theophiles.org - Israel and Judah

Written by Entity

Tuesday, 01 December 2009 09:07

For some reason, I still seem to mystify people in my views on the American political scene. Indeed, the most mysterious criticisms I get are the ones illustrated in the comments here, for instance, which say (in mixed tones of bafflement, rage, and disappointment), "How can you simultaneously be a Catholic writer who respects the Church's teaching . . . and yet also be so critical of torture and its apologists?"

How do I live in that sort of contradiction?

Comments

Entity - From the article

|2009-12-01 09:10:06

The author also wrote:

I think that politics is the art of the possible. I regard political parties as large, clumsy mechanisms that Catholics should attempt to use in order to try to enact as much Catholic social teaching as possible. Sort of like trying to knit with tire irons. The moment such parties stand in the way of some fundamental aspect of Catholic social teaching is the moment I drop them like a hot rock and look around for some other means of advancing the Church's teaching. I have absolutely no party loyalty whatsoever and never have. Such loyalty seems to me as sensible as cleaving loyally to a hammer through thick and thin, when what might be needed to do the job is a wrench or a screwdriver.

laika

|2009-12-01 12:10:07

heh, i like the hammer bit, and have to agree that party loyalty is useless..

metallurge

|2009-12-01 12:10:57

Oh, I don't know... He seems to be arguing as much for a sort of realpolitik pragmatism as he is arguing for a principled moral stand.

Frankly, I think the notion of religion using politics to achieve religious ends is simply doomed to failure, and doomed to bring shame to the name of Christ.

Perhaps we should begin by doing a better job of convincing people abortion is actually morally wrong. Because we really haven't been doing a very great job of that.

Just as we should be doing a better job of convincing people torture is actually morally wrong. We really haven't been doing a very great job of that either.

Fact is, we Christians have decided the most important act we can take is at the voting booth. Yet as far as I can tell, what takes place in the voting booth is a culmination. If we have been failing to widely make our moral case, if we have allowed our moral authority to become corrupted as we turn our backs on obvious intrinsic moral evils, the voting booth is merely a reflection of the larger reality that we have failed.

emperorbma - failure indeed...

|2009-12-01 12:42:51

The voting booth should be a last resort, not a first choice. People aren't made good through legislation, only through Christ and what Christ has taught.

Coercion merely increases and foments rebellion, especially when it is used as the sole means. In short, Law without grace is meaningless.

Curbing evil is meaningless if people cannot accept that something is evil, and the only reason people will accept that evil actually is evil is to realize the actual price that evil is exacting. To wit, evil, in the light of the relative, is simply a "lesser good." Conversely, in the light of the absolute, "genuine evil" simply cannot exist. From a relative standpoint, there is no reason to prefer one to the other. One can choose to be "us" or "them," and it is of equal relative value. From an absolutist perspective, "evil" simply doesn't exist.

Hence, the common man's conception of good and evil, which is basically "Manichean dualism," fails because it doesn't establish why evil is wrong, it only claims that it is a parallel and opposite power to good. It's a trivial, meaningless choice that "theoretically" confers benefits either way. Thus, to the world, favoring God or favoring the devil is merely a choice of personal preference.

To Christians, evil is not a parallel power, or even anything coming close to God's and, in fact, it cannot be. We are, in fact, meant to be absolute on the reality of good. Likewise, evil is wrong because of whom it injures... Christ, but also (by extension) others and even oneself. Evil is eschewed, then, not because it's "them versus us," but because evil deprives both "them" and "us." The very word "depravity" reflects the fact of what evil is, it is not an "equal and opposite" force (as in the imaginary Yin and Yang) but it is, rather, a "deprivation of good" as darkness is a deprivation of light.

So, we may return to the point: how does abortion "deprive good?" Well, what does abortion deprive and is it good? We speak everywhere of a "right to life and liberty" as a common good. Yet, how is it that one can so trivially deprive the unborn of this common good? God, being the author of all good things, did not deprive them of their lives or their liberty...

laika

|2009-12-01 12:29:44

metallurge wrote:

Frankly, I think the notion of religion using politics to achieve religious ends is simply doomed to failure, and doomed to bring shame to the name of Christ.

so Christians have no responsibility to the state; no say in its direction?

holmegm - re:

|2009-12-01 20:02:31

laika wrote:

so Christians have no responsibility to the state; no say in its direction?

Apparently not ... when all the princes finally come into our tent and so forth, we should just tell them to go back out and do whatever the heck they want.

metallurge

|2009-12-03 17:51:08

Hmm, that word picture doesn't remotely describe what I have seen of the interaction between politics and religion...

laika

|2009-12-03 18:07:23

holmegm wrote:

Apparently not ...

yeah, i'm afraid i don't understand the objection (not you, to be clear). i went back and read the entire article and gleaned this:

Quote:

Therefore, as a free man, I make use of political parties when they support Church teaching and reject them when and where they do not.

sounds reasonable to me.

metallurge

|2009-12-03 21:01:42

Yeah, but that viewpoint kinda presupposes that political parties ever actually support Church teaching. I think the political considerations are far more cynical than that.

metallurge

|2009-12-03 17:58:54

The state is the state. Its purposes are secular. It has at various times and places been used as a religious tool, but this is ill-advised. The tools of the state are fundamentally not spiritual ones.

I didn't see Jesus so much using political power to initiate His Kingdom...

laika

|2009-12-03 18:12:34

metallurge wrote:

The state is the state. Its purposes are secular... ...The tools of the state are fundamentally not spiritual ones.

yes, and i'd like to keep it secular, but we as citizens can influence the state to do Good, can't we?

metallurge

|2009-12-04 00:27:08

I guess, on some level, perhaps, maybe, for a brief time, with constant supervision. But, if I can change it up with the language for just a moment, perhaps I can get to what it is I am concerned about...

Consider the difference between influencing the state to do good, and influencing the state to be good. It's like one of those is kinda actually personifying something that is really just a useful human way-of-understanding-groups. It's like we somehow want to redeem the state, to remake it, but good. I guess I just see such as inevitably doomed to failure. We can't make the state be good. We can temporarily and coercively make it do good. But that is probably the best we can hope for.

emperorbma

|2009-12-03 21:43:43

However, we also need to consider if in coercion we (perhaps unintentionally) become like the thing we are trying to coerce.

Entity - re:

|2009-12-05 08:35:46

metallurge wrote:

The state is the state. Its purposes are secular. It has at various times and places been used as a religious tool, but this is ill-advised.

But don't we use the state to legislate morality? Is not allowing murder, theft, or perjury strictly a secular act? Or is it natural law? Catholics would say that Church teaching is in line with natural law as both were established by God. So while natural law outlaws murder, theft, and perjury, it would also outlaw abortion, gay marriage, and torture.

WebbedFeetOfClay

|2009-12-05 15:12:37

but murder theft and perjury aren't illegal because they are immoral. they are illegal because they violate the social contract.

Entity

|2009-12-06 21:31:29

How does murder violate the social contract, but abortion and torture not?

WebbedFeetOfClay

|2009-12-07 22:00:48

they do... never said we were consistent or perfect or free from hypocrisy. Torture is actually illegal, but done anyway, largely with justifications that obscure who has civil rights/ a part in the social contract. abortion isn't illegal largely because the fetus' has lost it's recognition as a sovereign individual. If it's not thought of as a person it has no part in social contract.

OrionBlastar - Sociology

|2009-12-03 22:17:35

Religion is all about the sacred, and Secularism is all about the profane. Our system of government is designed to be secular but based on Judeo-Christian traditions, but Modern Secular Progressives want to remove all traces of religious tradition in the USA citing separation of church and state (Which was in a Thomas Jefferson letter, not the US Constitution and even so it was meant to stop the government from supporting one church over another or others and treat them all equally, and a church is something different from the concept of God or religion or religious symbols, and thus these secular progressives failed basic understanding that the church is the organization and not the same as God, religious symbols, and religious expressions) but to change traditions so that the profane isn't shunned anymore but new traditions that lead to individualism or narcissism and thus we don't have family values anymore but shock and awe values that offend anyone and are meant to mock religious traditions. Hence the Maplethorpe "Piss Christ" photos/paintings, etc.

Mixing religion and politics is not a good thing, mixing science and politics isn't a good thing either, politics mostly corrupts anything it touches.

As a Catholic we are supposed to be Pro-Life, Pro-Family Values, Pro-Religious Traditions, and Anti anything that destroys life or tries to take away religious freedom. But some Catholics decide to be Pro-Choice, Pro-Death Penalty, Pro-Gay Marriage, Pro-Secular Progressism, Pro-Profane, and etc. But hardly anyone calls them on it unless they are in politics and thus gets communion refused to them as a consequence.

Trying to stay away from the profane is very hard, it is in the media, TV shows, songs, movies, and often offends the sacred or mocks the sacred. Family Guy for example turns the traditional family into something profane and marks Christians as below intelligence of retarded people and the father of the family is a buffoon, almost the same with The Simpsons, but how many of us watch them anyway? It is a cartoon, it uses the offensive funny style of humor. One type I call the "Pooh pooh" jokes because they stink like poop but people laugh at them anyway even if them seem to be written by a 3rd grader who can only write jokes about "Pooh Pooh", another type is the "Religious Attack" jokes that attack religions and religious people (I think "South Park" uses this more than the others, but to be fair they attack every group on the planet) another type is the "Offensive Joke" where it is sexual, porn, nudity, cuss words, insults, and usually directed at a person or group and meant to offend them to be funny. Like the Muhammad in a Bomb-Turban cartoon, one of the ones they didn't print but was placed on a humor Wiki and Wikia deleted it was Muhammad giving oral sex to another man in which it becomes porn and offends Muslims. That stuff is the profane, and our founding fathers wouldn't allow it, and it didn't happen until the nation started to be secularized and then "anything goes". This is due to pressure from the left in politics who try to control the media and liberal arts. Notice that hardly anything on the left gets offended or mocked in this system.

You cannot convince the masses, when the public schools, colleges, media, TV shows, movies, songs, etc already changed their minds to worship the profane instead of the sacred. They want material things and have no need of spiritual things because they are taught if they cannot see or hear it, then it doesn't exist, and spiritual things are intangible in nature like love, kindness, forgiveness, emotions, enlightenment, knowledge, wisdom, faith, courage, grace, justice, God, fellowship, etc. You cannot prove in science that any of that exists to a worshiper of the profane, they already have their minds made up and you might as well be talking to a brick wall.

So they will never buy the abortion is wrong because it murders a human life form, because they have been indoctrinated into thinking the fetus either isn't alive, isn't human, or is a parasite and part of the woman's body she can do whatever the hell she wants with it.

In the same case Rush and company have a profane on the right in that torture is needed to fight terrorism. They don't consider it torture and they don't consider the terrorists as human beings with the right not to be tortured but treated as the US Constitution says to treat them, and International UN treaty says to treat them, etc. You cannot force them to give up their position on torture any more than you can force the profane secularists to give up their position on abortion. Politics has corrupted both sides then.

laika

|2009-12-03 23:02:24

OrionBlastar wrote:

Our system of government is designed to be secular but based on Judeo-Christian traditions, but Modern Secular Progressives want to remove all traces of religious tradition in the USA citing separation of church and state ...

so should the US government actively promote these Judeo-Christian traditions? should they be promoted to the exclusion of other religious traditions?

OB wrote:

That stuff is the profane, and our founding fathers wouldn't allow it, and it didn't happen until the nation started to be secularized and then "anything goes".

but the Founding Fathers didn't have South Park ;-)

OB wrote:

This is due to pressure from the left in politics who try to control the media and liberal arts. Notice that hardly anything on the left gets offended or mocked in this system.

i sometimes try to mock sacred leftist institutions like Political Correctness and the Primacy of the Minority, but you guys slap me down.

emperorbma

|2009-12-03 23:44:52

Quote:

i sometimes try to mock sacred leftist institutions like Political Correctness and the Primacy of the Minority, but you guys slap me down.

The Force must be kept in balance... :P

laika

|2009-12-01 12:26:42

emperorbma wrote:

People aren't made good through legislation, only through Christ and what Christ has taught.

ah, but there are things that i would do if they weren't illegal. of course avoiding certain illegal activities doesn't make me good, but it might be argued that it makes me a good citizen.

emperorbma

|2009-12-01 13:16:11

Quote:

it might be argued that it makes me a good citizen.

Does this argument extend to the citizens who handed over leaders of the Church to the Soviets?

To wit, the government is given authority over the sword by God and it is accountable for how it uses that sword. However, the citizen is also accountable for his or her willingness to cooperate with something contrary to God's Word. To say otherwise abrogates the responsibility to proclaim the Gospel in countries that are enemies of Christianity.

Let's be honest, the laws of a state carry an implicit threat of force. This threat was no less real though the Christian Church had to violate it to be faithful to her God. There are times when the lawbreaker is, indeed, good even though the state be established by God.

Now, is the citizen who does good under a state that commands him to being evil? Not necessarily. However, are all citizens who do good under a state that commands them to good? Again, no. Likewise, neither are all lawbreakers doing evil if they break the law because it was contrary to God's Will. Obviously lawlessness toward both constitutes both sin and crime.

(Now, whether one may break a human law that is adiaphora is a separate question.)

emperorbma

|2009-12-01 13:17:34

P.S. "good citizen" in which kingdom? Should we care that we're "good citizens" in the kingdom of men? Rather, if we are "bad citizens" of the Kingdom of God, then we should be concerned.

emperorbma

|2009-12-01 13:22:04

P.P.S. A better question to ask is whether one can see the Gospel commanding anyone to coerce charitable acts or whether coercion constitutes a form of thievery and injustice.

Entity - re:

|2009-12-05 08:30:09

emperorbma wrote:

P.P.S. A better question to ask is whether one can see the Gospel commanding anyone to coerce charitable acts or whether coercion constitutes a form of thievery and injustice.

You mean like taxes to support welfare and health care?

emperorbma

|2009-12-05 14:37:45

I would phrase it "Taxes to support programs that undermine the basic economics of the country." The current policies reward failure and punish success. That doesn't make for good economics.

For example, I don't mind the idea of a government supporting health care if it, at the same time, doesn't undermine the quality and turn-around rate of health care in general. The problem is that no government can manage the entire economy by itself since people are not an inherently "predictable equation." The current policies of micromanagement, however, are making doctors consider leaving their profession because of all the nonsensical regulations being imposed. I mention somewhere else the "law of unintended consequences" and it applies here as well. Likewise, the insurance industry will soon become a subsidary of the government, negating any benefits achieved through private enterprise and raising costs for everyone overall.

Charity is not something we can force people to do and if we do try to force them to do it, there is a significant cost involved. I call it Robin Hood economics. The problem with it is that the rich people who are being "taxed" simply raise their costs to recoup their own losses, resulting in higher prices for the poor in the end... The unintended consequence being that by punishing success, we are rewarding failure and undermining any attempts to succeed. The state of being poor is, then, not a circumstance but an imposition and Scripture would seem to imply "woe to him who imposed it."

laika

|2009-12-01 19:02:59

emperorbma wrote:

P.S. "good citizen" in which kingdom? Should we care that we're "good citizens" in the kingdom of men?

i can't answer whether we should or not, but i try to be a good citizen of this kingdom, respectful of its laws and whatnot.

my original point was that good behavior can to some degree be legislated, because some people do respond to the stigma of illegality and the threat of punishment.

to be explicit, i would like to grow some marijuana for my personal use for those (sometimes frequent) occasions when i'm crippled by violent vomiting related to migraines. but i don't pursue that line of safe and free herbal self-medication because the penalties for growing your own are pretty stiff, and i don't like the taint (to borrow metallurge's word) of illegality.

emperorbma

|2009-12-01 20:24:29

Actually, I would venture that you are the exception, not the rule. The people that actually warrant the "taint of illegality" very often do not care that they carry it. Civil legislation can certainly instill a cultural norm, but it won't actually correct the behavior itself.

Continuing with your example: Many people do skirt the laws about marijuana. Not only is there enough demand, but there are enough people who skirt the laws that there is an extremely lucrative black market, in fact. Otherwise, people would not risk their lives trying to cross the US border with bags of the stuff. Drug addicts are rather easy to find in any sizeable metropolis and I doubt they care that what they are doing is illegal. Drug dealers, as with any capitalist enterprise, fill the niche that this captive market affords.

The prohibition does not correct the underlying problem. It only serves to mask it and make actual regulation of the problem all the more difficult. The drug dealer is not going to stop for the police and submit to the state taxes and it would be ludicrous if any dealers did. The very fact of "prohibition" makes it exactly as lucrative as bootlegging and speakeasies were in the 1920s. The Chicago Mob is not a historical abberration and the very same things that drove its rise are continuing to feed the drug/gang wars throughout America today.

Correction of vice cannot be done through heavy-handed strategies. It's far too easy for one little leak to bring the entire facade down. Ever heard of the "streisand effect?" The black market is the economic equivalent. The law of unintended consequences guarantees that any legislation of this sort fails at the outset.

Only registered users can write comments!

Our valuable member Entity has been with us since Thursday, 03 April 2008.

Show Other Articles

The Twelve Days of Christmas: A Documentary Hypoth... (23 December 2009)
Job opp at BibleGateway.com (12 August 2009)
The Semi-Permeable Membranes of the Various Protes... (21 July 2009)
Don't Wear that Mini to Mass (11 July 2009)
California Public Schools Curriculum Requires Firs... (02 June 2009)

Feeds

Make a Donation

Current Poll

Support Us!

Latest News

Latest Journals

3.20 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

Popular

Statistics

Who's Online