Or, perhaps to use a word less charged with meaning, a confessional state.  The delegation of the authority, because it is given to fallen, yet presumably redeemed men, will be diffused between Church and State, but there should be absolutely no opposition between the two.  Christ is both king of Church and State because all power in heaven and on earth was given Him (c.f. Mt. 28:18).  It is His power that the Church wields, and it is that same authority by which the State draws its legitimacy.

That Christ must rule even the State has been forgotten so immersed have we become in the error of “Separation of Church and State”.  Unaware of the waters we are swimming in, Pius XI thought it helpful to develop the “logic” of Christ’s Kingship.

Within an ethos of individualism, we often think of Christ as ruling individual men.  While that is true, it does not go far enough.  Man is by nature a social animal and thus you cannot rule over individual men while not also ruling over those individual men when they come together in society.  One might concede this to be true and then say “that is why we have the Church.”  Again, true, but again, not far enough.  While his spiritual reign has a certain primacy, His reign is also temporal.

Likewise, when we speak of the Kingship of Christ, we often refer to Him ruling over the hearts of mankind.  It impossible to rule over the hearts of men without ruling over their worldly affairs.  We are not disembodied angels, but men, body and soul composites.  Finally, while the consummation of His reign will not reach fruition until the end of time, all of time should see it growth in that direction.  Once the Feast was moved to the end of the Liturgical Year, rather than in October as Pius XI first promulgated it, there was a tendency to associate His Kingship with the end of the world.  This led to a lowering of the bar so that the goal became for Christ only to rule over the hearts of men.

What Separation of Church and State Has Wrought

It is the separation of Church and State that has led to society’s forgetting God.  In other words, the separation of Church and State is a denial of Christ’s Kingship.  The only way to win the culture war then is to restore the rightful King to His throne.  Again, there should be a separation of powers, but they must be pulling in the same direction.  In this model the State becomes a means to the salvation of mankind as it removes every temporal impediment within its sphere of influence.  By recognizing His Kingship, a Kinship that is His by right as Redeemer, He acts upon those temporal things that positively aid men’s salvation and sanctifies them.  By sharing in His temporal Kingship, the temporal leaders earn a grace of state that empowers them to rule more justly.

The Church, with Christ as King, rules the spiritual realm, answering only to Christ Himself.  The civil authority is subject to the Church but only insofar as the Church issues judgment upon those temporal things that could hinder the progress in the supernatural realm. This is the basis of what was called the “indirect power of the pope” by which the Church can intervene in temporal affairs in order to safeguard the interests of the divine life.

In short, recognition of Christ’s kingship means that Church and State have a unified goal—the salvation of men.  When a wall of separation is erected, the State, because it has rejected the True King and is governed solely by men, will always attempt to keep the Church out.  It does this by offering salvation to its citizens through utopic solutions.  Short of that it will offer them “bread and circuses” to but a wall of separation between their bodies and spirits.

Pius XI was not the only Pontiff to recognize this problem.  In his Encyclical on the Constitution of Christian States, Leo XIII said “The authority of God is passed over in silence, just as if there were no God; or as if He cared nothing for human society; or as if men, whether in their individual capacity or bound together in social relations, owed nothing to God; or as if there could be a government of which the whole origin and power and authority did not reside in God Himself… it follows that the State does not consider itself bound by any kind of duty toward God ”(Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, 24-25).  And his solution?  “The people have heard quite enough about what are called the ‘rights of man’. Let them hear about the rights of God for once” (Pope Leo XIII Tamesti Future).  The Feast of Christ the King is the constant reminder of that exhortation.

Standing Firm in History

Church and State, Culture, History, , , , , ,

The attendant clatter of a silent statue falling on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was loud enough to be heard throughout the country.  Loud, not just because of the coverage it received in the main stream media, but also because it was joined in chorus by the death knell of one historical vision and the triumphal melody of its replacement.  Although Confederate statues have been toppling over with great regularity, this one is different.  Different because it occurred on the campus of an institution of higher learning, an institution that prides itself on its department of history whose “primary goal is to foster the creation and communication of historical knowledge.” History as it has been understood up until now is, well, history.

We must first admit that there is no such thing as merely communicating historical knowledge.  The essence of history is not found in facts, but in interpretation of specific historical events.  Good historians always allow the data of facts to drive them, but in the end how they view reality itself is always going to color their communication.  Events never occur within a vacuum so that the context itself also matters.  As the great Catholic historian Christopher Dawson once quipped, an alien may witness the Battle of Hastings and have more facts than we do, but this knowledge would not be historical because it lacked both an understanding of reality and a context.

The Two Views of History

What are these two views of history that have been grappling for the Western Mind?  What we might call modern history has won out strictly because it is modern.  It is modern because it feeds off of the two great modern ideologies—communism and liberalism.  In the communist view, all of history is marked by a conflict between oppressor and oppressed.  History for liberalism is only subtly different in that it documents the struggle at various stages pitting those who fought against for freedom against the enemies of freedom.  Either way, a reduction occurs in which history is driven by conflict with the bad things always left in the past.  This inevitability of progress assumes everything in the past was backwards and that those who do not see this are evil, ignorant or both.

In this way history parallels the theory of evolution in that there is always progress towards a time of enlightened peace.  Progress will save us.  And like its intellectual counterpart, the evolutionary view of history also suffers under the weight of materialism (even if there is some lingering Deism).  With conflict as the only thread, there is a sit-com-like disconnect of events from each other.  History is simply one episode after another, with very little reference to the previous episode.  Retaining a historical memory really has no value, because, as the great historical student Henry Ford once said, “all history is bunk.  The only history I care about is the history I am making.”

The toppling of Silent Sam gives us a prime example of this viewpoint of history.  The Civil War was a battle between the white oppressors in the South and the Union proxies of the oppressed slaves.  Even the great Karl Marx saw it that way.  Sure there are other things that happened, but it all really comes down to this one thing.  Freedom, of course, won the day and the United States marched on in its messianic mission as the instrument of liberal progress.  Because the statues harken back to those days of un-freedom, they must be literally dumped in the dust bin of history.  Anyone who sets his hand to the handle of the bulldozer and looks back can have no part in progress.  History, like our favorite sit-com, has nothing to do with here and now so why would we need reminders of it?  If you do not understand that then you are, at best, an ignorant fool, or just as likely, a racist xenophobe who wants to put other people in chains.

This view of history has finally eclipsed its previous contender; what one might call the Christian view of history.  Christianity is by definition of historical religion because its Divine Founder “in the fullness of time pitched His tent and dwelt among us.”  Whether you use BC/AD or BCE/CE, the fact still remains that the Incarnation is the center of history.  It is the center of history because it proves once and for all that history does not merely have a direction, but a Director Who regularly makes cameos in His story. History now becomes the field in which the redemption of Creation plays out.

Knowing this, history must always leave room for the supernatural.  There are no accidents.  Where would the world be if St. Joan of Arc was blown off because she merely “heard voices”?  What if St. Pius V hadn’t pleaded with the Queen of Victory at Lepanto?  Or what if Pius VI when imprisoned by Napoleon in France had not prayed while the Emperor mocked him (Napoleon is purported to have said “does he think the weapons will fall form the hands of my soldiers?” which is exactly what happened in Waterloo)?  What if the steady handed, trained assassin had not encountered the hand of God in the chest of John Paul II?

The exemplar of all Christian historians is the great St. Augustine.  His City of God is a synthesis of human history read through the lens of Christian principles.  History for Augustine, and for us as Christians, is not a record of events but the revelation of a divine plan that embraces all ages and peoples.  He also shows that history, in order to be truly history, must be continuous.  There are no episodes or seasons, but a continuing story.  Memory is a key component of identity.  Both liberal democracy and Communism create regimes for forgetting the past.  Fans of the Jason Bourne series know the dangers of forgetting the past—not that you are doomed to repeat it, but that an amnesic people is defenseless and malleable.

What About the Statues?

Through the lens of the Christian notion of history, what place do Confederate Statues have as tokens of history?  In an age in which the conflict theory of history prevails they are very important.  When we think we have moved on, it is easy to think we should sanitize all versions of the past.  When we see history as the revelation of God’s plan of redemption for mankind however we need statues.  Statues, as the name suggests, are not symbols of honor but signs of someone who stood firm.  They may have stood firm for bad things like slavery.  Or they may have stood firm for good things like the courage to defend your homeland.  Or, as in the case of many of the Confederate statues, it was both.  But as tokens of history they teach us to choose carefully those things we are going to stand firm in.  They also teach us through real life examples that our actions, good and evil, endure.  They will not be erased.  Finally, they remind us that even the greatest of men is still flawed.  We wonder how courageous young men like those depicted in the Silent Sam statue could have such a blind spot and hopefully wonder where our own blind spots are.  Finally, it keeps our hubris in check in thinking we can build some messianic kingdom.

Let the statues stand—if for no other reason that they keep history from falling into the dustbin.

The End of the Death Penalty?

Church and State, Church Authority, Defending the Faith, Politics, Pope Francis, ,

Today the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had approved a change to the Catechism of the Catholic Church regarding the use of the death penalty.  The specific paragraph in the Catechism, no. 2267, had included an important qualifier admitting that the State may validly have recourse to its use: “the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty.”  The modified version has removed this important qualifier and now says the death penalty is “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”  While this may seem like a relatively small change, at least doctrinally speaking, it is more important than one might think.

The Snowball Effect

First, it means that the preceding paragraph (no. 2266) also will need to be modified.  Legitimate public authority no longer has the right and duty to inflict proportionate punishment to the offense.  I have written about this in greater detail earlier this year, but to summarize, by saying that there are no crimes deserving of death, you ultimately invite injustice through arbitrary punishment.  As I put it back in March, “To say that a mass murderer deserves the same punishment (life imprisonment) as say a rapist is to ultimately destroy the principle of proportionality.  That a mass murderer gets only life imprisonment would suggest that a rapist who, “at least didn’t kill someone” should get less.  This leads to a sort of arbitrariness in punishment, including excess or even no punishment at all.”

This one change creates a snowball effect that can only become an avalanche of change.  The Church’s divinely inspired teachings can be likened to a seamless garment so that if you tug at the smallest string of doctrine the entire thing unravels.  Necessarily the Church’s teaching will then have to change regarding the rights and duties of the State, followed by the rights and duties of the individual and so on.  Before long we are left with a pile of string.

More importantly, the change also signals to the Faithful that the Pope is wrong.  Mind you, I am not saying this particular Pope is wrong (yet) but the Vicar of Christ is, in a very real way, one voice throughout the centuries.  Numerous Popes have taught that there are valid applications of Capital Punishment (including Pius V and his Catechism of the Council of Trent, Pius XII, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and all the Popes who, as head of the Papal States, exercised their right and duty in executing criminals as a means of retributive justice), even if they exercised prudential judgment as to when it should be applied.  Now we begin to see why this is about more than just the death penalty.  Either all of these Popes taught error or this particular Pope is now teaching error by abolishing the death penalty.

In what now appears to have been a prophetic utterance, the future Pope Benedict XVI, as Prefect for the Congregation of Divine Faith under St. John Paul II, once said:

“[I]f a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment… he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities… to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible… to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about… applying the death penalty…”

Given this and the fact that the new version appears to be literally wiping out tradition (recall the paragraph in question makes reference to “the traditional teaching of the Church”), we should be inclined to side with the litany of saints and previous Popes who thought that Capital Punishment could be a just, and therefore licit, means of punishment.  In short, by calling the death penalty “inadmissible” the Pope is contradicting Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture.  Rarely used? Fine, that is a prudential matter.  Absolutely immoral or inadmissible?  This is too far, contradicting Tradition and leads to injustice.

It IS all about the Dignity of the Person

The Scriptural justification is particularly relevant in this case because it directly contradicts the wording of the new No. 2267.  While setting up His covenant with Noah, God says “Anyone who sheds the blood of a human being, by a human being shall that one’s blood be shed. For in the image of God have human beings been made” (Gn 9:6).  Obviously it is problematic (at best) to say that God has commanded something that the Pope is now calling immoral.  But that is not really the biggest problem with the now “inadmissible” nature of the death penalty.

Vatican spokesman Greg Burke when speaking of the new wording said “the key point is really human dignity.”  But dignity is a two-edged sword of sorts.  Notice that the Lord tells Noah that it is because murder is an affront to man’s dignity as made in the image of God that men should have recourse to the death penalty.  In other words, rather than being an attack on the dignity of the person, the death penalty affirms it.  It affirms the dignity of the victim.  You cannot speak of the dignity of the offender while at the same time ignoring the dignity of the victim.  Eventually you do violence to the notion of human dignity until it becomes a term devoid of any real content.  To say that a human person is so valuable that the only proportionate punishment for killing him is to forfeit your own life (the most valuable thing you own) is a great testament to the dignity of the human person.

Perhaps not as obvious is the fact that the death penalty also affirms the dignity of the offender as well.  Edward Feser goes into more detail on this in his book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed, but his point is rather salient.  Capital punishment treats the offender not as a victim of his own rage, but as a free moral agent (i.e. made in the image of God).

Mr. Burke is right, the key point is human dignity, but not in the way he meant it.  To fully take the death penalty off the table ends up degrading the value of human life.  It is false then to deem the death penalty inadmissible in all cases and contrary to the Gospel—the power to take the life of a criminal comes from above (c.f. Jn 19:11).  Anyone who says otherwise is contradicting Sacred Scripture and Tradition.

On Not Walking the Extra Mile

Church and State, Culture, ,

As the archetype of all spiritual masters, Our Lord left a rule of life for His followers.  This rule of life finds the bulk of its content in the Sermon on the Mount.  There is hardly any aspect of life that isn’t touched by Jesus’ prescription for happiness.  The bar is set ridiculously high to prove both its practical impossibility and His power to transform us.  Those who set out under their own power quickly find His maxims unlivable.  But this is not the only reason why many find it unlivable.  It is also unlivable when, although with the best of intentions, Christians treat it not as a rule of life, but as a social blueprint.

An example may help better illustrate what I mean.  When addressing the issue of retaliation, Our Lord tells His followers: “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.  If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well.  Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles.  Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow” (Mt 5:38-42).  There are a multitude of ways in which this new law manifests itself in the lives of individual Christians, but it all boils down to how we are to respond when we are victims of evil.  We may, like Our Lord (Jn 18:23) and St. Paul (Acts 16:22) choose not to turn the other cheek, but only if we are prepared to absorb the evil rather than respond in kind.  How this plays out in the day to day is left to the discernment of each Christian man and woman.

Our Lord’s Blueprint

What Our Lord was not offering a plan for social justice.  All too often these verses and others like them (except oddly enough the ones on divorce) are quoted in support of a political agenda.  These verses are meant to be a plan of life for the individual Christian.  This is not to imply that there is not a social dimension to living in accord with them, but it is not Our Lord’s blueprint for society, but His recipe for leaven.

A society made up of Christians who are willing to turn the other cheek, go the extra mile or lend without condition is a society that will be animated by charity and forgiveness.  But society itself has no cheek to turn.  It may be governed by men living out the Beatitudes, but their rules of governing must be based in service of the common good.

Jesus was not condemning “an eye for an eye.”  Many people go far beyond what Our Lord was saying.  In a qualified, that is a non-literal sense, there is nothing unjust about it.  The principle represents a sound basis for the foundation of any society.  Offenses must be punished and any punishment that is just must have the proper degree of proportionality to it.  A society that offers no resistance to evil is sure on the path to anarchy.  To attempt to apply Our Lord’s personal principle to society as a whole makes Christians look foolish no matter how well intentioned.  Non-Christians conclude then that the Gospel is not only unlivable, but unreasonable as well.

Punishment

There is a second aspect of this as well that is important to mention because it does apply to society.  We should never respond to evil with evil.  This is worth mentioning because, although punishment may be perceived as an evil by the one punished, it is not evil in itself.  In fact, it is a good for both society and the individual when it is carried out in a just manner.  In other words, to expect society to “turn the other cheek” in the face of evil is actually responding to evil with evil.

This habit of socializing the personal permeates much of the discourse of priests and prelates for hot button issues like the death penalty and immigration.  Jesus telling us to “turn the other cheek” is not an argument against the death penalty, no matter how Christian society is.  “Welcoming the stranger” may be the basis for allowing any immigrants, but it can never be used as an argument against specific policies.  The examples could be multiplied but each time they are invoked the power of the Gospel to be leaven is greatly minimized.

The Newest Teen Idol

Anthropology, Atheism, Church and State, Politics, , , , ,

To mark his 200th birthday, the self-styled “young person’s guide to saving the world,” Teen Vogue,wrote an article on Karl Marx—“the Anti-Capitalist Scholar.”  The article is worth reading, not necessarily because it is a work of serious scholarship, but because it represents a perfect example of the propaganda that many young people are fed regarding Marxism.  Avoiding the inconvenient truth that his ideology led to deaths in the neighborhood of 150 million people (according to The Black Book of Communism) and focusing instead on the abuses of capitalism that it allegedly rectifies, Marx is presented and an underappreciated genius.  This marks the latest in a long line of attempts to paint the intellectual founder of Communism and his theories in a positive light.  Of course this is a favorite tactic of Lenin himself who thought that targeting the minds of the young and teaching them to love Marx, hate any authority and  label anyone whose ideas differ from theirs as haters (notice how “bosses”, “rich people” and even Donald Trump end up in their sights) they could be won over to Communism.  The rest of the general public, living in a post-Cold War world, remains wholly ignorant to the tenets of Marxism, let alone its inherent dangers.

In his scathing condemnation of Communism (he calls it a “satanic scourge”), Divini Redemptoris, Pope Pius XI said that Communism spread so rapidly because “too few have been able to grasp the nature of Communism. The majority instead succumb to its deception, skillfully concealed by the most extravagant promises…Thus the Communist ideal wins over many of the better minded members of the community. These in turn become the apostles of the movement among the younger intelligentsia who are still too immature to recognize the intrinsic errors of the system” (Divini Redemptoris, 15).  His assessment of Communism remains to this day one of the best overall and succinct descriptions of the goals and errors of Marxism.  It should appear on every Catholic’s reading list, especially those who view Marxism as something relegated to the dustbin of history.  It is still very much alive in places like Cuba and North Korea and in its cultural form in many countries (including our own).

Marxism and Conflict

Rather than focusing in this essay on each of these errors, there is one particular aspect that draws our attention.  In the last paragraph of the Teen Vogue article, the author says “While you may not necessarily identify as a Marxist, socialist, or communist, you can still use Karl Marx’s ideas to use history and class struggles to better understand how the current sociopolitical climate in America came to be.”  This plea for open-mindedness towards Marxism is really a thinly veiled attempt to promote it.  It rests on an important assumption attached to Marx’s philosophy that paves the way for the whole package—his dialectical and historical materialism.

Marx’s interpretation of history is simple; it is a process that is driven inevitably forward by the law of dialectics.  In this vision of history, all social change comes about through class conflicts produced by economic causes.  As Marx put it, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Communist Manifesto, Chapter 1 ).  This growth occurs according to the pattern of the dialectic.  Thesis generates its own antithesis and from this conflict a synthesis emerges.  This synthesis becomes the new thesis and the process continues until it reaches its end—the Communist society.  For Marx, the rise of Capitalism had reduced society to only two classes, the Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.  What he proposed was a single world-wide revolution that abolishes the Bourgeoisie and puts an end to class conflict forever under the “dictatorship of the Proletariat.”

To organize the young around the view that all of history is oppression is the key to the spread of the Marxist revolution (or any revolution for that matter).  This is also at the heart of the challenge by cultural Marxism that we face.  The dialectic of oppression is the predominant social vernacular of our day.  The rich oppress the poor, men oppress women, white men oppress black men, religious majority oppress the sexual libertines and on and on.  We must see this for what it is—something the Holy Father warned about, “The preachers of Communism are also proficient in exploiting racial antagonisms and political divisions and oppositions” (DR, 15).

Marx’s vision of history is not historical but religious instead.  He offers no evidence to support his claim that all of history is conflict and accepts no explanation to the contrary.  In fact, if we look at history then there are plenty of examples of cooperative societies (including the family and apprentice/master relationships) that were not in perpetual conflict.  The Christian High Middle Ages were not a period of economic conflict either.  Historian Christopher Dawson has shown conclusively that history has been moved not by economic factors, but religious ones.  Of course there is some truth to the fact that when the cooperative elements broke down, conflict ensued.  But still that can hardly be the lens through which we view all history.

One could refute Marx based on his unproven assumption, but there is a more important anthropological assumption that needs to be challenged.  For Marx the goal is the perfection of society and thus each individual exists for the sake of the whole.  Each man becomes a cog in the machine of society and thus is expendable, leaving him without any true rights.  In the Christian conception of man, society exists for the individual; not in the liberalist sense of individualism couched in a social contract, but because each man only finds his individual perfection by contributing to the whole.   Man is social by nature because He is made in the image of God, Who, as a communion of Person, is social by nature too.

Conflict and Complementarity

This is ultimately why the conflict theory of history doesn’t fly.  Society is formed by men who are all made in God’s image, thus giving them a certain equality.  But this equality does not mean we are destined for a classless society.  The message is not one of conflict but complementarity in which each man and woman finds and is satisfied with their own station in life.  They are fulfilled only by finding this station and living out of it.  This place is predetermined only in the sense that it is part of God’s providential plan and not based upon the preconceived ideas of other men and women.  Richer and poorer depend equally upon each other for their own personal fulfillment.  Men and women, black and white, likewise are the same.  When done well without social agitation from cultural Marxists, this can become a reality.

Perhaps this sounds more utopian than Marxism itself.  This vision will not put an end to oppression because the problem is not in the social structure but in the human heart.  “The poor you will always have with you” because there will always be Original Sin and its accompanying oppression.  But it is not a social revolution that will put an end to that but a revolution of each man against himself.  But this revolution will never come about unless we live out of the truth.  The exterior must support the interior.  The revolutionary language of oppression will never bring about this revolution but only further alienates us from each other and from ourselves.  It’s time we pull the mask off Marxism and call it when we see it.

Defending Death?

Church and State, Church Authority, Culture of Life, Human Dignity, ,

In a previous post, two of the most common arguments for abolishing the death penalty, were examined and put to rest.  In the midst of this presentation, I promised to return to the topic because the arguments themselves are predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of the reasoning behind the Church’s position, a position she has held from her beginnings.  When asked where the Church stands on Capital Punishment, most would put forward the “self-defense” defense, a position based upon John Paul II’s explanation in Evangelium Vitae and later included in the Catechism:

“If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person. Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself – the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity ‘are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.’” (CCC 2267)

In summary, provided that the threat to society from the person can be neutralized, then the death penalty should not be used.  Given greater and greater security measures, we should expect that the death penalty will eventually be done away with.  Or so the argument goes.  This may come as a surprise to many, but “self-defense” has never been the primary reason why the Church has allowed recourse to the death penalty.  And if it was, this would represent a novelty (i.e. a change in something belonging to the Tradition of the Church).  Instead the Church has taught from the beginning that the death penalty was a valid means of punishment.

“From the beginning?”

Within the classical tradition, punishment has three distinct purposes.  The primary end is the re-establishment of justice.  When a crime is committed, the order of justice is upset and is only restored when a proportionate punishment is given to the offender.  This is why the punishment must always be carried out according to the judgment of a competent authority.  The other two purposes serve only secondary roles.  First, the punishment must be ordered to the correction of the offender himself, that is, it is medicinal in some way to the person who committed the injustice.  Finally, it must serve a social purpose, primarily as a deterrent and isolation of the offender.

We can examine Capital Punishment in light of these three ends to see if it can be applied.  It bears mentioning that this is a different question as to whether it should be applied in a given situation.  This is a question that only the competent authority whose role it is to promote and protect the common good.  We are interested here only in the question of why in principle the death penalty is not immoral.  That being said, we can examine the primary end, namely the re-establishment of justice.  Does the punishment fit the crime?

Almost on an intuitional level we must admit that there are some crimes that are so heinous that the only fitting punishment is death.  If this sounds like vengeance then that is because it is.  Vengeance corresponds to the innate desire for justice that is written into human nature and it is a good thing when it is exercised according to justice.  This is why punishment should always be carried out by the competent authority.  If “all authority comes from above” (Romans 13:1) and “vengeance is mine, says the Lord” (Dt 32:35) then it is the competent authority that carries out the punishments of the Lord.

Even if you are willing to concede this, you might answer “no, there is no crime for which the fitting punishment is death.”  The problem with this position is first that it contradicts Sacred Scripture.  In the midst of His covenant making with Noah, the Lord says “Anyone who sheds the blood of a human being, by a human being shall that one’s blood be shed. For in the image of God have human beings been made” (Gn 9:6).  This is the principle of proportionality.  A principle that even Our Lord did not abrogate in the Sermon on the Mount in which He addresses His individual followers to avoid unjust anger and vengeance while at the same time commanding them to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”  There should be no vigilante justice, only those for whom the competence rests (c.f, Romans 13:1-4).  Our Lord teaches how we should respond as victims to violence, not as punishers.  It is with this awareness that the Church has always taught that society may have recourse to the death penalty as a punishment; from St. Paul to Augustine to Aquinas to Pope Innocent III to Pope Pius IX to Pope Pius XII to Benedict XVI.

The second problem is more one of common sense.  To say that a mass murderer deserves the same punishment (life imprisonment) as say a rapist is to ultimately destroy the principle of proportionality.  That a mass murderer gets only life imprisonment would suggest that a rapist who, “at least didn’t kill someone” should get less.  This leads to a sort of arbitrariness in punishment, including excess or even no punishment at all.  We cannot eliminate per se Capital Punishment as a proportional punishment.

Although it is not immediately obvious, Capital Punishment also serves the second purpose of punishment.  It serves a medicinal as well.  St. Thomas says that the death penalty leads to either repentance or puts an end to their sin, both of which are good for the person.  Death is not the worst thing that can happen to us—hell is.  Repentance obviously leads the person away from hell, but keeping a person from sinning even more keeps them from further punishment in hell

Finally, how the death penalty serves a deterrent.  This also needs to further explanation.  Many people take this to be an empirical claim and think that the number of murders is no less in places where there is recourse to the death penalty.  But the claim is more about the law as a great moral teacher.  As a deterrent the death penalty is not a part of someone’s calculation, but represents an overall hatred of murder.  Most people would not commit and murder and one of the reasons why they have such distaste for it is the horror of the death penalty.  Rather than being an affront against human dignity, it actually shows the great worth of human life.  Recall the reason that God gave Noah as to why he should use capital punishment—“in the image of God have human beings been made” (Gn 9:6).

A Novelty?

It was mentioned above that the “self-defense” defense would represent a novelty in the Church’s teaching and would be a break with unbreakable Tradition.  “Still”, one might say, “the Catechism says what it says.”  That is true, except that the paragraph must be read from within its proper context.  The teaching on the death penalty is presented from within the context of punishment, that is, as Capital Punishment.

“The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people’s rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people’s safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.” (CCC 2266)

This is merely a summary of the principles of what we said above.  What follows then in the next paragraph is meant to be an application of those principles based on the Holy Father’s prudential judgment.  He thinks that given the current state of the penal system, the ends of punishment—proportionality, expiation and deterrence— can be met with something like life imprisonment, rendering the only issue being whether or not society can be protected from further violence by the perpetrator.  As proof that this is a merely prudential application we need only look to the comments of the future Pope Benedict XVI when he said “While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia” (Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith).  It is both permissible to have recourse to capital punishment and to disagree with how it is applied.  The principle is set but how it is applied, like many things related to the moral teachings of the Church, is debatable.   Put another way, that it can be used as punishment is not debatable, when it should be used is.  As an aside, I should mention as well that, despite taking a lot of flak for it, Edward Feser offers an excellent explanation of why this is an imprudential judgment in his new book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of the Death Penalty.

In conclusion, the Church has repeatedly affirmed the validity of the death penalty as a moral option for punishing violent offenders.  Despite a move towards a more merciful approach, this particular doctrine will not and cannot change.  The death penalty should always be on the table.

Catholic Culture and the Collapse of the Self-Evident

Church, Church and State, Culture, Culture of Life

In a book written just prior to becoming Pope called Truth and Tolerance, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger describes the present day crisis of faith as coming about from a “collapse of the old religious certainties.” This collapse affects more than just faith, but leads to a total “collapse of human values” (Truth and Tolerance, p.140).  So connected are these religious certainties with our conception of human values, that we treat certain truths of the Christian ethos as self-evident.  Or at least, we did.  What we are witnessing is not just the death of a Christian culture, but also, what one author has called, the collapse of the self-evident.

The Enlightenment and the Collapse of the Self-Evident

Those who have been victimized by the project of the Enlightenment, the same project which promised to liberate reason from the constraints of religious truth, have seen reason collapse instead.  Rather than liberating reason, it has enslaved it to feeling and the scientific method.  There are no longer first principles, truths that we all hold as self-evident, from which reason and society might proceed.  Freedom reigns supreme, unfettered even by reason itself and it is every man for himself in this brave new world.  It seems that the only self-evident truth is that there are no self-evident truths.  Descartes’ skepticism has won the day—we now know nothing for sure.

Nevertheless, this is our reality and a failure to adapt to it only exacerbates the problem.  For those who desire to spread the Christian ethos they must come to accept the consequences of the “collapse of the self-evident.”  When we encounter another person who fails to acknowledge what is self-evident we assume that they are either stupid or wicked.  We assume that they are either unable or unwilling to see the truth. They are the swine upon which we should not cast our pearls and we counter with indifference and/or hostility.

Our Lord’s admonition regarding our pearls and the world’s swine is not without merit, but we miss a great opportunity when we fail to grasp that, in a culture in which the self-evident has collapsed, they may be neither stupid nor wicked.  In fact, in Christian charity, we should assume they are simply ignorant.  Rather than being, as we should all be, slaves to the self-evident, they become slaves to the fashionable.  There was a time when the Christian ethos was the fashionable, but those days are long past.

An illustration will help to drive the point home.  Many Christians find themselves absolutely flummoxed by those who support abortion.  The self-evident truth that acted as a cornerstone for our country, that no one may directly kill an innocent person, makes it practically self-evident that abortion is immoral.  Therefore we assume that abortion supporters are either stupid or wicked, marking them as enemies to be conquered rather than potential allies to be won over.  It is no longer self-evident what a person is.  Even if we are able to grasp that, then we run into a second “self-evident” roadblock, innocence.  What is an innocent person; one that poses no threat to my well-being or one that does not deliberately seek to harm me, or what?  That a child in the womb is innocent should be self-evident, the fact that so many people can’t see it is because of the collapse of the self-evident.

Every pre-Christian culture had abortions.  This was not because they were less enlightened but because they were pre-Christian.  Likewise with the dignity of women, slavery, euthanasia, and nearly every other societal ill.  It is only in light of the Christian conception of man that we can even speak of the value of every human being.  It is the fact that we are made in the image of God and worth enough for the Son of God to die for that we can even conceive of human dignity.  Throw out those two truths and the collapse of the self-evident is sure to follow.

We argue and argue, but our voice is lost because no one understands us.  We are, quite literally yelling into the wind.  Sure individual conversions still occur, but nothing on the massive scale that the Church is used to.  And that is because the smattering of individual conversions cannot sustain a Christian culture.

The Necessity of a Catholic Culture

Our Lord won a grace for the ignorant to see the truth on the Cross—“Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”  But His Mystical Body, His visual presence on earth has been given a grace and a task.  This is the same grace and task that the early Church was given to “instruct the ignorant” through the foundation of a decidedly Catholic culture.  It started with a tightly knit sub-culture but before too long blossomed into an entire culture.  Constantine may have “legitimized” Christianity by adopting it as the state religion, but he was only acknowledging what every Roman already knew—the empire, thanks in no small part to a lifeless pagan worship, was in steady decline with the most vital part of society being the Church.  I am not calling into question the sincerity of Constantine’s conversion, there is no good historical reason to doubt that, only pointing out that it also turned out that a healthy Church has a unifying capacity in society, even if not everyone is Christian.  What follows from this is the rise of a Christian culture.

The Church may not be in favor of divorce, but they must finally admit that the marriage of the Church with liberalism is a failed union.  We have been trying for over a century to show how the Church is compatible with liberalism rather than showing how liberalism is compatible with the Church (or mostly how it is not).  Pope Leo XII may have been ahead of his time in declaring the heresy of Americanism, but he wasn’t wrong.

Culture, as the liberals (not in the liberal vs conservative sense, but in the sense of liberalism of which both liberals and conservatives are a part) know is built from the bottom up in the education of the young.  Why have Catholic schools adopted the liberal model and dropped the classical liberal arts model?  Catholic education was a battlefield in the 1950s when the Supreme Court put parochial schools in its sight.  Rather than continuing the fight, the Church schools simply adopt the liberal model.  There is no longer a uniquely Catholic education, except among a very small remnant.

Likewise, we are urged to call our Congressmen to protect the Dreamers, many of whom are Catholic immigrants, from being deported.  But if we are honest, they would probably be better off in their Catholic homeland rather than having their eternal salvation at stake as here.  Oppose Trump’s wall?  Fine, but how about building a wall around these young people so that they retain their Catholicism and not Americanism.  There was a time when there was enough of a Catholic culture to sustain many Catholic immigrants.

The examples could be multiplied, but the point remains that until we remain committed to building a Catholic culture, we will lose, not just the culture war, but eternal souls.  The collapse of the self-evident leaves many blinded by the fashionable and unable to see the truths of the Faith as livable and coming from the hand of a loving Father.